It feels like it was just yesterday that I walked across the stage at the Patriot Center to get my TJ diploma. Just yesterday that I stepped foot on the campus of the University of Southern California for the first time at freshman orientation. Just yesterday that I began what has been the most transformative period of my life.

So needless to say, it’s really weird knowing that just last week, I finished my third year at USC – I’m a senior now. Jesus. It’s been one helluva ride, and I’ve had the honor of meeting and befriending some of the most brilliant and talented people I will ever encounter. It’s extra-double weird knowing that somewhere along the line while I was on this incredible ride meeting incredible new people, something I never thought would happen happened.

I got old.**
**Writer’s Note: I realize nobody close to my age range is actually “old” in anyway shape or form, I just like to put it that way for a chuckle. Please don’t slap me. 

Ahem. More accurately put: I grew the fuck up. A lot.

There’s a lot of external signs when it comes to the passage of time and growing up. Friends graduating, Facebook telling you “Bob is now engaged with Jill”, so on so forth. But the biggest indicators of growing up are internal. Perspectives change, emotions change - you change. Concretes become abstracts, and you start to look at things differently as your self-identity truly takes shape. Here’s some stuff I’ve come to realize as I’ve grown up -

You have ‘fewer’ and closer friends:

All those people you think were your friends in high school? Ha. Right. I just looked through all the signatures in my senior year yearbook, and not that I necessarily only had the dearest of friends sign my yearbook (most definitely not), but damn. I mean, maybe it’s an on-paper relative of the teenage insecurity driven Facebook friend-whoring phenomenon, but I can’t be the only one who looks through his yearbooks and doesn’t feel a particularly strong emotional attachment to most of the signatures. I only keep in touch with a handful of their writers.

That’s probably because a lot of the people who signed my yearbook were my ‘friends’ (mental air-quoting highly encouraged), not my friends. I think when we’re young, we’re too quick to confuse our friends with our ‘friends’. Y’know, ‘friends’ who you share a couple of common interests with and find to be generally pleasant company, but with whom you don’t really feel any deep connections. It’s only as you grow up that your mind forms a more solid distinction between the two. And as you grow up, sometime you’ll wonder if you have less friends than you did before, but then you’ll realize that you’ve just come to value your truly close friends more.

And the close friends you have mean more to you than all those ‘friends’ you had before. They’re there for you like none of those ‘friends’ you had before. They understand you like none of those ‘friends’ from before. And you cry when you see them go like you did for none of those ‘friends’ before.

Having a million ‘friends’ will get you nowhere; having just a few good friends can get you anywhere.

You value your parents and your time with them more: 

We all like to moan, groan, and straight-up bitch about our parents every once in a while. Some of us more than others. Yes, for whatever reason, as much as we love them, we like to take for granted the people who raised us, no questions asked, for however many years.

But think about it. You’re getting old. And so is everyone else, including your parents. You think you’re old, they’re even older (not to put too fine a point on it)! With that, you come to wrestle with the mortality of the very figures you’ve always taken to be permanent fixtures in your life. You realize that one day they will be gone, and with them, the only people you can ever claim cared about you for the entirety of your existence. Your time left with your parents and your valuation of said time are inversely correlated – as the amount of time you have left with your parents decreases, your valuation of it increases.

It kinda fucking sucks.

You have more responsibilities:

An obvious one for most. But if you’re one of those people who’ve always kinda overloaded themselves in terms of shit to do-

You might not have a lot more responsibilities, but you’re more cognizant of those you have: 

There’s something about being young that lets you just do things with reckless abandon. Being a kid just lets you do >9000 different things without really thinking about the fact that you’re doing >9000 different things and that it’s draining you.

But as you get older, you become more aware of all the shit you have to do, and it begins to occupy more ‘mindspace’ and wear you out. You can’t just do anymore, responsibilities begin to take more and more thought and planning and effort. And after a while, it all kinda starts to weigh down on you. Staying up all night to do write that song or edit that video or work on that novel gets a little harder. It’s not even that you particularly have more stuff to do; you used to finish your homework at 1am and be able to work till you heard the birds chirp, but now, none of the gallons of coffee you chug or 12 packs of Monster you practically inject can keep you going. You just wanna close your eyes and recharge.

And you don’t know why.

You feel like time is flowing by faster and faster:

We experience life in percentages. 1 year is 10% of a ten year old’s life, but hardly 5% of a twenty year old’s life. That’s why childhood and adolescence feel like they drag on, college goes by super fast, and all the years after (presumably?) go by faster. That’s why you hear your parents nostalgically reminisce about your childhood days or the day you left for college or whatever – what felt like a long time to you felt infinitely shorter to them.

I feel like the seemingly slow pace of time we experience during childhood and adolescence conditions us to think that when there is something good, it will always be there – that things won’t change, that life is in stasis – when the reality is that time is always passing and things are constantly changing. Both the good and bad enter and exit our lives constantly. Nothing is permanent; we can only hope to prolong the good, or, failing that, make the most of it while we can.

That’s why it’s so important to hold onto every moment like it’s your last. Cherish every moment with your friends and loved ones while you can. Because you never know when it’ll be gone. Remember what Ted (of How I Met Your Mother) said: ”You can’t hold onto the past. Because no matter how tightly you hold on… it’s already gone.”

So make the most of the present lest you end up regretting the past.

You realize very few things in life are black and white:

There’s seldom one right answer to anything. A lot of the time, the ‘right answer’ lies in an awkward gray area between two radically different approaches, and many things depend on context and situation. There is no ‘good’ and ‘right’ are neither universal nor relative; they’re universally relative. And because of this, you realize there’ll rarely be one answer that satisfies everyone, no single approach that guarantees happiness, no single road to success.

Everything’s almost always a matter of balancing conflicting methodologies, but I guess that’s just the walk of life.

(Photo: USC School of Cinematic Arts, credit Will Cherry)

I was super excited when I learned that the upcoming Tomb Raider film would be based on the new Tomb Raider game reboot. It makes sense – why spend all that money developing an entirely new universe and plot line when developed, fleshed out ones exist? Saves so much time.

On a related note, one of the most ridiculous things I’ve seen when it comes to developing licensed games I saw in an Official Xbox Magazine feature waaaaay back when about the game based on Peter Jackson’s King Kong; it boasted about how similar the concept art for the game looked to the concept art for the movie. I was like, “… if they were gonna make the ‘new’ concept art look the exact same, why not just use the old concept art?..”

The thing is, if you’re gonna have a game based on a movie, vice versa, or simultaneously develop a game and a movie based on the same property, the earlier you can establish “convergence” between the two projects, the more you can optimize the asset creation pipeline, tighten the project budget, and perhaps even create a more polished, consistent, tightly integrated brand experience. Think about it.

Story: The world and story for a given property/installment in a franchise could be made far more consistent. The game and film could be purposely designed to reveal different perspectives on the same story events or reveal newer details about the world.

Art: Possibly the biggest party to benefit from convergence. Shared concept art and shared 2D and 3D assets. For the time being, 3D asset sharing would involve a high detail version for film and a lower detail counterpart for games; but as home computers get more powerful, we’ll soon get to a point where that won’t be necessary. Working with the same concept art and assets would also more easily allow for a far more consistent visual language.

(And you know what’s a gnarly thought? 3D printed prop pieces based on high-poly game assets. Dude. You know it’s gonna happen eventually. Then again, that’s entirely assuming that 3D doesn’t evolve to the point where we don’t need anything more than people and a greenscreen or mo-cap setup. Or no people at all. Gasp.)

