The NFL Draft occurred over the past few days, and I was watching pretty contently through the first four rounds. Generally speaking, I really liked what I saw.
Things started with a bang on the first night. We used the Browns' fear that another team would trade up and take Trent Richardson to move back a single slot and pick up 3 additional late round picks. Then we grabbed Matt Kalil as we had intended to for months, no matter what Rick Spielman wanted everybody to think. Kalil is the top left tackle prospect in years, and while he's not Jake Long or Joe Thomas, he's immeasurably better than what we had (Charlie Johnson) or even what we have had for ages (Bryant McKinney). He's an athletic blind side protector who is intent on doing things the right way -- whether it's technique on the field or building up power in the weight room to improve his run blocking. Almost as important, it lets us move Charlie Johnson inside to guard, where a lot of people suspect he's a better fit. Along with some off season moves we made, our O line is suddenly adequate if not legitimately strong instead of one of the top liabilities on the team.
Later, we used some of the ammunition we got from that early trade to move back into the first round to pick up Notre Dame safety Harrison Smith. Smith was the consensus number 2 safety in the draft, and last season made it incredibly clear that we had nothing at the position. Smith worked with our coaching staff extensively at the Senior Bowl, and they fell in love with him. Not only his talent and his positioning on the field, but his presence in meetings and his leadership. He should be a day one starter and provide a serious improvement in our secondary.
Our secondary saw further improvement with Josh Robinson, CB out of the University of Central Florida. Robinson set the fastest 40 time at the Combine, running it in 4.29 seconds. On top of that, he put up 17 reps of 225 lbs on the bench press, more than many larger, supposedly stronger backs. He should provide a powerful jam at the line of scrimmage, and he has the speed to recover if he gets burned and make plays on the ball from the other side of the field, and he's a willing tackler. He's an early entry from a mediocre program, so he may not be ready to jump in and start immediately is up to question, but he could develop into something special.
The fourth round saw a number of interesting picks. First being Arkansas wide receiver Jarius Wright. I watched a lot of Hogs games last fall with one of my roommates who comes from the state. Wright is small and best fit to line up in the slot, where we already have Percy Harvin, so a lot of fans may not like the pick. I've seen him play, though, and he's nothing like Harvin. He's possibly faster and more explosive, even if he doesn't have the strength or dynamic ability in the open field. Most important, though, he's a great route runner, which can't really be said about, really, anybody else on the roster. Combined with his speed, this makes him a great deep threat down the middle. I'm honestly excited about the potential to line Wright and Harvin both up on the slot or, better yet, Wright in the slot and Harvin in the backfield and play games with opposing defenses.
Later in the 4th, we picked up a second Arkansas receiver, Greg Childs. Childs is 6'3" and possesses ridiculous speed (clocked at 4.38 at his pro day). He produced extremely well while healthy, but he tore his patella tendon in 2010 and tried to come back too soon, hurting his 2011 performance. Because of this, I haven't seen as much of Childs, but he's a prototypical number 1 receiver in terms of size and ability. Friends who have watched him insist that he's a first or second round talent if not for the injury limiting his exposure last season, and scouts seem to agree. He was a steal who could pay dividends for years to come if he adapts well to the pros.
Between those picks, we made an incredibly un-glamorous but essential decision with USC FB/TE Rhett Ellison. With Jimmy Kleinsasser having retired, we were seriously lacking in supplementary blockers. Current top TEs Kyle Rudolph and John Carlson are great receivers but are only adequate at best in the blocking game. Ellison didn't have a lot of buzz in the media, but Spielman insists that there were other teams planning on grabbing him in the fourth round. Ellison is a hulking guy who was responsible for making holes nearly every time he was on the field last year, and he did it well, considering the high power of USCs offense. I'm sure the Vikings saw plenty of tape on him when they were doing their homework on Kalil, and this is a pick that should pay dividends with AP returning from knee injury and Toby Gerhart being a less dynamic runner in general.
In the top of the fifth, we made possibly our most questionable choice, drafting another DB from Notre Dame. I really haven't been able to find out much about Robert Blanton, other than the fact that nobody seems to see him as a CB in the NFL, meaning he may move over to Safety next to his past and present teammate. Considering the decisions made up to this point, though, I'm going to express faith in the pick. Time will tell, and everything is a crap shoot at this point in the draft, anyway.
We finally started the hunt for a successor to Ryan Longwell in the sixth, where we grabbed Georgia kicker Blair Walsh. Longwell had his worst season in ages last year, missing six kicks, and it's fully possible that he'll continue to regress as he pushes on towards 40. Blair might get knocked for inaccuracy after going 21/35 last season, but 10 of his 14 misses came from 40 or more yards as Georgia kicked more than any other team in the FBS. Kicks that long are always a crapshoot for college players, and he hit a long of 56 yards, so he's got the leg. NFL conditioning and coaching should help his accuracy. It could be an interesting camp for the old guard in special teams.
I honestly don't know much of anything about either of our seventh round picks (UNC linebacker Audie Cole and Cal DE/DT Trevor Guyton) except that several scouts had fourth round grades on the both of them and both play positions where we can always use depth. Along with the bevy of undrafted rookie free agents we've already reached agreements with, they'll fight for positions throughout training camp and provide perspective on our current crop of players.
In short, we've become a much better team over the past 48+ hours. I'm not holding out that we'll be truly competitive, but climbing back up as 6-10 is certainly possible. We've got potentially strong pieces in place at positions where we had nothing. We won't have nothing to work with coming into the draft next year, meaning we can focus on depth and a much smaller number of holes.
I feel good about being a Vikings fan right now. Much better, certainly, than I was after that dark, dark Packers game in November.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Gamification
Goddamn, I hate gamification. I'll admit, part of it is because every time somebody tries to shove Jane McGonigal down my throat (which has happened a lot over the past 15 months), I feel pandered to and underestimated as both a person who plays games and as a rational human being who expects people to actually back up their arguments (Malcolm Gladwell: not a credible source, even when you're not misrepresenting him). Mostly, though, the whole thing just takes an ugly view of humanity.
Gamification presupposes that the only thing we care about is our own sense of achievement. It suggests that the best way to get people to do things is to promise them immediate reward and recognition. It basically works to eliminate language of servitude from our lexicon in favor of personal growth.
Personal growth is bullshit -- at least when it occurs in a vacuum. If we abstract away the actual purpose of our efforts, replacing it with an augmented reality veneer that puts ourselves at the center of every action, then we won't actually learn the lessons that make us more Godly. Instead of coming to grips with our own fundamental insignificance, with the incredible value of the people around us and of creation as a whole, we will only grow and grow in our own sense of self-importance.
So, yeah, fuck gamification.
Gamification presupposes that the only thing we care about is our own sense of achievement. It suggests that the best way to get people to do things is to promise them immediate reward and recognition. It basically works to eliminate language of servitude from our lexicon in favor of personal growth.
Personal growth is bullshit -- at least when it occurs in a vacuum. If we abstract away the actual purpose of our efforts, replacing it with an augmented reality veneer that puts ourselves at the center of every action, then we won't actually learn the lessons that make us more Godly. Instead of coming to grips with our own fundamental insignificance, with the incredible value of the people around us and of creation as a whole, we will only grow and grow in our own sense of self-importance.
So, yeah, fuck gamification.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Games and Art
Most videogames are not art. I don't just mean "most videogames suck". I don't mean Madden or Call of Duty or other series that rehash the same principles under an annual release lack soul. I don't mean repackaged upgrades/expansions like Super Street Fighter 4: Ultimate Championship Edition are just cheap cash-in attempts. I mean legitimately good games that I love -- games like Final Fantasy VI, Ocarina of Time, or Mass Effect 2 -- aren't inherently art.
