COMM 333: Color me deconstructed.

The trendy thing in food these days is the deconstructed meal. In digital video, we are afforded the ability to deconstruct in new ways that, perhaps only the bravest filmmaker attempted before. As a function of deconstruction, I chose to lead my group down two distinct paths, which, while not precisely a binary opposition, are at least a kind of dualism. The first is the contrast between Kubrickian filmmaking and Music Video style, which will be discussed in depth in my final commentary. The latter, which will be discussed herein, is the contrast between vibrant color and high-contrast black and white, eventually leading to a deconstruction of color into it's distinct channels.

Visible Spectrum
In this aspect, I must be solely technical, and state that, thanks to a very good camera, set up with the excellent Magic Lantern software, we had an incredible control over white balance in the field. Very little had to be done to correct whites in post.

The Color Wheel
 We shot in a low contrast mode (what the industry calls flat, in this case, it is Technicolor's cinestyle) in order to be able to bring up a wider range of colors in post with a simple contrast correction than we could with a full range image coming directly from the camera. This also gave us an incredible amount of wiggle room in color correction, as our colors were captured with very low saturation, and it is easier to boost saturation than to decrease it evenly.

Primary Colors
The red cups are a theme in our video's Kubrickian first half. This is the most promenient use of primary color in that section. However, our second half, which is inspired by music video aesthetics, is a total deconstruction of color into it's primary channels. Two short clips are played multiple times, each in full color, then the red channel only, then the green channel only, then the blue channel only, before going into a black and white, slow motion cut. This means that, all told, color is extremely present in it's primary forms in our second half.

Warm/Cool shots
The Kubrickian half of our video is mostly warm, when in color. It has a single shot that is done in an intensely cool tone, in order to cause a sense of discomfort. The MTV half of our video is shot in a neutral tone, as the shots are often far too fast to even notice warmth/coolness.

Contrast
The black and white shots of this video are done in an ultra-high contrast style. This is to heighten the feeling of theatrics that is present throughout this video.

While not all of the concepts apply to our particular video, contrast and primary colors are completely present in such a way that the real star element of the video is color. This is probably not at all surprising to anyone who is familiar with my passion for color grading. These decisions were highly stylistic, and ultimately cannot be aptly considered in a blog post of this length. To consider the color alone is something that could take quite a bit of ink, when considering the artistic influences and style choices in each shot. Moreover, there is a vast wealth of babble I can make crediting Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and 2001 as well as Russell Mulcahy's work on The Highlander for some of the choices, not to mention Baz Lurhman's Romeo and Juliet, for it's method of adaptation and modernization that inspired me  while conceptualizing this video, or Bertholdt Brecht's Alienation Theory, which permeates through most of my work, but is ultimately perfected in this piece. However, for the purposes of this blog, I will leave you with this surface look at the color work I have realized. That is to say - deconstruction of color as a signifier of not only our villain's death, but of the pulling apart of our video at it's ends.

COMM 344: Doom Clones

Before there were games like Bioshock and Deus Ex making the FPS genre as diverse as it is derivative, FPS games were not generally called such, as evidenced by this chart of Usenet term usage frequency found on The Doom Wiki.

Blue is the use of FPS, red is the use of "doom clone"

According to this data, it wasn't until 1997 that the term first person shooter took hold, around the time that id released Quake. Between Doom and Quake, there were few types of first person shooter in the world. Most notably considered to be unauthorized Doom clones are System Shock, Star Wars: Dark Forces (which later became the massively successful Jedi Knight series, and Duke Nukem 3D (which also copied id's penchant for making a famous side-scroller into a 3D shooter ala Wolfenstein 3D). Also of note, however, were first person shooters that not only cloned Doom's style, but also used it's engine. These included Raven's Heretic and Hexen, as well as Rogue's Strife. It is the second variety of Doom clone that I wish to consider for a moment.

