Author Archives: Leigh Alexander

How’s everyone been? I could talk about how many brand new video games I have over here; I could talk about Skyward Sword or Skyrim or something like that. But I won’t, actually — there are a lot of places you can read that stuff, and since I so rarely get time to update SVGL, I figured I’d talk about something different, though hopefully no less timely.

The Metal Gear Solid HD collection is out, and it looks shockingly good. I think it’s a pretty well-known fact that I’m a huge, sentimental fan of the franchise. To be quite honest, it’s one of those few I love enough that I don’t know where my personal reaction begins and my critical lens — you know, the distanced thought I try to give games so that I can talk to you guys about them independently of my own taste — ends.
Okay, I’m a huge fan. But then, even in my work I’m known to prefer games with voice and character. In MGS, that voice and character often veers into the arena of self-indulgence, and jeopardizes things like mass appeal or conventional design wisdom, and even still I prefer it to games that are cleaner and much better crafted.
MGS demands a lot from its players in terms of investment and patience. Its story is not accessible, and it turns over and over on itself like a coiling snake in its attempts to make its numerous meta-meta-plot loops connect. Yes, you have to sit through a lot of dialogue and cut scenes that are nakedly imitative of film. Some people argue that Hideo Kojima, who is director of the series and thus assumedly responsible for its tone and character, is plainly resentful of his audience and of the industry in which he works (I agree). Plenty don’t like that.
But to me, a work of creative storytelling needs to reflect the creator. I want to be able to talk about what he or she wants to say, and what their work says about them. I always have something to say about MGS. The media I know I really love will put the hair up on my arms no matter how much time passes, and no matter how many times I experience it (sidenote: I feel this way about Neutral Milk Hotel’s song ‘Naomi,’ one of my favorite songs ever).

My dear game industry: I rarely write scored reviews, but if I had, I would put an eight and higher on everything you have released this fall and winter. You have done well, you have done so, so well. Congratulations. It’s one of the highest-quality crops of games I’ve ever seen. But I will not remember them in ten years. I am sorry.
I’ve never met a working game designer that thinks MGS is great. I spoke to one lately who said that Tetris is perfect and MGS is not, end of story — but the thing I think the games industry fails to understand about its audience is that we care a lot less about perfection than it thinks. So for the people who always are asking me what’s the big deal about MGS for me, even that’d suffice as an answer: Because it’s interesting and I want to talk about it.
I’ve started sort of replaying all of them since the HD collection came out. My friend Sarah is my copilot, having read in Tom Bissell’s lovely book‘s appendix about the time when he spent a few hours playing MGS4 with me and listening to me chatter about how I feel it’s a metaphor for the things Kojima wants to say about the 21st century games industry. No, I’m serious.
People ask me a lot if I have written much about my thoughts on MGS, which I’ve mostly shared through conversations with others and on Twitter and stuff. Writing it out formally has always seemed too fangirlish. But in the next couple weeks I’m going to try to do it, like, to some extent.
Speaking of fangirlish, I’ve also made a few MGS1 tribute banners and

Tough Act

“As game creators, we put up too much front in our creations and we don’t make ourselves nearly vulnerable enough. I think our audience senses this, and they emotionally withdraw from our games.”

– Richard Lemarchand, Naughty Dog lead designer

Tonight I saw Naughty Dog’s Rich Lemarchand talk about how the team’s intention for the Uncharted franchise, was (to some extent) was to explore games’ equivalent of the classic summer blockbuster film. Well, summer may be blockbuster season for movies, but we’re in it now.

I’m getting a little overwhelmed by all of these new games. I know, you’re playing me the world’s tiniest violin,

Thank You

My latest Kotaku column is an expression of some of my anger, fatigue and frustration at the “woman in games” role I have adopted, at times uneasily and at other times poorly, throughout my career. It’s stirring up a lot of controversy, which naturally I predicted, so I wanted to share a couple more thoughts.

