I Don't Get Resident Evil

Resident Evil is one of those series that has never made much sense to me. On its surface, it's a bio-horror action series featuring zombies, genetically engineered viruses, parasites and biological super weapons. However, underneath all that it carries these bizarre puzzles that seem like they could only have been thought up by an insane chessmaster, like a homicidal schizophrenic version of Batman's Riddler.

You find keys shaped like miniature statues, in some cases in the shapes of actual chess pieces. But why? Nowhere in the series is there any mystical elements beyond the seeming symbolism of these objects that are entirely out of place. Granted, a lot of the villains really ARE totally insane, but most of them don't seem to be what I would describe as "brilliantly insane", like eccentric geniuses. Instead, they seem to be more just criminally insane, or, as in the case of Albert Wesker, insanely gay (CHRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSS!). Not once have I seen a character who seems either brilliantly insane or insanely brilliant, nor have any of these characters shown an honest interest in the occult.

I honestly have not yet played Resident Evil 4, and I only did a quick run-through of the original game. I never played RE0 either, nor did I ever finish Code Veronica. But I've gotten the general gist of things, and none of the villains ever came off, to me, at least, as ever really explaining the placement of these items. Puzzles to solve to open secret passageways seem to be found throughout the series, and yet nowhere is their presence justified, with maybe a few exceptions.

This doesn't ruin the games for me, of course. I can still enjoy them for what they are, but I don't think they will ever make sense. In comparison to what is, in my opinion, both a better series, writing-wise, and scarier, Silent Hill, Resident Evil will never manage to compare, but the Resident Evil series will still remain an enjoyable one in general, even if it is sort of nonsensical.

After all, shooting the heads off zombies will never go out of style, right?

Filling Swiss Cheese: Explaining ME3's Ending Without Indoctrination Theory

Okay, once again, I'm going to write about the ending of Mass Effect 3. Before anyone starts groaning, this time I have a little bit of a different angle to take. This time, I'm going to attempt to give my own alternative to the Indoctrination Theory, in which I attempt to explain the ending as-is without resorting to the idea that it was all a dream. Naturally, your mileage may vary on this, and it's a difficult task to undertake considering the massive Swiss cheese of plotholes, but I think I do a decent job.

Without having to go into too much detail for those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the games, just before the game reaches its climax, the protagonist, Commander Shepard, and his/her team recapture an ancient virtual intelligence, or VI, a sort of computer that behaves to mimic intelligence for ease of interface but is not actually intelligent, that contains information on where the MacGuffin, known as the Catalyst, is located. Supposedly, the MacGuffin is the key component to a super weapon, referred to as the Crucible, of ancient design intended to be used against the Reapers, the ancient, synthetic entities assaulting the galaxy.

Mind you, up to this point, the Catalyst is simply a MacGuffin. It is nothing more and nothing less; so far as we, the audience, have been informed, the Catalyst is just a plot device meant to be used with the Crucible to stop the Reapers. Up until now, no one even knows what they actually do, let alone what they are, so we're kind of just meant to accept them at face value as plot devices. The Crucible, for further explanation, has supposedly been constructed by different civilizations over numerous Reaper cycles, the period of approximately 50,000 years between when the Reapers arrive and wipe out civilization, and it has never been completed, essentially meaning that you have numerous civilizations attempting to build it in the hopes that it might save them. Such behavior is nonsensical, but plausible enough that I can work with it.

The VI reveals that the Catalyst is, in fact, the Citadel, a huge space station/city in the Serpent Nebula that has served for thousands of cycles as a sort of "galactic capital", with no one really knowing its origins. It even serves in the game as the main hub from which the player can find side missions and purchase goods. It is then revealed that a major antagonist, "the Illusive Man", affectionately referred to by fans as "TIM", who runs a secret organization, Cerberus, devoted to "furthering the goals of Humanity", has informed the Reapers that Shepard has obtained the VI and is now aware of the Catalyst's identity/location. It is not clear how TIM managed to communicate with the Reapers directly, but since it's obvious at this point that he's been Indoctrinated, despite not knowing it himself, we can assume the Reapers were willing to listen, if, indeed, they even needed to speak. Whatever the means, Shepard is then informed that the Citadel has been moved to Earth's orbit.

Now, here is where the first major plot hole enters into the ending. Why Earth? Why do the Reapers suddenly, discovering that their greatest foe has discovered the secret to defeating them, immediately take the Citadel to the human homeworld? Isn't that just a little TOO convenient? Well, in a sense, yes, it is a little too convenient, but it is also explainable. Earth was the second planet the Reapers assaulted directly, and we already know the reason for this. In fact, the only reason it wasn't the first was because the Reapers essentially had to fly through Batarian space just to get there, so they, of course, proceeded to start destroying the Batarians on the way. The reason they target Earth is exactly because it is the human homeworld.

Let me put it this way: you are an entity several hundreds of thousands of years old. In all those hundreds of thousands of years, you've never once even been scratched by another living being. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, some little bug comes along and pokes out your eye. In this analogy, you are the Reapers and Shepard is the bug. In the first Mass Effect, Shepard managed to do what had never been done -- EVER -- by preventing the Reapers' arrival when the Reaper Sovereign attempted to open a Mass Relay, a form of extremely rapid faster-than-light travel, in the middle of the Citadel. In the second game, Shepard manages to lead a team into the heart of the galaxy and either capture or destroy a human Reaper (I'd attempt to explain this one, but it'd really take way too much time than I have for writing and you have for reading to be worth it). So, yes, the Reapers have every reason to think that humans are special, as it is a human that has managed to be the only being in hundreds of thousands of years that could manage to make them rethink their strategy.

So, in that case, why bring the Catalyst straight to Earth? Why not take it somewhere out of the way? Well, I can answer that question with a single word: Harbinger. Harbinger is the oldest known Reaper, effectively the oldest living thing in the known universe, and is, arguably, the leader of the Reapers. Little is known about the Reapers and their origins, but there are a few things that we can say for sure, and especially about Harbinger in particular. Harbinger has an almost fetishistic desire to oversee its plans personally, as we hear over and over again when it "assumes control" of various minions in the second game. Harbinger gets a hard-on for doing the most important jobs itself, which makes its minimal role in Mass Effect 3 seem all the more bizarre, but, well, for arguments' sake I'm taking this for what it is. It makes sense, then, that if Harbinger wants to protect something, it would keep whatever it wants to protect as close by as possible. And, if Harbinger wants to destroy something, it would either be there for its destruction or assume control of something that is. In short, Harbinger would be at Earth in order to destroy humanity, and the Citadel would be at Earth because Harbinger would want to be able to personally keep an eye on it.