Doom was the first game with an engine-as-a-product mentality. Before Doom, game engines were disposable. If one game used the same engine as another, there was a good chance the second was a sequel to the first, this is the case with Megaman 1-6, Super  Mario Bros and the Japanese version of Super Mario Bros 2, and many other sequels of the era. The idea of another game series, or even another game company, using the same engine was unheard of before Doom, and now, according to Mark Deloura of the CEDEC (That is, the CESA Developer's Conference, a conference held by the Japanese CESA or Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association to connect with game developers), 58% of games in development in 2011 used a premade engine of some sort. This path was forged by Heretic, Hexen, and Strife.  Unfortunately, id did not end up gaining much from their precedent. The idTech version included with Quake 3 was delayed just enough for Epic's Unreal Engine to come out and overtake idTech's market share and become the lead game engine in the world. idTech is now only used in games published by id's owners, Bethesda, who don't use it in their flagship games (i.e. The Elder Scrolls and Fallout).

COMM 344: The Level

The perfect level is one that challenges us, but does not frustrates us, one that is neither linear nor a hedge maze. id Software has made a lot of games: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and Rage are the ones that come to mind immediately. 3 of those 4 games are level based shooters, while Rage is an open-world shooter (there's a longstanding community rumor that Borderlands was more or less designed based on prerelease footage of Rage, based mostly on how similar the games feel, and how Borderlands was developed almost entirely in the eternity between when id first showed off Rage and when it shipped, a year after Borderlands). The goal of this post is to analyze the structure of game levels, particularly how id changed it's methods of making a first level between Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

Wolfenstein 3D's Episode 1, Floor 1

The first level of  Wolfenstein 3D is mostly linear. There are some corners for early weapon upgrades hidden here and there, and a set of connected rooms that provide at least 3 ways to complete the level. As far as general game levels go, it's fairly fun to play through, though the world is flat in every way. The level takes place on a single floor of a castle to compensate for the lack of variance in floor height that the Wolfenstein engine had. The engine also lacked diagonal walls, making everything feel somewhat square.

Doom's E1M1: Hangar

Doom's first level is even more linear than Wolfenstein's, on the surface. The main path of the level is such that it can be completed in less than 30 seconds, however, some early weapon and armor pickups, plus a secret area that takes up roughly a third of the map, give the level more replay value than Wolfenstein's three slightly different grey and blue square paths. Doom also adds floor height and diagonal walls, in addition to enviromental dangers. The look and feel of Doom's level is closer to the expectation we would have for real architecture than it's predescessor. The issue with the level design emulating reality is that idTech 1 could not do what is called floor over floor, that is, multiple levels on top of each other. Height could done, but a second story, or even a balcony or bridge, was out of the question.

Romero's sketch for Quake's E1M1

Quake changes things considerably. idTech 2 introduced floor over floor, as well as smooth slopes (rather than idTech 1's solution of doing slopes as really tiny stairs) and rudimentary support for curved walls (basically the really tiny stairs idea, but with walls). Quake's layout is pretty linear, but contains more bonus rooms, a bridge, and the introduction of switches to id's first level work. Doom 2 also contained switches in it's first level, and Doom had switches and keycards throughout most of it's levels after the first, the reason I count Quake's inclusion of the switch as novel is that it's the first a switch is introduced in the first level of an unfamilar game, as Doom 2 was so similar to Doom that the game could assume more knowledge of mechanics in it's first level.

While first levels are not always the most exciting in the game, they serve an important purpose as a benchmark for change in a developer's expectations of a player. id Software made their levels more interesting over time while also increasing the general scope and challenge of the levels.

COMM 344: The Sounds Of Doom

Doom's sound style is rooted in two places - heavy music, such as Soundgarden and AC/DC, and the popular Sound Design library of sound effects. Sound Design is notable for it's use in other media, particularly in episodes of Doctor Who and in 1994's The Santa Clause (where enemy death sounds from Doom are used as Reindeer grunts).