Music: The only real difference between game and film music in the interactivity involved in the former. It wouldn’t be very difficult to either re-arrange/re-orchestrate a game score and remove the interactivity or, should a project director deem appropriate, cut a film to pieces from the game soundtrack.

Marketing: Simultaneous marketing for both the film and the game, crossing medium-dependent demographic boundaries.

I realize that to implement any of the above suggestions would entail a big departure from “tradition”, but this kind of convergent workflow will probably become standard at some point anyway. Someone high in the corporate hierarchy will (hopefully) realize that by avoiding redoing certain parts of the pre and post production process that involve a lot of similarity – and not bringing on all of the people needed for those re-dos -, a lot of moolah can be saved. Because today, the tools, talent, and technology used in film and games overlap a lot anyway… so why not take advantage of this overlap?

In early March, the USC School of Cinematic Arts will complete the third and final phase of construction on the School of Cinematic Arts Complex and open the gates to its newest building, located on the corner of 34th Street and McClintock Avenue. Previously covered in my post about its “topping off” celebration, the building will house the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, the Interdivisional Media Arts and Practice Ph.D program, and the #1 ranked Interactive Media Division, as well as additional programs and courses on “online multiplayer game design, interactive architecture, immersive, mobile and environmental media, crowd-sourced cinema, transmedia storytelling, alternate reality games, augmented reality and mixed reality experience design.” Perhaps in homage to its interactive and interdivisional resident departments, the new building’s building code will be SCi – and I really hope they lower-case the ‘i’ like that wherever possible, because it looks COOL!

Although SCi will open in just a few weeks, move-in will not take place until the summer, and classes will not be held in the building until the fall 2013 semester. A public opening date has not yet been set. The building is technically still under construction… but I was lucky enough to get a preview of the interior, and what I saw left me excited for the days to come. During my time inside, photography was discouraged – and frankly, a lot of it you really have to see for yourself – so I’ll do my best to give you an idea of what’s going on.

Walking into SCi from the entrance on McClintock, you’ll immediately notice something different from SCA – there are these big black rectangles on the wall. Step closer and you’ll notice that they’re screens. Reach out and touch them – they’re touch screens.

Head toward the “back” of the lobby, turn right, and head down the hallway. Ahead of you, you’ll see a staircase leading upstairs, but right before you reach it, you’ll see two doors on your right. One is labeled Jury Room and the other is labeled Screening Room. The Jury Room is setup like SCB104, with rows of tables facing a screen, while the Screening Room is exactly what it sounds like. If I remember correctly, the projector for the Screening room is 4K capable and 3D ready.

So let’s leave these rooms behind and head up that (kinda narrow) staircase to the 2nd floor. You’ll see that starting on this floor, the interior design leaves behind the more traditional feel that the lobby and the rest of the SCA complex follow and adhere to a modern, colorful style. Let’s just say it doesn’t feel as barren as the hallways of SCA would be without all the movie posters.

On the 2nd floor are the offices of the Interactive Media Division and the iMAP program. There’s also an immersive 360* gallery area filled with flat screens (you gotta see it to believe it), and a research lab for the iMAP program. In the hallways connecting all these spaces, there are flat-panel displays (touchscreen? Not sure) hanging on the wall at various spots.

Going up to the third floor, things get even more interesting. The third floor houses IMD’s Game Innovation Lab. Building upon the above-mentioned colorful/modern style, the Game Innovation Lab space is full of curves and colors, projectors and whiteboards. Imagine a bigger version of the 2nd floor of RZC, and you’re getting the right idea.

Attached to the Game Innovation Lab are 2 play test rooms and observation rooms. I think this is the coolest thing I saw. Basically, each observation room is attached to a playtest room but separated by a one way mirror, so that the occupants of the observation room can see what’s going on in the other room without being seen themselves. Pretty gnarly for play testing purposes, but all I could imagine was the sick interrogation scenes that could be shot here.

Also on the third floor is IMD’s Master Thesis Lab, three Emerging Media Research Labs, and… a hardware fabrication shop. That last component caught me a little by surprise, but it also made me think of how useful fundamental familiarity with electronics, circuitry, and working with breadboards could be for IMD folk, especially those interested in the hardware /platform development side of games.

The opening of SCi will mark the beginning of a new era for the Interactive Media Division and all of the departments housed within SCi. I think I can safely say on behalf of all the students in IMD that we’re super excited for the building to open. There’s a lot of cool stuff inside and… it’ll hopefully save us countless treks to RZC.

—

For a while, my dad has said, “Danny, ‘Viva La Vida’ will be your Forrest Gump.” At first, that probably doesn’t make sense. How related could a 2008 song by a British band and an early 90s movie by an American film studio be? Well, in the context of my life… quite a bit.

October 26^th, 1992. The Koryeo University Hospital in Seoul, South Korea

In one of the sterile rooms of the hospital, a woman is having a baby, but you don’t hear anyone saying, “Breathe,” or “Push,” nor do you hear any screaming. All you hear is the rhythmic beep-beep of a heart-rate monitor and the gentle click-click of surgical tools – a C-section is taking place. Soon, you hear the cry of a newborn baby piercing the silence. A boy.

The doctors immediately realize something is wrong. They notice three of the fingers on the boy’s right hand are missing. They then notice his ankle is disfigured; instead of being perpendicular to his leg, his foot points straight down, like a ballerina’s does when she dances on point – except less graceful and a lot less attractive. 

I’m all for making an entrance that turns heads, and clearly, I’ve had a knack for it since day one. I entered the world with two extreme disabilities. To my parents, a “normal life” seemed to be out of reach for me then.

Today, my dad tells me stories of how he stopped by the hospital from work in the weeks after my birth, waited until my mother was asleep, held me in his arms, and cried silently, wondering what kind of life I would have. Would I be made fun of by my peers? Would I be able to write? Would I even be able to walk?

My mom also had been devastated, emotionally and physically. She was weak as a result of blood loss during the C-section. But my dad tells me she still had the energy to cry every day for weeks after I was born. My mom wondered about the same things my dad did, and more. Having been a pianist for over two decades, she wondered if I’d ever be able to play piano. Both my parents wondered if I’d ever be able to pursue music at all – they didn’t think so. 

A snowy evening in December 1997. Seoul, South Korea

A man walks into his room after returning from volunteering at a daycare for children with disabilities. He sees his wife sleeping next to their son who, until recently, had been wearing a brace on his right leg, like some of the children he had seen that day. The doctors had explained that the boy would be able to walk normally, but that he would never be able to run too fast, and that his deformed hand was something he’d just have to live with. The man sighs, heads into the living room, and begins to watch a movie that he had rented on the way back home. A movie called Forrest Gump.

By the end of the movie, he is in tears.

My dad tells me that after having volunteered at facilities for children with disabilities since my birth, seeing Forrest wearing a metal brace on his leg in Forrest Gump the way I had to wear had touched him. It helped him realize that what he really wanted to do was to help children with disabilities like those I have, so he applied to several American graduate programs in social work soon after seeing the movie and was accepted to the University of Alabama – coincidentally, the school that Forrest attends in Forrest Gump. After living in Alabama for two years, we moved to Virginia so that my dad could complete an internship to earn his master’s degree in social work.  