We now return to our stupid-ass ending, already in progress. After using the combined fleets he/she has gathered from around the galaxy, Shepard breaks through the Reapers in orbit around Earth, making it possible for the Shepard's ship, the Normandy, to dispatch a landing party. With Shepard in the lead, the landing party break through the front lines and establish a forward position near the space below the Citadel's geosynchronous orbit over London. Alliance troops line up for a final run toward what the military leaders refer to as a "conduit", a weird beam of light running from the ground up into the Citadel. What is the conduit? The only explanation I can come up with is that it is some sort of built in function of the Citadel designed to hold it in geosynchronous orbit. Alliance troops, including Shepard and his/her mentor, Admiral David Anderson, charge the conduit on foot in a momentary bout of stupidity, and after fighting off a massive onslaught of Reaper-created monstrosities, are met with none other than our old friend Harbinger in the sky, who proceeds to blast the crap out of Shepard and the remaining soldiers with a death ray, and Shepard blacks out. That's it for Harbinger. Thanks for the cameo!

Shepard awakens right where he/she blacked out, armor decimated, limping and down to just a pistol to fight off the remaining Reaper forces, all the troops in the immediate area dead or dying. Radio chatter reveals that everyone is dead, giving the order to all remaining soldiers to retreat. Shepard limps on toward the conduit, bravely shooting down a few weak enemies. Finally, Shepard makes it to the conduit and... is transported upward, into the Citadel. Apparently it functions as beaming technology, too. Who knew? Finding him/herself in a dark chamber among the bodies of thousands of people who didn't manage to escape the Citadel before the Reapers claimed it, and discovers Anderson is on the Citadel somehow too via radio communication. Shepard limps forward, meets Anderson, who is also badly wounded, at a terminal that they hope can be used to open the arms of the Citadel in order to let the Crucible in. In walks TIM, to reveal that he thinks it would be much better to CONTROL the Reapers than to destroy them, and he proceeds to begin controlling Shepard and Anderson, forcing Shepard to shoot Anderson in the left abdomen.

Here is where we meet our next major plot hole. If TIM is actually Indoctrinated, how is it that he is able to seemingly control Shepard and Anderson through Indoctrination? This is simple, naturally. TIM is a puppet of the Reapers, and the Reapers are in full control. He only thinks he has free will because the Reapers let him. Meanwhile, the Reapers exert their own control on Shepard and Anderson, killing to birds with one stone: Shepard and Anderson are reminded of the power the Reapers hold, and TIM continues to be a willing pawn doing the Reapers' bidding without even being aware. The alternative in this scenario would be the Reapers attacking directly, but they would deem this too dangerous because it would risk damaging the Catalyst. More on that in a minute.

We continue to go through an exchange in which TIM tries to convince Shepard that his plan of controlling the Reapers is the best plan and can work. This ends either with Shepard shooting TIM to save Anderson or Shepard managing to convince TIM that he's been indoctrinated, at which point TIM realizes the only way out is to kill himself, which he promptly does.

Shepard and Anderson then have a moment to chat, both exhausted from their wounds. This is the one redeeming feature of the ending, in my opinion, and I think most people agree with me. It's a touching moment in which Shepard and his/her father figure throughout the trilogy get to have a real heart-to-heart connection, both sure of their own impending deaths. Indeed, Anderson, a moment later, quietly passes on with Shepard looking on solemnly.

Some people point to a fresh, bleeding wound in Shepards left abdomen as evidence of Shepard's Indoctrination. The argument, in this case, usually points out that it's the same location that Shepard shot Anderson, claiming Anderson represents Shepard's resistance to Indoctrination and that Shepard is, in fact, shooting him/herself. This, of course, requires you to assume that Anderson is, in fact, a representation of Shepard's subconscious, which is at the very least as large a leap to make as simply making the assumption that Shepard accidentally reopened an earlier wound in via stress.

The radio then crackles to life again and we hear the voice of Admiral Hackett, who asks if Shepard can hear him and proceeds to say that the arms of the Citadel still aren't open and they need to be if there is to be any hope of getting the Crucible inside. Some people question how Hackett could know Shepard was on the Citadel if everyone supposedly died in the charge to the conduit, but I don't bother with this one too much. It's a relatively minor plot hole, and can easily be explained away with a handwave, ie. something about trackers being placed on all Alliance soldiers or something. Yes, such handwaves are cheap, but they exist because they are easy explanations for minor detail issues.

Shepard opens the arms of the Citadel, and the Crucible floats in. Hackett's voice over the radio informs us that nothing's happening and the problem must be on Shepard's end. This is when any idea that the ending was at least decent firmly plants itself in the crapper and proceeds to flush itself down into the municipal water system of Dumbassville. Suddenly, a patch of floor beneath Shepard's feet begins to levitate into the air, lifting Shepard up to a level above the terminal that apparently no one noticed was up there. Dogs CAN look up, but apparently every other species in the galaxy seems to have lost this ability. And what is there to welcome Shepard to this hidden chamber of one of the most populous locales in the known universe? Why, the Catalyst, of course! Wait... what? Yes, you heard right, that MacGuffin we've been chasing all this time is, in fact, a fully sentient AI that has been literally beneath your feet the entire time.

The Catalyst appears to Shepard in the form of a ghostly image, the shape of a young boy Shepard witnessed being killed by the Reapers on Earth, and has haunted Shepard's dreams throughout the game. There might be lots of things open to interpretation in this ending, but one thing has been made almost painfully clear by BioWare: the boy is intended to represent all the people Shepard could not save. Why the Catalyst chooses to present itself this way is anyone's guess, but it must be able to read Shepard's mind in order for this explanation to work. Considering that the Reapers are established to be able to control people's minds absolutely, it is not a huge leap in logic to assume that similar technology could be used to read minds.

Now here's where things get complicated. The Catalyst proceeds to explain to Shepard that it controls the Reapers, and that the Reapers exist in order to harvest organic civilizations and preserve them as Reapers every 50,000 years in order to prevent organics from developing synthetic life that will inevitably destroy organic life. Naturally, this notion is ridiculously circular logic, but their is a sort of brilliance behind it that I have worked out. This brilliance, of course, even if it proved true, would never counter the execution so bad it could only have been written by a drunk chimpanzee, but it does make sense. First, the Reapers claim to have more-or-less always existed. They claim to have witnessed synthetics destroying organics. Indeed, they even claim to have originally been victims of this tragedy. That's the first step in the equation. The Reapers have seen this happen, and work to prevent it from occurring again.

