Category Archives: Music

I Hate Picking Headlines

I’ve talked to you guys a little about Chrono Cross’ soundtrack before. For Kirk Hamilton’s weekly music block over at Kotaku (Kotaku has “programming” now, if you hadn’t heard), he asked me to kick in some thoughts, and I elaborated some on why it’s absolutely my favorite soundtrack in games. I’ve been replaying Chrono Cross lately and it only serves to emphasize for me how massively overlooked and underrated the game is. Chrono Trigger was a tough act to follow. More on that soon — promise.

For everyone asking me “should I buy a PlayStation Vita,” I’m like, “well, do you want it? Are those games you want to play, and can you afford it?” I mean, if the answer to all three questions are yes, you should get it.
Me, I really like the thing. Of course, the great delusion of game journalists is that their likes and dislikes have anything to do with the market and what consumers will actually buy. I’ve written my impressions and thoughts on the device and its tough-to-call role in the complicated portable landscape over at Gamasutra, if you’d like to check it out and weigh in.
In other cool ideas that depend on complicated marketplaces, I’ve written an editorial about transmedia gaming and entertainment. Where’s that glorious transmedia future we were promised?
Speaking of the future, I’m part of this classy quarterly futurist magazine called Arc. If you look at the other contributors you might see why I’m wondering if someone just put me in there by mistake. It’s super awesome, and you can check it out on digital platforms or in print.
That’s about it for now, aside from a very important music recommendation. For my birthday last year I threw an enormous loft party with many of our friends’ bands, and Ava Luna, one of my favorite locals, was awesome enough to play. They continue to get bigger and more awesome, and now they have a new record out and the famously difficult-to-please Chris Weingarten likes them enough to put their record on Spin so that you can stream it, so you should. They’re really good.

Big Ups

Happy belated Thanksgiving, Americans. I stayed at my family’s place in Massachusetts for the holiday, and now that I’m back in New York I am fighting to catch up amid the whirlwind of work that December always is. We’ll be continuing with our Metal Gear Solid marathon soon! For the moment, though, just some things to catch you up on!

At Thought Catalog, I wrote about the time I adopted a baby robot dinosaur. During the FFVII Letters that Kirk Hamilton and I wrote at Paste, we talked about the broad sketches digital worlds can draw that let us attach our imaginations to things. That sense of attachment is even stranger and more intense when it comes to things that resemble living creatures. And sad. And primal.
There’s a new augmented reality game for iOS called Dimensions, and it’s very, very neat. It uses the audio in your environment and responds to your movement and activity level to create the sense that you travel among realms of sound. It’s easier to experience than to describe, but in this interview at Gamasutra, the developer talks to me about augmented reality and the nuance of making the world around you, subtly, into a magical experience.
There are social games where you click on farm animals and there are real games where you pull triggers and shoot dudes, right? Not anymore. The lines between these platforms are becoming more elastic, and the multiplatform social space and the core gaming space are beginning to borrow from each other more and more. Chris Archer used to work at Activision, but at his new studio, U4ia, he told me he wants to make “first person social” games that bring together the social and FPS spaces.
Of particular interest, he believes that amid all of our networking activities and social media platforms, it’s actually harder these days to have a meaningful gaming experience with your actual friends than it was in the ol’ LAN party days. What do you think?
I spend a lot of time in the change games space, talking to folks who want to make games that motivate people to support charitable causes or to better understand global issues. One shortfall that’s plagued this promising sector for some time is that they’ve gotten good at raising awareness, but ways to get people to actually do things — give money, spread the word — are still under consideration.
A new game from Sojo Studios called Wetopia has found a really promising way to take all of the sharing and visiting and resource management inherent to Facebook games and use it to support major nonprofits. Ellen DeGeneres said she likes it! Check out my interview (with Sojo Studios’ Lincoln Brown, not with Ellen, sadly).
Finally, I’ve gotten to chat to the studio head of IO Interactive about what’s next for them. They get to work on a new IP and a new Hitman game once they ship Absolution. In my full interview you can read all about it.
By the way, here are my five most favorite albums from 2011, if you are looking for something new to listen to:
1. Widowspeak (s/t)
2. Parallax (Atlas Sound)
3. Staring at the X (Forest Fire)
4. D (White Denim)
5. Helplessness Blues (Fleet Foxes)