That's not to say that these games aren't, in a way, artful. There is skillful work of all manner in play in these games and others. There's writing. There's composing. There are models and environments to draw and render and animate. There's A.I. scripting and software design. Years ago, I would feverishly point out to these facets of game design and insist that games must be art. This agglomeration argument doesn't work for me anymore, though.
Many games have moments where they reach the level of art. There are scenes of catharsis and closure in adventure games and RPGs of all generations that (due to limitations of writing or presentation if nothing else) would lose their teeth if not for the connection that control gives you to the protagonist(s), and thus the world they inhabit. There are points in Mass Effect 2 and 3 where your decisions catch up with you and you're stuck having to choose between options you don't like with no idea of how things will pan out. Then you remember that, so long as you've been consistently good or bad, you'll almost certainly get a dialog option -- eventually -- that lets you satisfy all parties. But that doesn't make the game, as a whole, art.
In order for anything to be art, it must take advantage of the inherent, or at least prevalent, characteristics of its art form. For games, this means delivering messages and fostering ideas and discussions that are most effectively conveyed through the participatory nature of the medium. Few games are dedicated to this task, but it seems like examples of this are increasing, and I think that has something to do with the fact that we're finally beginning to understand this medium as multiple generations of people who grew up with it are finally working together to determine its future.
I think it's fair to take into account the technological context of a game when deciding if it's art. The original Legend of Zelda, for instance, seems to have a better claim to being art than any of its successors. Why? Because the entire game is exploratory. You begin helpless. An unfamiliar old man cautions you and gives you a sword. And you find your way and unlock the mysteries of the world around you on your own. You bomb walls and burn bushes and stab octoroks and, through cryptic clues, slowly discover the intention of the designers with as little overt instruction as possible. Lack of instruction was a common thing in older games, but generally there were people who gave obvious directions or level design that limited your options and made things pretty clear (I can't go to the left, I guess I'll go to the right). The Legend of Zelda had none of this, and that's part of what makes it so thrilling and frustrating to go back and play today.
For similar reasons, I'd call the original Metroid (and maybe even Super Metroid, if only because of Metroid's relative obscurity at the time) art. Nearly any time a game asks you to play with it and not just play it, I'd call that art. This falls apart in more sandbox-y games like Sim[fill in the blank], where developer intent is minimal, but I'd generally classify those more as toys than games -- a discussion for another day. Unfortunately, this is increasingly hard to do as genre norms and design conventions create a context in which we can figure out what a game wants from us without a whole lot of explicit instruction. It's still doable (this is what Jonathan Blow is trying to do with Witness), but it's harder.
Another example of how games approach art is by abusing, rather than obfuscating, the goal oriented nature of a "game".
As an example: At various points in the end of the classic SNES RPG Earthbound (also known as Mother 2), the developers break the fourth wall to ask you, the player, your name. Come the end of the game, it turns out that your characters, no matter how well leveled, cannot defeat Giygas. Instead, you need to use Paula's "pray" ability until, eventually, you, the player, pray for Giygas to die, causing him to take massive damage.
As a good little Christian boy, the intent of this was lost on me. "Of course praying can defeat evil," I thought. What was really going on was this: Shigasato Itoi, the creator of Earthbound, was trying to be subversive. The only reason that Giygas dies -- the only reason that these characters and this world can be saved -- is because the player wants it. The player doesn't even have to want Giygas to die for the sake of the characters, but only because he or she wants to finish the game. At the climax of the game, Itoi sucks you out of the moment by fantastically breaking the fourth wall and asks you to come to terms with the time and effort you've put into this ultimately meaningless experience.
Does it work? Not entirely. Is it admirable? Yes.
It's a technique that is accomplished infinitely better by Shadow of the Colossus, one of the best examples of games as art that I can think of. Some of what makes SotC great are the exploratory elements. The only instruction available to you is the beam of light that will appear to direct you to your next goal if you hold your sword up to the sun. The game world is large and empty and filled with small spots of quiet beauty that you can find if you're willing to just wander aimlessly.
The entire game itself consists of 13 fights with enormous creatures who you only learn how to defeat as you struggle to survive against them. You're never told explicitly why you're doing this, as I recall. It's just suggested that you're taking the only course of action you know to revive your lost love -- whose body you place on a stone slab inside a gigantic temple at the beginning of the game.
It's also suggested that what you're doing is taboo, and as your progress through the game you begin to get a sense of why. Every time you kill a Colossus, you're not only extinguishing the life of a magnificent being that, other than your intrusion, has lived in peaceful solitude for time immemorial. You're unleashing palpable darkness that both enters physically into yourself and gives rise to discomforting shades in the temple that serves as your home base.
But you have no choice. The nature of the game is such that you either have to continue doing this or put it down or simply ride your horse around the barren landscape as you try to decide between the two.
At the end, your misgivings are proved correct, and while your love is brought back, it's to life alone in this now completely empty country.
It's powerful and beautiful and perhaps one of the greatest games ever made. People have complained about the awkward controls, but they're meant to be. You're not a God of War or any other sort of ultimate bad ass. You may be a great warrior, but you're still on your own fighting against living mountains. It's not meant to be easy or fluid. It's meant to be gut wrenching and panic inducing, and the moment of triumph as a Colossus collapses to the ground and dissolves into nearly nothing is meant to be as total as the moment of conflicted-ness following it as you again see something ominous penetrating your soul.
Maybe less powerful, but likely more important, are games that ask us to think about the norms in gaming. This is what I see happening more and more, especially in small, one-shot indie games.
One of the most famous individuals in game design is Peter Molyneux. This is the man created the "god game" in Populous and took it to new levels in Black and White. He tasked players with taking on the role of the villain in Dungeon Master, and attempted to create a game world that would respond dynamically to the player's behavior in the Fable series. The thing about Molyneux is that, as much as for his games, he's famous for over-promising, and also for making promises and talking about ideas that gamers as a whole often don't care about. The use of the Dog as a surrogate HUD in Fable 2, for instance, or his talk about creating a sense of "touch" by using Kinect in Fable 3 (a feature that disappeared long before the game saw release).
Molyneux's lofty and occasionally absurd ambitions have given rise to a brilliant Twitter parody known as Peter Molydeux. This is a guy who asks questions like "What if your avatar was afraid of you and you had to gain his trust?". Kind of ridiculous, but sometimes, you just need to run with ridiculous ideas and see the result. Fortunately, game developers all around the country agreed with that sentiment, and a couple of weekends, we got the Peter Molydeux Game Jam, in which hundreds of developers/development teams spent a weekend making a game/prototype based on a Molydeux tweet.
There are half a dozen games about talking suicidal businessmen off of ledges. There are games about being a bear who needs to hug people in order to breath, but you will kill people if you hug them for too long. There are games in which a pair of lovers need to parkour their way out of a city but become distracted/incapable if they are too far apart. Most impressively, there are games like Recidivism, where you need to continually watch the death animation of every enemy you kill until they fill up the screen and/or you die.
For better or worse, videogames are violent, and rarely do they ask you to confront that notion. Again, there are instances (such as the airport scene on Modern Warfare 2 or, better yet, having to deal with the zombies of every person you killed during one of the boss fights in Metal Gear Solid 3), but these are isolated. Making games, even short, tiny ones, that ask us to think about and stare at the things that games tend to force us to do is good. It gets us to question why these activities are the only ones we engage in, and it asks us to open up our minds to new approaches.