From that, we can suppose that, much in the same way that the Reapers "harvest" organics and preserve them as Reapers, the Reapers were, themselves, originally organics. This is the easy conclusion we make in this. It gets more complicated from here. The Catalyst claims to control the Reapers. Some people believe this to be contradictory to the idea that the Reapers are artificial intelligence, but it is and it isn't. The Reapers are still intelligent and capable of acting on their own, but that does not make the Catalyst's claim of controlling them a lie. We could suppose that the Catalyst was the central control of the Reaper cycle, maintaining their purpose and directing them to perform their tasks, but that it somehow lost control. The Reapers, for sake of argument, began to act against the will of the Catalyst.

Why would this system exist? Well, I take a large part of the inspiration for this theory from the conflict between the Geth, another artificial intelligence in the Mass Effect universe, and their creators, the Quarians. Much like the Geth, the first Reapers were created but feared by those among their creators that did not understand them. This resulted in a war that ultimately led to the destruction of the organic species that created the first Reapers. Much as the Geth remained mostly loyal to the Quarians even though they would fight for their own survival, the Reapers would be upset at the loss of their creators, so they begin a process of maintaining the galaxy in their stead. They create the Catalyst to function as a form of central computer to observe and guide their efforts, but over time the Reapers begin to slowly deviate from their original intentions. After witnessing further wars between organics and synthetics, they draw the conclusion that destruction is inevitable and begin the cycles as we see them in the Mass Effect games.

That leaves one major plot hole, however: the Crucible. How is it that a device, designed, added onto and constructed over numerous cycles, could ever perfectly connect to the Catalyst and manage to carry out a function? The answer comes from the only possibility: the Crucible was originally designed by the Reapers themselves. The Reapers are not stupid. They might do things that seem ridiculous to humans, but they never do them because they just weren't thinking. Everything they do is done with specific intent, even when that intent is flawed. The Reapers foresaw the possibility that they would become the very thing they hoped to prevent, so they designed a failsafe, the Crucible, to be used in order to stop them from destroying everything. The core design of the Crucible was the necessary function, but the added devices managed to modify its use, both empowering it and adding additional capabilities, such as being able to control the Reapers directly or to take a template and imprint that template on all life in the galaxy, thus explaining the differing results of the ending.

The rest is mostly little details that can be explained with handwaves, and I really don't feel like going into every little thing. I think I've covered the major points here. Again, a lot of speculation goes into it, but I don't think it requires any more assumptions than the Indoctrination Theory. In essence, it's a sort of Murphy's Law counter to IT more than a "better explanation". It does no better of a job tying all the plot holes together, just ties them together differently. It doesn't change the sheer massive fail that is the ending, but it is an alternative perspective.

Entitlement, Methinks Thou Doth Protest Too Much

I've seen a number of independent developers out there taking stabs at the for-profit video game industry lately that, I think, are kind of unjustified. In many cases, it's just based around the idea that games should be fun and artistic and not used as merely a means to make money. In some cases, this is expanded to the recent boom in "kickstarter" initiatives, a way of soliciting donations in order to fund the development of a game without having to submit to a publisher.

While I can respect the right of developers to simply make games for the joy of making games, I find this to be rather arrogant. Not in the sense that a rich man might believe himself more worthy than a poor man because he "earned his wealth," but rather in the sense that it proposes the thought that this person has the right to dictate what is and is not enjoyable or "worthy" in a game. It causes me to wonder why a person would make such claims in the first place. Perhaps they are fed up with being ignored for games they view as being "less interesting." I don't know. What I do know is this: they are destroying themselves.

A friend of mine once shared with me a bit of wisdom that I shall not soon forget: your politics are boring. Not in the sense that your political opinion is, literally, boring, but that you will never get people to join your way of thinking by making them feel like you think you are better than they are on moral grounds, even if you actually are (yes, typically a subjective thing, I know, but whether subjective or not is irrelevant in the argument). You will only come off as grandstanding, arrogant and holier-than-thou, and in the end will just exhaust your audience rather than get them to be concerned with whatever you want to convince them of.

The way this connects with video games is pretty simple. The industry is as much a political construct as a social one. You might disagree with EA's policies, but at the end of the day they will always have better public relations, a larger budget and more lobbyists. Their business methods, focused more on quantity than quality, do not necessarily create better games, only more money. This is where, if you want to change the structure of the industry, you have to beat them. If you want to get people to respect your opinion and why what you think is better for video games going forward should be accepted, you need to be among them.

If you find yourself shouting from the mountain tops that "they are all whiny, entitled brats," no one will ever give a fuck what you think. But if they find you sitting among them, just as frustrated as they are with the way EA gouges fans of sports games, or ramps up costs on downloadable content, or how much you really hated such-and-such changes made in the sequel to whatever, they will respect you. People will begin to understand your opinion because they can connect to you.

I, for one, find independent games often tend to be some of the best, most imaginative and enjoyable gaming experiences for their cost. I feel I get more out of paying $15 for an indie game that I would give a three-star rating than I would from a big-budget blockbuster with the same rating based almost purely on the fact that it didn't cost me as much. Alternatively, a great indie game for the same price is a treasure, but so can a similarly great big-budget game be. If you want to convince me that your opinion matters, you need to convince me you're not an arrogant snob who thinks you're better than me just because I happen to enjoy some games that are made on larger budgets. Yes, maybe I am a bit too "mainstream," but the fact remains that I play the games I like, and while some of the things in those games might frustrate me, overall I still like them and am passionate about them and will defend them from people that I feel unjustly belittle them, because to belittle them makes me feel that you also belittle me as well.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that video games are art, but art is exactly what art has been for thousands of years: it is both an aesthetic thing intended to convey the makers creativity, and it is a means of making a living. Some people value the creating more than making a living off of it, and that's fine, but some people are willing to pay for something they like, and that's fine too. We should never exclude anyone from the community because we like different things.

Except for Angry Birds. I hate that game.

Can "Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut" Fix the Ending?

So, this morning BioWare announced "Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut", a free downloadable content extension to the ending of the game that is supposed to help clarify some of the things people were confused about as well as provide closure through " additional cinematic sequences and epilogue scenes," due to be released sometime this summer. These words suggest to me that what I wrote the other day is correct: the so-called "Indoctrination Theory" is wrong. The ending we got is, for better or worse, exactly as bad as it seems.

So, now that we have some idea of what BioWare is doing to address the concerns of the fans, will it manage to satisfy those who have been so angered? Maybe. BioWare's founder and CEO, Dr. Ray Muzyka, has stated that he believes they've managed to find the right balance between addressing the biggest issues the fans had with the ending, while also maintaining the "artistic integrity" of the team (I put "artistic integrity" in quotes mainly just because I don't think the original ending had much "integrity" in it at all).

