Thanks, And Goodbye


Dear friends of SVGL,

It’s kinda hard for me to write this, especially knowing that some of you who’ll be reading this have been with me here at this blog since I began it over three years ago (!!) Back then, I didn’t really know yet what I wanted to say about the “land” of video games, or to whom I wanted to say it, but by beginning here with all of you, I discovered my voice and grew to where I am now: not only am I Gamasutra’s news director, but I’ve got bylines at Kotaku, GamePro, Slate, Wired, Variety, the AV Club, and many many more.
Maybe too many more. I’m often teased for my prolific and varied output in the world of games writing, but the fact is I’m a workaholic. Producing at this volume for so many years has caused me an enormous amount of stress. Many of you may have observed frequent references to alcohol emerging in my Twitter feed in recent months, plus “jokes” about my drunken antics.
Friends, it breaks my heart to tell you today that these are not jokes. My life has become one long, infamous Giant Bombcast. Games journalism has devoured me alive and it is with much pain and regret that I today announce my retirement in order to enter rehab for the rampant alcoholism in which I have sought refuge from the ruthless and stressful world of writing about video games.
Fortunately, there is a way for me to maintain the connection with you all that has been the primary factor sustaining me in these dark times. My Twitter feed attracted the attention of a casting director for Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab show, and I’m proud to announce I’ll enter this reality-show rehabilitation program along with other celebrities such as Gidget Yankelevitz, Toney Palumbo and two of the members of the band GunFight!. I’m kind of nervous to meet them, but I’m optimistic and excited about the process ahead.
Today’s announcement means SVGL will be no more. Thanks to all of you who’ve loved my work, and I’m sorry your love was not enough.
Best Wishes,
Leigh Alexander

Nerd Crush

My friend works at a restaurant where I had a little thing with the bartender. “I beat the campaign of Modern Warfare 2 in three hours,” he announces when I come in to visit her one day after work.

“Stop,” I tell him immediately. I decline to greet by hugging, I frown stiffly, and I can hear a worn, thin tone snappish in my voice. “I don’t want to talk about work,” I tell him. I immediately feel bad for being bitchy. He’s a nice kid, and he’s told me before that bringing up “game stuff” is an easy way for him to start conversation with me, and he’s just so enthusiastic he can’t help it, no matter how many times I try to change the subject.
A lot of guys I meet feel the same way, whether they want to date me or not. Such a novelty is it for them to discover a neighborhood gal who presumably “plays video games all day” that they seem over the moon to find a girl they can talk about games with. This should make me feel cool. It makes me annoyed.
Yeah, of course I have played [insert new title here]. It’s my job. And yes, of course you may come over and play [game that isn't out yet] with me. Just bring me a bottle of gin and have something else to talk about, please. My house is not an arcade. Sometimes when I’m off the clock video games are the last thing I want to look at, think about or talk about.
Does this sound really unfair of me? Am I sometimes over-sensitive to people who are just trying to be nice or share an interest in my field? Probably, but try to understand it really sucks for men to continually make of me a novelty. I don’t want to be a novelty. I am not my job.
And I imagine any gal who’s an avid gamer even for a hobby, not for a living, has to deal with the same thing, endless barrages of breathless shock from guys that can’t believe you exist. And maybe gals for whom it’s just a hobby find this flattering. I don’t.
You wouldn’t ask your friend who’s a lawyer for free legal advice every time you see him. You wouldn’t ask your friend who’s a tax preparer to share his expertise gratis. You wouldn’t bug your psychologist friend about your traumatic childhood every time she simply wants to have coffee with you. You pay people for that stuff.
Maybe I should charge people to play video games with me. Maybe I should refuse to talk about them unless I’m being paid. Maybe I should only allow guys at the bar to ask me if God of War III is any good (“yes, awesome.” Like, what else can I reply?) after they’ve bought me a drink.
…Of course I’m not serious. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love it, and while I definitely get impatient at being pigeonholed as some kind of nerd goddess who’s about nothing else but video games, I understand I’m a rarity and I hope I can contribute something useful in my perspectives because of that. It does help me bond with new people, since there aren’t too many of us gamers out there who “get it”.
But I bring it up because so many of you wrote me asking what I think about GameCrush.com, wherein gamers pay for “PlayDates” with real live females. As I said on Twitter, do you really need a girl to tell you it’s demeaning and insulting for you to believe it?
It’s stupid, but y’know, I get it. In Japan, girls get compensated for any number of things, from chaste dates to having lunch with salarymen while dressed up as maids with rabbit ears. Part of me feels like it’s hard enough to be a female gamer in a culture where — well, where men would pay women to play games with them — that they might as well make some money at it. I dunno that any amount of money would be worth the heavy breathing the girl’s gonna have to sit through when she’s playing MW2 with the kind of guy who’d pay women to play games with him.
What if I auctioned off the opportunity to play and discuss the Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill Series with me at my house? Would you bid on that, let’s say, if it were for charity? Would your opinion change if I for some reason needed the money to keep this blog up? What if I just wanted the money for myself? I am quite sure some of you would, because I am quite sure some of you are here because I am a girl generally determined by others to be pretty. Judging by some of the emails and comments I sometimes receive and promptly delete, a few of you are here only for that.
There’s a really ugly reality to our landscape, and while I firmly believe it will evolve and improve, I am also pessimistic that that ugly underbelly can ever fully go away. The way I see it, it was only a matter of time before someone found a way to capitalize on it. I’m not, like, full of outrage. It’s just dumb, and I didn’t even think it really needed addressing.
I will say I can’t wait to interview the girls about what it’s like, though!