Chains Of Meaning

Post-GDC, it takes forever to get back to normal. Like, weeks! I’m still working on it! But here are a few fun things I’ve been working on in the meantime.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m a big fan of Jason Rohrer (remember when I got to play Sleep is Death with him last year?) This GDC, he participated in Eric Zimmerman’s annual game design challenge, where a panel of sharp designers are tasked with creating a concept based on a certain theme. This year’s was religion, and you can read about how Rohrer won the challenge in my coverage here.

I did an interview with Rohrer on his new game, Inside a Star-Filled Sky. He’s a fascinating person to talk to, and despite the whole “art game” thing that canopies much of his work, he’s terribly pragmatic and upbeat (that contrast between his heavy death themes and his approachable personality is one of the things I asked him about).

Anyway, Rohrer’s challenge-winning Chain World design is now at the center of something of an interesting controversy. If you haven’t heard about it, catch up here. The most interesting thing about the debate is that even though it seems that Rohrer’s intentions for Chain World are being “subverted” (depending on whom you ask), this very sort of discussion and debate — what defines “good”, what is the fate of the “holy object”, who can participate, should money be involved and what principles are most important — is inherent to religion.

I haven’t asked Rohrer about this but I have to think he was aware of the possibility that people would disobey his “rules” for Chain World, or that it would mutate in some fashion beyond his foreseeing. But that we’re still discussing the “chain of meaning” behind that little USB key is even more proof that his design was a success, I think.

Other than that, I’ve launched into an analysis of the narrative of pretty much my favorite album, Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me, speaking of meaning. It’s a very personal album to me. Probably only people who are curious about music or who like the record would be interested, but I did it one disc at a time: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.

Special thanks/blame for the Joanna series goes to friend/hero Kieron Gillen, whose idea it was. By the way, Gillen just got married this past weekend, and I regard him more highly than most people I know, so feel free to spam his inbox with congratulatory notes, because he isn’t busy CONTROLLING THE FUCKING X-MEN or anything.


Today’s Good Song: “I’m Losing Myself“, Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes) feat. Ed Droste (Grizzly Bear) [via Said The Gramophone]

ONE Music Post — My Favorite Albums & Songs Of 2010

Indulge me, willya? These are just ‘my favorites’, things I loved most/listened to most, I am not a ‘music critic’ and dunno what is ‘the best’.

my top 20 albums
20. four tet – there is love in you
19. twin sister – color your life 
18. woods – echo lake
17. perfume genius — learning
16. mountain man – made the harbor
15. amen dunes – murder dull mind
14. junip – fields
13. royal baths – litanies
12. warpaint – the fool
11. green gerry – odd tymes
10. the bitters — east general
9. cloud nothings — turning on
8. white denim — last day of summer
7. art museums — rough frame
6. ariel pink’s haunted graffiti — before today
5. herbcraft — herbcraft discovers the bitter water of agartha
4. deerhunter — halcyon digest
3. tame impala — innerspeaker
2. white fence — white fence
1. joanna newsom — have one on me

my top 10 songs (that aren’t on any of those records):
10. born stoked — wet illustrated
9. no way — pepepiano
8. pure — blackbird blackbird
7. take it all — omnivore
6. marathon — tennis
5. wolf pyramid — night manager
4. lately (deuxieme) — memoryhouse
3. horchata — vampire weekend (embarrassing, but the most-played does not lie)
2. fingertips — holy spirits x gem club
1. lawn knives — GOBBLE GOBBLE

i left out obvious stuff like kanye on purpose. also, compilations and stuff don’t “count” but boy did carissa’s wierd’s long-awaited ‘they’ll only miss you when you leave’ get a lot of play here too.

back to regularly-scheduled videogame programming!