First, we have the problem of the destruction of the Mass Relays themselves. It is established canon in Mass Effect, starting with the Arrival DLC for Mass Effect 2, and reaffirmed in the Codex in Mass Effect 3 itself, that rupturing a Mass Relay will release an amount of energy roughly equivalent to a star roughly the size of our sun going supernova. This would mean that destroying ALL the Mass Relays throughout the Milky Way would cause untold amounts of destruction, becoming, effectively, galactic genocide. Now, since the energy released during the ending of ME3 is a special color, we might assume that this is somehow a special case that would NOT cause said destruction. This leads to another problem, however: galactic populations and the importance of trade.

There are two significant species in the Mass Effect universe, the Turians and the Quarians, whose biology is based upon dextro-amino acids, as opposed to levo-amino acids, which almost every other sentient species in the galaxy is based on (yes, including humans). Now, at the ending of the game, when the Mass Relays are destroyed, huge numbers of the military force of both of these species, and perhaps even the entirety of the Quarians in the galaxy, are in the Sol system, on or orbiting Earth. Dextro-based lifeforms cannot subsist on levo-based foods, and it is almost unheard of that the two would be found in the same star system, meaning that neither of these two species would be able to survive indefinitely in our solar system. Since the Mass Relays are the only means of traveling rapidly across the galaxy, that leaves only conventional Faster-Than-Light travel, meaning that if they started traveling immediately, it could be years, perhaps even decades, before they reach a star system with any renewable food sources.

Now, even worse than the idea that these two huge fleets would starve to death is the idea that, with so many billions of people of all different species stranded in the Sol system, which has only one habitable planet, how could all those people survive long on such limited resources? It seems inevitable that war will break out sooner or later as groups begin fighting for survival against starvation, unless they can manage to discover the technology to build Mass Relays on their own REALLY fast.

These are just the BIGGEST issues I feel would have to be addressed in an "extended" ending. There are others, but those are the biggest, and certainly not the only ones that would need to be there for me to feel like it's even worth it. Other issues include:

The fate of your crew. The crew of the Normandy includes a Turian and a Quarian, who, along with the rest of the crew, are stranded on an uninhabited garden world. Either the life on that planet is levo based, in which case both those characters will inevitably starve to death if they don't die of an allergic reaction first, or it is dextro based, which means everyone else will starve to death.

The Catalyst and the Crucible. It is still entirely unexplained how the two devices, built hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years apart with no prior knowledge of the existence of the other, become somehow compatible. Did the Reapers design the initial version of the Crucible? Is the Catalyst just magic? The convenience of this is never even mentioned, let alone explained.

The Reapers. So, the Reapers were created to harvest organic life every 50,000 years before it can develop synthetic life that will destroy them? Ignoring the circular logic there for a moment, what exactly does that mean? Who created them to do this? Does this mean they just ignore the Geth, an already existing synthetic lifeform? More than that, they actually through the course of the game EMPOWER the Geth by providing them with more advanced technology. If synthetic life is so dangerous, why make them MORE dangerous? Furthermore, if the Catalyst "controls" the Reapers, as it says it does, does that mean the Reapers are not really AI because they have no free will? By extension, since the Catalyst is all of a sudden able to do something differently but can't (or won't) do so on its own, does that mean that it isn't truly an AI? I have my own theories, but they are all based entirely on conjecture at this point. While some things can be vague, things being too vague can just become ridiculous.

And finally, pardon my French, but what the fuck is "Synergy?" In the Synergy ending, in which all life, synthetic and organic, are supposed to be merged somehow to create a "perfect evolution" somewhere between the two. What does that mean? We see that the Normandy's crew, climbing out of the crashed ship, now have glowing green "circuitry" on their skin, including EDI, who was already a machine, so are we to assume that the green "circuitry" is also somehow representative of organic life? Does it flow with glowing, digital sap?

Okay, that last one is just me ranting a little bit, and I really don't care that much, but it does feel nice to just let my mind screw around with it. As for the rest, though, these are legitimate concerns I have. I could accept an expanded ending if it at least addresses these clear problems. It doesn't need to be perfect, but I would at least like to know if these major questions can be answered. If not, then it will just seem like a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.

Why I Think the Indoctrination Theory is Bullshit

So, there is a major theory regarding the ending to Mass Effect 3 that has been making its way around the Internets that attempts to claim that the ending is actually so clever it just goes over people's heads. It is explained in detail in a long video on YouTube, but for those with ADHD who don't have time or energy to watch the whole video, I'll attempt to sum it up.

Essentially, the theory claims that the protagonist of the game, Commander Shepard, is experiencing the process of Reaper Indoctrination. Indoctrination, in this sense, is a literal form of technological mind-control that, with prolonged exposure, makes it essentially impossible for an individual to fight the Reapers, and usually results in active, even willing, servitude to them. The events in the final moments of the game are essentially hallucinations brought on by the finalizing of Shepard's Indoctrination, and the ending cinematic after Shepard makes his/her choice is, essentially, hopeful visions of the future rather than an actual conclusion.

Many people have argued for or against the truth to this claim, and I personally am of the opinion that there is some truth to it. That does not, however, mean that it is in any way brilliant or even fully true. I have a feeling that the intention behind it is somewhere in the middle.

The game's developers have hinted as much by saying they were trying to make an ending that would be talked about for a long time (and Obi-Wan told Luke his father was dead, but that's another story). This suggests, so far as I can guess, that they intended for things to be a bit vague, and if they wanted to be vague, Indoctrination would have been the way to go. Ever since the very first game, Indoctrination has been known to be something that causes hallucinations and can cause people to guess what is and is not real. In fact, I would go so far as to say that would have been an ending truly worthy of the word "awesome." It would have been a brilliant plot twist worthy of high praise. However, it isn't.

My reasoning for this is twofold. First, there are major flaws in the logic used to explain the theory. First, of the three options the player is given at the end of the game, the one that supposedly would be the only choice in which Shepard actually resists the Indoctrination is the only one available no matter what. In the game, you have to gather War Assets in preparation for the final fight against the Reapers. You earn an Effective War Asset value, and the higher it is, the better the ending is supposed to be. The theory claims that the choice of "controlling" the Reapers or "merging all organic and synthetic life" are, supposedly, the wrong choices and would indicate Shepard giving in to the Indoctrination. However, those options are only presented at all if your Effective War Assets are high enough. The supposedly correct choice, "destroying all synthetic life," is the only one available no matter how low your score might be. It makes little sense that the options offered would provide no reward at all for doing better. The only part of this that would suggest truth to the Indoctrination Theory is that, if your score is low enough, you actually wind up destroying all life in the galaxy, not just synthetic life. It's never explained why that would be, so my only guess would be that there weren't enough scientists working to complete the Crucible and fix certain flaws. Regardless, it doesn't make sense that it would be the only option the Catalyst offers, because it would be directly counter to the Reapers' goals, both if what the Catalyst says is taken at face value and if it is, in fact, lying, since it would destroy the Reapers as well.