But more to the point, we look at Doom's music soundtrack. The primary source (both in the sense of it being the main source of information and a literal primary source) of information on the inspiration for Doom's music is in the music files themselves. The files reference, for instance, AC/DC's Big Gun as an inspiration for E2M1 of doom.wad.

We know this is true of the whole soundtrack because, in 2007, John Romero released Bobby Prince's unused tracks from Doom (doom.wad) and Doom 2 (doom2.wad) with notations as to which albums inspired which unused tracks, and which unused tracks were adapted into other tracks. We also know, from Romero's own admission, that he gave Bobby Prince a stack of metal CDs to work from for Doom's (doom.wad and doom2.wad) soundtrack.

(Author's note: references to doom.wad, doom1.wad, and doom2.wad are made in order to show the usage of a primary source while not being able to upload that source directly due to copyright concerns. All the information found in the WAD files can also be found dissected on The Doom Wiki, but people who cite wikis as sources belong in the setting of Doom's second episode [hell])

COMM 333: Black Music on MTV

The situation with black music in the early days of MTV is fascinating in several regards. While, in lecture, we focused on the contributions of Rick James and Micheal Jackson, there are some other interesting points that bear mention.

There's the issue of musical memetics (that is, the cultural genetics of music, herein seen meme as a form of musical genealogy), which is an interesting subject in and of itself, but takes on a new dimension when we look at it's impact on MTV's refusal to play black music.

To dig into this, lets consider the memetic genealogy of a given song, with black influences in bold.

Another One Bites The Dust

• Queen's biggest inspirations in general are The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
• John Deacon, Queen's bassist and writer of this song, however, was inspired heavily by disco band Chic, whose song "Goodtimes" would have it's riff adapted into Queen's Another One Bites The Dust as well as into Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight later on.
• Chic also inspired Duran Duran's song Rio. Themselves, they were inspired by Ben E King, Arethra Franklin, and Parliament Funkadelic.
• Those three artists track back to Otis Redding, and Chuck Berry.
• The Beatles and Led Zeppelin are born of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, respectively.

The point being that most music that MTV was perfectly fine with playing and representing is, in a memetic-genealogical sense, far more black than white. Yet MTV didn't want to represent black music on their network? It seems as if the real issue that MTV had was in representing black artists as equal to white artists. When they did support a black artist in Micheal Jackson, it was after he left his Motown roots behind to create pop music with Quincy Jones. The threat of Jackson's blackness was subdued by a music with mass market appeal. Jackson's physical features were softer, less tough than Rick James. He was, in essence, white washed. Which begs the question of whether the industry desire to make him seem less black is culpable for his plastic surgery later in life.

COMM 344: Doom and the Columbine problem.

When the Columbine Massacre happened in 1999, pundits jumped on Doom. As this article from The Denver Post in May 1999 shows, a lot of focus was put on Eric Harris's love for the game. People speculated that Harris had created a Doom level of Columbine High School, that he and Klebold had practiced their massacre in-game. 

Commonly, Doom players rebutted this assertion. The common rebuttal is that enemies in Doom are aggressive. That, in 1999, the ability to change enemy behavior so that they flee was not possible. Regardless of these rebuttals, it is of high importance that we look into news media's portrayal of the impact of video games on violent behavior.

In the modern day, video game violence is no longer such a concern. In "Are Video Games Art?", Nick Gillespie states "...video games have become too ubiquitous to prohibit, their predicted damage to the fabric of society has stubbornly refused to materialize." Essentially, the people who called for bans on games in the Doom/Night Trap era were proved wrong by history. The news media still wants to discuss the issue, but banning video games is an absent concept.

This shift is apparent from a perusal of Gillespie's article. On Columbine, he says "The Columbine rampage was routinely attributed to the killers' playing of first-person-shooter (FPS) games such as Doom (where players were "space marines" fighting demons) and Wolfenstein 3D (World War II POWs vs. zombie Nazis), even though later analysis concluded, in the words of psychologist Peter Langman, "These are not ordinary kids who played too many video games.". 