Music For Nerds

Because I’m big into music and always yakking about bands, I get a lot of people asking me about “nerdcore” bands and, like The Protomen or whatever. I always say I don’t like them — totally willing to admit I’m biased because I make my entire living in the world of video games, but I really dislike the idea that gamer fandom is something that needs to seep into every single pore of a person’s waking life. Also I think they’re just bad, but that’s subjective.

Why should I make it, like, a personal mandate to browbeat gamers into being interested in things other than games? If games are all you like and you want to eat (McFarmville?), sleep, breathe and listen them every minute of your day, that’s totally your business, isn’t it? More power to you. Do what you love.

It’s just that personally I think we can have a richer experience relating to interactive worlds when we have well-rounded lives — and more importantly, we as consumers will ask for more nuanced, more genuinely social and more diverse game experiences when we are broader and more curious media consumers.

And whether or not it applies to me (protip: it does) I’ve always flinched at the idea that ‘nerd’ is a label we should all brag about, like we deserve to be segregated for our interests, like we must embrace this stereotype of being single-minded and socially inept just because we like this or that. We want people to get with the idea that games aren’t particularly weird, that they belong in people’s lives, right?

Anyway. As much as I am sassy and opinionated about most stuff, at the end of the day it’s mostly a big put-on. I’d never tell someone in seriousness that they shouldn’t enjoy something that’s important to them. But this article on SomethingAwful basically encapsulates, in more depth than I’ve ever gone into, why I mostly don’t really dig “gamer music.”

Which makes the YouTube I’ve posted at the head of this post a little bit of a guilty pleasure, right? (The author of the SA piece told me on Twitter, though I can’t find the Tweet now, that this tune is more forgivable because it is self-aware and not taking itself seriously).

In related news, you might all like (or become angry at) this Hosta song, ‘No More Video Games‘, which I stumbled across today on Indie Rock Cafe’s decent Summer 2010 mixtape. I came there looking for tracks by Sleep Good, a band from Austin, which is where I spent my entire past week (more on GDC Online later! I’m still catching up on sleep!)

Squeaky Clean


Dear ‘gamers’ — I’m surprised at you. You have been showing up here at Sexy Videogameland to swoon over Catherine trailers; you pile on my Formspring to ask me about my nerdy Metal Gear Solid theories (when you are not asking me creepy questions about my sex life and/or shoe size). If you are really cool, you’ve tossed a couple bucks the way of Babycastles, because you believe that the work of indie designers should have a home in New York City. To be a part of something special! For the future! For your children! Or because you want a copy of We Love Katamari autographed by Keita Takahashi, whatever.

You don’t just enjoy video games; you love them and you live them. Maybe you grew up with them, like I did, as described in my current series at Thought Catalog (now up to Part Two! Part One is here.) But when I told you about how developers tell me some game publishers overuse focus testing to rationalize developing only formula-driven, risk-averse status quo video games, (thus stifling creativity and making innovation scarce) so many of you shrugged breezily and told me, “it’s just a business.”

It’s naive and idealistic to think that games are more than simple consumer products and that there’s more potential in the medium than its ability to make tons of money. So lemme be naive and idealistic — I’m the one that has to get up in front of everyone and yak about it, so you guys can nod along or not.

So, uh… why aren’t you all nodding along? Are games just consumer products to you, like soap or something? At Kotaku this month, I examine the schism between our experiential, artistic and emotional fondness for games and the biz-driven “product” identity games have carried since the 1980′s when they were sold as novelties beside VCRs and music players. Check it out!

Fun ‘insider info’– while editing my column Stephen Totilo and I took bets on how long it would take someone to post a picture of Soap McTavish. Guess how long it took.

Wii remote soap in the image was found here, along with some other pictures of crazy/awesome video game soap. The new banner was a present from Matthew Carstensen, who has a pretty interesting blog.

Today’s good song is the chip-ish and flipping excellent cover of Japandroids’ Wet Hair done by Teen Daze. I’m posting it here rather than tucking it away in brackets because it has a game-like sound you guys might like. This looks like a fan-made video done, appropriately, to animations from the Scott Pilgrim video game.

And while I am slamming amazing things into your faces, let me remind you that you pretty much have to get the soundtrack to that game. Duh, Anamanaguchi.