The second reason I think the Indoctrination Theory is wrong is my issue with the claim that it is somehow "so brilliant" that it just "goes over our heads." Perhaps it does go over our heads, but that does not mean it is brilliant. In fact, I would argue that the reason it fails is exactly because it goes over our heads. It comes down to a matter of understanding the audience. It is wise not to fall into the trap of thinking your audience is stupid, but it is also important to avoid the idea that your audience is too smart. Part of the reason the Indoctrination Theory has become so popular is because it fills in all the blanks. Unfortunately, the fact that there are so many blanks is a problem in and of itself: it is exactly the same as the "God of the Gaps" argument, in which one makes a claim that something is true because there is no other reasonable explanation for things we don't know. In essence, it's trying to justify things that can't otherwise be explained by drawing inferences and conjecture based on clues that are sketchy at best. In fact, some of the "clues" cited in the video are SO sketchy, it is arguable whether they were even things anyone ever intended to be noticed at all, including one-off lines from the first Mass Effect game that are so vague they could be interpreted almost any way one likes and may not even have any connection at all.

Occam's Razor, which can be paraphrased as "the simplest explanation is usually the correct one," leads me to conclude that, in fact, the idea that the Indoctrination Theory is true is based so much on conjecture and speculation that, while it might be the only explanation that accounts for all the plot holes and continuity errors, it is little more than grasping at straws at best. In short, even though the ideas proposed in it might be very clever, if it is, in fact, true, then it is so ineptly executed as to cancel out any genius inherent in its conception. In fact, in this case, it would go so far as to undermine any brilliance, as has been seen in the many blogs, videos, magazine articles, etc., that have analyzed the ending.

The Ending Must Not Be Abstract

Fiction is about characters. There are many styles of writing, and many ways to tell a story, but in order for the audience to connect on an emotional level, the story must be about characters. Not in the abstract sense, either: if the audience is to feel something about the story, they must be able to relate to the story, and that means there must be people that the audience likes.

Without likable, relatable characters that the audience can invest in, the story becomes little more than a thought experiment. This, I think, is the largest part of why Mass Effect 3's ending was so unsatisfying: it disconnected from the characters that held us in the story so much that it became abstract and lost its connection to the people who clearly cared so much. The choice provided at the end of the game makes for an interesting thought experiment in which the player is asked to think of what the implications of their choice might be, but at the end of the day, it was the characters that held the player's interest. They were likable and many players would go so far as to claim they even fell in love with them, and to have their fate glossed over in a broad few seconds of footage showing that they essentially had "not died in a crash landing" does little to resolve the concerns of the fans who had grown so attached.

This is an important lesson for writing in general, but I believe video game designers in particular should take note. The investment people give in a story in which they make key decisions and literally become involved in the outcomes such as this means that people will make attachments that become difficult to disentangle. Even in a tragedy, it is relieving to know that the characters you sought to aid would have not died in vain. To rush past all this and pretend that it was just about "saving the world" or "fighting the enemy" misses the point of having a story altogether. While some games, such as games heavily focused on multiplayer deathmatches like Team Fortress, can get away with minimal focus on plot, it is notable that to create a game that is heavily focused on storytelling such as BioWare tends to make, you cannot simply pretend the players will not care about the characters.

A great example to look at is Halo: Reach. While the game is heavily focused on action, it does have a well thought-out story in the single-player campaign. In particular [spoiler alert, for those of you who care and have had your heads stuck in the sand], it is relevant in that the story IS a tragedy that does end with the protagonists, including the player's character, dying in battle. While I had actually bought the game to play with a friend, I found myself deeply involved in the story and the characters. They had likable personalities, unique quirks, and, above all, they were watching MY back. Not just each others', but MINE. That is a key thing that you don't get in any other medium: not only do these people become likable personalities, but they can become people you TRUST, in spite of being fictional.

The ending, in contrast to Mass Effect 3, is sad, but not disappointing. That is a key thing that is so often missed by critics of the fans' complaints: it is NOT about wanting a happy ending; it is about wanting an ending that feels like an ending. Noble Team, in Halo: Reach, dies off throughout the course of the story while fighting to get critical strategic resources safely off-world, as well as helping to get the people evacuated. Yes, they die, but they die fighting for a chance. Even if they hadn't succeeded in securing the cargo they needed onto a transport, it would have meant something that they died fighting.

By comparison, it is also possible to have a happy ending that is totally meaningless. Deus Ex Machina, a narrative device in which something or someone shows up to save the day without the need of the heroes' help, is not always a poor plot development when used sparingly, but it is an easy one to misuse. If victory is achieved and the heroes did not struggle, had no triumph of their own, then the ending will feel hollow because it is disconnected from the characters themselves. This often comes directly into gameplay when it comes to video games: there is a fine line to walk between cinematic immersion and technical gameplay. On the one hand, gameplay can seem rather dull from a storytelling perspective. Fighting a boss is often more instinct than drama. On the other hand, it can feel incredibly disappointing if you had a boss you wanted to fight and instead it was relegated to a simple cutscene in which your character performs a spectacular move.

To put it all together: a satisfying ending in fiction must include the characters heavily. While it is interesting to explore complicated ideas in science fiction, it is always abstract if not viewed through the eyes of characters we have come to identify with. The ending must include triumph of some kind, even if that "triumph" is emotional instead of literal, such as dying in battle failing your mission; the "triumph," in this example, being that the character did not succumb to despair even when all hope for success was crushed. It is the "triumph" that brings catharsis to the audience, and without that catharsis we find ourselves left hanging as though the final episode of our favorite tv show never saw the light of day. You'll never know what happened to the characters you were so worried about, and now you don't only have to mourn the show but to do so knowing that you will be left on a cliffhanger forever.

Why Quality is Essential to the Survival of the Games Industry

Some game developers have been making dramatic shifts in some disturbing directions lately. Instead of pushing out great games that make you feel they are totally worth the money and time to be spent on them, they seem to push games out the door far too soon before they can truly be completed. In other words, it seems like a push toward quantity over quality.

This is a mistake, not only from an artistic perspective, but from a marketing perspective as well. One of the reasons many of these game companies become as successful as they do is because they have made great games. To suddenly turn away from that direction and start churning out half-assed games as quickly as possible with as much for-pay downloadable content as you can get away with not only makes your games weaker, it also generates negative feedback from players. In an age when consumers can communicate rapidly among large groups and spread ideas at lightning speed, negative feedback has become an Achilles' heel in a way not possible before. When someone posts an extremely angry critique of something in a forum, for instance, others will read that and it will strike them far more powerfully than if they had simply played the game themselves. It creates a sort of "emotional magnifying glass", where every idea and opinion becomes amplified by a magnitude relative to the amount of emotion behind the initial comment.