The interactive nature of games can make for powerful storytelling in the traditional sense, but traditional design concerns make it relatively easy for player to simply escape the stories that game makers may be trying to tell. The attitudes that most people take into games simply aren't conducive to articulating the sorts of ideas that we see in books and movies. This is why the agglomeration argument doesn't work and why storytelling isn't the measure by which we consider games as art..
What games are good at is confronting us with ideas about leisure and how we spend our free time. This, then, is how games become art: by building into their structure questions about how and why we play them and what their limitations are. A game is are art when it changes the way we play and think about games as a whole.
Events like the Molydeux jam give me hope that people will take time to think about games at this level and to make statements about the state of gaming through games more regularly going forward. The importance of the ideas being expressed may not make immediate sense to people outside the culture, but that happens with all art, and it doesn't matter. Art isn't about appeal. It's about truth. And we're finally reaching a point where we're willing to pursue that.
That's not to say that these games aren't, in a way, artful. There is skillful work of all manner in play in these games and others. There's writing. There's composing. There are models and environments to draw and render and animate. There's A.I. scripting and software design. Years ago, I would feverishly point out to these facets of game design and insist that games must be art. This agglomeration argument doesn't work for me anymore, though.
Many games have moments where they reach the level of art. There are scenes of catharsis and closure in adventure games and RPGs of all generations that (due to limitations of writing or presentation if nothing else) would lose their teeth if not for the connection that control gives you to the protagonist(s), and thus the world they inhabit. There are points in Mass Effect 2 and 3 where your decisions catch up with you and you're stuck having to choose between options you don't like with no idea of how things will pan out. Then you remember that, so long as you've been consistently good or bad, you'll almost certainly get a dialog option -- eventually -- that lets you satisfy all parties. But that doesn't make the game, as a whole, art.
In order for anything to be art, it must take advantage of the inherent, or at least prevalent, characteristics of its art form. For games, this means delivering messages and fostering ideas and discussions that are most effectively conveyed through the participatory nature of the medium. Few games are dedicated to this task, but it seems like examples of this are increasing, and I think that has something to do with the fact that we're finally beginning to understand this medium as multiple generations of people who grew up with it are finally working together to determine its future.
I think it's fair to take into account the technological context of a game when deciding if it's art. The original Legend of Zelda, for instance, seems to have a better claim to being art than any of its successors. Why? Because the entire game is exploratory. You begin helpless. An unfamiliar old man cautions you and gives you a sword. And you find your way and unlock the mysteries of the world around you on your own. You bomb walls and burn bushes and stab octoroks and, through cryptic clues, slowly discover the intention of the designers with as little overt instruction as possible. Lack of instruction was a common thing in older games, but generally there were people who gave obvious directions or level design that limited your options and made things pretty clear (I can't go to the left, I guess I'll go to the right). The Legend of Zelda had none of this, and that's part of what makes it so thrilling and frustrating to go back and play today.
For similar reasons, I'd call the original Metroid (and maybe even Super Metroid, if only because of Metroid's relative obscurity at the time) art. Nearly any time a game asks you to play with it and not just play it, I'd call that art. This falls apart in more sandbox-y games like Sim[fill in the blank], where developer intent is minimal, but I'd generally classify those more as toys than games -- a discussion for another day. Unfortunately, this is increasingly hard to do as genre norms and design conventions create a context in which we can figure out what a game wants from us without a whole lot of explicit instruction. It's still doable (this is what Jonathan Blow is trying to do with Witness), but it's harder.
Another example of how games approach art is by abusing, rather than obfuscating, the goal oriented nature of a "game".
As an example: At various points in the end of the classic SNES RPG Earthbound (also known as Mother 2), the developers break the fourth wall to ask you, the player, your name. Come the end of the game, it turns out that your characters, no matter how well leveled, cannot defeat Giygas. Instead, you need to use Paula's "pray" ability until, eventually, you, the player, pray for Giygas to die, causing him to take massive damage.
As a good little Christian boy, the intent of this was lost on me. "Of course praying can defeat evil," I thought. What was really going on was this: Shigasato Itoi, the creator of Earthbound, was trying to be subversive. The only reason that Giygas dies -- the only reason that these characters and this world can be saved -- is because the player wants it. The player doesn't even have to want Giygas to die for the sake of the characters, but only because he or she wants to finish the game. At the climax of the game, Itoi sucks you out of the moment by fantastically breaking the fourth wall and asks you to come to terms with the time and effort you've put into this ultimately meaningless experience.
Does it work? Not entirely. Is it admirable? Yes.
It's a technique that is accomplished infinitely better by Shadow of the Colossus, one of the best examples of games as art that I can think of. Some of what makes SotC great are the exploratory elements. The only instruction available to you is the beam of light that will appear to direct you to your next goal if you hold your sword up to the sun. The game world is large and empty and filled with small spots of quiet beauty that you can find if you're willing to just wander aimlessly.
The entire game itself consists of 13 fights with enormous creatures who you only learn how to defeat as you struggle to survive against them. You're never told explicitly why you're doing this, as I recall. It's just suggested that you're taking the only course of action you know to revive your lost love -- whose body you place on a stone slab inside a gigantic temple at the beginning of the game.
It's also suggested that what you're doing is taboo, and as your progress through the game you begin to get a sense of why. Every time you kill a Colossus, you're not only extinguishing the life of a magnificent being that, other than your intrusion, has lived in peaceful solitude for time immemorial. You're unleashing palpable darkness that both enters physically into yourself and gives rise to discomforting shades in the temple that serves as your home base.
But you have no choice. The nature of the game is such that you either have to continue doing this or put it down or simply ride your horse around the barren landscape as you try to decide between the two.
At the end, your misgivings are proved correct, and while your love is brought back, it's to life alone in this now completely empty country.
It's powerful and beautiful and perhaps one of the greatest games ever made. People have complained about the awkward controls, but they're meant to be. You're not a God of War or any other sort of ultimate bad ass. You may be a great warrior, but you're still on your own fighting against living mountains. It's not meant to be easy or fluid. It's meant to be gut wrenching and panic inducing, and the moment of triumph as a Colossus collapses to the ground and dissolves into nearly nothing is meant to be as total as the moment of conflicted-ness following it as you again see something ominous penetrating your soul.
Maybe less powerful, but likely more important, are games that ask us to think about the norms in gaming. This is what I see happening more and more, especially in small, one-shot indie games.
One of the most famous individuals in game design is Peter Molyneux. This is the man created the "god game" in Populous and took it to new levels in Black and White. He tasked players with taking on the role of the villain in Dungeon Master, and attempted to create a game world that would respond dynamically to the player's behavior in the Fable series. The thing about Molyneux is that, as much as for his games, he's famous for over-promising, and also for making promises and talking about ideas that gamers as a whole often don't care about. The use of the Dog as a surrogate HUD in Fable 2, for instance, or his talk about creating a sense of "touch" by using Kinect in Fable 3 (a feature that disappeared long before the game saw release).
Molyneux's lofty and occasionally absurd ambitions have given rise to a brilliant Twitter parody known as Peter Molydeux. This is a guy who asks questions like "What if your avatar was afraid of you and you had to gain his trust?". Kind of ridiculous, but sometimes, you just need to run with ridiculous ideas and see the result. Fortunately, game developers all around the country agreed with that sentiment, and a couple of weekends, we got the Peter Molydeux Game Jam, in which hundreds of developers/development teams spent a weekend making a game/prototype based on a Molydeux tweet.