When I say I’m tired of always being identified as a “female games journalist,” I absolutely don’t mean to entirely diminish the relevance of being an outspoken woman in a male-dominated space. My perspectives in my writing come from my identity and my life experience, and being a woman is a part of that I absolutely don’t intend to reject.
For example, I was happy to be photographed by Gay Gamer and called a “fabulous femme fatale”. Some of my earliest writing was on sex games, and I don’t know if that would have gone over so well if I’d been a man (I still write about sex games– just last week I published a new Escapist column about Anna Anthropy’s unusual text-based sex adventure). As everyone always points out, yes, my blog is called Sexy Videogameland and there are pretty girls on it. Everyone knows I think Big Boss is hot. I’m proud to be a strong woman, and sometimes I’m happy to be a silly girly-girly-girl. I am who I am.
It’s not that I’ve suddenly decided I no longer want to be a voice for women, or to speak from a female perspective — how can I possibly do anything but? I’m just frustrated at the role I’m often asked to take in the constant wars that go on in gaming culture.
I write on a daily basis about things that have zero to do with my gender. I’m a survival horror aficionado. I’m obsessed with experimental storytelling. I love indie games; I love game development and technology. I love all kinds of culture and media. I’m not just here to fill the “lady quota.”
Some of the feedback I received so far concerns the hostility in the tone of the piece — yeah, I was angry. I’m not sorry for that. But there’s one thing I need to make clear: For all the anger I felt toward the people I told to grow up else crawl back to forums where they can argue about review scores? That’s how grateful I am for an equal number of you right now.
Thank you so much to my colleagues and friends, my longtime readers and my Twitter followers who’ve stuck with me and watched me publicly fumble as I try to figure all this out. I’ve had a lot of growing up to do, and I still do, and I’ve been doing it openly and messily in front of all of you. When I was younger I was one of those people who believed that if I didn’t speak about my gender then no one would make a big deal out of it. Not only did that attitude ignore all the women who wanted to look to me for an example, but it also didn’t work. I’m unhappy that it took me attaining a larger public profile and a painful degree of attack from the wider core community for me to start listening, learning and taking responsibility for being able to help change things.
These days I tweet about my crazy parties, I tweet snippy things about music, I tweet mean things from bars about the outfits of people who push me. I drink, I can be flippant, I can be arrogant, I can be confrontational. Sometimes I hardly tweet about video games at all, which is the reason you’re here, I know.
But there are so many of you who support me anyway, because you share my hopes and dreams about video games and because you believe in my work.
I couldn’t get through all the comments on the Kotaku piece. And I got all kinds of those emails that you think are just stereotypes, the “get back in the kitchen” and “quit attention-whoring” and all of that. I’ve heard it all before and it’s lost its ability to hurt me, but it can be disheartening.
I heard from so many of you on Twitter telling me you’re behind me, that you read the piece and you support me, and that you, like me, believe that nobody has to tolerate an environment of closed minds and cruel comments in video game culture. I often go around saying I don’t care what people think of me or if they find me controversial — that I’m going to focus on my work, on games and the people who make them, and do the writing I want to do anyway, and that’s true to an extent.
Yet it’s wonderful to know that so many of the folks who matter to me will stand with me and speak up, too. It makes me feel supported, but it also gives me hope that we can do this, you know? We — writers, players, creators — can have a wonderful, healthy culture in video games with discourse, debate, respect and equality. We can all keep helping each other learn and grow together. I’m really lucky to have you with me.
NOW GO GET DRUNK IT’S HALLOWEEN ~ !!