The result of this, of course, is that negative player response becomes extremely negative player response, and when that gets to a certain point, it becomes extremely bad press. Obviously, I'm thinking about BioWare as I write this. As it is, I have stood as a defender of BioWare for years. I have loved their games, and I'm not just using the word as hyperbole. I have worn their merchandise. However, I cannot deny that their games, in recent years, have been declining. I've still loved them, but there have been some details that seemed rushed. And then we have this whole fiasco over the ending of Mass Effect 3... This has been, I believe, the influence EA Games has had over them since they bought the company. Make more games faster, make more money, which has seemed for a long time to be EA's entire business model. But I think it fails to accept some truths that will be a major chink in its armor.

First, EA is not the only gaming conglomerate out there. Activision has been around the block, and suffered its own losses. Activision ultimately had to make some sacrifices to keep their business going. One of the biggest keys to their readjustment came when they merged with Blizzard Entertainment, the developers behind the wildly successful WarCraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises. What makes this merger different, however, is that Activision truly needed Blizzard more than Blizzard needed Activision. As Blizzard makes their own games, and were doing quite successfully for many years, they have maintained a significant amount of independence, and have been free to take as much time as they need to develop a game that meets the quality standards they have set for themselves. The result is that, in spite of the increase in their budget they have gained by being part of a larger company, they have managed to produce games of consistently high quality (your mileage may vary, of course, but the general reception of their games has remained steady).

The obvious key here is that Activision truly NEEDS Blizzard. Activision's falling on hard times meant they needed to restructure, and the result was that they found a willing partner that was already doing quite well on their own but felt they could still benefit from being part of a larger company. EA, on the other hand, brings nothing to the table. Instead, EA manages to avoid developing games at all, while at the same time making enormous sums of money off their subsidiaries. Capitalism is not evil, but there is something to be said for what works and what doesn't work in a capitalist society. For years, EA has gotten away with this business model. Unfortunately for EA, however, you can now begin to see some rather nasty cracks in it. The recent blowback against the ending to Mass Effect 3 is just the largest example of these cracks.

I cannot say for sure that the reason the ending came off so rushed and inadequate was a result of a deadline imposed by EA, but it is my suspicion that this is the case. And it really is just the largest scandal to hit the internet. It can't even be considered the "latest" because even MORE criticism is coming over one of BioWare's other large IP's, Dragon Age, as new information comes to light about the development of Dragon Age III. It's beginning to look like a veritable shitstorm of bad news for BioWare alone, which is just one of EA's subsidiaries.

I have been bothered by EA's practices for years, even going so far as to consider boycotting them, but the fact remains that many of the companies they own still produce games I truly want to play, in spite of their faults. But as the years roll on, I find myself worn thinner and thinner trying to defend my interest in these games. It's getting to a point where even I have to admit that I'm losing trust in BioWare, in particular, which has been a game developer who has consistently held my loyalty.

It is my hope now that EA might soon learn its lesson and back off before it is too late; to allow their subsidiary developers to take the time they need to develop quality products, because EA is, at this point, the video game industry's equivalent of Wall Street. They have grown so big that, if they fail now, a huge portion of the industry will crumble with them the same way banks began to fail after Lehmann Brothers fell apart. I can't ask that people boycott EA, because I don't even believe I could hold myself to that promise, but if you can, try to avoid letting them get away with their "quantity over quality" business practices. It's quickly becoming far more destructive than I think anyone even truly realizes.

Mass Effect is the Gaming Industry's Star Wars

I recently watched a video that made the argument for a positive side to all the drama over the lackluster (to use the understatement of the century) ending to Mass Effect 3. The argument Jim Sterling makes in the video is that, regardless of what your thoughts might be on the ending or the ENORMOUS outcry over it, the outrage, itself, is a good thing. That Mass Effect can generate such a loud and even potentially destructive response means that, regardless of the "destruction" people might see to video games as an art form or the possibly demeaning behavior of some fans, means that video games have officially made it as a legitimate entertainment industry. And, you know what? He's right.

I have argued for years that Mass Effect is the video game world's Star Wars: an epic that manages to be both a critical success as well as having, no pun intended, mass appeal. It's a trilogy with spectacular action; enjoyable, innovative gameplay; clearly identified heroes and villains; but it also has thought provoking themes; a memorable, likable cast of characters; exploration of choice and consequences; and explorations of morality beyond the simple black-and-white of "good and evil." It is, like Star Wars, not the first blockbuster in its medium, but it is one that has set a standard going forward by which others will attempt to imitate.

Of course, Mass Effect being the video game world's Star Wars, comes with the obvious downside: Mass Effect is the video game world's Star Wars. Along with all the great things about Star Wars, there is a definite dark side (once again, no pun intended) to the fandom. With that level of success, you inevitably open up a Pandora's box of criticisms, with fans who have been around longer believing themselves to be the "true fans," newer fans feeling they have a better understanding of the series, and of course, people who, no matter what is done, will always feel they had better ideas and be upset when those are not the outcome they get. There is also, inevitably, fan fiction written to "fix" the problems their writers perceive in content.

This is all, normally, manageable, as in the case of the Star Wars prequels, which are generally seen as of significantly less quality than the original trilogy, but still accepted, if somewhat begrudgingly, as canon. Individual complaints about midichlorians, poor acting, excessively padded screenplays, too many digital special effects or what-have-you are ultimately pushed to the fringe and the movies themselves become a central part of the Star Wars universe. This is, largely, the case with Mass Effect, too, with one small caveat: the ending is SO poorly written that even professional writers have come out claiming it completely misses every quality that an ending is supposed to have. Endings being so pivotal to a story, of course, as well as the fact that the ending itself is the last thing we experience in a story, have caused the fervor to achieve critical mass. No where did Star Wars ever have an ending that was literally in dispute. People may not have liked where a film finished, but it was never so bad and so vague that absolutely no one can agree on any in-universe facts about it. In fact, one of the most popular theories about the ending is that NONE of it actually happened, and that it's all something the protagonist essentially dreamed. When what is now known infamously as the "Dallas Ending" is a better ending than what you have, you KNOW there's a problem.

