In My Defense

My defense is next Friday. To say that I am anxious about it would be a severe understatement. I can hardly bear to spend more than an hour or so away from it. I am having an onslaught of dreams where I accidentally sleep through the whole thing (which takes a lot of sleeping, since it's an afternoon defense). The biggest sign of all is that the anxiety has even brought me back to my poor, neglected blog. So this post is going to be a stream of consciousness hodge-podge that will hopefully let me vent some steam.

The preparation itself is interesting. Up to this point, I managed to avoid most of my worry by focusing on smaller events that were happening between the time the date was set (back in late September) and now. First, I was giving a guest lecture on narrative and ludology for my supervisor's first year course. Then I had another guest lecture on masculinity and game culture for another professor's class (this is turning into a humble brag about my guest lectures, but I'm going somewhere here, honest). Most recently, there was going to Wordplay 2015, a one day event in Toronto showcasing games that feature words predominantly in one way or another--a must-go event for someone whose research area is videogames and text. (I met Emily Short! I made a no to slightly negative impression!) In each case, the dissertation defense was something I was working on in the background and preparing for, but it wasn't until it was the Next Thing Coming that it suddenly started to really affect me.

The prep is going... all right, I think. I've met with the tech people, so I'm nominally familiar with the equipment in my defense room. I've done enough presentations to know that being familiar doesn't stop things from going wrong, but at least I'll know what to troubleshoot when it does. I've read over and over the dissertation draft, finding all the terrible typos that somehow evaded me before the dissertation went out. 

Actually, I have some advice on that note. For financial and moral reasons, I use Open Office, an open-source word processing program, over Microsoft Office, but I really wish I had converted it into MO before sending it out. The big problem was formatting it properly with the table of contents and page numbering. To make a table of contents, you need to set up headings and subheadings, and there's a bug where OO automatically adds about half a dozen lines of blank space to the first footnote of every chapter, regardless of how many times I take it out. The other problem was the page numbering--university regulations say that everything that comes before the table of contents has to have roman numeral page numbers, and arabic numbering for the TOC and everything after. And again, that's a pain to do in OO. (Maybe a pain in MO too, but it's OO I'm working with) I finally wound up having to copy the whole document into a new sheet entirely so I could start from scratch. And THAT wound up, for some reason, erasing all the alignments I did for my long quotations. I had to go in and re-align them manually, and as a result, I missed about a quarter of them. Suffice to say, OO is not maximized for 300+ pages of formatting.

I've also met with two out of the three members of my internal committee, which has been a huge source of relief--I'd really recommend it to those prepping for their own defense. Even apart from the useful advice on how to handle the defense, talking with them has reminded me that, at this point, I am the expert; I'm not just the expert on the subject, but on the defense itself. I will certainly have read it through more than anyone else in the room, and it takes a priority for me more than anyone else in the room. That second part in particular is a useful reminder, in that for everyone else, this is a routine thing--while everyone's there for the dissertation, I'm the one with the greatest emotional investment. It's a big deal in my head, but less so for everyone else. I don't think I'm fully expressing what I'm trying to say here, but I find it comforting on some level to remember that the dissertation is less burdensome from other frames of mind.

It's still going to weigh pretty heavy on my frame, though. The major task left is to prepare the slideshow. That's easier said than done. All in all, I've got a minor or major focus on approximately forty different games throughout the course of the argument, and that means a lot of screenshots that I need to line up. That's a practical aspect of game studies that isn't discussed enough, I think--how presenting a lecture on a videogame differs from more traditional media. Luckily, I have a small bank of images ready to go from previous presentations--video game manuals, Doom, Myst, and Planescape: Torment are already covered. That still leaves, however, two dozen or so games from the second and fifth chapters that need more substantiation. I spent about four hours last night watching walkthroughs of Final Fantasy: Tactics, only to realize that was watching the remake, not the original, just to get a shot of a cutscene that occurred about 3/4 of the way through the game. Film studies doesn't have this problem! (It has its own, I imagine. But not this one, specific problem, in exactly the same way.)

Anyway, I'd better get back to the work. I have promises to keep, and hours of Ni No Kuni walkthroughs to go before I sleep.

Later Days.

Random Thoughts, May 2015 edition: Futurama, dissertations, informed consent in fantasy, and match 3 games

This is going to be a combination of updates, and things that have occurred to me.

* "Not sure if _____ or ______"
"You're _____ is bad, and you should feel bad!"
"I don't want to live on this planet anymore."
"__________ do not work that way!
"I'll make my own ___________! With blackjack, and hookers!