But what does the lack of calls for mass-banning of games really mean? Does it mean that child-friendly games like Super Smash Bros have gotten us to a point that banning games is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or is it games like Bioshock and Flower that reinforce the idea that games are art, as Gillespie argues? While the motivations for acceptance of video games are unclear, it is clear that games have become more socially acceptable in our society. Games are no longer our scapegoat. (Leave that to social media).

COMM 406: The Century Of Self

Edward Bernays was influential to the idea that Americans are now essentially consumers, and no longer citizens. He wanted to find a way to sell to the people in large cities that came about in the turn of the century. To accomplish this, he looked to the work of his uncle, Sigmund Freud. Freud's work concerned the idea of humans having hidden, irrational desires. Bernays decided that he could profit off of people's irrational desires. The film The Century Of Self articulates that there is more to our purchasing decisions than information.

The idea of selling things with information was a longstanding one. Items would be marketed on necessity, on facts as to how they will improve one's life practically. This changed with Bernays. He was the first to theorize that we should sell products based on irrational desires, and it worked.

Today we purchase Apple computers because they make us look innovative and young. We purchase Lucky Jeans because Oprah once told us they would make us sexy. We buy things to satisfy an irrational faith in image over substance. Is there a practical benefit to a Mac over an HP PC? In most cases, no (Final Cut Pro being the notable exception). We buy Mac because we want to be as Mac users are. Do Lucky Jeans offer any benefit? They fit inconsistently, are pre-shrunk, and tear easily, but we buy them at a higher price than superiorly made Levi jeans because we want to be seen as the type that wears Lucky Brand. What about Beats headphones? Tests have proven them to be lower quality than Sony headphones that sell for 150 dollars less, and yet we buy them for the idea that we can be like Dr. Dre. We want to be something bigger than ourselves, not for the value of self-improvement, but because it might chance to impress others.

That's essentially what Bernays theorized. He thought that we would want something for irrational reasons, and today, rationality seldom comes into play in purchases.

COMM 344: Doom and the question of art.

Artistically, Doom shares a lot of ideas with the Alien(s) film series. It's not hard to see why, in an interview with The Guardian, John Romero, the lead designer of Doom, listed H.R. Giger's Necronomicon and James Cameron's Aliens as the primary influences on the game's style. If you are familiar with the Alien(s) series, you'll know that H.R. Giger was the designer of the Xenomorph species that exists throughout the films. With the atmosphere being inspired by Aliens, and the monsters inspired by Giger's Necronomicon, it bears looking into Giger's work.

From the title Necronomicon, we immediately see that HR Giger was inspired by the work of the legendary gothic horror writer HP Lovecraft. In "The Gothic and the Fantastic in the Age of Digital Reproduction", Anne Quéma argues that Giger's work is both Gothic and a work of Fantasy. The Gothic is considered to be texts which are present in the place between pure reality and pure imagination. Quéma quotes Todorov's The Fantastic "The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.". Todorov gives the specific example of the devil, which, while not present in HR Giger's work, is absolutely present in Doom. The series takes place largely in hell, and forces us to encounter demons that are visually very much like the works of Giger. One of the earliest dialogue moments in Doom 3 is "the devil is real, I know, I built his cage".

But Quéma also looks into the sexual undertones that Giger put into his work. For Giger, necrophilia is a repeated theme. Quéma states that "erotic seduction is checkmated the necrotic display that identifies the viewer as a posthumous witness."  Giger is essentially creating an image that juxtaposes the sexual and the grotesque so as to create a level of discomfort in the viewer. In Alien, this is evident in Ripley stripping to her underwear in the escape pod before her final confrontation with the Xenomorph. In Doom, you shoot white plasma from a phallic looking gun that is mounted in the center of your body at a series of zombies and demons. The influence of Giger's necrophiliac work is subtle, but once you notice it, quite obvious.