If my feeling is correct that this is the game industry's Star Wars breakthrough, that leaves many things up in the air. If this is the response that comes out of it, where does it lead from here? Do video games now enter a sort of dark age where no developers venture further out to develop compelling stories? Do we never see anything even remotely like Mass Effect EVER again? As always, only time will tell, but I fear we may be entering a period when some of the greatest fiction in the world could be held back because no one is willing to stake their careers on a dream. I am hoping that there are creative and enterprising developers out there who will pick up the pieces and continue to bring forth the world of gaming into new and wondrous experiences.

A Digital Glass Ceiling: Women in Video Games

In a previous post, I discussed how the iconic character of Jennifer Hale's performance as the voice of the female Commander Shepard was both amazing for its brilliance and directly inspiring to me personally. This does, of course, come with a significant caveat: Shepard is a character that was written as a man. This, above all else, is what essentially established Commander Shepard's character, as, for all plot purposes, Shepard had to perform the same actions, or else drastically alter the plot, as well as greatly increase the amount of voice over recording needed. It is all dependent on that personality, for which it was Jennifer Hale's job to interpret into a voice that was believable and likable, which she does stunningly.

Few people in the game industry, or indeed the greater entertainment industry, even think about this simple failure: women in fiction are women first and everything else second. This isn't true for the real world, but in a society so dominated by male privilege, women are, ourselves, seen as a sort of commodity. We are treated as though being a woman is the defining trait in our lives, and thus find ourselves repeatedly being shown in fiction having features that are almost entirely exclusive to women.

I look at the Batman universe to draw examples from, primarily because Batman has such a wide cast of characters with clear psychological profiles that, while unrealistically over-the-top, serve as excellent and fairly well-known character archetypes. When asked to name some of Batman's nemeses, usually the first names that come to mind are the Joker, the Penguin, and Two-Face. These are three characters whose identities are simple to identify, but also complex in detail. The Joker is a psychotic, disfigured man who portrays himself as a clown and enjoys causing mayhem and destruction. The Penguin is a wealthy and sophisticated mobster with a thing for birds. Two-Face is a disturbed former District Attorney, obsessed with a twisted perversion of "justice" based entirely on chance, whose formerly hidden dark side exploded to the surface after half his face was horribly scarred by a criminal he had sought to prosecute.

All of those are spectacular character profiles; all extreme and overblown, but easily identifiable. But what do you think of when you are asked to think of female villains in the Batman universe? Well, you will almost always hear Catwoman first, followed by Poison Ivy. If the person you are talking to is particularly knowledgeable, they may mention Harley Quinn or Talia Al'ghul. Let's examine these characters individually.

Catwoman: First up is the self proclaimed "Greatest Thief in Gotham." In most continuities, Catwoman is basically an expert cat burglar who has a thing for cats and wearing skin-tight leather clothing. What makes Catwoman a particularly dangerous foe to Batman is her potential as a love interest. She teases him, and even occasionally helps him, and in return Batman has a kind of respect and admiration for her that he wouldn't afford to most thieves. Essentially, this is a role that can ONLY be filled by a woman.

Poison Ivy: Poison Ivy is a botanist mutated by an accident that gave her control of plants as well as the ability to poison people with a kiss. She is essentially a superpowered eco-terrorist, but it's the latter ability that defines her role in fiction. She is a seductress, dangerous and attractive, but almost entirely defined by her sex appeal. Again, a role that could ONLY be filled by a woman.

Talia Al'ghul: Now we're getting into territory that fewer people are familiar with, thus showing that, after only two entries, we're already somewhat scraping the barrel for examples. Talia Al'ghul is the daughter of R'as Al'ghul, a man who has survived hundreds of years using a mystical well he calls "the Lazarus Pit" and has established the League of Assassins, a group of extremist vigilante ninjas who see it as their duty to execute any and all criminals without trial. R'as serves as a sort of corrupt father figure to Bruce Wayne, which makes him one of the very few enemies that knows Batman's identity. This also establishes Talia as a particularly deadly love interest, as she knows Bruce Wayne and has been intimate with him as well as knowing his identity as Batman. Again, since her particular role establishes her as a love interest, this is again a role that could ONLY be filled by a woman.

Harley Quinn: Harley Quinn is a character first introduced in Batman: The Animated Series in the 90's and quickly became a fan favorite. She is the Joker's girlfriend and most loyal henchwoman, and adores "Mr. J" more than anything in the world. The Joker, of course, treats her like dirt, but she's so madly in love with him that she doesn't even realize it. This is a particularly degrading example, as it depicts a woman in an abusive relationship who simply accepts "her place," even relishing in it, while actually being a DOCTOR as well. That's right, Harley Quinn, aka Dr. Harleen Quinzel, had managed to earn a Ph. D. before having a series of psych eval sessions with the Joker that drover completely bonkers. On top of that, she's also an expert martial artist and acrobat. In other words, not only is it a role that could ONLY be filled by a woman, but it's also a particularly offensive one when looked at in detail.

Clearly, all these examples fail the simple test of finding a female character whose role in the story would be possible to replace with a man, but it's not just in the Batman universe. If you look around in films, video games, comic books, and even most novels, it is hard to find any female characters for whom the narrative either specifically required to be female or fills a role traditional to a woman. This is something that needs to change if we are ever to encourage more women to play games.

With the example of FemShep, I am hoping that door is finally beginning to open. We still, five years on, have yet to see very many female characters that don't fit into traditional female roles in video games, but there has been a crack made in the glass ceiling. Even with statistics saying that only about 18% of people who play Mass Effect play with a female Shepard, most of the fans that do have become some of BioWare's most loyal fans, even the men. There is hope for a more diverse field of women in video games.

Gamer Entitlement and the Argument of Exclusivity

One thing that consistently irritates me about the gaming community is its immense sense of entitlement. Gamers often make the mistake of thinking they "own" games, and therefore get to dictate what does or does not go into them. This, of course, results in enormous outrage when they don't get things exactly their way. It also creates a situation whereby they tend to push people out of the community for having a difference of opinion, thus destroying diversity.

I have a friend who is an incredibly intelligent and exceedingly vocal gamer. We discuss games every so often, but this occasionally results in some serious arguments. I'm usually pretty open-minded and accepting of other peoples' views. Problem is that, in this case, my friend tends to think of himself as always being right, even when he thinks more with his heart than his head. Anyone that follows our arguments can usually identify that the things that are upsetting him are almost entirely colored by his anger at a particular game company who shall remain nameless - it rhymes with fee-pay - that he feels has destroyed his favorite game developer, which it bought some years ago. His opinion generally contends that their games have gone downhill since then, but usually the evidence he cites for this opinion run hollow since the things he complains about are, in fact, not at all what is actually there upon an empirical look.

