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Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Top Stories from the last 24 hours
BioShock Infinite's Lead Creator on History, Video Game Violence and... What Happens to the Sewage in a Floating City?
February 13th, 2013Top StoryBioShock Infinite's Lead Creator on History, Video Game Violence and... What Happens to the Sewage in a Floating City?By Stephen Totilo
Anything? OK... Here are three things we talked about: 1) Founding Fathers, Racism and What Will Horrify People In The Year 2113The new game Levine and his crew at Irrational Games are making takes place in 1912 on a city that floats above America. The people running this city idolize some of the founding fathers, but they hate Abraham Lincoln. This is the second straight game from Irrational that looks at some of the warped ideals of the past and warps them further, so I wondered what Levine's view of history is: something to revere? Something to scorn? "I think there were certainly things that were culturally fascinating in a different period," Levine said. "I also think it's amazing to see people who are so ahead of the curve. I think a lot of people look at this game and in some ways think it's critical of the American experiment, but I think if you look at guys like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington or Ben Franklin, [they] were so extraordinarily ahead of the curve in so many ways in science and philosophy and certainly in politics—the work they were creating, the structure, the tripartite checks and balances and all those things were extraordinary... "On the other hand, they were very much men of their time. Jefferson and Washington were slaveowners. Jefferson probably fathered a child with one of his slaves, which was very common at the time. I find that interesting. I don't need to… it's ok to be able to hold both of those ideas in your head at the same time. I think it's hard for a lot of people to do [that.]…These guys were both revolutionaries for freedom and held people in bondage in the same time. To me that's interesting. It's certainly not interesting for the people who were held in bondage, but looking back as a history nerd and as a culture nerd, I think they're fascinating, brilliant, revolutionary figures who are also at the same time enslaved to the ideas of the time they came from." Levine said that Infinite isn't intended to be a history lesson. It refers to the founding fathers; it uses popular reaction to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and many others to define its factions. But if there's a message about history in the game, Levine wagers it is mostly about thinking about how our history is taught and about how these figures were more complex than we might have thought and more complex than how we traditionally think or talk about them. Levine: "It's hard to talk about that period without talking about racism, without really being dishonest about the period." When I played the first four hours of the game last December, I was surprised how prevalent racism was in the game's narrative and setting. You feel like you're in a place and time where racism is much more widely accepted among the white majority. This doesn't feel common for a video game, but fits with Levine's belief that you can't talk about an interesting era and avoid its complexities. "It's hard to talk about that period without talking about racism, without really being dishonest about the period," he said. "I'm sure in the same way people are going to look back at now from a hundred years from now and they're going to be shocked at some of the things that we're ok with…" Like eating animals, I suggested? "I think that's probably going to be it," Levine replied. "Look, I"m a vegetarian and I'm wearing leather shoes and a leather belt… I'm not a political vegetarian. People can eat whatever they want...I'm going to guess that's probably it, but I'm just guessing here. I could be completely wrong." Or he could be outlining the plot of BioShock Future. A game made in 2113, set in 2013 all about a sick society that chows down on cows. Yes? No? (Probably not!) 2) Smart Games And/Vs. Gun GamesWe were talking about the origins of the first BioShock and Levine's commitment to having Irrational make games about things they think are interesting, even if that sends them down the path of making a game about a failed Objectivist utopia. "We just follow the things we're interested in." That sounds great. That's what I think we want people who make the games we play to say, but a thought struck me and I spilled it out as a very long question. I said: "You guys are a studio that tries to do smart and interesting things. You find themes that appeal to you. And that explains… it makes total sense why you'd make BioShock Infinite and its setting and its place. "You're also a studio that's really good at making shooters, so it totally explains why you'd make BioShock Infinite a first-person shooter. "Do those two things have anything to do with each other? "Why is it that a studio that thinks about really interesting themes and is interested in making a game about Objectivism or about a person who creates their own philosophy or some of the other things you're talking about… why is it that a studio that is highfaluting enough and interesting enough to do that is also a studio that makes first-person shooters? Do they have more to do with each other than one would think?" Levine: "In terms of the shooting, it's weird, right?" "Well, the first-person