The Plasma Rifle being fired at an Undead Soldier

1. Quéma, Anne. "The Gothic And The Fantastic In The Age Of Digital Reproduction." English Studies In Canada 30.4 (2004): 81-119. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

COMM 344: Research in gaming and education.

Slavin, Robert E., Nancy L. Karweit, and Baltimore, MD. Center for Social Organization of Schools. Johns Hopkins Univ. "An Extended Cooperative Learning Experience In Elementary School." (1979): ERIC. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

This article explores the efficacy of various team-based learning models. Included is the Teams-Games-Tournament model, in which Mathematics students competed with other students to earn points for their teams, and at the end of each week, the team scores were posted publicly. In the STAD model (used for language arts), students were put into teams, then scored based on their performance in typical class work, with team results posted weekly. In the Jigsaw II method, students were given a portion of each chapter, and went into teams first by topic, and then a mixed team of every topic, to discuss and teach each other student. Students were tested on basic skills before and after the models were used. The STAD method proved to be useful in Language Arts, while the TGT method was useful for Mathematics. Jigsaw II proved mostly unhelpful.

Bacon, Melanie A., and Marilyn M. Ault. "ALTEC Learning Games: Successful Integration Of Learning And Gaming." Online Submission (2009): ERIC. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

This article explores the idea that mathematics and language arts can be taught through video games. The reasoning the article gives is that children are already motivated to play games, and therefore learning through games is an easier sell. The games presented are essentially Space Invaders level complexity, but with subjects like basic addition added in. In the classroom, these games proved to be more effective than tradtional learning, with 14/24 students getting an 80% or above before games and 20/24 students getting an 80% or above after games.

Dusel, John P., Sacramento. California State Dept. of Education, and Others And. Bibliography Of Instructional Materials For The Teaching Of German. Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve. n.p.: 1975. ERIC. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

This article aims to catalog various methodolgies for teaching German language in k-12 environments. While a large number of the materials discussed are periodicals and books, variations on Bingo and other children's games are present throughout the text. In total, of the hundreds of learning products listed, only 17 were games. This speaks not to the efficacy of gaming in language education, but to the underwhelming presence of game-based learning. 

Oregon Univ., Eugene. Oregon Elementary English Project. Games And Activities, Volume 1, Part C: Language; Levels A-B (Grades 1 And 2). n.p.: 1972. ERIC. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

This article discusses possible games that can be used to grow the language skills of elementary aged students. Though the article primarily looks at games for 1st and 2nd grade, it also discusses game play for students as high as 6th grade. The author believes that game play encourages learning because it is different than the everyday classroom.

National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, IL. Ideas Plus: A Collection Of Practical Teaching Ideas. Book Eleven. n.p.: 1993. ERIC. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

This article discusses many ideas in education, but of concern to us is the author's editing game. Students were given Monopoly money for every good edit they made in a peer's paper. This money was used in an auction at the end of class periods for things like snacks, school supplies, and the ability to turn in a paper late. The exercise proved to be an effective motivator for the students. 

Tatar, Sibel, English, and Communication, Bloomington, IN. ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, and Bloomington, IN. Family Learning Association. Dramatic Activities In Language Arts Classrooms: Resource Summary. ERIC Digest. n.p.: 2002. ERIC. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

This article explores the usage of creative drama in the classroom to build upon language skills. The paper theorizes that children learn language through things like theater games because it forces them to use language in a way that simulates reality.

COMM 333: Goodwin's model and Nirvana's Sliver

In the Sliver video, Nirvana chose to create an image of a garage band style performance. The song itself is about being babysat by grandparents as a child. The lyrics read as a personal story being told by Cobain about his life. In visual form, this is enhanced by the video's frequent extreme closeups on Cobain's face. It's contradicted by the presence of a medical model of a baby in the womb and a scarecrow-like dummy wearing a rubber mask. The juxtaposition of child-like themes, intimate close-ups, and things that a child would perceive as scary work to create an image that suggest a troubled childhood, something the lyrics do not confirm until the final moments.