December 12^th, 2008. Fairfax, VA

A teenager sits at his desk, staring intently at his computer monitor. The materials on his desk contrast starkly with what appear onscreen. Fundamentals of Physics is lit up by the staves of music on the computer monitor. The boy has finished his homework already and doesn’t seem to realize time is passing by as he gleefully inputs notes and conducts a virtual ensemble by himself. Then a phone rings. “Danny, we heard you were working on an arrangement of ‘Viva La Vida’ and…” 

A month and a half later. Alexandria, VA

A string quartet enters the stage, and a teenager in the audience can’t help but smile and hum along as the quartet begins to play a familiar melody. He opens the program and sees his name. “Viva La Vida by Coldplay, arranged for string quartet by Danny Kim.”

I really have to thank “Viva La Vida.” The original performers of my arrangement of the song are the most amazing people I’ve ever had the pleasure of being friends with. The arrangement earned itself some respect and recognition in an academic environment that often seems to overlook the arts to focus on science and technology. But most importantly, it made me realize what was really important to me – music.

My dad is entirely correct in saying that “Viva La Vida” is my Forrest Gump. In the same way that Forrest Gump inspired my father and helped him realize that he wanted to study social work, “Viva La Vida” inspired me and helped me realize that what I really want to pursue is music.

I came to Thomas Jefferson High School believing I loved science and technology. By the time I applied, I had built my own computer. I could program on the TI-83. I could edit video. Back then, I had every reason to believe science and technology was my forte. And the thing is, you’d think attending a science and technology school would foster my passion for science and tech even more. But instead, it has helped me realize that I love music.

Between arranging, composing, leading the men’s a Cappella group, and taking AP Music Theory, I’ve had a personal renaissance that I’m sure would never have been complete without “Viva La Vida.” Now, I realize I’m doing what I love. I use this comparison: most of my friends have chosen to program software or conduct experiments as their main focus and play piano in their free time. But me? I’ve chosen to compose and study scores as my main focus and build computers in my free time. It’s definitely different, but I figure it’s okay to stand out a bit. I like to think my technical side adds some flair to my passion for the arts and color to my music.

To this day, it amazes my dad to see me composing, playing the piano, singing, or playing the violin. When he sees me playing out a melody on the piano or typing some lyrics on the computer, his eyes zero in on my right hand, with its three missing fingers, amazed at what I’m able to do with it. My leg doesn’t bother me much and it looks completely normal.

My parents had given up on a future in music for me as soon as I was born. But here I am, defying their original expectations. Then again, no one had expected Forrest to be able to outrun a truck or win the Medal of Honor, either.

Mama Gump was right: “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you’re gonna get.” But I’m happy with what I’ve gotten. And I’m sure my parents are, too.

I’ve noticed a lot of my friends love How I Met Your Mother. I came across it myself through one of my co-workers last year, and it quickly became an obsession. I spent all of Spring Break 2012 sick, wrapped in my comforter, running through the first 6 seasons of the show. As I did so, I laughed, I sighed, and I damn-near-cried like I’m sure many others have. For a comedy, How I Met Your Mother has a lot of heart and emotion; for each witty quip and ridiculous Stinson pick-up line, it has a heartstring-pulling moment to match. You know the kind I’m talking about – scenes that can’t help but extract a sigh out of you and make you reflect on… life, as you feel a wave of the subtlest goosebumps wash over your skin and you’re reminded why you love the show so much.

I’ve been meaning to write about this sigh-inducing, heartstring-plucking quality, about what exactly it is that keeps us coming back to HIMYM. I’ve been trying at it for a while, too, as evidenced by my countless draft articles with “HIMYM” in the title. But as difficult as this “X-factor” is to distill into words… I think I’ve finally nailed it:

Beyond the moment-to-moment relatability – “Oh man, that totally happened to me, I wish I’d said what Barney/Ted/Lily said!” – what ultimately pulls many of us back to How I Met Your Mother is its high-level empathy, the near-perfect rendition of the story that we’re all so familiar with – the modern young adult narrative, the story of human beings living in a society that values emotional detachment and spurns the natural human affinity for romance and companionship.

As the show’s central character, Ted is intended to be the figure viewers sympathize with the most, and from the get-go, he finds himself pulled by two seemingly different approaches to happiness. At one end of the spectrum are Marshall and Lily, Ted’s best friends who’ve known happiness through each other since before the show even started. Does that sound even remotely familiar? Like that notion telling us about how since before we’re even born, we’re conditioned to seek happiness through companionship? After all, companionship is how we all came into existence, right?

But then Ted also sees Barney seemingly achieve the same happiness through the complete opposite route – through complete emotional detachment. Barney has countless hookups and deceives and showboats his way to happiness, presumably to the same degree of satisfaction that Marshall and Lily achieve. Ted is obviously not as big a partier as Barney, and our architect protagonist is definitely seeking a more traditional Lily-Marshall style relationship; but that’s not to say Ted hasn’t been pulled toward Barney’s school of thought in some episodes. In fact, the show is in a way a constant tug-of-war between the Barney School and the Lily/Marshall School, and Ted is the rope.

Where does Robin factor into all this? She’s the personification of conflict, of both an external and internal. A conflict that everyone – no matter how relationship-inclined, party inclined, or independent someone may consider themselves – finds themselves embroiled in at some point in their lives. And as you’ve seen, both Ted and Barney find themselves involved with Robin at various points throughout the show’s canon.

The five characters represent us – our hopes, our troubles; our past, present, and, hopefully, future in a world that’s conditioned us to desire and respect stable satisfaction but tells us to get by with passing pleasures. The relatability of the show extends far beyond the social-romantic realm, but it’s the show’s perfect depiction of this emotional dissonance – of how we get by with parties and play, hookups and heartbreak on the road to “the real thing” – that really rings so true with today’s generation.

Because in today’s world of social artifice and showmanship, we’re all Ted’s, acting like Barney’s, barely getting over Robin’s, seeking our own Marshall or Lily. Ted reminds us to have heart and persevere. Barney reminds us to have fun and take it all it stride, to let nothing get you down for too long. Robin shows us that no matter how bad the heartbreak afterwards, our time with someone is something we would never be the same without. And Lily and Marshall give us hope that after all the twists and turns, the ups and downs, the good and the bad… that once all the dust settles, we’ll all find what we’re looking for, whatever that is.

Because remember, if there’s one thing know for sure in How I Met Your Mother it’s this: Ted will meet the girl with the yellow umbrella.

One day.

I subscribe to the latter school of thought in everything I do, from writing to music to film. I casually describe my method to friends as “throwing a bunch of cool sounding things on paper and finding ways to connect them all together.” More formally put, I’ve come to call my creative process a “moment-driven” approach to content creation.

When I write, I don’t always start by writing the intro paragraph. When I compose, the first note I write is seldom the first note in the piece. And when I make movies, I don’t always work on scene one first. Instead, all of my works start as a bunch of ideas that spark strong emotional reactions in me, ideas that become important plot points, themes, or arguments in the project – these are the “moments” that drive my creative process. Depending on the medium of the project at hand, a moment could be an especially eloquent paragraph, or maybe a really heart-wrenching melody, or perhaps a particularly dramatic scene. I throw as many of these moments as I can down on paper – or on the timeline in the editing software – and flesh them out.