There are half a dozen games about talking suicidal businessmen off of ledges. There are games about being a bear who needs to hug people in order to breath, but you will kill people if you hug them for too long. There are games in which a pair of lovers need to parkour their way out of a city but become distracted/incapable if they are too far apart. Most impressively, there are games like Recidivism, where you need to continually watch the death animation of every enemy you kill until they fill up the screen and/or you die.
For better or worse, videogames are violent, and rarely do they ask you to confront that notion. Again, there are instances (such as the airport scene on Modern Warfare 2 or, better yet, having to deal with the zombies of every person you killed during one of the boss fights in Metal Gear Solid 3), but these are isolated. Making games, even short, tiny ones, that ask us to think about and stare at the things that games tend to force us to do is good. It gets us to question why these activities are the only ones we engage in, and it asks us to open up our minds to new approaches.
The interactive nature of games can make for powerful storytelling in the traditional sense, but traditional design concerns make it relatively easy for player to simply escape the stories that game makers may be trying to tell. The attitudes that most people take into games simply aren't conducive to articulating the sorts of ideas that we see in books and movies. This is why the agglomeration argument doesn't work and why storytelling isn't the measure by which we consider games as art..
What games are good at is confronting us with ideas about leisure and how we spend our free time. This, then, is how games become art: by building into their structure questions about how and why we play them and what their limitations are. A game is are art when it changes the way we play and think about games as a whole.
Events like the Molydeux jam give me hope that people will take time to think about games at this level and to make statements about the state of gaming through games more regularly going forward. The importance of the ideas being expressed may not make immediate sense to people outside the culture, but that happens with all art, and it doesn't matter. Art isn't about appeal. It's about truth. And we're finally reaching a point where we're willing to pursue that.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Vikings!
I'm going take an extended brain dump about the current state of the Minnesota Vikings. I'll be doing another one later about the Timberwolves. Sorry to those of you who don't give a crap.
The Vikings are coming off a terrible season. Their 3-13 campaign has landed them the third pick in the draft, and we have far too many needs to be competitive in a year's time. Many of my thoughts hold true with what I wrote after their incredibly depressing loss to the Packers last November. The chief exception is that I no longer value Lorenzo Booker higher than Toby Gerhart (a handful of well executed trick plays do not make up for an awful fumbling habit).
We're in a rough place right now, waiting to see how AP can recover from torn A/MCLs and if Ponder can watch enough tape and get enough time in with Musgrave to take a serious step forward after an increasingly worrisome debut. Personally, I'm optimistic on both counts, but, hey, you've got to be optimistic about something.
In terms of legitimate good news, we've actually made some savvy decisions this off season that should give us flexibility moving forward, and the draft is strong in the places we need it to be.
First up, Chris Cook was acquitted. Is it very possible that he beat his girlfriend and quietly paid her to recant? Yes. Does he need to be a perfect citizen to be an ascending cornerback, perhaps our position of greatest need? Nope. Sad, but true. I mean, Ray Lewis killed a man, and the city of Baltimore still loves him. Our secondary is a mess, but at least we have one of the positions set with a viable talent who will hopefully be committed to reaching his potential and staying out of trouble after this scare.
Second, we smartly re-signed Erin Henderson to a one-year "show me" contract and moved Fred Pugac back to linebackers coach. Pugac is, by all accounts, one of the better position coaches in the league. It's unfortunate that his stint as defensive coordinator didn't pan out, but we should be glad to have him back where he belongs. Chad Greenway took a step back last season under Mike Singletary, and Erin Henderson is a young player with very high upside if he can get a good teacher. If, under Pugac's tutelage, he can take the step forward everybody seems to think he can, we should lock him up longer term after the season and really solidify our LB corps moving forward.
Third, we've resisted the urge to make splashy moves that will cost us in the long run. There was some legitimate receiving talent available in free agency, but we refused to play ball with the inflated contracts that the young talent was demanding. 8 million a year for Pierre Garcon? No thanks. Similarly for defensive backs. 10 million a year for Brandon Carr and Cortland Finnegan? More tempting, but still too much. The draft is, by ll accounts, deep at DB -- especially since we play a scheme dominated by cover 2, where elite talent isn't as necessary as patience and good reads.
Instead, we've been trying to find value: players who flashed for a period but then regressed briefly or suffered injuries that deflated their marketability. Lots of one year and minimum contracts. Fill the camp with bodies, motivate people with a legitimate chance to win a starting job, and cut the ones who don't look the part. We've also been looking outside the NFL for players, including a pair of intriguing players from the Canadian and Arena football leagues.
Solomon Elimimian is slightly undersized as a Linebacker, but the kid's got wheels (4.6 40) and was named the CFL's defensive player of the year in his rookie season, and players voted him the hardest hitter in the league last year. That highlight video suggests he doesn't give up on a play, and in Tampa 2, where the MLB is responsible for the deep middle of the field, we need a guy who is a bit more athletic to cover the slot and, especially, the new breed of Tight Ends that are tearing up the game right now. Worst case, he's an effective contributor on special teams. Best case, he finishes rounding out the second level of our defense.
As much as an unknown as Elimimian is, even stranger is Nicholas Taylor. Taylor is a former Florida International point guard whom the Vikings grabbed on a minimum futures contract purely as an athletic prospect. Dude is 5'10" and runs a 4.27 40 and spent time last year playing defensive back in Arena Football. Zero risk, amazing upside if he can put that athleticism to use anywhere on the field (especially at corner or returner).
Neither of these are flashy acquisitions, but both of them show a front office that is serious about looking at all the angles while we start rebuilding. We should have money on the books next season once we've filled some of our holes and know where we need to focus our final effort before being truly competitive again.
What we spend this money on next year will be determined by this year's draft.
I'm assuming that we'll take Matt Kalil, an incredibly highly rated Left Tackle out of USC, with our first round pick. This one pick will do worlds for our offensive line. John Sullivan took an enormous step forward at Center last season (pro football focus listed him as one of the top centers in the league), Phil Loadholt still has all the tools to succeed at right tackle with the proper motivation. With Kalil in place at left tackle, we've suddenly got a competition between Charlie Johnson, Joe Berger, Brandon Fusco, and free agency pickup Geoff Schwartz at the two guard positions. Any pair of those guys would be a step up from the Herrera-Hutchinson combination from the last couple of years -- Hutch is an all-time great, but he's old and only just above average these days.
From there, we need to worry about finding starters at wide receiver and defensive back and insurance at linebacker and defensive tackle. In my dream world, Georgia Tech wide receiver Stephen Hill is still available at the top of the second round. This is made more likely by the Bears trade for Brandon Marshall and the cornucopia of receivers that San Francisco grabbed in free agency. I'm still not certain it will happen. Despite being relatively unknown 6 weeks ago, Hill is 6'4", ran a 4.37 at the combine, is an experienced and talented run blocker, and showed better hands and route knowledge than anybody expected at his pro day. The mock draft gurus have him ranked as the number three or four wide receiver available right now, depending on their opinion of Kendall Wright. The Broncos, Browns, and Texans are all possibly landing spots in the bottom third of round one.
If Hill is off the board, I think we pass on a receiver in the second round. There will be very solid prospects available. Alshon Jeffrey was considered a first round prospect for much of the season, and I'm really high on Mohamed Sanu. Both big guys with good body control. I wouldn't even grab a receiver in the early third round, where we could grab similar guys like Marvin McNutt or Nick Toon. These are all big, reliable targets who serve well in the redzone, but they're largely possession guys who won't bring the vertical dimension we need. We've got Michael Jenkins if you're looking for good hands and deceptive speed.