The imagery looks as though it were made on low quality equipment. This is two-fold in meaning - firstly, the distortion of the music matches the distorted look of the video. Secondly, this can suggest the idea of young kids making their own music video, which plays to amplify the lyrics' storytelling quality.

The performance aspect of the video is very similar to a live Nirvana performance, but with a few key differences. The video is in a much more cramped space that the large stages Nirvana often played. The video is almost made in a way that suggests this is what the band looks like performing at someone's home. This makes the video more intimate and relatable than a performance video like Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, which takes place in a high school gymnasium. 

COMM 344: Doom and Modification Culture

Doom is widely known for it's extremely open stance on modding. In 1993, mods were limited to levels and basic graphic changes. Still, this was enough for many people. Tons of levels in the style of the original game were created, but some gamers weren't satisfied.

The first major Doom modification was Aliens TC, a total conversion of Doom into a game based on the film Aliens. It inspired a slew of other movie themed mods, including ones based on Star Wars and Batman.

Batman Doom is of particular note, as it was one of the first total conversions to use a program called Dehacked to modify Doom's code. This was at a time when Doom was closed source, and no one knew how exactly the game was coded. Dehacked worked by reverse engineering the game's DOS executable. People worked tirelessly to change a game that was mostly closed off from change.

But in 1996, Quake was released, and the Doom modding community began to die. But then, in 1997, Doom's source code was released in a not-for-profit license, and in 1999, it went GPL.

The result? Doom became the new Hello World. People run Doom on tons of different devices. People port other games to Doom's engine, including Sonic The Hedgehog, The DayZ, and Resident Evil.

A game so bright in the engine of a game that had more than 40 shades of brown in it's 256 colors.

The modding community has kept Doom alive 21 years after it came out, but Doom is also timeless for it's art style, which I'll cover in my next blog.

COMM 406: Frith Analysis

Ad - War Horse, Vanity Fair January 2012, page 11.

The surface meaning of this ad is simple: visually, this is a film, and in this film, there is a boy and a horse. Textually we see that aforementioned horse is of/pertaining to war in some regard.

The advertiser's intended meaning is that the film is epic, a journey, and even a tear jerker. This is a sad movie that will ultimately uplift you.

The cultural meanings are great and varied.

• The boy and his horse are close together. The horse is arching it's head over the boy, as though to hug him. They're friends.
• The boy and horse are looking to the left. Because of the way we read from left to right, this appears to be indicative of looking back on things. This is furthered by the boy looking over his shoulder.
• The sky also takes advantage of the left-right reader model. there is sunshine and blue skys behind us, and dark storm clouds ahead. 
• The overall color scheme, rich in reds and deep natural browns, indicates a historical setting, a serious tone, and a theme of passion. 
• The style of the image is evocative of Civil War era paintings, particularly the Gettysburg Cyclorama, which has far less horses than I remembered. The film itself takes place during WWI, but nonetheless, the cultural image of cavalry horses on canvas is a strong one to indicate bravery.
• The font of the words "WAR HORSE" is strong and serious, while dignified. This give the reader the impression that this film is high class drama, not Helvetica Hipster or something of that ilk.

COMM333: Analyzing Sliver

From it's intentionally low-fi video presentation (a novel idea in 1993) to the embracement of childlike consumerism, Nirvana's Sliver music video is something of a peculiarity. In 1991, Nirvana's Nevermind album knocked Micheal Jackson's Dangerous off the #1 spot in the charts. Yet two years later, here was Nirvana, the biggest band in the world, making a video that looked like a garage band.

Here's a song by a "big rich rock band" (as Kurt Cobain described his band on MTV Unplugged) that's lyrically about an upset child, yet the images of childhood are joyful, and the video looks like it was shot on the world's cheapest camcorder. Kurt Cobain's sweater is ripped. Krist Novoselic, generally the band's most charismatic member, is barely shown as more than a shadow. This is a video that hearkens back to the band Nirvana used to be during their time at Sub-Pop.