These moments don’t spill out of me in any particular order – whether I’ll come up with a bridge, chorus, or verse first, I never know. Once I’ve written everything out, it’s up to me to consider each moment’s relationship to the others and put them all in the right order. During this process, I come up with smaller moments to connect the larger moments I initially had; it’s a pretty quick task if the initial moments were developed enough. Of course, I never know exactly where everything will end up in the final product, so I’m constantly moving scenes, paragraphs, and themes around to find the best fit during the creation process. In a way, it’s like solving a puzzle that has no set solution; but some permutations definitely feel better than others.

In my “Jar of Hearts” music video, the first big moment that I thought of was the shooting scene, which actually is toward the end of the video. I wanted the lead girl to shoot her ex in a flashback, but due to school policy, I wasn’t able to show a prop gun on camera. I had to think of a workaround for this limitation that didn’t look cheap, and, in the struggle, I came up with the muzzle flashes and accompanying silhouettes that are in the final product.

The other moment I had in mind early on was the opening, with the lead girl smiling and walking down a seemingly abstract hallway, sitting down, and singing. It’s a fairly standard opening, but what’s really cool is the moment that ties the shooting and opening together: as the girl walks away from the ex’s apartment after the shooting, you realize from the parallels in shots and expressions that she had actually been walking away from the ex’s apartment at the beginning of the video. The flashback timeline converges with the main timeline as the girl sits down at the corner and looks directly into the camera while singing. Once I had these three key moments, filling in the gaps wasn’t hard – girl gets dumped over text, gets angry, finds gun, shoots ex.

In “Spirit”, I wanted to imitate the style of Harry Gregson-Williams’s Metal Gear Solid 3 theme and Michael Giacchino’s Medal of Honor theme. Because of this desire, the moment that came to my mind first was the ending, as both themes have epic endings. The string ostinato in the background immediately feels similar to its counterpart in the Metal Gear theme, and the grand brass screams early Medal of Honor. The other two significant moments that sprang into my mind were the intro and the oboe line in the bridge. I wanted to imitate the feel of Craig Armstrong’s World Trade Center piano theme with my intro, and the oboe line in the bridge was an original invention that provided a nice, reserved contrast to the bombastic main theme. Once I had all these moments, tying them all together was simply a matter of varying the orchestration and tweaking the melody a little bit over multiple repetitions.

This moment-centric approach to writing, composing, and filmmaking might seem like a weird workflow to some. Where’s your organization, Danny? What about structure? What about flow? It might all seem pretty random. Think about it, though: isn’t life pretty moment-driven, too? In the same way a line is but a series of points, life is just a sequence of moments holding each other together – and so, I’d like to think, is my art. Sure, not every moment in the works I create is incredibly dramatic or epic, but neither is every moment of my life. And though life may seem pretty random when you’re living it, you can almost always look back and analyze the relationships between the big moments, in the same way I have to when I’m trying to organize all the moments in my works.

But it’s important to remember that whether they be big or small, every moment serves its purpose by building up to the next. Each measure, each scene, and each paragraph contribute to the identity of the work, in the same way each moment we live, big or small, builds up to and shapes who we are the next. All the small moments work to prepare you for the big ones, in art and in life.

This moment-centric approach to developing film, music, and writing ends up as a testament to the moment-driven nature of the mediums themselves – the very quality that draws us to them. When we sit down for the two hours of that movie, the four minutes of that song, or the three hundred pages of that novel, we gain control of the moments to come in our lives for the duration of that work. If you’re revisiting an old favorite song, you know exactly when the driving drums come in for the first time and when the nostalgic strings hit in the chorus, and you know that the tutti swell at the end of the bridge builds up to the last reprise of the heart-wrenching chorus. Or maybe you’re walking into a movie premiere – you’ve never seen it, but you still have some sense of what you’re going in for because you’ve seen the advertising and know the genre, characters, actors, and director. You know you can expect scenes – filmic moments – that’ll make you laugh, cry, smile, or tremble.

We rely on the emotional reactions generated by the moments in these works to escape from the emotional monotony of our own lives. We rely on film, we rely on music, we rely on literature; we rely on art to give us the moments we need until the next big moment in our own life narratives.

We’re all just addicts who need our fix. We’re moment junkies. And as an artist, I’m more than happy to be a moment dealer.

But why? Why are smart people so often referred to as elitist? Yeah, sure, there’s the occasional arrogant prick who legitimately deserves the title, but as for the rest of them… what did they do? What did they do to deserve to be called elitists besides 1) be born into existence, in the case of those society likes to refer to as “gifted”; or 2) work their asses off to increase their intellect?

It’s rare that smart people ever call themselves smart. If anything, the adjective is hoisted upon them by others. To quote Adam Jensen of Deus Ex – Human Revolution: “I never asked for this.” – smart people never asked to be called “smart” or “gifted,” it’s just what everyone else calls them. There’s a reason that smart kids awkwardly walk out of the classroom for their Gifted and Talented sections in elementary school. There’s a reason that smart kids at top ranked schools are sometimes hesitant to say what schools they go to. There’s a reason that when people point out their intellect in a social situation, they smile sheepishly and just thank whoever it is that gave them the compliment.

Being called smart separates a person from the norm, and smart people ultimately just want to fit in.

It’s funny how society put this label of “smart” on certain people to separate them, but then judges them for the very label it puts on them. It attaches adjectives like “intelligent” and “gifted” to these people, then when these so-labeled “smart people” embrace this label and the opportunities it opens up for them and try to make full use of it (going to prestigious schools for example), society calls them elitist. What are they supposed to do, act embarrassed, shout, “OH NO NO NO, I’M NOT SMART!” and denounce their abilities? They never asked anyone to label them separately, but society itself put this label on them, and they’ve accepted it. Now don’t judge them for it.

It’s important to realize that society’s tendency to label and separate smart people is actually what ends up reinforcing smart people’s naiveté, the very naiveté that later indirectly causes society to call them elitist. While people naturally surround themselves with others they are similar to in some way, it seems like society wants to formalize this process for smart kids starting at an early age by pushing them into Gifted or Honors classes or institutions like TJ. Why? For parents – the hand of society in a weird way if you think about it, shaping the future – , this formal “stamp of approval” is a chip on their shoulder. It isn’t good enough that their kid is gifted – they have to be officially recognized for it. Yes, there’s some truth to the fact that your alma mater serves as a “billboard” for you for the rest of your life, but an even bigger truth is that if one is truly gifted, his passions and talents will manifest in a way that will lead him to success regardless of anything else – should genius be real, genius will prevail.

But no one ever thinks of this, that recognition isn’t important, that smarts are smarts fuck all what anyone else thinks, and this craving for official recognition of intelligence leads parents to try to push their kids into advanced and/or prestigious academic programs as early and as much as possible, regardless of whether it is a good fit for the kids or not (a topic worthy of an entire separate article). And the time spent in the bubbles of Gifted and Honors classes and schools like TJ serves as an incubator for smart people’s misguided socio-intellectual view, the very view that leads people to believe that they are elitist – being surrounded by people of the same capacity as them starting at an early age reinforces smart kids’ mistaken beliefs that their capacity and abilities are normal, that they are just normal and average.