We need somebody who can consistently take the top off of defenses. Early in the fourth round, we should be able to pick up Miami's Tommy Streeter. The guy is a physical specimen on par with Hill but even more raw. I can deal with raw in this case. Sub 4.4 speed at over 6'4" is worth taking a risk on when we've already got Rudolph, Jenkins, Harvin, and now Carlson around for the underneath stuff. We need to make their lives, and Peterson's and Gerhart's, easier, and a guy like Streeter (or, better yet, Hill) can do that for us better than Sanu or Jeffrey much less McNutt or Toon.
Assuming Hill is gone, I'd use our round two pick on somebody like CB Alfonzo Denard. He's not a top tier player at his position, but he's big and physical off the line and plays the zone well. Depending on how the front office feels about Christian Ballard and Letroy Guion, the other option here would be to take advantage of the draft's depth at DT. Devon Stills, Jerel Worthy, and Michael Bockers could all still be available at this point, and while I'd like to have faith in the guys we've got in place, our defense always thrives on a strong rotation up front.
Beyond these picks, try to find value at safety. It would be great if we could trade to pick up extra picks and put ourselves in positions to grab guys like George Iloka and Markelle Martin where they're worth it. Look for insurance at linebacker, potential at WR, and depth along the line while we're at it. This isn't going to be a one year rebuilding, but the pieces are available for us to be somewhere near .500 next season. Considering the conference we play in, that would be absolutely thrilling.
The Vikings are coming off a terrible season. Their 3-13 campaign has landed them the third pick in the draft, and we have far too many needs to be competitive in a year's time. Many of my thoughts hold true with what I wrote after their incredibly depressing loss to the Packers last November. The chief exception is that I no longer value Lorenzo Booker higher than Toby Gerhart (a handful of well executed trick plays do not make up for an awful fumbling habit).
We're in a rough place right now, waiting to see how AP can recover from torn A/MCLs and if Ponder can watch enough tape and get enough time in with Musgrave to take a serious step forward after an increasingly worrisome debut. Personally, I'm optimistic on both counts, but, hey, you've got to be optimistic about something.
In terms of legitimate good news, we've actually made some savvy decisions this off season that should give us flexibility moving forward, and the draft is strong in the places we need it to be.
First up, Chris Cook was acquitted. Is it very possible that he beat his girlfriend and quietly paid her to recant? Yes. Does he need to be a perfect citizen to be an ascending cornerback, perhaps our position of greatest need? Nope. Sad, but true. I mean, Ray Lewis killed a man, and the city of Baltimore still loves him. Our secondary is a mess, but at least we have one of the positions set with a viable talent who will hopefully be committed to reaching his potential and staying out of trouble after this scare.
Second, we smartly re-signed Erin Henderson to a one-year "show me" contract and moved Fred Pugac back to linebackers coach. Pugac is, by all accounts, one of the better position coaches in the league. It's unfortunate that his stint as defensive coordinator didn't pan out, but we should be glad to have him back where he belongs. Chad Greenway took a step back last season under Mike Singletary, and Erin Henderson is a young player with very high upside if he can get a good teacher. If, under Pugac's tutelage, he can take the step forward everybody seems to think he can, we should lock him up longer term after the season and really solidify our LB corps moving forward.
Third, we've resisted the urge to make splashy moves that will cost us in the long run. There was some legitimate receiving talent available in free agency, but we refused to play ball with the inflated contracts that the young talent was demanding. 8 million a year for Pierre Garcon? No thanks. Similarly for defensive backs. 10 million a year for Brandon Carr and Cortland Finnegan? More tempting, but still too much. The draft is, by ll accounts, deep at DB -- especially since we play a scheme dominated by cover 2, where elite talent isn't as necessary as patience and good reads.
Instead, we've been trying to find value: players who flashed for a period but then regressed briefly or suffered injuries that deflated their marketability. Lots of one year and minimum contracts. Fill the camp with bodies, motivate people with a legitimate chance to win a starting job, and cut the ones who don't look the part. We've also been looking outside the NFL for players, including a pair of intriguing players from the Canadian and Arena football leagues.
Solomon Elimimian is slightly undersized as a Linebacker, but the kid's got wheels (4.6 40) and was named the CFL's defensive player of the year in his rookie season, and players voted him the hardest hitter in the league last year. That highlight video suggests he doesn't give up on a play, and in Tampa 2, where the MLB is responsible for the deep middle of the field, we need a guy who is a bit more athletic to cover the slot and, especially, the new breed of Tight Ends that are tearing up the game right now. Worst case, he's an effective contributor on special teams. Best case, he finishes rounding out the second level of our defense.
As much as an unknown as Elimimian is, even stranger is Nicholas Taylor. Taylor is a former Florida International point guard whom the Vikings grabbed on a minimum futures contract purely as an athletic prospect. Dude is 5'10" and runs a 4.27 40 and spent time last year playing defensive back in Arena Football. Zero risk, amazing upside if he can put that athleticism to use anywhere on the field (especially at corner or returner).
Neither of these are flashy acquisitions, but both of them show a front office that is serious about looking at all the angles while we start rebuilding. We should have money on the books next season once we've filled some of our holes and know where we need to focus our final effort before being truly competitive again.
What we spend this money on next year will be determined by this year's draft.
I'm assuming that we'll take Matt Kalil, an incredibly highly rated Left Tackle out of USC, with our first round pick. This one pick will do worlds for our offensive line. John Sullivan took an enormous step forward at Center last season (pro football focus listed him as one of the top centers in the league), Phil Loadholt still has all the tools to succeed at right tackle with the proper motivation. With Kalil in place at left tackle, we've suddenly got a competition between Charlie Johnson, Joe Berger, Brandon Fusco, and free agency pickup Geoff Schwartz at the two guard positions. Any pair of those guys would be a step up from the Herrera-Hutchinson combination from the last couple of years -- Hutch is an all-time great, but he's old and only just above average these days.
From there, we need to worry about finding starters at wide receiver and defensive back and insurance at linebacker and defensive tackle. In my dream world, Georgia Tech wide receiver Stephen Hill is still available at the top of the second round. This is made more likely by the Bears trade for Brandon Marshall and the cornucopia of receivers that San Francisco grabbed in free agency. I'm still not certain it will happen. Despite being relatively unknown 6 weeks ago, Hill is 6'4", ran a 4.37 at the combine, is an experienced and talented run blocker, and showed better hands and route knowledge than anybody expected at his pro day. The mock draft gurus have him ranked as the number three or four wide receiver available right now, depending on their opinion of Kendall Wright. The Broncos, Browns, and Texans are all possibly landing spots in the bottom third of round one.
If Hill is off the board, I think we pass on a receiver in the second round. There will be very solid prospects available. Alshon Jeffrey was considered a first round prospect for much of the season, and I'm really high on Mohamed Sanu. Both big guys with good body control. I wouldn't even grab a receiver in the early third round, where we could grab similar guys like Marvin McNutt or Nick Toon. These are all big, reliable targets who serve well in the redzone, but they're largely possession guys who won't bring the vertical dimension we need. We've got Michael Jenkins if you're looking for good hands and deceptive speed.