The video is interesting, then, because of the presence of Dave Grohl behind the drums. When Sliver was recorded in 1990, Interim drummer Dan Peters was the man behind the drums. The band used the audio from the Dan Peters version, but Dave Grohl is the one pantomiming in the video. The reasoning behind this is pretty obvious, being that Dave Grohl was the only drummer most Nirvana fans knew, and even Bleach/Sub-Pop era devotees would only recall Chad Channing's time with the band, but the idea gets fuzzy when one considers that, when Nirvana first recorded In Bloom, it was with Chad Channing, and he was in the original music video. When Grohl joined the band, they rerecorded the song and did a new, totally different music video. Why they would go to the trouble for one song and not the other is curious, but it speaks to a deeper meaning in Cobain's head.

Sliver was the video to promote Incesticide, a corporate cash-in album of unreleased tracks from the early days that Cobain only approved on condition that he was allowed to design the album art. If Kurt's gonna be forced to make an album just as quick buck for the label, he's sure as hell going to promote it in the most anti-commercial way he can. Of course, Incesticide turned out to be an awesome album, but Kurt's greatest influence on it was to make sure only the diehard fans would buy it. Making a music video that looked raw helped to insure that Nirvana wouldn't be only known as the band that beat MJ.

COMM 344: Doom and The ESRB.

Recently, Night Trap made the news. From having 203 copies traded into a game store, to how Kickstarter almost brought us an HD remaster. Night Trap is a strange game. For all it's innovation in full motion video, for the star power of Dana Plato of Diff'rent Strokes, for all the half-naked teenagers and PG-13 level violence, no one seems to care about Night Trap. Maybe it's because the game is generally considered terrible, or how full motion video in games didn't take off, but it begins to feel like Night Trap would be forgotten completely in a different world.

But that world is one where Senator Joe Lieberman never saw the violence and sexuality of Night Trap, The spine-ripping of Mortal Kombat, and the demon-killing bloody good times of Doom. That is a world where congressional hearings never lead to the creation of the ESRB.

Night Trap doesn't get much more sexual than this. (Digital Pictures/SEGA via Wikipedia)

At the time, Mortal Kombat and Doom had the most realistic visuals of any game on the market, and Night Trap was little more than an interactive movie. Games were experiencing a frightening amount of visual realism, which, when mixed with blood and breasts, creates a bit of a controversy stew.

Night Trap on it's own couldn't have this. The game wasn't particularly violent, nor was it particularly sexual. Worse things happen on TV every week. Mortal Kombat couldn't have done this on it's own. It was primarily an arcade game, and home versions were typically censored.

But Doom? Doom was it's own controversy. It didn't need the rare Sega CD that Night Trap needed. It didn't need a pocket full of quarters at a local mall like Mortal Kombat. Doom came on two floppy discs, and the first third of the game was free. All you needed was a DOS computer with an IBM 386 processor and 4 MB of ram. This was a lot more common than the Sega CD, and free is certainly cheaper than 25 cents every time you die. Confounding the problem was that id Software, the developers of Doom, encouraged people to share their shareware copy with friends.

Doom difficulty select. (id Software via GiantBomb)

Other games could argue that they weren't ulta-violent.  Doom couldn't. Hard mode on Doom was titled "Ultra-Violence".

It was great that the ESRB came along from this. No longer did gaming have to fear the stigma of being an industry for children. The ratings that the three games responsible received? M for Mature. In the modern day, the most revered games share that rating, and mature content isn't all shotguns, demons, and nightgowns. Games like Bioshock and The Last Of Us are mature for reasons beyond their violence, and without the path to violence that Doom helped to pave, they may never have happened.

And of course, Doom's modding community, which I'll cover in my next post, means that Doom can continue to get even more brutal.

COMM344: The Art and Influence of Doom.

