Month: February 2019

Gaming is Changing and I Don’t Feel the Same

Just recently, gaming giant Activision announced it was laying off an astonishing 800 employees from its nearly 10,000-strong workforce. Normally a mass layoff like this follows news of falling profits, but Activision’s 2018 financial results were in fact, by its former CEO’s own admission, “the best in our history”.

The news came as a bit of a bombshell in the gaming industry, but over the last 10 years, mass layoffs like this one have been happening to many high profile publishers and developers at an alarming rate. Pandemic, Visceral Games, Maxis, Telltale, Boss Key, and Capcom Vancouver are some high profile names that have experienced closures despite producing well-received titles, most of which were profitable. It’s a symptom of a major shift in the gaming industry, which has expanded into a multi-billion dollar industry in a single generation, from one of ideas and passionate individuals into something that veteran gamers like myself barely recognize anymore.

I’m old enough to remember the days when games were made by small studios that were driven more by a passion for new ideas and games that were fun. These were the days of id Software, Ion Storm, Westwood Studios, Pandemic, Raven Software, and pre-Dota 2 Valve. Many of the games that came from that generation, starting from 1996 to around 2007, have aged extraordinarily well and hold their ground even by today’s standards. Think Red Alert, Deus Ex, Rainbow Six, Half Life, StarCraft, Far Cry, Fallout, and Jagged Alliance. There are still studios that passionately make games like these today, such as IO Interactive (Hitman), 4A Games (Metro), Harebrained Schemes (Shadowrun) and CD Projekt (The Witcher), but unlike the good old days, they do so under a dire climate in which one’s employment and livelihood is but one mediocre game away from termination.

The demand for quality games is extraordinarily high today, and there is simply no room for error if you’re working on medium-to-high budget title. Unfortunately, because of the incredible rate at which the gaming industry has expanded, there is a serious lack of wisdom on the part of publishers when it comes to long term planning with their IPs and protecting the employees that work under them. In two recent examples, newly hired employees at Telltale Games and Activision showed up to work on their first days, only to be told that they were being laid off (!). In any major industry, this would be grounds for legal action. In the gaming industry, it’s just “shit happens”.

The threat of Free-to-Play games is another factor influencing the lack of good judgement in the industry. F2P games used to be the domain of the East, with a grocery list of gacha-based titles produced in China, Korea and Japan for their respective audiences. The West had its traditional Buy-to-Play model, and the East had Free-to-Play.  However, the release of Epic Games’ Fortnite, EA Games’ Apex Legends, and the advent of Lootboxes in Buy-to-Play games like Star Wars Battlefront and Call of Duty: World War II has changed the calculus considerably in the West. It used to be that Free-to-Play games were shunned in the West because they were shoddily made, emphasizing freemium gameplay design over tasteful aesthetics and tight gameplay mechanics. Fortnite and Apex Legends have shown that you can, in fact, have a well polished, well balanced game that is Free-to-Play.

What does this all mean for the industry? It means that those who work in the trenches will be caught in the crossfire, as the industry as whole, while still trying to adapt to its rapid growing pains, is now faced with another gargantuan change in direction. It very certainly means more layoffs, as major publishers will look to do more with less as the incentive for profit is driven to insane heights thanks to inroads being made in China. Finally and most importantly, it means the industry will be moving towards transforming the very idea of gaming from one of narrative, player agency and immersion, into a perpetual service in which both developers and players engage in the same title indefinitely, sinking money and time into it. One thing I learned studying videogames in college: games are supposed to end.

Where I see hope for the industry to hang onto its original principles is in Europe. Some of my favorite games to come out recently have been from Europe, such as The Witcher 3 (Poland), Metro Exodus (Ukraine), Quantum Break (Finland), Hitman 2 (Denmark) Kingdom Come: Deliverance (Czech Republic), Alien: Isolation (United Kingdom), and Wolfenstein: The New Order (Sweden). The Europeans have always had a more holistic approach to entertainment media, and the same goes for Japan, which also is having a bit of a resurgence in the industry thanks to Capcom (Resident Evil) and Namco Bandai (Dark Souls). Then there’s the bevy of independent game studios turning away from major publishers and using Kickstarter  and Steam Early Access to fund passionate and innovative titles (Divinity: Original Sin, FTL, Kerbal Space Program, Battletech).

The way I see it, gamers like myself who have been playing games since before the 2000s have to be more proactive in supporting the kinds of games we want to see. There’s nothing we can do to stop the tide of mass-marketed shit that’s being churned out every month, but we can most certainly use our wallets to support the ideas and the people in the gaming industry who genuinely love what they do and, like us, know what truly makes a great game.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace – The Un-American Dream (NETFLIX)

The second season of American Crime Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, continues with the show’s trademark of presenting dramatized real-life events with an impressive balance of objectivity, accuracy and artistic license. Initially centered around the killing of fashion icon Gianni Versace, the story works its way backwards as the issues of identity and loneliness are explored in the title character and his killer, Andrew Cunanan.