Not an original observation, but Futurama's clearly going to be more remembered as a meme generator than a TV show. There's a Buzzfeed article in there, somewhere."
Just posted this on Facebook. I don't really feel like fleshing it out too much further at the moment, but it's an interesting issue.Arguably, Futurama has had more cultural value as a source of memes than as a TV show. That probably still holds if you talk financial value too--but only if you factor in the ad revenue generated by the hundreds and thousands of sites that have deployed variations of these memes to get clicks. It's not money that's going to the show creators. Then again--who creates a meme? Its original coiners, or its major circulators? If I ever have a spare couple of days, it's a new media area I'd like to delve into more fully.

*The dissertation's reaching a boiling point. My defense is projected for September--though I've only got permission for one more term of grad school, so that's a fun future hurdle--and I'm still coping with the notion of what comes next. I should be applying for things and submitting other things like crazy but... I'm not there yet. It might be the same sort of procrastination that led to the degree delays to begin with, but I feel like something still needs to click. Soon, hopefully.

*Speaking of clicking, I've been reading Rachel Aaron's The Legend of Eli Monpress. I'll probably have a full review somewhere at some point, but an idea in regards to the series popped into my head today, and I want to preserve it. The magic system in the novel is essentially the animus version, with a genie twist. That is, every object in the fantasy world--manmade or natural--if it's of sufficient size, is inhabited by a lifeforce, a sentient spirit. Wizards can communicate with the spirit, and bind it to them and make it serve them, ala the genie/master relationship. So far, so good. But what Aaron adds to the concept that really makes it interesting is the idea that the current dominant group of wizards, the spiritualists, believe that it's unethical to bind a spirit against its will. The only spirits you can call on as servant, then, are the ones that you enter into a willing relationship with, where both parties supply the other with what they need, and both may break it off, if they wish. In short, it's a fantasy universe where magic is based on the idea of informed consent.  That's kind of amazing, and makes the series really relevant in terms of greater cultural issues. Yes, there's a huge difference between consent as relates to sexuality and as it relates to magical spirits, but framing the relationship in terms of ethics and moral responsibility over personal desire creates some really interesting parallels.

*I gave a talk this week based on the third chapter of my dissertation. I got some good feedback on it, but in a lot of ways, it's the wrong point in the dissertation process to be soliciting feedback from outside of my committee. I'm really glad I did it, and I understand my own argument and how it's perceived a lot better now, but it would have been better to have pursued this sort of thing earlier. At that point of writing, I was too caught up in the idea that I couldn't put anything out there until I had my committee's seal of approval; more experimentation could have been helpful. That's something to remember.

*Conversation overheard on the bus today: "When I was a kid, I used to read while I walked around, with my nose in a book." "Me too! It really bugged my mom. She thought I'd walk into a tree, or something."
Me, in my head: "I AM ONE OF YOU."

*This weekend is all about prepping for the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and writing the paper for the Canadian Game Studies Association. I've got some draft notes, but it's time to flesh them out. If I was a better planner, it'd be a presentation on dissertation-related material, or even a revised version of this week's talk. Instead, it'll be a look at the cultural, economic, and design-related issues involving Match-3 type games. Basically, it's a chance to take some of things I've said  about Match-3 games and put them before a larger audience. I'm thinking five minutes on the social and economic aspects of Match-3 games in general, five minutes on how some of them incorporate narrative skins, and five minutes on how Marvel Puzzle Quest in particular approaches these issues.  If anyone's interested, I might put the piece up here when it's done.

Later Days. 

Nierly Done with this Pun forever

I had to play a few hours of Nier today to get the point where I could talk about its book-like interface system for the dissertation. And I had to play to that point because Nier's endgame (spoiler, I guess?) doesn't really leave things in a state where doing that is possible.

What I found is that Nier is a wonderfully complex game (albeit somewhat graphically low for a mid to late Xbox 360 game), one whose eventual story is set up right from the start, and design choices that contribute to the overall aesthetic in a meaningful way all build on each other. It's an unusually rich, creative game for a JRPG low budget (for AAA, anyway) game.

I never want to play it again.

I felt the same way going back to Ni No Kuni (which is much more diminishing returns than Nier) for its dissertation section; there's a point in lengthy games where enthusiasm is displaced by entropy, and trying to research the game at the same time only makes it worse. Nier's a wonderful game, and I could (and have) written pages and pages extolling its virtues, but I really, really don't want to subject myself to having to go through it again. Ah well; I'm an hour or two in and at the shrine where Weiss becomes a party member, so the end's in sight.

Later Days.

Dissing the Dissertation

Two excerpts from the dissertation:

Another Sierra game, the 1991 remake of the original Leisure Suit Larry came with brochures for in-game locations, and the questions were thus reflective of the game’s so-called, and more than slightly misogynist, humor: “What do the cowgirls have at the Palamino Ranch?”; the correct answer was “c: Jugs o’ moonshine.”