And because they think of themselves as average, no different from anyone else, smart people at a young age are often surprised or frustrated when others fail to display the same capacity that they do, something that happens when they interact over a period of time with those outside of their immediate social circles or, more typically, are kicked out of their bubbles into the real world (usually in the form of going to college). In situations like this, the quickest of the smart kids use their social abilities to turn attention away from themselves and mask their surprise and frustration with pedagogy - no problem, lemme show you - and flattery - yeah, you got it!. But the rest of them, they’re caught off guard by their purely innocent misestimation of others’ abilities and end up dealing with an awkward silence or repeating high-level instructions where detailed low-level instructions are necessary. And the worst? The less empathetic/less socially capable smart ones visibly get pissed, not at the person as some may believe, but at the situation - I can do it and this person’s no different from me, so what’s wrong? As you can hopefully tell, none of this is because smart people believe they’re better than anyone else -

It’s because they don’t know better. Smart people are really quite stupid in their own way. They’re slow to realize their capacity, and because they think of themselves as average, they naively expect everyone to know and understand most everything they themselves do. They’re unable to realize that their abilities are exceptional, that others may not possess the talents they have, and because of this, they don’t realize that by holding others to the same standard as themselves, they hold them to an unintentionally high standard.

I’d be lying if I said that this youthful socio-intellectual naiveté couldn’t serve as the seed of actual elitism. Indeed, it’s the rare case of being unable to grow out of this naiveté and the naiveté manifesting itself in other ways that leads to true elitism and an inability to understand the perspectives and circumstances of others - I didn’t do anything special, I just worked hard to get here, why can’t everyone else? says the CEO raised in a rich WASP neighborhood to the inner-city youth.

But thankfully, for most smart people, the naiveté is just a product of youth, of not enough life and people experience, lasting through the teenage years and maybe early adulthood. Once exposed to the real world and after meeting different people from different backgrounds, most smart kids are quick to realize the reality of their abilities. They become grateful for their smarts and the educational opportunities they had. They become smart, well-informed adults, and thanks to their new awareness, they become more understanding of others and are able to fit in with them better.

And that’s just what they wanted: to fit in.

“[Videogames] are genuine narrative forms and we would have to be very stupid not to be immersed in and understand [them]… [...] The art direction, soundscapes, and immersive environments in video games are as good as, if not superior to, most movies.”

- Guillermo Del Toro, director of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth.

It’s with this bold quote that Jamie Russell opens Generation Xbox – How Video Games Invaded Hollywood. Just from the title and this opening word salvo, you’d think Generation Xbox is about how video games are replacing movies – the nightmare of every film executive in the world, but, at the same time, an oft-prophecied shift that never quite seems to become reality.

In truth, Generation Xbox‘s subtitle is just a “yellow journalism”-style face, intended to incite discussion on what the book is really about – the relationship between movies and video games. Generation Xbox reveals that the relationship between film and video games ultimately isn’t about invasions or dominance, superiority or supplantation -

It’s about convergence and synergy.

From the moment that video games first appeared on screens around the world, video games and movies have inevitably shared a linked fate. Never has this fact been more apparent than it is today, where the two industries share a lot of common technology, techniques, and talent. Russell provides the reader with a detailed history of this very relationship through riveting text based on interviews with over a hundred industry professionals from both sides of the “interactivity fence,” as well as those who audaciously stood in-between the two industries and worked to bring them together. From the life and death of the E.T. game in the Atari 2600 era to the rise and fall of full-motion video in games, from Nintendo’s apathy with the Super Mario movie to the premiere of Heavy Rain - Russell provides a comprehensive background on how video games and movies have cross paths and influenced each other over the past several decades.

In a way, Generation Xbox is a “tale of two industries,” filled with twists, turns, and missteps on both sides. It’s a story where an ambitious animator says good-bye to Disney and redefines cinematic games by making Dragon’s Lair; where George Lucas’s throwaway script for Indy 4 becomes one of the first breakthroughs in adventure game storytelling; where Microsoft finds itself outmaneuvered by Fox and Universal during pre-production on the Halo film; and where James Cameron navigates through his Avatar world of Pandora in the same way a CounterStrike player would.

As storytellers, filmmakers and game designers are no different at the most fundamental level, and by providing unparalleled insight into the relationship between the two biggest storytelling industries, Generation Xbox positions itself as a must-read for the modern day film/game design student and for anyone interested in cinematic storytelling, whether it be games or movies.

—

Generation Xbox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood

Author: Jamie Russell

Publisher: Yellow Ant

Release: April 10, 2012

ISBN: 0956507247

Every story needs a hero and a villain, and stories in video games are no different. For every good guy, there must be a bad guy; and for every evil-doer, there must be a do-gooder to save the day. This can be an issue for stories grounded in reality, as each character or faction must have a believable backstory, an important part of which is often nationality – while everyone loves a cool character of their nationality, problems pop up when writing in less favorable characters. A lot of it is unfortunately political – for example, although nobody has a problem with Nazis or zombies being depicted as the enemy in video games, depicting the Chinese, Cubans, North Koreans, or any Middle Easterners as the antagonists has proven to be a sensitive issue, with the respective nations crying foul about such portrayals or, in the case of Middle Eastern states, developers avoiding the issue altogether by omitting specific country references, á la 24. 

Russia seems less sensitive about the way it is portrayed in video games than most countries, with little to no real feedback to be seen about either the positive depictions or the less favorable ones; and this callousness is wonderful given the wide variety of ways Russians are portrayed in games. Although every game provides a different take on Russia and its people, upon analysis, it becomes clear that of all these depictions can ultimately be broken down into some combination of the following basic types:

- The Hero: The player character/faction is Russian. 

- The Villain: The enemies in the game are Russian.

- The Ally: The player character/faction is allied to or otherwise collaborating with a Russian character/faction.

- The Stereotype: Russian characters in the game are heavily stereotyped, oft-complete with heavy accent and love for vodka. 

None of these categorizations are mutually exclusive, and a game can totally have a Russian as a heavily stereotyped manifestation and a hero, villain, or ally; or, given a significantly large cast, any combination of the above. In some cases, the depiction “type” even evolves and shifts over the history of the series or franchise.

The hero depiction type is very common, especially so in World War II games – this is reflective of Russia’s critical role in securing victory for the Allies on the Eastern front during the war. For example, the game Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 (Tripwire/Valve (Steam) 2006) and its sequel Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad (Tripwire/Tripwire 2011) focus entirely on the Soviet campaign on the Eastern front, with the series being renown for its particular focus on realism and historic accuracy in environmental design and gameplay.

But by far the most notable video game property displaying the hero depiction type is the Call of Duty franchise. In the very first Call of Duty (Infinity Ward/Activision 2003), players step into the shoes of Corporal Alexei Ivanovich Voronin of the Soviet army for the Russian campaign. The Russian campaign opens up with what many consider one of the most epic sequences in first person shooter history as the Soviet army crosses the Volga River during the Battle of Stalingrad – a clear homage to Enemy at the Gates. The player finds himself on one of the numerous barges carrying the soldiers across the river, many of which are being taken out by German aircraft and artillery, and the men are cowering as their commanding officer gives one last speech. When one of the soldiers tries to jump overboard and swim away, the officer has the deserter shot. The player finds himself unarmed once the barge lands and must make his way through the battle – it’s quite an exhilarating sequence, one that has made its mark in video game history. What’s very cool are all the historical tidbits players can pick up from the early Call of Duty games – for example, one of the key battle sequences in the first Call of Duty‘s Russian campaign takes place at Pavlov’s House during the Battle of Stalingrad. The player is placed under the command of Pavlov himself and assists in the capture and defense of the house.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bYJVVnLyr8]

Gameplay footage of the Pavlov’s House sequence from the original Call of Duty. The player receives orders directly from Sergeant Pavlov.