It's older brother, Wolfenstein 3D, was the first ever first person shooter. It was the first game in it's genre to use varying floor heights, textured floors and ceilings, and varying ammo types. It single handedly created the massive game modding culture that is now one of PC gaming's most celebrated features. It was, along with Night Trap and Mortal Kombat, one of the reasons for the creation of the ESRB. It's nine free shareware levels, known collectively as "Knee Deep In The Dead" were some of the most iconic level designs in gaming history. 

The game was Doom, and it's influence was obvious. From the fact that a game from 1993 is now considered a must-have on every new console (and every console has it, from the Atari Jaguar and SNES to the PS3 and Xbox 360), to the plethora of derivative titles (Doom bore Heretic, which bore the Elder Scrolls franchise, Doom bore most shooters, but particularly Space Marine shooters like Halo, Gears Of War, Killzone, and Crysis) Doom was a massive success. This is a game that I have personally purchased on Xbox 360, Steam, Boxed PC Copy, and Game Boy Advance. Perhaps the only game I've purchased more times is Tetris, and that's not the same experience or worse on every system.

The important thing about Doom, besides it's incredible replay value, huge influence on the industry, and great art design, is the way it's perhaps the most charmingly violent game I've ever played. Plenty of games are violent, but Doom has a way of making violence make you smile. Mods and addons like Batman Doom and Brutal Doom (not to mention the massive conversion of Doom into Sonic Robo Blast 2) have extended the life of a 21 year old game into infinity. Everything about Doom makes me nostalgic, and I didn't even first play it until it and myself were 13 years old.

COMM406: Cult Branding and Technology.

Gaming has always been a beneficiary of cult branding. From the days of Atari vs Intellivison, to the days where you couldn't pick up a gaming magazine without hearing about how SEGA does what Nintendon't. In the modern day, this is often taken to an extreme in the console war, with the joke that goes as follows:

"Why do they call it an Xbox 360?"
"Why?"
"Because when you see it, you do a 360 degree turn and walk away."
"360 degrees means you would be walking towards it still."
"Shut up."

However, despite the vicious cult-like attitudes of console gamers, PC gamers are even more devoted. A quick peek into the /r/pcmasterrace subreddit shows a world where PC gamers are the "master race" and console gamers are "peasants". To a degree, this is done in jest, but the reaction that many PC gamers have to a Steam sale (i.e. compulsively spending money until they go broke) is reason enough to suspect something a little more extreme than simple brand devotion that goes even further into the Linux vs Windows (and never Mac) , AMD vs Nvidia, and Steam vs GOG vs Origin vs Uplay divides.

But PC gaming is still only a minor blip in the cult-branded market compared to the glory that is cryptocurrency.

Official Logo of Dogecoin

Bitcoin is, by nature, a political movement. It attracts libertarian politics and people interested in fiscal anarchy. Bitcoin is the spokesrebel of a generation of unenthused Batman villains.  More dangerous is the advertising methodology of Dogecoin. Dogecoin creator Jackson Palmer left the community this summer after deciding that dogecoin was "cult-like". How is Dogecoin a cult?

- Dogecoin is spread via two methods: Giving away free money and relying on a well established cultural icon (the doge meme).
- Dogecoin's subreddit disallows negative statements about the coin, thereby keeping those who get into the culture from hearing things that would make them want to leave.
- Dogecoin's developers actively discourage suggestions that would improve the quality/value of the coin (such as limiting supply).

This has worked exceedingly well for Dogecoin. The official dogecoin subreddit has gone from 84 users in December of last year to 87,000 users today. If ever user had an equal amount of the 100 billion dogecoins that will exist at the end of September, it would amount to 187 dollars each.Of course, this is not the way things are. There are, as in any economy, the haves and the have-nots. But even those who only hold a couple hundred doge (the 467 doge I still hold is worth about 6 cents) are happy just to be a part of the group, a group that is ultimately a money-making brand.