And 

the 1988 game Wasteland not only had a booklet of paragraphs, it included fake entries to dissuade players who would “cheat” by reading ahead. The very first entry, in fact, is one of these:

1 You creep up to the window, and in the soft muted tights [sic], you see a tall woman with long, blond hair. She sits before a mirror and brushes her hair, then stands and walks over to the sunken tub to her left. She kneels and her blue, silken robe drops to the floor. She turns the water and steam slowly fills the air. You watch in fascination as she reaches down into the tub, whirls, and points an Uzi in your direction. ‘Stop reading paragraphs you’re not supposed to read, creeps.’ She sighs deeply. ‘Next time I’m going to demand they put me in a Bard’s Tale game, this Wasteland duty is dangerous.’ (1)

The problem with writing a dissertation on the subject of the history of videogames is that the history of videogames is full of stuff like this. Yeah, it's sexist, and, as dissertation me claims, arguably outright misogynist, but mostly... it's just *embarrassing.*

Honestly, off the top of my head, the only game stuff I can think of that's funny that was clearly supposed to be funny is some of the stuff from Saint's Row the Third and some of the more absurdist endings for Japanese fighting games.

Later Days.

Because if I'm talking about writing on my blog, it's like I'm actually writing

All right--we're going for a two stone initiative here. Blog needs more content. Dissertation needs to get written. So we'll try a positive affirmation method, whereby I state how long I worked on the diss, and how much I wrote. I will say a disclaimer right now that I will not be posting EVERY time I work on the dissertation, and these blog posts are in no way a reflection of the total labor involved.

So--today, I spent 36 minutes on the dissertation. I wrote approximately 200 words. ...Every little bit counts, ok? It's a Saturday, cut me some slack.

I *might* be a little defensive where the dissertation is concerned.

Later Days.

Language warning: DOOM dissertation

And another quotation from yours truly, this time from my dissertation writing:

More generally, DOOM could be considered as the game that cemented the modern conception of the hard-core gamer, negative stereotypes included. As mentioned earlier, Sega, in its promotion of the Sega Genesis, attempted to appeal to teenaged gamers moving out of Nintendo`s “kid” demographic through connecting coolness to its mascot character Sonic’s speed; id pursued a similar sense of cool, but accelerated it, through an emphasis on speed, violence, and a culture of competition that drew on both. Consider this passage from Kushner`s book-length study on id, wherein he describes Romero’s adoption of a “rock star” persona as the public face of id, and his trip to Austin with id employee Shawn Green:

It was all silent except for the sounds of fingers rattling on keys. But all that changed as the id guys began to play.

Romero hurled a few shotgun blasts into an opponent and yelled, ‘Eat that, fucker!’. The sheepish guy on the computer looked up in fear. Shawn knew that look—the look of a gamer never heard true, unbridled smack-talk, just like he’d been the first time he had heard Romero insult him during a game. But now Shawn was a pro and joined right in. “Suck it down, monkey fuck!” he called, after firing a few blasts from his BFG. The gamers cowered. They would learn. (187)

"Suck it down, monkey fuck." I really need to get done this section on DOOM, because it's reminding me about everything I hate about videogames.

Later Days.

Still Worth It

I am feeling really good about things at the moment. It's interesting how quickly emotions can flip like that, because I was NOT feeling that way about 12 hours ago.

That's because about 20 hours ago, I made a Bad Decision: to scan an entire class worth of secondary reading in a single sitting. Difficulties ensued (basically, an antique scanner, file size restrictions, and about 600+ more pages than I had thought), and my own stubbornness insisted I see it out rather than let common sense prevail, and, long story short, I was not a very happy camper when I finally got home last night (and very nearly this morning). As a sort of reward for myself, I decided to stay up even longer and watch the season finale of a show that I was saving for just such a down-in-the-dumps moment.

And man, I'm glad I did. The episode had a lot of truly great scenes, but the crowning moment was the montage at the end. And the accompaniment was perfectly chosen-- I honestly haven't been that moved by a piece of music in a TV show since Seinfeld's brilliant use of Time of Your Life. It was so good, I'm not even going to tell you what show it was--I'd like to keep it to myself a little longer. (Do feel free to guess.)

The other thing that has me in a good mood is that I FINALLY received my final mark for last term. It's really, really good, so I'm not going to complain, but I imagine anyone that didn't do so well would be rather displeased at having wait quite this long. I also find it kind of odd that I do much, much better in my 18th century courses than my supposed specialty, but again, I'm not going to complain.

The third (and least; some people build up, I build down) reason I'm in a good mood is that I talked to the grad chair yesterday, and I finally feel like I've got a firm direction mapped out for my studies. I'd be more pleased about this, but he was convinced I should learn Japanese for my language requirement, which seems... foreboding. I mean, since my area is video games, it would be the most useful, but still... but that's jumping ahead a bit. Next step: finding a supervisor.

So. It's Friday, the weekend's ahead, and it's a beautiful day outside. (20 degrees. Enjoying your snow, Saskatchewan?) I'm feeling good. How are you?

Later Days.