Post-GDC Mega Catch-Up, Yeah!

Well, I’ve been home for a few days from GDC — every year it’s an amazing, inspiring and invigorating time. I got to see Jason Rohrer discuss his new DS game, Diamond Trust of London (but Brandon Boyer’s writeup of Rohrer’s Sleep is Death is far more interesting than my article); he was talking alongside Molleindustria’s Paolo Pedercini, whom you know I adore.

I saw some truly impressive Unreal Engine tech demos and received reassurance on the future of AAA gaming from Epic’s Mark Rein (despite the concerted attempts of social gaming venture capitalists to discourage me) ; I heard wonderfully wacky Metroid and Wario Ware visionary Yoshio Sakamoto discussing his creative strategy, and I was refreshed to learn that at ThatGameCompany, development process actually comprehends that game developers are human beings and not design robots that produce when crunched upon.
It’s amazing what happy people who work well together can create, isn’t it? One of the highlights of my GDC was meeting many of the members of the team at Naughty Dog, who swept the Game Developers’ Choice awards (which I also attended, enjoying the hosting talents of Kyle Gabler and Erin Robinson). Friend and awesome person Andy Schatz won the IGF with Monaco!
To be quite honest, I have never been a big fan of the Uncharted games; when people ask me what I think of Uncharted 2, I use words like “impressive” “an achievement” “a beautiful game” and “very well done.” I mean all those words, of course, but when I’m writing criticism I tend to prize other traits. And I always like to root for underdogs; while I knew there was no chance whatsoever that Demon’s Souls would beat Uncharted 2 as Game of the Year at the Choice awards, I selfishly wanted to see it happen! I also would have preferred to see Brutal Legend recognized for writing, but hey.
However, having met a handful of the team’s senior members during GDC, I’ve gotta say I’ve never met a nicer or more humble group of game developers, and can’t help but feel that nobody deserves the recognition more. They are the kind of people who, when you ask them what they do while chatting at the bar, are humble to the max –you have to push to even get them to admit they made the Game of the Year, and they all seem thrilled and bewildered by the recognition.
(Leaders on a certain couple of 2009′s other major game successes often do not deign to socialize with us commonfolk, and if they did they would come in all popped collars, snakeskin boots and chest pounding over what they developed.)
The Dogs told me they feel like a family and love working together. I think that makes a difference. I would love it if more publishers got the idea that the way to get developers to make excellent games is to allow them to work according to their own internal culture (provided it’s a positive one).
These are the kinds of people and ideas that inspire me most when I am at GDC, although the indies tend to be my very most favorite. The Los Angeles Times has just run an article by me on the constituency of the Experimental Gameplay Project, many of whom I got to say hello to at the event this year. While at GDC I also heard 2DBoy’s Ron Carmel explain how a group of indie “angels” hopes to support independent designers in self-publishing.
I spoke on a panel, too. Mia Consalvo, Manveer Heir, Jamin Brophy-Warren and I discussed issues of diversity and race both within video games and on the development side. My friend Michael Abbott of Brainy Gamer fame (who is so warm and nice I cannot quite believe he is From The Internet, and who as usual I did not get to see enough of!) did an excellent write-up of our discussion. There seemed to be a great response to the discussion in general, and Cliff Bleszinski said it gave him ideas and “white man’s guilt”!!
Friend and fellow Kotaku columnist Tim Rogers completed a speaker evaluation of my panel that indicates he would not recommend it to others out of the desire to “keep it as a secret weapon,” that all speakers received zeroes except for I who received a rare “heart” ranking, and that “Bikini” is required to improve the panel. This was my favorite GDC Souvenir:

(courtesy of Tim, the high-res version of his speaker evaluation is here.)
The combination of hard work and hard drinking killed many of my brain cells, I’m sure — it was a whirlwind time and I’m glad to be back bumming around in Brooklyn with my snobby cat and not-snobby friends, but there’s nothing like GDC. I had a wonderful time, and to those of you who did come up and say hello to me, it was nice to meet you!
Don’t forget, you can find all of my GDC coverage, as well as the fine and excellent work of my colleagues, at Gamasutra’s designated GDC 2010 landing page.

Question Of The Week: What Scares You?

Look, I remembered to do Question of the Week this week!

The horrific Phantasmagoria 2 became available on GoodOldGames.com this week. I haven’t played it since I was young (and it’s not appropriate for young people, bless my parents) — but I remember that it scared me worse than nearly any other video game ever to date. I could not even finish it for a good couple years because I was too scared to try things and die over and over. It took me a few years before I was brave enough to print out a walkthrough for the very last section and beat the game.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if I tried it again today, it would be terribly disappointing, possibly even hilariously terrible. But paradoxically — kid you not — I’m still too frightened to revisit it.
What game scared you worse than any other in your memory? Do you feel stupid about it now, or does it still scare you?

The Good Ending


How’s your PlayStation 3 this morning? Mine is afflicted with the same problem that a lot of others seem to have. I hope it’s fixed soon, because I want to play Heavy Rain.


At the same time, is it so terrible that I feel glad to have a reprieve from AAA gaming, a tidy excuse not to move on immediately from the exhausting emotional wringer that is BioShock 2‘s Rapture? Speaking of which, here is my review of BioShock 2, which I think encompasses the things I think are stronger than the original versus weaker.
I think probably the biggest open issue I have with BioShock 2 is that harvesting Little Sisters feels so irrational that the option to do so seems excessively heavy-handed — as if it existed to support the game’s messages about choice, rather than to contribute to the gameplay. The sheer variety of options BioShock 2 gives you to take out your enemies makes it wholly unnecessary to feel so desperate for ADAM that you harvest Little Sisters.
So does the fact that, as a player, you feel more familiar with Rapture now. It doesn’t lose any of its compelling qualities, and its advanced state of decay actually makes it more breathtaking in places (my favorite moments of the game were due entirely to certain arrangements of its scenery). But you don’t have that sense of being lost, of being desperate, that you had as Jack in the first game. Not only do you know your way around now, so to speak, but you’re wearing a Big Daddy suit.
The effect of being a Big Daddy is twofold: You feel more powerful (and the other Big Daddies feel wonderfully lonesome and tragic, not so scary). But beyond that, you feel more of an attachment to the girls. Big Daddies and Little Sisters were introduced to us via inseparable imagery, and now we’re expected to conceive of killing one — especially within the context of a narrative that asks us to risk everything to get one “back”?
This obviously is not a deal-breaker for me, not by a long shot. Even if the option to do the irrational simply exists as a way for the player to experiment with the game’s philosophical framework, rather than to feel immersive and genuine, I’m glad it’s there. I’m not sure I’d mind if “Harvest or Rescue” were part of the BioShock framework for future sequels.
Which brings me to something else I’ve just written! I promised I’d explore the idea of sequelizing games that don’t “need” sequels in the context of BioShock 2, and I’ve done so over at Gamasutra. Check it out!
Finally, I really believe that whether a “flaw” is a deal-breaker for you or not depends on what your motivation is for playing video games. My latest Kotaku feature investigates how different kind of games scratch different itches, and how a certain weakness in one type of game might not be as big a problem in another.
Meanwhile, while I wait for Sony to fix whatever this PS3 problem is, I’ve been playing Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands on DS for hours and hours and hours. It’s like crack to me. Bonus Material: My original Aberrant Gamer column on gender identity and Harvest Moon marriage.
I feel like I’m not even done talking about BioShock 2 yet. It never fails to amaze me how we as audiences demand increasingly complex and sustaining experiences, and yet every game we get, we bang through as fast as possible so we can get to discussing the next one. Sucks.