We need somebody who can consistently take the top off of defenses. Early in the fourth round, we should be able to pick up Miami's Tommy Streeter. The guy is a physical specimen on par with Hill but even more raw. I can deal with raw in this case. Sub 4.4 speed at over 6'4" is worth taking a risk on when we've already got Rudolph, Jenkins, Harvin, and now Carlson around for the underneath stuff. We need to make their lives, and Peterson's and Gerhart's, easier, and a guy like Streeter (or, better yet, Hill) can do that for us better than Sanu or Jeffrey much less McNutt or Toon.
Assuming Hill is gone, I'd use our round two pick on somebody like CB Alfonzo Denard. He's not a top tier player at his position, but he's big and physical off the line and plays the zone well. Depending on how the front office feels about Christian Ballard and Letroy Guion, the other option here would be to take advantage of the draft's depth at DT. Devon Stills, Jerel Worthy, and Michael Bockers could all still be available at this point, and while I'd like to have faith in the guys we've got in place, our defense always thrives on a strong rotation up front.
Beyond these picks, try to find value at safety. It would be great if we could trade to pick up extra picks and put ourselves in positions to grab guys like George Iloka and Markelle Martin where they're worth it. Look for insurance at linebacker, potential at WR, and depth along the line while we're at it. This isn't going to be a one year rebuilding, but the pieces are available for us to be somewhere near .500 next season. Considering the conference we play in, that would be absolutely thrilling.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Fiction Editing
Several months ago, I posted a blurb I wrote on a whim. I haven't had much time to expand on it, so I'm still trying to figure out where things go from there, but I've put it through a couple of rewriting passages as I try to figure the main characters out. Just to give a sense of how I edit things, here's the current draft. Hopefully I can actually expand on the story in the near future:
Darren groaned slightly as he woke up and tried to remember what day it was. Mostly, he just hoped it wasn’t Thursday. If it was Thursday, then his alarm would be going off in about 3 minutes. More pressing, today being Thursday would mean that Wednesday had actually happened. He could think of few ideas less appealing than that.
Wednesday had happened, though, and Darren knew there was no escaping it. Even knowing that, he continued to hope that it wasn’t Thursday. Maybe it was Friday and he would at least have some space from Wednesday’s embarrassment. Better yet, maybe it was Saturday and he wouldn’t have to face the consequences at all. Darren didn’t care if he’d slept through two days of work and gotten fired. He was good at his job. He could find a new one. What he couldn’t do was show his face to Angie.
Two minutes until the alarm and Darren’s imagination really started to run wild. Sure, it was almost certainly Thursday, but maybe there was some holday he’d forgotten about. Maybe 26 years ago, somebody had done something heroic. Maybe 43 years ago, somebody important had been born or died. Maybe there was some good reason that everybody got to stay home and sleep on this particular Thursday and he’d have time to nurse his wounds.
One minute until the alarm, and Darren crunched up his eyes and crossed every limb he could under the covers to no avail. History hadn’t re-written itself, time advanced normally, and the morning DJ promised a chilly commute accompanied by Darren’s favorite hits of yesterday and today. Darren cursed both of those days and dragged himself out of bed. This Thursday, even more than most, would need coffee.
Not remembering what he may have sitting around on the floor, Darren gingerly stepped across his one room studio to the cabinet and appliance adorned corner that served as his kitchen. Once there, he flicked on the light and, blinking a few times, let his gaze settle on the sack of fair-trade beans sitting prominently on the counter top next to a second hand French press. Today was going to be bad enough without his coffee trying to make him feel bad about his privileged existence. Besides, he’d decided that he didn’t really like that Guatemalan crap, anyway.
He pulled the traditional, drip pot and the can of grounds out from under the cupboard, where he kept them for family visits and days like this. He shoved the largest measuring cup he could find into the can, dumped the water into the pot, and hopped into the shower while the coffee brewed. Out of distractions, Darren finally let himself start running through the details of last night.
The problem wasn’t necessarily that he’d had too much to drink. Darren’s budget and conscience conspired together to pose a fairly strict three drink limit most nights. No, the problem was that nerves had led him to consume this allotment far too quickly. It had taken weeks to get Angela to admit that, in this instance, dating a coworker wouldn’t be the worst idea ever. They had fun together, and the potential for paperwork wasn’t enough to merit not giving it a shot. Now he wasn’t sure if she’d laugh at him or slap him when he inevitably ran into her at the office. He did know that he’d prefer the slap.
Outside of the warm steam of the shower, the apartment was still cold, and Darren felt the urge for coffee again as soon as he stepped out of the bathroom and back into the kitchen. He gulped down one cup before he even bothered to get dressed and another as a reward once he tracked down a clean pair of pants. Pouring the rest of the pot into a travel mug, Darren buttoned up his flannel shirt and headed down to the corner.
It was cooler than Darren had expected from the forecast, and he immediately questioned his decision to forego a jacket. He fastened another button and tried to ignore the cold while he waited for the bus. Ignoring one thing means thinking about another, though, and Darren continued to reflect on the events of the night before. It was Angela’s fault nearly as much as his. She’d caught him off guard. He’d intended to keep it casual, but then she came to the door with her hair up and wearing a skirt. She’d put in effort. She cared. He never had a chance to recover from the surprise, pleasant though it was.
He saw Roger’s grin as soon as he boarded the bus. Darren sat down across from him and took a swig from his mug, knowing full well what was coming next.
“So?” Roger asked.
“‘So,’ what?” Darren was not looking forward to this.
“Dinner. With Angie. How did it go?”
“Less well than it could have.”
“That’s not saying much. How, particularly, did it stray from the ideal?”
“I may have propositioned her during dinner.”
“May have?”
Darren glanced around and lowered his voice, “There was an awkward silence. Some part of me thought it would be smart to break it by asking what I’d have to do to get fucked that night”.
The dirty look he received from the octogenarian sitting ahead of them suggested that he hadn’t lowered his voice enough.
“Well, that was much less awkward.” Roger’s eyebrow was thoroughly cocked.
“It was a joke!” Darren insisted, “I said it in a funny voice and everything!”
“Could she really be that offended? I mean, I’m sure she didn’t think you meant it. It’s far from the first time she’s met you”
“She must have been disgusted. Made an excuse to duck out as soon as she finished her chicken. Left half of her baked potato right there on the plate.”
Roger paused but couldn’t bring himself to change the subject, “...what on Earth were you thinking?”
“Obviously, I wasn’t.”
“...well, it’s not like she’s the only cute girl in the sea.”
Darren pulled up a picture of Angela on his phone and thrust it in Roger’s face. “That, and she’s a Raven’s fan, AND she loves Bruce Campbell.”
“That sucks, man.” Roger knew he was defeated.
“That it does.” Darren took another swig of coffee and questioned his decision not to put a drop or four of whiskey in it.
Darren groaned slightly as he woke up and tried to remember what day it was. Mostly, he just hoped it wasn’t Thursday. If it was Thursday, then his alarm would be going off in about 3 minutes. More pressing, today being Thursday would mean that Wednesday had actually happened. He could think of few ideas less appealing than that.
Wednesday had happened, though, and Darren knew there was no escaping it. Even knowing that, he continued to hope that it wasn’t Thursday. Maybe it was Friday and he would at least have some space from Wednesday’s embarrassment. Better yet, maybe it was Saturday and he wouldn’t have to face the consequences at all. Darren didn’t care if he’d slept through two days of work and gotten fired. He was good at his job. He could find a new one. What he couldn’t do was show his face to Angie.