perspective and these kinds of worlds we create have a lot to do with each other," Levine replied as he began to talk about the core elements of Infinite, which involve you, as a character named Booker, infiltrating that lively, complex floating city of Columbia, to rescue a woman named Elizabeth who will spend most of the game adventuring at your side. "It wouldn't really work from any other perspective because of the kind of detail [we have]. When you're controlling the camera you can get really up close to the kind of detail we have…and the relationship with Elizabeth, if you were seeing her over your shoulder that wouldn't really work… there are certain moments that only work in first-person… it's not 'the other is having a relationship with her. The goal is that you're having a relationship with her. That's the intent." That explained the camera angle, of course, but not the popular gaming action-shooting-that goes with that camera angle. Levine got that. "In terms of the shooting, it's weird, right? Games have this interesting thing. When you see some people experimenting, like Kentucky Route Zero and stuff like that where they are starting to experiment with sort of not having a game element or even Walking Dead has a really reduced element. My problem is, I like games. I like challenge. I like having a skill component of it. And so what is that skill component? It is weird in some ways that all of a sudden you bust out a gun and start shooting. It would make sense maybe in a [Levine interrupts himself] but the scale and the amount of shooting that you have is heightened obviously, but, you know, so is Indiana Jones. The dude is an archeologist and he's busting caps in people's asses left and right. He probably kills 100 people in that thing." It feels like a fundamental thing, I suggested to Levine. Violence in games is an efficient way to give the player agency. Let the player blow something up or shoot something and they can sense their agency. It's a way to make a game feel interactive and to present it as a system, perhaps? "It's a limitation of the medium," Levine said. "I can sit down and write a scene about just about anything. It's really tough to make a game about any particular topic. You go see a movie like Margin Call, which is a fascinating exploration of how emotionally and the kind of pressures that led to the financial meltdown were on people. To turn that into a game would be a real head-scratcher. But to turn it into a movie is really a function of: can you write a good movie about it? Because you don't need that skill component, and you don't need to sort of train people on the systems and things like that [as you do] in games. Levine: "My problem is, I like games. I like challenge. I like having a skill component of it." "So we tend to have fewer forms in the game space. One of the nice advantages of a form is that it's a skill-set that people have acquired. And remember that if you hand a controller to somebody who has never played a first-person shooter, it's not something you were born with. So, you know there are certain advantages it gives you." Perhaps the shooter is just a simplistic thing, but not a regrettable form, I offered. It can be quite complex, right? "I would say it's an evolutionary form as we figure out more and more … we'll go nuts with Booker and Elizabeth. We are taking some baby steps there along the way of a character relating to another character. That needle has not moved very far in the video game space—outside of cutscenes—where you have any agency. I think that was one of our biggest challenges: moving the needle there, but that needle is really on the left side (zero) and not the right side (100). "We're figuring it out and in the context of these very big expensive games because that's one of the things that helps you figure it out is having a lot of money and time to help figure out these problems. But this is an artform that is incredibly new. Go look at cinema. They didn't have camera cuts at the beginning. They didn't have close-ups. They didn't have reverse-angles. The language evolved over time through experimentation." 3. What a floating city does about sewage...I'd seen Infinite's lead producer retweet the following: Me: Do you know what happens to the sewage in the city? I saw Rod Fergusson retweeting somebody asking what happened? Levine: When guys on my team retweet, I'm like, oh my god, now people are going to ask me about this. Well… Ken Levine knows everything that happens! Me: We can skip… Levine: I guess two things can happen to it. What happens on a ship or what happens on an airplane. Me: I guess it depends on how the Founders are feeling about the people below. Levine: They wouldn't so much care. [laughs] Oh, and here's one more bonus bit. There's been some talk about how well the BioShock brand is known by the kind of fratboys who help make Call of Duty popular. Levine says that any outreach to that constituency did not have much affect at all on the creation of the game. It seems like more of a marketing thing. Levine hopes they'll get it—maybe embrace Infinite the way so many people did the similarly distinct and offbeat Inception and The Matrix: "It's not exactly something that pulls its punches or is trying to pander to a mass audience," Levine said of his new BioShock. "It's a pretty strange bird. But I believe that people who think strange birds are unappealing to a broad audience are underestimating the world."  |
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Are Spanx Good or Evil?