Contract Killer

“Yeah, and let’s not kid ourselves. If you sell a game that’s a first-person shooter, then no matter how many RPG elements you shoe-horn into the game, the shadow that hangs over every character interaction that you have, no matter who they are, is the question in the player’s mind of “What happens if I shoot this person?“

And that’s our own fault! We’ve sold the player that; we’ve made a contract with the player that says it’s okay to kill people. Why would we then chastise them for exploring that?”

Are We Gonna Be Together?


Keeping an eye on our local BioShock sidebar poll here, I’m actually fairly surprised at what an overwhelming percentage of you are Little Sister rescuers. I think the SVGL audience skews more empathetic than the average core gamer, judging by the discussions we have here — but even still!

I find the results especially surprising because of all the talk I’ve heard around the Little Sister choice in the games — people always say it’s not really a “choice” since you receive a gameplay benefit in either case, or because it doesn’t change much about the story save for the ending; people find them creepy AIs, not cute little people at the crux of a meaningful moral conflict, blah blah. If all that is so, why do so many of you care?
I killed all the Little Sisters in the first BioShock. To me, to do so seemed to suit the narrative better — I was a faceless stranger in a man-eat-man world. I liked the repellent desperation that made Rapture so lawless, and so amoral was its world I thought I’d play along. Did I feel good about doing it? Not exactly, but to make my decisions based on a hunger for power felt appropriate for the story.
And I’ve always maintained I had a better experience in the first game because of it. When the things I was led to believe came crashing down, having to face what I’d done made the story’s later revelations more of a gutpunch. Arriving at Tennenbaum’s safehouse as a Little Sister killer was one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’d had that year. One thing I wish is that the game could have given me the opportunity to redeem myself, to start handling the little sisters as fellow victims instead of as prey once I knew what the real deal was — but then, that might have violated the game’s message of “no real agency”.
I am hesitant to say much yet about BioShock 2 because I’m doing a review for Paste, but I’ll say that the choice felt much different to me this time. Although the harvest-or-rescue decision is more nuanced and complex from a gameplay perspective, it seems not a decision at all from a narrative standpoint — in the first BioShock, it felt equally realistic to take either path. In the second, I personally find it implausible to do anything but rescue. But maybe that’s just me.
It does bring me to an interesting point: What’s your motivation when you play a video game that allows you some agency? Are you writing a story and creating a character? Or are you using the medium of interactivity to express your own self — and see how the environment responds to you?
What determines your harvest-or-rescue decision, for example — something inside the game, or something inside of you?
Bonus Content: Header image is this wallpaper.
August 2007, I write my Aberrant Gamer column for GameSetWatch on the original Little Sister choice and what creates emotional impact versus basic cost-benefit analysis.
August 2007, I write a different Aberrant Gamer column on the Little Sisters themselves, and the use of creepy girlchildren in survival horror.
July 2008, at Kotaku EA boss John Riccitiello tells me that he, too, was a Little Sister killer.

Question Of The Week, February 18

A real life little sister needs adopting, big syringe and lamp-eyes and all. Do you accept?

Could you nurture her out of rooting around in corpses? Would you try to take her to a physician so she could be “rescued” from her gathering urge — even if doctors would treat your lil’ orphan like a freak? Would you adopt her just to harvest her for superpowers?
Serious question. I’ve also added a sidebar poll that quizzes you on your quintessential playing habits within the BioShock universe. I am playing 2 quite differently from 1, wherein I killed everything.
For some serious thoughts, read Michael Abbott’s take on fatherhood in BioShock 2, and then read Chris Dahlen’s apparently-opposing take (they are both for-realsies daddies, whereas I’m probably way more Tennenbaum than Lamb). I did not read their columns, because I didn’t finish the game yet — I’m neurotically spoiler-averse with games like BioShock. But you could, if you wanted to.
I’m going to try to make “question of the week” a regular feature here. I said “try.” Today I just wanted an excuse to post this Little Sister picture:

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!