Remember when I did an interview article on them circa 2k9? Think I said they ‘might break through’. Think I was ‘totally right’.


Dear ‘gamers’ — I’m surprised at you. You have been showing up here at Sexy Videogameland to swoon over Catherine trailers; you pile on my Formspring to ask me about my nerdy Metal Gear Solid theories (when you are not asking me creepy questions about my sex life and/or shoe size). If you are really cool, you’ve tossed a couple bucks the way of Babycastles, because you believe that the work of indie designers should have a home in New York City. To be a part of something special! For the future! For your children! Or because you want a copy of Katamari Damacy autographed by Keita Takahashi, whatever.

You don’t just enjoy video games; you love them and you live them. Maybe you grew up with them, like I did, as described in my current series at Thought Catalog (now up to Part Two! Part One is here.) But when I told you about how developers tell me some game publishers overuse focus testing to rationalize developing only formula-driven, risk-averse status quo video games, thus stifling their creativity and resulting in an industry where innovation is rare and challenging, so many of you shrugged breezily and told me, “it’s just a business.”
It’s naive and idealistic to think that games are more than simple consumer products and that there’s more potential in the medium than its ability to make tons of money. So lemme me naive and idealistic — I’m the one that has to get up in front of everyone and yak about it, so you guys can nod along or not.
So, uh… why aren’t you all nodding along? Are games just consumer products to you, like soap or something? At Kotaku this month, I examine the schism between our experiential, artistic and emotional fondness for games and the biz-driven “product” identity games have carried since the 1980′s when they were sold as novelties beside VCRs and music players. Check it out!
Fun insider image — while editing my column Stephen Totilo and I took bets on how long it would take someone to post a picture of Soap McTavish. Guess.
Wii remote soap in the image was found here, along with some other pictures of crazy/awesome video game soap. The new banner was a present from Matthew Carstensen, who has a pretty interesting blog.
Today’s good song is the chip-ish and flipping excellent cover of Japandroids’ Wet Hair done by Teen Daze. I’m posting it here rather than tucking it away in brackets because it has a game-like sound you guys might like. This looks like a fan-made video done, appropriately, to animations from the Scott Pilgrim video game.

And while I am slamming amazing things into your faces, let me remind you that you pretty much have to get the soundtrack to that game. Duh, Anamanaguchi.

Remember when I did an interview article on them circa 2k9? Think I said they ‘might break through’. Think I was ‘totally right.’

All I Wanna Do Is Take Your Money

I don’t like M.I.A. Her music is okay; certainly not as exciting as she’s given credit for, although I like some of it. However, I couldn’t pin down why I didn’t like her until I read this Times profile of her by Lynn Hirschberg. This is the best piece of writing I’ve read in some time, and this because of the way it impresses on me an opinion of an individual and suggests I should share it.

It’s opinion writing of the best kind, and I’ll admit I don’t know whether the article has crystallized for me why I don’t like M.I.A, or has persuaded me of reasons not to like M.I.A. Doesn’t matter.
At times like this, I deeply resent the game industry (and also at times like this).
Let’s pretend I was skilled enough a writer to do a piece like Hirschberg’s. I couldn’t in this business. Because game developers aren’t vocal enough about who they are. If they have creative identities (many don’t), they don’t express them. But even if I could grasp at a couple people who would be nuanced enough “personalities” worth covering — the Housers, Infinity Ward, Bobby Kotick — there’s no way in hell I could get close enough to them to do a piece like this. The PR machine wouldn’t let me.
Because video games still refuse to be part of the entertainment industry in any way besides the dull commercial. Because the video game industry is still culturally irrelevant.
I feel like I’ve been banging on about impediments to gaming’s cultural relevance my entire career. I need to take periodic breaks so that I don’t become fatigued and cynical (too late, maybe). However, this article does a lovable job of summing up why it’s still embarrassing to be a gamer, or to put it more kindly (since none of you are actually embarrassed), issues that are still holding the industry back.
[Today’s Good Song: ‘Paper Planes‘, M.I.A]