The Russian campaign continues to be a big part of Call of Duty‘s single player while the series is set in World War II. From stepping into the shoes of Private Vasili Koslov and fighting in the Red Army’s Stalingrad offensive in Call of Duty 2 (Activision/Infinity Ward 2005) to working together with marksman Sergeant Viktor Reznov (voiced by Gary Oldman) to assassinate a German general as Private Dimitri Petrenko in Call of Duty: World at War (Treyarch/Activision 2009), the Russian campaigns and the players experiences on the Ostfront hold some of the most memorable moments of the early Call of Duty games.

But Call of Duty is also a very good example of a series whose depiction of Russians has shifted over time. Indeed, the series’s portrayal of Russia and Russians changes drastically once the series shifts setting to present day, doing a complete turnaround from the hero depiction type to the villainous. Gone is the epic heroism of Stalin’s Red Army, and in its place is the radical ultranationalism of Imran Zakhaev and Vladimir Makarov. In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward/Activision 2007), Imran Zakhaev is the leader of the Ultranationalist Party and mastermind behind a devious scheme to bring Russia back to its former glory while distracting the world by funding a coup d’etat in the Middle East. When he launches nuclear missiles against the US, the missiles are aborted just in time and Zakhaev is killed by the SAS.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NMnnMRWJ-0]

The controversial mission “No Russian” from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. In this mission, the player engages in the killing of civilians at a Russian airport as a CIA operative; but your cover is revealed to have been blown at the end of the mission, and the Russians kill you and use your involvement in the mission to frame the whole incident on the CIA and launch an invasion on the US.

However, his right-hand man, Makarov, continues the Ultranationalist revolution in Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward/Activision 2009), seizing control of Russia and declaring Zakhaev a martyr for their cause. He leads a massacre of civilians at the fictional Zakhaev International Airport in Moscow, knowing that one of his men is actually a CIA operative. Makarov kills the CIA operative and uses his body to claim that the massacre was a terrorist attack by the United States; Russia then launches an all out invasion of the US in retaliation. The invasion is repelled, but Makarov’s efforts continue in Modern Warfare 3 (Infinity Ward/Activision 2011) as he kidnaps the Russian president and launches a full-scale invasion of Europe.

Another major franchise featuring significant Russian characters in the narrative is Electronic Arts’s Command & Conquer: Red Alert series. The series takes place in an alternate reality where Einstein’s time travel experiments in 1946 allowed him to travel back in time and talk to a young Hitler, an event that indirectly stops the would-be fascist from starting the Nazi Germany regime. Without Nazi Germany to oppose them, Stalin’s Soviet Russia rises to power and begins an invasion of China and Eastern European nations. In response to this, European nations form the Alliance, and the Allies and the Soviets fight for control of Europe – this revised World War II makes up the story of the first Red Alert (Westwood/Virgin Interactive 1995). The canonical ending to Red Alert - the one at the end of the Allied campaign – leaves Stalin dead and Russia in civil unrest. In Red Alert 2 (Westwood/EA 2000), the Allies name a distant descendant of Nicholas II, Alexander Romanov, as Premier, but he quickly turns on the Allies and launches an full-scale invasion of the United States.

Although the player gets to play as both the Allies and the Soviets in Red Alert and Red Alert 2, it is clear from the direction and tone that the Allies are meant to be seen as the “good guys” and the Soviets as the villains in the overarching world narrative. Stylistically, Red Alert is known for its embrace of the cheesy B-movie aesthetic and over-the-top characters and dialogue, which manifests itself partly in the form of very exaggerated Russian characters with corny, “typical villain” accents – and as such, Red Alert is a perfect example of where two depiction types, villain and stereotype, overlap.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK-ArPlw8Jw]

Soviet live-action cutscene footage from Red Alert 3, establishing the narrative of the game.

But Red Alert, like Call of Duty, is also a series whose depiction of Russians changes later on in its history. In Red Alert 3 (EALA/EA 2008), two Russian generals travel back in time and eliminate Einstein in 1927 in a desperate attempt to weaken the Allied forces in their own time. However, this action results in a newly created timeline where the Empire of the Rising Sun – Japan – wages war against both the Soviets and the Allies. Faced with this common enemy, the Soviets and Allies form a temporary alliance to defeat the forces of the Empire in the Allied campaign – the level of stereotyping stays constant, but for this brief sequence in Red Alert 3, the Russians are stereotype and ally rather than stereotype and villain.

What’s also interesting about the way this third installment handles its portrayal of the Soviet faction is that while the Red Alert series has always had zero qualms about playing off stereotypes about Russia since its inception, Red Alert 3 of the series takes it to another interesting level – the stereotype-play is embedded in lyrics in the soundtrack.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDQ7hXMLxGc]

“Soviet March” from the Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 soundtrack (music composed by James Hannigan).

The “Soviet March” in Red Alert 3 has a very stereotypical Russian sound, with driving low brass and cymbal hits accompanying a highly “typical” sounding male choir. However, upon examination of the lyrics, EALA’s willingness to play off cultural stereotypes in Red Alert delves into another level. The lyrics are as follows (accompanied by rough translation):

—

Наш Советский Союз покоряет | Our Soviet Union subjugates
Весь мир от Европы к Неве на восто-ок | The whole world from Europe through Neva to the East
Над землёй везде будут петь: | On the earth, everyone will sing:
Столица, водка, Советский медведь наш! | Capital! Vodka! And our Soviet bear!
(x2)

Все народы, не стоит того | All nations have come to see
Что мы все воплотили на свет,| That we are the embodiment of light
Благодарный низкий поклон | A profound thanks and deep bow
От са-мой мо-гу-щес-твенной в мире! | From the mightiest nation in all the world!
(x2, followed by two repeats of first stanza)

—

(Lyrics provided by LyricWiki; translation courtesy of Aviv Cukierman, MIT ’14 and Walex Khmurets, William & Mary ’13)

The lyrics of the “Soviet March” play off the classic association between Russians and vodka as well as the symbolic link between Russia and the bear. In addition, a “Russia vs. the West” attitude is very prevalent here in the first stanza. Combined with the musical style, this makes for a multi-layered, if somewhat overdone and exaggerated, stereotypical musical portrayal.

The Grand Theft Auto series is another series known for its willingness to play off cultural stereotypes to establish and enhance its urban environments (it has taken flak for this in the past), and stereotypical Russian characters have played a role in the lives of the protagonists in two of its most recent installments, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North/Rockstar 2004) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar North/Rockstar 2008). While relatively minor figures in San Andreas, the Russian Mafia is one of the most influential criminal organizations in Liberty City, the setting of Grand Theft Auto IV. When Niko Bellic, the Serbian protagonist, first arrives in Liberty City at the beginning of the game, it is through his cousin’s associates Vlad Glebov, Dimitri Rascalov, and Kenny Petrovic (the “avtoriet”/авторитет) of the local Russian Mafia/Bratva (Братва) that Niko is able to secure his criminal living.

The most interesting aspect about the way Grand Theft Auto IV handles its Russian characters is the fact that, due to its deeper narrative compared to more purely action-oriented games like Call of Duty, the player’s relationships with the characters are more intricate and personal, there is more drama, and characters switch between stereotypical ally and stereotypical villain fairly regularly. For example, Niko is forced to kill Vlad, his very first source of jobs in Liberty City, when he finds out that the Russian loan shark slept with his cousin’s girlfriend; Dimitri, one of Niko’s first allies in the Bratva, ends up betraying him to the very former employer that he left Serbia to avoid.