Two minutes until the alarm and Darren’s imagination really started to run wild. Sure, it was almost certainly Thursday, but maybe there was some holday he’d forgotten about. Maybe 26 years ago, somebody had done something heroic. Maybe 43 years ago, somebody important had been born or died. Maybe there was some good reason that everybody got to stay home and sleep on this particular Thursday and he’d have time to nurse his wounds.
One minute until the alarm, and Darren crunched up his eyes and crossed every limb he could under the covers to no avail. History hadn’t re-written itself, time advanced normally, and the morning DJ promised a chilly commute accompanied by Darren’s favorite hits of yesterday and today. Darren cursed both of those days and dragged himself out of bed. This Thursday, even more than most, would need coffee.
Not remembering what he may have sitting around on the floor, Darren gingerly stepped across his one room studio to the cabinet and appliance adorned corner that served as his kitchen. Once there, he flicked on the light and, blinking a few times, let his gaze settle on the sack of fair-trade beans sitting prominently on the counter top next to a second hand French press. Today was going to be bad enough without his coffee trying to make him feel bad about his privileged existence. Besides, he’d decided that he didn’t really like that Guatemalan crap, anyway.
He pulled the traditional, drip pot and the can of grounds out from under the cupboard, where he kept them for family visits and days like this. He shoved the largest measuring cup he could find into the can, dumped the water into the pot, and hopped into the shower while the coffee brewed. Out of distractions, Darren finally let himself start running through the details of last night.
The problem wasn’t necessarily that he’d had too much to drink. Darren’s budget and conscience conspired together to pose a fairly strict three drink limit most nights. No, the problem was that nerves had led him to consume this allotment far too quickly. It had taken weeks to get Angela to admit that, in this instance, dating a coworker wouldn’t be the worst idea ever. They had fun together, and the potential for paperwork wasn’t enough to merit not giving it a shot. Now he wasn’t sure if she’d laugh at him or slap him when he inevitably ran into her at the office. He did know that he’d prefer the slap.
Outside of the warm steam of the shower, the apartment was still cold, and Darren felt the urge for coffee again as soon as he stepped out of the bathroom and back into the kitchen. He gulped down one cup before he even bothered to get dressed and another as a reward once he tracked down a clean pair of pants. Pouring the rest of the pot into a travel mug, Darren buttoned up his flannel shirt and headed down to the corner.
It was cooler than Darren had expected from the forecast, and he immediately questioned his decision to forego a jacket. He fastened another button and tried to ignore the cold while he waited for the bus. Ignoring one thing means thinking about another, though, and Darren continued to reflect on the events of the night before. It was Angela’s fault nearly as much as his. She’d caught him off guard. He’d intended to keep it casual, but then she came to the door with her hair up and wearing a skirt. She’d put in effort. She cared. He never had a chance to recover from the surprise, pleasant though it was.
He saw Roger’s grin as soon as he boarded the bus. Darren sat down across from him and took a swig from his mug, knowing full well what was coming next.
“So?” Roger asked.
“‘So,’ what?” Darren was not looking forward to this.
“Dinner. With Angie. How did it go?”
“Less well than it could have.”
“That’s not saying much. How, particularly, did it stray from the ideal?”
“I may have propositioned her during dinner.”
“May have?”
Darren glanced around and lowered his voice, “There was an awkward silence. Some part of me thought it would be smart to break it by asking what I’d have to do to get fucked that night”.
The dirty look he received from the octogenarian sitting ahead of them suggested that he hadn’t lowered his voice enough.
“Well, that was much less awkward.” Roger’s eyebrow was thoroughly cocked.
“It was a joke!” Darren insisted, “I said it in a funny voice and everything!”
“Could she really be that offended? I mean, I’m sure she didn’t think you meant it. It’s far from the first time she’s met you”
“She must have been disgusted. Made an excuse to duck out as soon as she finished her chicken. Left half of her baked potato right there on the plate.”
Roger paused but couldn’t bring himself to change the subject, “...what on Earth were you thinking?”
“Obviously, I wasn’t.”
“...well, it’s not like she’s the only cute girl in the sea.”
Darren pulled up a picture of Angela on his phone and thrust it in Roger’s face. “That, and she’s a Raven’s fan, AND she loves Bruce Campbell.”
“That sucks, man.” Roger knew he was defeated.
“That it does.” Darren took another swig of coffee and questioned his decision not to put a drop or four of whiskey in it.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Mass Effect 3 and the Stories We Think We Tell (Spoiler Free)
Finished Mass Effect 3. If you're an active resident of the internets, you've probably heard that a whole lot of people aren't just displeased with the ending, they actively hate it -- to the point that Bioware is caving and preparing an alternate ending (try searching around if you want to know more). I'll admit that the ending feels a little contrived at points (and the post credits scene is laughably bad), but it could be waaaay worse.
Here's the thing to know: in the minds of the game's creators, the message of this series was never simply about survival. For them, the whole of the series was about organic vs synthetic life (and the presumed deficiencies of organics). In that light, the ending makes perfect sense.
Unfortunately, this overarching "organic vs synthetic" plot line was never made nearly as explicit as the "fight for survival" that dominates the rhetoric of the characters. Yes, the synthetic nature of the Reapers makes them a unique sort of enemy, but it's their unknowable-ness (a combination of their origin, their age, and their limited appearance), not just their unnaturalness that makes them daunting.
You could just as easily have had an advanced organic race that shows up every several thousand years to check in on the modern races and assimilate or destroy them as they see fit. The Reapers didn't need to be synthetic to be effective, they just needed to be insurmountably powerful. Being synthetic is one path to that. Simple sci-fi technobabble is another.
It would be hard to do more with just the Reapers themselves to enhance the clarity of the message that the writers were trying to deliver, though. They need to be somewhat remote so they can remain effective boogeymen. Besides, Sovereign and Harbinger both bring out the whole "gaaah, you are puny organics, we are your future, cower! COWER, I SAY!" rhetoric on those rare occasions where you do get to communicate.
In order to make this story work, you need to have a world that's built around paranoia about the limitations of organics from the start. You need to have the advanced races terrified about the technological and cultural plateaus that they've been sitting at, sometimes for millennia. Humanity has only been part of the interstellar scene for about 30 years by the end of Mass Effect 3, and yet we're as advanced as any other species in the galaxy.
You need to have more incidents of failures to contain or control artificial intelligence, possibly all having gone and merged with one another to form some heterogeneous variation on the Geth. You need to have these scarier Geth floating around the edges of "civilized" space before things ever start, using their unique intelligence to devise technologies and solutions and threats that we've never conceived of. The Reapers need to not be the only threat, but the biggest and most sudden. The Reapers need to be a realization for the existing fears that are already plaguing the population.
Instead, we have a peacetime galactic government that is focused on politics as usual and just the one incidence of failed A.I.. Worse, the Geth don't seem to be improving much upon the same technologies everybody else in the galaxy is using, and once Legion shows up to provides a mouthpiece for them, they suddenly become more accessible -- making it seem like collaboration could be a legitimate option if organics are willing to set aside their (limited) fears.
Fixing these problems of setting would be an important step, but the rest of the problem is harder to address. Part of the reason the basic survival narrative seems so dominant is because it's next to impossible to provide a gameplay goal built around anything else. This stripped down story was always going to engage the player's attention because surviving is what they spend roughly half of the game doing. The only solution I can see is to make fights with synthetics lifeforms more imposing. Make sure that they are so much harder to kill than simple security robots. Make these fights feel distinct and more tense. Don't just send Shepard and friends off to kill them in droves, but let a handful of Geth be a significant challenge.