This, I think, is the core problem: emotions often overrule critical thought. Not that this is a bad thing, and certainly everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but this should not be reason for making false claims about anything - or anyone. It is perfectly okay to dislike something merely because your emotions about it run high. I myself have entire lists of books I will not read because their authors have made public statements that have so offended me that I cannot dissociate their work from their personal views. But it is an entirely different problem to start placing blame for problems that don't exist merely because your own perception of things is heightened by anger.

Perhaps I come off as being too erudite at times. That's a common criticism of me, and it's fair. I totally admit it. I'm even kind of ashamed of it, but I try very hard not to let my emotions get in the way of serious thought. I have allowed that to happen in the past, and it only resulted in people getting hurt, least of all myself. However, I expect the same sort of restraint from others, and occasionally I give people too much credit. It is okay to levy criticism; no art or business would be able to do its job if it weren't. But to place false criticism of something only demeans you and the people who would take you seriously. Furthermore, it causes more damage than it promotes in creativity.

And this is where we get back on the subject of gamer entitlement. No gamer is ever right as an individual. If you want to be a gamer, you have to accept that there will ALWAYS be other gamers you disagree with, which means there will always be an audience for games you are not interested in. The idea that a game developer making changes to a game in order to make that game more accessible is a direct assault on you is a failure to understand games as a whole. Game companies desire more money, therefore it is in their interest to sell more games, which means they must make those games accessible to more people. To criticize a developer for doing this is literally the same as saying "it's popular, therefore it sucks." As a point, I try not to criticize anything based on its popularity. After all, things become popular for a reason.

Movies, Video Games, and Why The Two Are Such a Terrible Match

If you've ever seen a movie based on a video game that is actually good, then you've seen one more than I have. It's no secret that video game movies are typically bad. No one in the gaming community would deny that, nor would anyone in the film industry. They are, at best, mediocre films and, at worst, cheaply made cash cows, exploiting tax loopholes, licensing deals and sleazy accounting practices to turn an enormous profit (I'm looking at you, Uwe Boll).

Many people will say it's because the writers left the best parts out, or because the producers had more interest in marketing than actually remaining faithful to the source material. Sometimes you will hear gamers say that it's because of the game developers' lack of involvement. All of these are valid criticisms, but they fail to address the core of the problem. They are merely symptoms of a much greater issue.

The heart of the issue is one that can sound simple but is, in fact, far more complicated than it appears at first glance: a failure to understand the differences between the two mediums. Video games and movies, as well as books and television shows, are excellent mediums for telling a story, but they have fundamental differences that make them particularly suited to certain things. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages that lend themselves to telling very different stories. These can each be broken down into the following.

First, and perhaps most obvious, is audience interactivity. Video games, being an interactive medium, can draw the player into the story in ways no other medium can by having the player be an important part of the show. Indeed, the most important part, controlling the action, to some extent. Movies are fed to the audience, and the audience is disconnected from the movie, but video games require the audience to get involved and have a stake in the story itself. This creates whole new complexities because a), one the game requires the player to WANT to play and b), when the player does get involved on that level, they create a connection to the characters that you can rarely find in any other medium. While typical moviegoers can like a character in a film, gamers will often fall in love with the characters in their stories. Not in a sexual way, mind you, but in the way you would love a friend. Numerous times, playing a sequel to a game you enjoyed will feel like catching up with old friends. You don't get that experience in any other medium, not to the extent you would in a video game.

The second major difference between the two mediums is a little more banal: length. Movies, for all intents and purposes, require a much shorter attention span. This is not to offend fans of film; film simply is a medium designed around finishing a story in one sitting of a few hours (some exceptions apply, but this is still mostly accurate as a general rule). Video games require a much greater attention span. Whereas most films fall somewhere between one and three hours long, I have never played a mainstream game that took me less than six hours to complete in its entirety, and that was a particularly short game around fifteen years ago, in a time when most video games were not even as long as they are now. Many of the games I play these days require a minimum investment of twenty hours in order to complete the main story. Naturally, not all of that time is spent on narrative, but, even so, that is a considerable length of time to expect someone to spend on something purely for entertainment value. As such, a lot more can happen in a video game than you could ever find time to fit into a three-hour movie, so whenever one is adapted to the other, sacrifices must be made. For a video game to become a movie, an enormous amount of material must be cut from the story. On the other hand, for a movie to become a video game, an enormous amount of material must be ADDED to the story, or else a gamer will not feel they've gotten their money's worth.

Which brings me to the third major difference: cost. Last I checked, a ticket to see a movie cost somewhere in the realm of $10. A lot of people complain about that price, but none of them ever bother mentioning that the average mainstream video game today costs $60 at release. If you do the math, assuming a 90-minute movie and a 20-hour game, the movie is about $5.40 per hour versus the game's $3.00 per hour. That sounds like a bargain, at a glance, but there are large factors in place that make the cost of a game far more volatile than that of a movie. For one, consider that you're paying for many more hours right off the bat. If you see a movie and decide half an hour in that you don't like the movie, you spent $5.40 more than you otherwise would have. In a similar situation with a game, in which you spend an hour playing the game and decide you just can't stand the game (again, a major concern when you remember how much more personal involvement is required), you are out $57.00 that you likely will not be getting back. You might trade the game in at a store for store credit and get something else, but even then you don't get a 1:1 ratio on cash back, and you wind up spending the credit on another game that you may or may not actually enjoy. For this reason, gamers tend to be far more judicious with their money than moviegoers.

So, given all these major differences between films and video games, what can be done to make a good film adaptation of a video game? I have an answer to that, actually. Most video games with a decent story are incredibly rich in background content. It is entirely possible to tell an entirely new story in the same setting and draw in gamers who wish to get the full experience of the worlds they cherish. Perhaps major characters that the players love might not be in the movie at all, or only make small cameos, but if the story to be told is one that is significant to the universe itself, a major part of the history that is not told in any other medium, fans would be devoted to seeing it. Much in the same way that Wicked is a story about background characters from the Oz books, a movie could easily be written about background in video games. Maybe an Assassin's Creed movie need not focus on Altair or Ezio Auditore, but it could be just as exciting of a film if it were about Desmond Miles' parents in their youth. A Portal movie might not be about Chell attempting to survive GLaDOS's twisted tests, but instead about the rise of Aperture Labs, the ultimate declining health of Cave Johnson, and the challenges Caroline would face keeping the company alive in the face of tragedy.

Naturally, no one gives a damn about what I think, but I put this out there in the hopes that, one day, gamers can actually see a movie based on one of their favorite games that DOESN'T suck. In fact, with enough good work and skill in production, I believe it would be possible for such a film to win Oscars, but video games are rarely given that level of credibility among the public. I only hope that, as time goes on and more games are developed with excellent stories, people will begin to see the value of video games as an artistic medium.