While games that depict Russians as heroes, villains, or manifestations of ethnic stereotypes do make up the majority, there are a handful of games that depict Russia and Russians as constant allies and collaborators. Team Rainbow of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six universe is a multinational counter-terrorist organization operated by the United Nations, and two of the operatives on the team in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (Red Storm/Ubisoft 2003) are Russian, as indicated by the flag accompanying their portraits: Arkadi Novikov joins the team after some bad experiences in the enforcement arm of the KGB, and Genedy Filatov signs up with Rainbow after several years in Spetsgruppa A, a Russian counter-terrorist group.

There is also the unique case of the Civilization games, in which Russians can basically be whatever you make of them. Players choose a country to develop from the dawn of time to the future age, and Russia is one of the countries that the player can choose to play as. Catherine the Great is the leader for Russia, their unique unit is the Cossack (stronger than normal Cavalry), their unique building the Krepost (experience boost to units created in Kreposts), and their faction bonus a boost to production speed and increased horse, iron, and uranium resources – the best part is that these formal gameplay elements actually make natural sense historically and dramatically. If the player chooses to play as Russia, this decision leans the country toward the hero depiction. Should he choose to play as another country, Catherine and her Russia may be in the match as one of other countries, in which case the player can choose to make Russia his ally or decide to make it the antagonist and wage war against it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Mzdbhf31Q]

The story trailer for Freedom Fighters. Soviet Russia has won the Cold War, and players take the role of Chris Stone, a plumber who joins the resistance when New York City is invaded by the Soviets.

Despite the differences among the hero, villain, ally, and stereotype depiction types, there is a major common theme tying many of them together – Russia is constantly battling the West. With the demise of World War II games, the games industry has been in search of a villain, and developers seem to have landed on Russia as their antagonist of choice. Early games of the 90s, such as Red Alert, first started this trend by depicting a Russia vs. Europe mentality. However, games developed closer to and into the 2000s, including the sequels to Red Alert and the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series, shift this to a Russia vs. the United States approach, with depictions of full-on Red Dawn style Russian invasions of Washington D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles becoming more and more common in games like Freedom Fighters (IO Interactive/EA 2003), Tom Clancy’s EndWar (Ubisoft Shanghai/Ubisoft 2009), and World in Conflict (Massive/Sierra 2007). This is partly reflective of the need to satisfy a hungry and ever-growing American video game market, but it also speaks to growing tensions between the current Russian regime and the United States and American fears of an invasion on the homefront – something that has yet to occur in the USA’s short history.

But what’s important and interesting to note is that even with World War II games, Russia is still fighting a battle against the West (Nazi Germany and Italy), and we know from history that its shaky alliances with some members of the West (the US and its allies) shift to hostilities as soon as the war is over. Russia is kept largely separate from the conflicts in the Western theatre and essentially fights its own war on its own front – this is usually emphasized in games visually through harsh, often snowy landscapes that are a stark contrast to the ruined urban environments of Europe and the dry desert environments of Africa.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHNlia4SK0M]

Zakhaev’s speech to the West in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

Russian ultranationalism is also becoming a very prominent theme in recent action games. It was really thrown into the spotlight by Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and continued to be a significant part of the Modern Warfare series afterwards. Zakhaev and later Makarov are hellbent on eradicating their Western enemies and returning Russia to the glory days of the mighty Soviet Union. Zakhaev in particular ends up with a personal stake in the conflict when his son commits suicide after being cornered by SAS operatives. And when Zakhaev himself is killed at the end of Modern Warfare, the theme of sacrifice comes into play, as the Ultranationalist party declares Zakhaev a martyr and takes over the Russian government.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7r9b_BSeVM]

The intro cinematic to the Playstation 2 port of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGPf_h0pLzU&ob=av3e]

The live-action trailer for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. The Ghosts assassinate an ultranationalist leader who is responsible for the suppression of civilian resistance. 

One of the first franchises to touch on the topic of Russian ultranationalism also seems set to return to it very soon. The original Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon (Red Storm/Ubisoft 2001) is set in a fictional 2008 where a Russian ultranationalist sect abruptly rises to power and launches invasions of several former Soviet states, and the player takes control of a team of special ops soldiers called “Ghosts” to defuse the situation; and based on trailer footage, the series seems set to address the topic again with the upcoming June release of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier (Ubisoft/Ubisoft 2012).

And finally, a theme that is becoming increasingly common among games of the late 2000s and early 2010s is a post-apocalyptic setting in Russia or one of the former Soviet republics – in a way, it’s a very modern take on the “end of the world” themes explored by writers such as Bunin (The Gentleman from San Francisco). The idea was explored in-depth initially by STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (GSC Game World/THQ 2007), which is set in area called “The Zone”. In the world of STALKER, the Chernobyl incident is followed by attempts to repopulate the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, but a second incident kills or mutates most of its inhabitants. The player takes the role of a Stalker, a name given to the many scavengers and looters who traverse the Zone in search for treasures and loot. The concept of the Zone and Stalkers is further explored in STALKER’s followup games, STALKER: Clear Sky (GSC Game World/GSC World Publishing 2008) and STALKER: Call of Pripyat (GSC Game World/GSC World Publishing 2010).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2hhef-Nzo]

Launch trailer for Metro 2033.

The concept of a post-apocalyptic Russia is most recently explored in the game Metro 2033 (4A Games/THQ 2010). Based on the novel of the same name, the player takes the role of Artyom (Артём), who lives in a post-apocalyptic Moscow destroyed in an unspecified nuclear war. The harsh surface conditions caused by the nuclear war force human survivors to live belowground in the Metro systems most of the time, and the player as Artyom must manage his scarce resources carefully as fights against Communists and neo-Nazis and attempts to solve the mystery of the strange creatures called the “Dark Ones.”

***

Very few countries and nationalities are portrayed in such a wide variety of ways and to such depth as Russia and its people are in video games. Russia’s current callous attitude when it comes to video game portrayals allows developers a completely clean, unrestricted slate in terms of how to portray characters of Russian nationality. And yet, at the same time, many of these depiction play into stereotypes and pop culture awareness in such a way that never seems completely out of touch with reality. It will be interesting to see how Russia’s reaction to the way it is portrayed in video games changes as the political climate between it and the US changes and video games become an even more widespread artistic medium.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r92cDygrDiM&w=560]

Video games are generally considered products of the digital realm. Sure, we as the players press buttons and fiddle with joysticks, but ultimately, all the action’s happening in the digital space. Even with motion-based control systems like the Kinect and the Wii, their physical motions are just means to achieving a desired result in the game – you swing your Wiimote to swing your tennis racket in the game, and you move your arms in front of your Kinect to interact with something on the screen. The digital-physical divide has a particularly noticeable effect in social gaming situations where you play together in the same space as other people, such as a split-screen match of Halo with your buddies. Although you might be trash-talking to each other, the emphasis is still clearly on the screen and the game within it, not the players themselves or their physical interactions.