PRACTICE Makes Perfect

I had a whole Silent Hill tribute post planned for Halloween, but I’ve been too busy. I went to GDC Online with Gamasutra — and I also spoke at the Game Narrative Summit with friends Chris Dahlen, Kirk Hamilton, N’Gai Croal, John Davison and Ben Fritz (Kirk wrote about our panel and shared his slides).
Right back from GDC Online, I had my gigantic 1990s-themed birthday party (feat. Ava Luna, Radical Dads, EULA, Ovlov and Casiorossi, check ‘em!) Then it was CMJ week, and then the Halloween parties began.
I went as Laura Palmer — what about you? Also over this past weekend was the fascinating inaugural PRACTICE game design conference at New York University’s Game Center. Eric Zimmerman and Frank Lantz explain what it’s all about here, and I attended some great talks as well!
PopCap’s Scott Jon Siegel spoke about the need for more prototyping specifically in the arena of social games. In a recent column of mine that EDGE published (in the print edition; it won’t be online until later), I compared the design methods used by popular Zynga games — and the player behavior they incite — to the methodology of drug pushers and the behavior of the addicted. I also wrote not too long ago about how disappointed I was to see some of these methodologies adopted by The Sims Social.
Scott told me on Twitter he was disappointed that folks like me seem to be throwing out his entire industry with the bathwater, but while I’ve gone after specific examples, design forms and business models with my fists up, I actually do believe there’s potential to do special things with this new frontier and don’t wish to dismiss that.
Last week I talked to online game veteran Raph Koster, who said that while he feels a sense of loss as games evolve into the social mainstream, he’s also excited by the unprecedented opportunity to reach so many people with our love for games. I share Raph’s feeling of loss, but I also share his enthusiasm for the possibilities the social space can doubtless attain when the right people are working in it for the right reasons.
Long story short, Scott Jon Siegel is one of those good guys, and he believes that more prototyping — the experimental rapid sort that is core to process in traditional design — can help address a lot of the risk aversion and idea-cloning that slows genre emergence and innovation in the social space, and that’s a great idea!
Speaking of game design, Harmonix’s Matt Boch took us inside Dance Central‘s prototyping process. The part I wish I’d written down verbatim was when he mentioned the way the game doesn’t legislate gender in dance performance (“gender is performance,” he said), and showed a video of how a man and a woman could interpret the same feminine, sexy song in their own ways and still succeed in the game.
In other good talks, we had Steve Gaynor on how the design of progression gates can lead to both better storytelling and more interesting use of space, and there was a fascinating, rapid-fire debate among Manveer Heir, Chris Hecker and Nick Fortugno about the extent to which the ability to program is — or isn’t — essential to the game designer’s role.
PRACTICE was such a good time, and is heartening evidence of the fact that we’re starting to collect a cohesive, diverse and wonderful game design hub in New York City! I mean, look at this awesome segment on games as art that was shot by PBS — everyone in it is a New Yorker (I’m in it, too)!
Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo was also at PRACTICE, and he wrote about the surprising and interesting discussion that emerged when Seth Killian and Arturo Sanchez were asked about sexism in the Street Fighter community.
I also wrote about sexism at Kotaku today, but I’m going to save the discussion for its own post. Stay tuned!

Melancholy Moo

I was finally able to do a pretty in-depth story that’s been important to me for some time. The subject is my friend, Ian Bogost, and the two major projects he’s worked on in the last year or so. At a glance those projects are diametric opposites; perhaps if you read the story you’ll be able to find some commonalities that might have even escaped their creator.

I’ve been getting excellent feedback from you guys via social media since this article ran at the beginning of the week — thanks to those who’ve spent time with the story and if you haven’t, please do. And for follow-up, you can check out a blog post by Frank Lantz, who’s also featured in the piece.
One of Bogost’s colleagues is Molleindustria’s Paolo Pedercini, of whom I’m a big fan. Something interesting happened when he released a mobile game that was critical of the mobile hardware industry on iOS, and I interviewed him about that here.
I like standing up for what you believe in. As long as you’re being rational about it. As you may or may not know, I’ve been doing a monthly column in Edge’s print magazine for the past few months, and it looks like they’ve begun to make their way online. Check out the debut piece!
When people care about complex issues, discussion is challenging. Read about how MIT’s GAMBIT team tackled the difficulty in making an RPG about LGBTQ identity issues in a community context, and check out Auntie Pixelante’s scathing response.
Other things: I checked out Mindbloom and Glitch, and I spoke to former AAA execs Ben Cousins and Senta Jakobsen about Ngmoco’s innovative new Stockholm office. Spending a lot of time getting ready for GDC Online — not only have we Gamasutras got a lot of coverage to do, but I’m giving a microtalk on the critics’ panel at the Game Narrative Summit. If you’ll be at GDC Online next week, come say hi to us!
Sigh. It’s a lot of stuff. Sometimes I feel I’ll never be able to get it together.