With these (not insignificant) changes, I'm sure people would have still complained about the ending because it's an ending and it's never going to satisfy everybody (and there are some contrived elements to it). But the complaints would have been for different reasons and could at least have been in line with what the writers were envisioning. As it stands, I'm glad to know what I know and I'll be glad to let that knowledge shape how I play through the game in the future. It was a fun trip, even if I'm not certain it was as strong as either of the first two games.
Here's the thing to know: in the minds of the game's creators, the message of this series was never simply about survival. For them, the whole of the series was about organic vs synthetic life (and the presumed deficiencies of organics). In that light, the ending makes perfect sense.
Unfortunately, this overarching "organic vs synthetic" plot line was never made nearly as explicit as the "fight for survival" that dominates the rhetoric of the characters. Yes, the synthetic nature of the Reapers makes them a unique sort of enemy, but it's their unknowable-ness (a combination of their origin, their age, and their limited appearance), not just their unnaturalness that makes them daunting.
You could just as easily have had an advanced organic race that shows up every several thousand years to check in on the modern races and assimilate or destroy them as they see fit. The Reapers didn't need to be synthetic to be effective, they just needed to be insurmountably powerful. Being synthetic is one path to that. Simple sci-fi technobabble is another.
It would be hard to do more with just the Reapers themselves to enhance the clarity of the message that the writers were trying to deliver, though. They need to be somewhat remote so they can remain effective boogeymen. Besides, Sovereign and Harbinger both bring out the whole "gaaah, you are puny organics, we are your future, cower! COWER, I SAY!" rhetoric on those rare occasions where you do get to communicate.
In order to make this story work, you need to have a world that's built around paranoia about the limitations of organics from the start. You need to have the advanced races terrified about the technological and cultural plateaus that they've been sitting at, sometimes for millennia. Humanity has only been part of the interstellar scene for about 30 years by the end of Mass Effect 3, and yet we're as advanced as any other species in the galaxy.
You need to have more incidents of failures to contain or control artificial intelligence, possibly all having gone and merged with one another to form some heterogeneous variation on the Geth. You need to have these scarier Geth floating around the edges of "civilized" space before things ever start, using their unique intelligence to devise technologies and solutions and threats that we've never conceived of. The Reapers need to not be the only threat, but the biggest and most sudden. The Reapers need to be a realization for the existing fears that are already plaguing the population.
Instead, we have a peacetime galactic government that is focused on politics as usual and just the one incidence of failed A.I.. Worse, the Geth don't seem to be improving much upon the same technologies everybody else in the galaxy is using, and once Legion shows up to provides a mouthpiece for them, they suddenly become more accessible -- making it seem like collaboration could be a legitimate option if organics are willing to set aside their (limited) fears.
Fixing these problems of setting would be an important step, but the rest of the problem is harder to address. Part of the reason the basic survival narrative seems so dominant is because it's next to impossible to provide a gameplay goal built around anything else. This stripped down story was always going to engage the player's attention because surviving is what they spend roughly half of the game doing. The only solution I can see is to make fights with synthetics lifeforms more imposing. Make sure that they are so much harder to kill than simple security robots. Make these fights feel distinct and more tense. Don't just send Shepard and friends off to kill them in droves, but let a handful of Geth be a significant challenge.
With these (not insignificant) changes, I'm sure people would have still complained about the ending because it's an ending and it's never going to satisfy everybody (and there are some contrived elements to it). But the complaints would have been for different reasons and could at least have been in line with what the writers were envisioning. As it stands, I'm glad to know what I know and I'll be glad to let that knowledge shape how I play through the game in the future. It was a fun trip, even if I'm not certain it was as strong as either of the first two games.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Games, Education, and Exploration
Generally speaking, I don't believe in educational games. That's not to say that I didn't learn a lot of facts from games like Number Muncher or Mario's Time Machine, but games like that are glorified flash cards. I think that we can add an engagement factor and arbitrary context for learning strictly declarative knowledge just fine. What I don't believe in is games that help, by their very nature, in learning procedural knowledge or higher level relationships between concepts.
This wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't currently taking a course that is, theoretically, about making games to serve just this purpose. Twice a week, I get to sit and listen to stories about all of the funding that my professor has earned from various institutions trying to make these sorts of games.
There are two simple reasons that I don't believe in educational games. One is transference. Virtually all games, especially games exploring abstract concepts, employ some sort of metaphor. This means that whatever skills or concepts are being taught, ultimately, are being learned with regards to the metaphor. Knowing what you're supposed to actually learn, then, requires additional interaction with the domain that the lessons are supposed to be applied to. Moreover, it requires an active effort to identify the pieces of the analogy in place. All of this means that it's going to be very hard to make the game itself educational unless it's included as a piece of a larger, directed education plan. Either that, or the game needs to actively mix in these elements, which risks breaking engagement.
Second is that, my professor, at least, seems to lack any sense of distinction between "play" and "playing a game". Play is self-directed and exploratory. It's a matter of expressing and recognizing and responding to patterns that we've observed in an environment where we have complete control. This lets us experiment with ideas and see where the rabbit hole leads us (even if it leads us astray). This is incredibly useful in learning because learning is an exploratory activity. On the other hand, games, by their very nature, are goal based.
The purpose of a game, in the mind of the player, is to complete the game. This can mean gaining mastery of the systems in play, or it can mean butting your head against it until something works and then moving on. In cases where a game requires real world knowledge, people are willing to play lip service to that knowledge without taking it to heart (just like students are willing to put the answer the professor wants on a test or a paper without believing a word of it). In short, all we want to learn from a game is how to beat the game.
Play is educational. Playing a game is not. What we need aren't educational games, but educational toys. Toys can be used in the construction of games to push people towards a specific goal, and games can have their purpose subverted and turned into toys to promote experimentation, but they are very different things.
This wouldn't be an issue if I wasn't currently taking a course that is, theoretically, about making games to serve just this purpose. Twice a week, I get to sit and listen to stories about all of the funding that my professor has earned from various institutions trying to make these sorts of games.
There are two simple reasons that I don't believe in educational games. One is transference. Virtually all games, especially games exploring abstract concepts, employ some sort of metaphor. This means that whatever skills or concepts are being taught, ultimately, are being learned with regards to the metaphor. Knowing what you're supposed to actually learn, then, requires additional interaction with the domain that the lessons are supposed to be applied to. Moreover, it requires an active effort to identify the pieces of the analogy in place. All of this means that it's going to be very hard to make the game itself educational unless it's included as a piece of a larger, directed education plan. Either that, or the game needs to actively mix in these elements, which risks breaking engagement.
Second is that, my professor, at least, seems to lack any sense of distinction between "play" and "playing a game". Play is self-directed and exploratory. It's a matter of expressing and recognizing and responding to patterns that we've observed in an environment where we have complete control. This lets us experiment with ideas and see where the rabbit hole leads us (even if it leads us astray). This is incredibly useful in learning because learning is an exploratory activity. On the other hand, games, by their very nature, are goal based.
The purpose of a game, in the mind of the player, is to complete the game. This can mean gaining mastery of the systems in play, or it can mean butting your head against it until something works and then moving on. In cases where a game requires real world knowledge, people are willing to play lip service to that knowledge without taking it to heart (just like students are willing to put the answer the professor wants on a test or a paper without believing a word of it). In short, all we want to learn from a game is how to beat the game.
Play is educational. Playing a game is not. What we need aren't educational games, but educational toys. Toys can be used in the construction of games to push people towards a specific goal, and games can have their purpose subverted and turned into toys to promote experimentation, but they are very different things.
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