February 13th, 2013Top StoryAre Spanx Good or Evil?By Caity Weaver and Hamilton Nolan
Caity Weaver: Spanx Are Good
Hamilton Nolan: Spanx Are Evil
Image by Jim Cooke.  |
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How to Work an On Call Job and Keep Your Sanity
February 13th, 2013Top StoryHow to Work an On Call Job and Keep Your SanityBy Alan Henry
Summon Your Willpower: Without It, None of This Will Work
If your coworkers know they can email you in the middle of the night and get a response whether you're on call or not, or text you on the weekend and get a call back, it'll take some getting used to when you start defending your personal time. Similarly, if you're on call, you'll need to learn to walk the line between jumping when your inbox says jump and giving yourself a little freedom take breaks and breathe. Once you commit and follow through, you'll be much happier on the other side. Being on call won't be quite as stressful, and your family and loved ones will thank you for not waking them in the middle of the night. Ready? Let's get started. Figure Out Where to Draw Your BoundariesWhen you're on call, your employer decides exactly how long your leash is. That doesn't mean you can't stretch it, or see what you can get away with while meeting your company's expectations. A lot of this depends heavily on your office's policies, but here are a few things to start with:
Most of these suggestions assume you work in an organization where "on call" means that you can be contacted by someone else at any time to look into an issue, not that you're expected to be up waiting for something to happen. At my last job, we had a network operations center that was staffed 24/7, and the crew would contact on-call technicians and managers when they were needed. Of course, they would only call if the issue met our criteria for severity, and once the on call staff were contacted, it set a chain of events into motion that would bring all the necessary people to the table to make sure the issue would be resolved as quickly as possible. All in all, it was a good policy, but I'd worked at that job long enough to remember when "on call" was "okay it's your turn to stay up late and make sure things don't go down, respond to automated alerts pushed to your phone, and hope nothing happens when you try to sneak a few hours of sleep." If that sounds like your workplace, don't wait for someone else to fix it. Get together with your coworkers and your boss and shape it up yourself. Use Technology to Reinforce Your BoundariesThe reason we advocate setting your boundaries so conservatively when it comes to your on and off time is because it's easier to slip back into bad habits if you try to take a metered approach to the issue. Of course, depending on your own self-discipline, you may be able to handle minor distractions or happily ignore emails and alerts knowing that if it's really important someone will call you. Some of you will have trouble with that, so turning everything off is the best option. Decide which is best for you, and embrace the tools, apps, and utilities that will help reinforce those boundaries. Granted, it's not as simple as just "turning off your phone when you want some privacy." Here are a few ways to reinforce your boundaries when you're on call and when you're off:
Address the Psychological Issue and Don't Deviate from Your BoundariesRemember, you work to live, not live to work. Don't be afraid to get away, and don't be afraid to stick to your guns about the lines you draw between your personal and professional time. You're also in for a fight: you'll have coworkers who want their problems fixed right away, or who insist on your attention whenever they want it. You'll have managers who'll test those boundaries to see how far they can push you. Don't get frustrated, just stick to your guns and set clear, open expectations about what your behavior will be. Compromise when you have to. When we talked about how to prioritize when everything is important, we explained that you can't do this alone. You'll need to build an understanding with your coworkers about how and when it's appropriate to get in touch with you, even when you're on call. The same applies to your family. You should also have an understanding with them that when you're on call, it means you'll be up at odd hours, you may have to go to the office on short notice, and sometimes you may have to miss dinner, or hole up in front of your computer working and shouldn't be disturbed. When everyone is on board and aware of how you work, being on call won't be a struggle, it'll just be another habit or routine to fall into. Just make sure that when it's time to hang up your hat that you actually do it and mean it. Click to viewClick to view |
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