With Combiform, that’s definitely not the case. Created by project lead Edmond Yee (MFA Interactive ’12) for his MFA thesis and developed by a team led by him and producer Josh Joiner (BA Interactive ’12), Combiform is unique compared to many projects in IMD in that it isn’t just a game; it’s a full-on platform on which developers can create their own experiences. The system consists of a set of four wireless controllers connected to a PC via a dongle. Each controller has a button, twisting knob, multi-color LED, and accelerometer, but the coolest thing about the Combiform controllers is that they are equipped with magnets that allow them to combine with each other. The ability to combine may seem gimmicky at first, but it works with the other capabilities of the controller to open up refreshing new gameplay experiences. To demonstrate this fact, the Combiform team is working on a host of games that really showcase the unique capabilities of the platform, and I had the chance to check some of them out.

The first game I played was called Blow it Up. It’s a 2v2 game where the players on each team combine their two controllers and use the combined device as an mock air pump, moving it up and down in the air to simulate a pumping motion. The faster you pump with the two controllers combined, the faster your balloon fills up; if the controllers become disconnected, you lose air fast. The surface-layer simplicity here is deceiving, because once you realize that the core of the gameplay – said pumping motion – takes place in the physical world, it opens up some unique strategies that you can use to win. Indeed, while messing with someone else’s controllers might be considered a gaming etiquette faux pas in most scenarios, with Combiform and Blow It Up, karate-chopping apart the other team’s two controllers to make them lose air is completely normal.

This mechanic of physical action affecting digital play was also on display in TAI. Named after the Combiform team’s lead engineer, TAI is a Simon Says style experience where the game gives you commands like “Combine” or “Press Button” that you must follow only if your controller light is blinking. You start out with five points, and  you lose a point each time you combine or press your button while the light isn’t blinking. This gives you the opportunity to screw up other players by pressing their button or combining with them while their controller isn’t blinking, making the experience as much about dodging other players’ attempts to hinder you as it is about keeping an eye on the light.

The next game I saw, My Light, My Game, I’d seen before, and it was as great as ever. Players are split into 2 person teams, Blue Team and Green Team, and to start the game, two of the controllers light up green and two light up blue. Players switch the light on a given controller between the two colors by pressing the button on it, and everything all four controllers are lit blue or green, the corresponding team earns a point. There’s a surprising amount of strategy involved as to how your team can earn the most points (get three of the controllers to light up your color then just keep mashing the button on the fourth controller) and prevent the other team from earning points (run like hell).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRSbLvX2XA8]

Then there’s Secret Agent Purple, where one of the players’ controllers lights up purple and the rest blue, and the objective is to get the purple light (transferred by magnetic contact) as many times as possible without getting caught with it when the music stop; it was very fun, basically Combiform’s take on the children’s game “hot potato”. Also notable was Get Out of My Way, arguably the most “traditional” game of the bunch. A 1v1 fighting game where each player gets two controllers, Get Out of My Way has players shaking their controllers to charge up their energy then using that energy to defend or attack the other player by combining their controllers in different configurations. It’s very fun and highly reminiscent of the “007″ game a lot of us played on the bus in middle school; the only downside is that your hands start to hurt really fast from shaking the controllers.

Not all the games were quite as interesting though, nor did all of them really take advantage of the platform’s unique capabilities. Firewall is a puzzle game that has really slick futuristic visuals but incredibly slow gameplay. Pop Quiz, a math game that’s great in concept and actually fun to play, is probably better served as just a traditional PC learning game. Match, where you’re given a color using the multi-color LED and then asked to match it once it turns off a few seconds later, is a game that could just as easily be played using other devices. And For Here, To Go, where players must balance a tray of coffee ingame by combining all four of the controllers into a fake “tray,” lacks depth and gets very boring very fast.

Among the final games I got to play was Switch, and it was a stellar game with which to round out the evening. You start with the four controllers combined together, and once the game starts, all of the LEDs on the controllers light up, two of them solid blue and two of them blinking purple. The players need to switch the positions of the controllers blinking purple to advance, after which the purple lights relocate to two other controllers to be switched, so on so forth, with each “level” giving the players less time to reposition them. Again, the game might sound simple in concept, but it becomes a delightful challenge in practice, with players cheering each other on and rushing to move out of each others’ way at the higher levels – the game really creates a sense of bonding among its players.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MmbDTTRtCo]

As great as most of the above games were, it’s important to remember that Combiform is about more than just the hardware or the games – it’s about the experience. Combiform is the first in a new genre that Yee himself has coined “communal casual gaming.” Communal casual games, or CCGs, are games that put more emphasis on the players in the physical world than the game itself and the virtual world. With CCGs, the experience isn’t about the fulfilling objectives in the game or winning; it’s all about the experience of playing the game with others and having fun together. It’s a radically different experience than most games people play, and closed minded “core” gamer snobs need not apply; but for the rest of us, Combiform ends up being a truly eye opening experience. You realize just how much most games limit themselves by sticking to the screen and its contents, and you see first-hand how the integration of the physical world into digital play opens up an entirely new dimension of gameplay.

So the games are great and the experience is unique; so what’s the catch? In its current state, the hardware is Combiform’s Achilles’ heel. While budget limitations are understandable, it’s surprising that the team hasn’t done more to make the controllers more user friendly and aesthetically pleasing. They’re boxy and bulky, the handles on them aren’t exactly ergonomic, and they don’t feel that great in your hands at all. Also, after some games, the controller left behind a rather uncomfortable rash wherever they rubbed against my hand. However, each controller is a nice weight, and you can hold one for a long time without your arm hurting. Durability is also no problem here, as each controller is built like a tank.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGkWyUsTAjU]

CONCLUSION

I’d been following Combiform for a while before I sat down with Yee and Joiner at the hands-on session for this preview. I’d always been a little skeptical about the limited controls and the simplistic nature of the games on the platform, but despite my past skepticism, I went into the preview session with an open mind. And as I sat down several hours later to write this preview, warm coffee in hand, I realized something:

Combiform had converted me.

In the year that passed since I first saw Combiform, the platform and the ideas driving it have matured immensely. For all my gripes with the controller build quality – something the team is well aware of – , the games on the platform themselves are top-notch, looking professionally done and custom-tailored to take advantage of the platform’s abilities, and the experience of playing them is like nothing else. Combiform successfully bridges the gap between digital and physical play, and, in the process, it gives life to a whole new kind of gameplay experience – one focused on fun and player interaction rather than just winning. It’s truly amazing to see the platform in action, not only for its cool/fun factor, but for the effect it has on its players – everyone’s smiling, everyone’s laughing, and everyone’s having fun. Indeed, Combiform’s big “X factor” is the way it provides a fun experience for everyone involved by putting the emphasis on the experience of social play rather than the typical goal of winning.

As I’m sure you can tell, I entered a skeptic and emerged a believer. Combiform will always be remembered as a pioneer in the CCG genre, but what’s just as important to remember is its nigh-evangelicalism. The ability for a product to single-handedly turn someone on to a genre is exceptionally rare in any form of media, but it’s one of Combiform’s biggest selling points. It’s difficult to play games on Combiform with your friends and not have a good time, because even if they’ve never played video games before, they’re pretty much guaranteed to have fun.

Following our preview session, I told Joiner all this; about the initial skepticism, the transformative experience of playing the games, and the conversion.

All he did was smile knowingly.

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Combiform will be on show at the Interactive Media Division and Directors Guild of America’s First Move showcase on April 26th 2012 as well as IMD’s Demo Day on May 2nd 2012. For more information, check out their official website at www.combiformgame.com.