Fans Are Intense

I attended the Call of Duty XP event out in Los Angeles a bit over a week ago, and it was really elaborate. My summary of the event itself is here. The main draw was ostensibly the opportunity for core fans to spend an entire weekend playing and competing at Modern Warfare 3, but it was also their first look at Activision’s Elite premium content service and social networking platform for the franchise.

The company had been rolling out information on Elite in careful bits and pieces, but it wasn’t until XP that it announced the price. The company’s digital VP, Jamie Berger, feels deeper social features will create a more positive community, and Beachhead, the Activision studio in charge of developing Elite, talked to me about working closely with the other studios, plus some important lessons from the beta.

I imagine that most of the SVGL readers aren’t that into Call of Duty, given that the longtime crew usually tells me that you found my work or my blog because of my writing on weird JRPGs, or on survival horror games, or  hentai games or something. Those of you in the latter crew might be happy to learn that I’m back on the pervy games with a new monthly at The Escapist.

This month I start out fairly tame with the sexuality of Catherine, but I’m the kind of person who gets a little bored and rebellious writing the same kinds of articles for too long, and then I write things that are weird. Speaking of Catherine, I also wrote about it in my Kotaku feature and reviewed it at Paste. Catherine, Catherine, Catherine. It’s a good thing I like that game a lot.

And speaking of weird RPGs, things I like, intense fans, and me writing things that are weird when I get bored, my latest editorial at Gamasutra is about “Persona_ebooks,” the Persona-themed Twitter tribute to both that series and internet sensation “Horse_ebooks.” Maybe you don’t know what I’m talking about, but trust me, you want to. Give it a read.

I’ve started Persona 2: Innocent Sin on the PSP. It’s so weird. I don’t even… like, I need to spend several more hours on it before I know what to tell you. But I’m looking forward to those hours, so take that bit for what it’s worth.



[Today’s Good Song: Broken Water, ‘Kamilche House’]

Live From Hurricane Irene



Hi everybody — sadly, I’m not at PAX like EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY GAMING FRIENDS. I’m coming to you live from a “Zone B Hurricane Bunker” at the border of Bushwick, Brooklyn. The picture you see above you depicts the eerie cast the sky here had yesterday evening, before the inclement weather descended.