[Wallpaper-sized edition of above is here]

No Sleep Til Brooklyn

Have you been playing BioShock 2, the “sequel to a game that didn’t need a sequel?” So’ve I. No, it didn’t need a sequel, but I’m glad it got one. I hope it gets several more. It could be the beginning of something awesome.

Don’t worry, I’ll be explaining at Gamasutra soon. No More Heroes didn’t really need a sequel either, but it got one (and I was also glad of that). All I’ll say for now is that we ought to get used to sequels to games that “don’t need them” — and that the trend could evolve into something very positive.
I’m busy all the time, especially with my staff at D.I.C.E. I suspect that what people do at D.I.C.E. is play a lot of poker and get supremely drunk. So in other words, it’s like my life, except my life lacks poker (which I don’t know how to play), and lacks me having to cover people’s talks. Props to my colleague, Game Developer EIC Brandon Sheffield, who’s already got a couple talks from Vegas up at Gamasutra: Astronaut and new-minted Facebook gaming boss Richard Garriott’s sorta-critique of game narratives, and Davids Jaffe and Crane talking about their experiences in the evolution toward casual gaming — Jaffe says Calling all Cars was “a mistake”, thanks to “a casual theme with a hardcore mechanic on a machine people had paid $500 for. Nothing matched up.”
Speaking of evolution, remember that whole “virtual worlds” thing, where everyone wanted to interact in browser-based 3D environments with avatars? That lasted like, 12-18 months, didn’t it? I feel sorry for the venture capitalists that are still buying that line (and for Sony, which appears to have some very expensive lemons with which it must now make lemonade).
A couple years ago when I was running the inaugural Worlds in Motion Summit, I got up in front of a room of all these starry-eyed venture-funded kiddoes (ignore the awkward pic! I thought we were friends, Zonk!), and — okay, it was a bit nervy for a journo to do — demanded that they prove to me why I should believe in their promises of a 3D web, an avatar-based future. I was skeptical that anyone wanted a “3D web” or to “democratize content” or anything like that, and what I saw was a bunch of people who had actually gotten someone to fund their fantasy that Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash could be real.
A little bit thereafter at Austin GDC, where I had less involvement in the Summit, I told FreeToPlay.biz I thought Web 2.0-types should “evaluate their substance” and take more lessons from the gaming biz. Now it sure looks to me like a lot of the buzz and enthusiasm around so-called “virtual worlds” has been transmuted into iPhone and Facebook gaming.
Just look how many game developers have gone into those spaces: The dude who made Klax (read my interview with him!) A couple guys from Rockstar Leeds, who miss the sense of agency that comes with grass-roots bedroom coding. Flippin’ Richard Garriott! Sid flippin’ Meier is even putting Civ on flippin’ Facebook!
This, this I am interested in — especially when you see publishers like EA plainly state that they depend on success in this small-digital space for their survival.
I used to snicker a bit at dudes saying things like “Facebook is a virtual world.” No, Facebook is a social network. Virtual worlds are also social networks, and it turns out that Facebook is a method much simpler and more intuitive for social networking. People just want to be connected to each other in the most accessible way possible. Nobody wants the Web to be a world, a game, an “environment” or a “user-generated content space.” They just wanna get shit done.
I was one of the earliest business writers on Web 2.0 — one of the earliest neutral ones, at least. I remember getting into arguments with other journalists at events: I’d argue that Second Life was only relevant to the people that “lived” in it, and they’d argue back how wrong I was. The argument would soon reveal that they owned a business selling virtual fashions in Second Life, or selling virtual kits that could make their avatars into hermaphrodites or whatever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think a very vocal super-minority made a lot of people feel like this avatar thing was way more important than it is.
I did say that I hoped that a lot of lessons from the virtual-everything gold rush got transmuted wisely into the larger games business, and I think that’s happening. Some bubbles pop, some don’t, but mostly what happens is a lot of subtle evolution. All of this industry fragmentation is really good both for core games and for social games. It’s exciting, and I’m glad I don’t have to interview anyone who uses their Second Life picture as a real picture anymore.