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Despite its title, TAOGV spends much of its 9 episodes on serial killer Andrew Cunanan. It’s an initially unexpected move for the showrunners, until you realize that, with the real-life Cunanan’s motives for murdering his victims officially unknown, there is more soil to plant a compelling narrative that explores his relatively unknown backstory and figure out why he chose his victims. The story moves backwards in time, beginning with the killing of Versace, and from there showing Cunanan’s killing spree in reverse until we arrive at his childhood and come to the full realization of how and why this highly intelligent young man became a pathological liar, high functioning sociopath, and murderer.

The overarching themes of TAOGV center around identity, in particular the gay community during the 1990s, a time when being gay was still taboo. Many of the show’s characters are gay; Versace, Cunanan, about a half-dozen of Cunanan’s former lovers and one-night stands, and the various people that surrounded them. As the show progresses, we discover that the various gay characters Cunanan comes across have found ways to sidestep the social stigma placed against them by using their skills to create magnificent works or help others in need. David Madson, one of Cunanan’s victims, is a highly skilled architect. Lee Miglin, another victim, is a wealthy architect who also helps out people in financial trouble. And Versace, of course, is a renowned fashion designer who wants to inspire confidence in his sister Donatella. Then there is Cunanan. Like these afore-mentioned characters, he’s gay and highly intelligent. However, Cunanan desperately wants to be loved and be the center of attention by virtue of his charisma, and not through skill or hard work. He buys expensive dinners for his friends and throws lavish parties, making up extravagant and constantly changing stories about himself. One by one, many friends and lovers come to the realization that he is inauthentic. Once the fun times are over, the grind of real life must resume, and Cunanan, who lives solely for the adoration of others, cannot understand why so many of his loved ones reject him eventually.

At the heart of Andrew Cunanan’s persona is perhaps the show’s second most compelling character, his father Modesto Cunanan, played to perfection by Filipino American actor Jon Jon Briones. He only appears in the last two episodes, but it is through Modesto that the final piece of the puzzle is put in place. A textbook immigrant story, Modesto migrated to the United States and, by most definitions, achieved the American dream: he married an American woman, had children, bought a nice house, and has a white collar job. However, who Modesto actually is underneath the veneer of his fairy tale life is much darker. He’s extraordinarily charismatic, charming his way to become a Merrill Lynch stockbroker by leveraging his rags-to-riches immigrant story. However, once he actually starts work, he’s revealed to lack the more technical persuasive skills required to secure clients, and prefers to use raw charisma to swindle his way to victory. He has a wife and three kids, but ignores two of them and regularly abuses his wife. The only one he truly loves is Andrew, who Modesto goes through great lengths to practically imprint his own intelligence, charisma and values onto his son. Rather than teach his son the values of hard work, discipline and humbleness, Modesto constantly tells Andrew that he is special and showers him with expensive gifts he wouldn’t even give his wife or other children. Modesto is a perversion of the American Dream; all the charm and benefits, but none of the un-glamorous, uninteresting hard work and humility that one must slog through in order to get there. It’s no wonder, then, that when Andrew realizes that everything he’s good at is useless at giving his life true meaning, he resorts to killing as way for people to finally sit up and regard him as more than just a party prop. His upbringing has left him cursed with being unable to create anything meaningful for himself or anyone, whether it is a relationship or a good. He can overcome that which he was born with, but he cannot overcome what was nurtured in him, and as a result he is left with the one significant thing anyone can easily do: destroy.

This brings us back to the titular character, Versace. Like Cunanan, Versace has a seemingly inescapable problem, but it’s not one of his mind, it’s one of his body: he’s HIV positive. Unlike Cunanan, however, Versace chooses to channel his anguish into something positive. He uses his considerable skills as a fashion designer and businessman to change the philosophy of his designs into one that celebrates life. He has a boyfriend, Antonio (played by Ricky Martin, of all people), and they genuinely love each other, but unlike Cunanan, Versace doesn’t try to impress his boyfriend because they have a mutual understanding of one another. In one particularly striking scene, after discovering he is HIV positive, Versace walks along the beach with Antonio and despairs at how jealous he is of the beach goers who have their lives ahead of them, begging Antonio to “get it out of me.” He has all the money, friends and family Cunanan desperately wants, but at the end of the day what Versace is shown to value the most is hard work and inspiring others.

Compared to the more cynical first season of American Crime Story, The People vs. OJ Simpson, TAOGV offers a more heartfelt story that is equal parts uplifting and upsetting. It portrays both killer and victims in an objective lens, never painting anyone in a particular stroke, and takes great effort to present them in a complex, respectful manner. Highly recommended.