…Not an actual bunker. I’m just at home at 3:40 AM watching all-night Irene reports with my cats, Zelda and Yorda. I only had enough duct tape for one window, so I’m going to try not to exhaust my flashlight battery by using the light to play with the cats, who seem entirely unconcerned.
Actually, there’s not much to be concerned about just yet; so far there’s just been an intense amount of rain, since the brunt of the hurricane won’t hit for a few more hours yet. I’m pretty safe where I am, but I’m kind of a disaster fetishist — check out my Thought Catalog piece on thoughts about the hurricane.
Since the last time I’ve updated, kind of a lot has happened; I went to MA to visit some video game developers (and my parents!), so here’s interview 1, 2 and 3 from my trip to Irrational. The main reason I went to MA will soon be unveiled!
I’ve done a couple of editorials at Gamasutra, too. I’m ambivalent in the truest sense of the word about the extent to which I’ve been sucked into Facebook games. Initially I meant to do some research for my monthly Edge column — by the way, the current print issue features a piece I wrote on what I perceive to be a disconnect between games critics and the average players, and thanks to those of you who’ve shot some feedback my way on Twitter about that.
But anyway, yeah, I decided to play some Facebook games, and gradually my wall and my notifications list are being overtaken by game spam. It’s driving me crazy, and yet I’m still logging into the stupid things every day. I had thought The Sims Social might be a little different, or a little smarter, but it’s kind of the worst offender yet. You can read my Gamasutra analysis for details.
If you are of an industry mind, I’ve got a couple of things for you: Fellow Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris feels the “revolving door”, in his words, of executives at Atari is concerning, and I spoke to the company’s latest mobile and digital executive hires about their hopes for the future of the venerated brand. Second, what’s former Microsoft Games Studios VP Shane Kim doing these days? You got questions, I got answers!
Some of y’all might be playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but of my favorite things I’m doing these days is continuing my letter series with my pal Kirk Hamilton (fairly-newly of Kotaku staff!) about the original Deus Ex. I assume all core PC gamers will have a coronary when I say my persistent impression of it is “eh, it’s not Metal Gear Solid.” But if you pay even a little attention to this blog, you know I’m almost irrationally fangirlish in regards to MGS, so hopefully you can forgive me.
More seriously, I get why everyone loved Deus Ex so much. It’s so, so smart, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. If you aren’t up-ons, please enjoy The Deus Ex letters part one, two and three.
When Kirk and I did The FF7 Letters at Paste, one of the conclusions at which we mutually arrived is that sometimes stylization is more immersive than what’s passing for “realism” these days. Now that it’s au courant to do remakes, HD re-releases and the like of beloved games, I’ve thought about how pushing for lifelike graphics and “realism” can actually make some games ultimately alienating because they don’t age well.
If you happen to be a NYLON Guys subscriber, or to see one on the newsstand, please take a look — I edit the games section, and have kinda quietly been doing so for the better part of 2011. I just finished assembling NYLON Guys’ October/November issue. Uh… did you realize how many major, major games are coming out around then? Here’s a fun game: Count how many of them are third in their series.
I went to Capcom’s Fight Club in New York, where I hung with Hip Hop Gamer and saw ladies dressed as Phoenix and Felicia. Vs. Tekken plays so, so well, for someone like me who’s hardly hardcore about fighters. People take fighting games quite seriously, you realize. There was a line around the block to attend the event; a pair of limo drivers on the next corner asked me what all of those men were waiting for. Because it was in the Chelsea neighborhood, they thought it was a gay lifestyle event and approached me to find out what a woman could possibly be doing there. Wince.
Next week, I’ll be at Call of Duty XP. I’ve never been to such a large-scale event around a single franchise. It should be exciting. Shout out if you’re going too, and say hi if you see me! You know the world of the FPS isn’t my natural habitat, so I’ve no idea what to expect.
You can imagine I’m a little tired. I’m half-hoping the power goes out this weekend so I can tell everybody I owe Monday deadlines to that I simply couldn’t. Maybe I shouldn’t say that in public. Oops.

Finally, thanks to Allan Offal for making an MP3 of DBZ’s Launch saying “WELL HELLO“, as I’d hoped someone would in my last post.

[Today’s Good Song: ‘Marquee Moon,’ Television (my fave storm jam!)]

WELL HELLO!



Had this boyfriend once I lived with who played a concerning number of Dragonball Z video games — you know, the hybrid fighting/RPG ones. I mean, not that I didn’t watch them. Like, a lot, to where whenever I am writing a new blog post, or whenever I’m talking to folks I haven’t seen in a long time, I have this urge to go, ‘WELL HELLO!’ in the voice of Launch.

She was running the shop in one of those games… I think it was Budokai Tenkaichi 3… or maybe it was like, some equipment upgrade station… dang man, I dunno. But when you went in she was all WELL HELLO, and so, yeah. Cred points if any commenters can find a clip of that voice audio for me.
(UPDATE: Here is is! Thank you, OffalAl, for making this for us!)
So. Well, hello — sorry I’ve been MIA from SVGL a little bit, but I’ve taken on some longer-term articles (which, like fruit, will bear slowly, stay tuned!) and had my hands full, and when I’m not doing that, I’ve been traveling. I’m coming to you live from midnight on Cape Cod, where my parents live.
I was raised here in MA, where summer meant Atlantic Ocean, the cold salted stone that borders it, and all of the shellfish that were dashed on its shores. This time of year, I love to visit whenever I’ve got time; this weekend we visited the Edward Gorey House, swam on a private beach in Yarmouth, ate lobster (favorite food, if I had to pick) — working vacation, I suppose.
Personal junk aside, the last time we talked, I had been getting ready to stage the Bad Bitches exhibit’s opening at Babycastles’ Williamsburg locale, and I am happy to report it went lovely. Motherboard covered the proceedings here, and at Kotaku this month, I used my column to address some of the response to the exhibit and, loosely, the reasons I wanted to stage it.
Related to challenging norms, Brandon Sheffield talks to BioWare Montreal’s Manveer Heir (friend of mine; I’m sometimes called “Womanveer”) about diversity in game characters, I talk to Metanet’s brilliant Mare Sheppard about Toronto’s Difference Engine Initiative, and interview Starhawk‘s senior producer at Sony on inclusiveness.
Finally, my bro Kirk Hamilton (who works at Big K now, whoa) writes on the “Mass Effect beauty pageant” that took place to much controversy on Facebook. As a mixed race woman with pretty non-traditional features I can identify with folks who are tired of media ideals that don’t look like them, but how I feel about Blonde FemShep is two things: One, lovely blonde women have probably had enough of being told they can’t possibly be smart or admirable, so piss off; and two, please stop saying “FemShep.” It drives me crazy.
Or, like, I guess, go ahead. I’m pretty not-into Mass Effect, so you guys have fun. I presume most of you guys like Mass Effect for the same reasons I like Twilight: trope-heavy pair bonding in the environment of beloved fantasy cliches where it’s fun to laugh at yourself, or, at the very least, to laugh at yourself while secretly being kind of serious about it. Pair bonding is quintessential. I wrote about it here.
Preceding article has nothing to do with video games, bee-tee-dubs. You know how important I think it is that we enjoy things that have nothing to do with video games. Like music! So if you’re on Spotify, please add this 1990S MUSIC PLAYLIST, entitled “liquid television,” an enormous 11-hour trip back to an era when flannel wasn’t ironic. You’re welcome.
[Today’s Good Song: Broken Water, ‘Peripheral Star‘]

Quick Bits

Long time no see! Yes, blah blah I’m busy, you know the drill. I finished playing Catherine (I liked it) and I am finishing up Ocarina and I wrote this little love-letter to young Link. SO CUTE.

I also curated an exhibit themed around alt-sexuality games at Babycastles in Williamsburg, and the opening party was ah-mazing. Here’s the event page, and there are Flickr galleries by attendees posted on the wall if you want to see a little of what it was like. I was so excited about how well-attended it was, and what meant most of all to me is that everyone was interested in and curious about the games, their creators and what it was like to play them. I lost my voice from giving so many little tours of the cabinets.
Now for some bad news: Silent Barn, Babycastles’ first home in Ridgewood, Queens, has been burglarized. Not only is it the home of my friends, it’s an important art and show space for our neighborhood and for New York City in general. Audio gear was stolen and people’s creations were destroyed, which is a horrible thing to have happen to people who literally live their lives to create a community for artists. Please stay tuned — if there’s anything we can do to help them recover I’d like us to try, because they’re the kind of folks who deserve our caring, even if it’s just to keep them in our thoughts and send good karma.
[UPDATE: Kickstarter to relaunch the space. Please consider helping!]
Other stuff as I try to catch up with you guys: Awesome Madoka pixel art video; Anamanaguchi remixes Ra Ra Riot. More soon.