Cheerleaders are kind of a funny thing, huh? They seem the last remnants of a bygone era where only men cared about sports, and nothing is better for men than drinking beer, seeing beautiful ladies jiggle, and watching other grown men in spandex bump into each other. (Wait. What is a "smokescreen" in football, really? Ah! Moving on!)
That's all fine and dandy, except that they're still a thing. Yes, every franchise has their own cheerleaders. And they still parade them out. CBS, NBC, and Fox still make it a point to include shots of them in their broadcasts. The NFL and those individual organizations - with their billionaire owners - make so much bank that it stands to reason that those cheerleaders are getting their fair share of the pie, right?
Well, turns out, not so much. Like, at all.
Turns out, the average hourly wage of an NFL cheerleader is $9 to $15 an hour. Basically, they're making minimum wage, or the same wage as anyone else in an entry-level position. Evidently, Raiders cheerleaders were making $5 an hour in 2014, well below minimum wage. The hourly wage covers the hours spent training, and there's also a "match fee" for game days.
Typically, there are two tiers of cheerleaders, "elite" and "armature." Elite are the ladies you see at the stadium and on television. They make between $100 and $200 in such fees, while armature make about $60 to $70. The breakdown of the season's income though is a little depressing considering the NFL made about $10 billion in revenue. Elite cheerleaders earn about $3,500 for their services while armature cheerleaders make about $2,000.
A lot of people might be willing to shrug it off, saying that $3,500 over the course of eight games isn't too shabby. In essence, they're making almost $500 per game! Sounds pretty good, right? A few thousand dollars for eight shifts sounds all right.
NFL officials - generally the low men (and now women!) on the totem pole - make considerably more money. On the surface, it's easy to pass it off as simple volume. Cheerleaders only work home games, of which there are only eight. Officials, on the other hand, will work an entire season's worth of games, of which there are nearly double the number. So of course officials will make more money.
Except that the breakdown is still highly uneven. NFL officials make between $25,000 to $70,000 per season. (This is much higher in MLB, NHL, and NBA, where there are substantially more games. In this case, the "more money because more shifts" does make some sense.) If you break that down per game, officials on the lower end of that salary spectrum will earn about $1,500 per game - nearly $1,000 more than the cheerleaders. And if those long-time officials who earn on the higher end get broken down, it's about $4,300 per game.
One of the main arguments, of course, will be that the officials are more important to the game. Cheerleaders are just there to look pretty while officials are there to oversee the game. This argument is a fair one to an extent, but it downplays the skill level required for cheerleaders. It talks about them like it's an entry level position, or that it's unskilled labor.
NFL cheerleaders are considered a part-time gig, and many organizations even require these women have other jobs. They're expected to attend two four-hour rehearsals each week, while game days turn into eight-hour shifts. Never mind the demanding nature of the position, wherein the women must be diligent about maintaining their weight and tone, lest they get benched and lose a paycheck. It's also a hyper competitive market. The official requirements might not be that complicated - high school diploma or GED, having a full time job elsewhere, and some squads have a height/weight ratio requirement - it's still something of a skilled position. Applicants with prior dance or cheerleading experience have a better shot than those that don't, although if you're attractive enough, you have a shot. Not to demean the patience of other stadium employees like beer hawkers, vendors, and ticket takers, but cheerleading, by comparison, is much more of a skilled position.
Let it just sink in, by the way, that NFL squads expect women to commit 16+ hours a week to cheerleading while requiring they also have full time jobs outside it. Probably worth noting that practices and rehearsals are unpaid. In essence, cheerleaders are expected to be working and active for 55-60 hours each week. Alternatively, you could skip the other job requirement if you're a full time college student. So yeah, it is something of a time commitment.
None of this is to speak of the appearances they will make at publicity and charity events, some of which are unpaid, but typically, these events net the women more money than the actual cheerleading at games does.
And this is sort of the problem: cheerleaders keep getting treated like part-time, unskilled employees. Yet these women could potentially spend full time hours involved in squad activities - from games to practices to public events. If the justification for paying these women such low wages is that they're part-time, then it gets really absurd when you hear that the minimum salary for NFL mascots is $23,000. The lowest paid mascots make about $3,000 for two games, putting them up there with NFL officials in terms of per game payment - well above cheerleaders.
The other part of the problem is that for a job treated like part-time and entry-level, the teams sure do have a lot of insane requirements. A heavily reported leak from a former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader made its rounds in the news outlets some time ago, and it's pretty messed up. Quite literally, the women are judged explicitly by physical appearances. Right from the rule book, each woman "is expected to maintain ideal body weight and physical look for the duration of your contract. Weigh-ins will be held at the discretion of the Ravens. a) Failure to comply with body weight and/or appearance guidelines could result in suspension from the team or gameday suspensions. b) 3 game misses due to physical appearance suspensions could result in dismissal from the team."
Several women have reported being benched and left out of big games because they gained a few pounds. Despite looking totally fine, and with one woman, still weighing less than she did the year before, they lost paychecks as a result.
I hate to bring up the hypocrisy, especially when it seems so obvious, but this is taken directly from the Ravens contract with cheerleaders:
"Cheerleaders shall not commit any act that will or may create notoriety, bring the Ravens or cheerleaders into public dispute, or reflect adversely on Ravens and/or Ravens' sponsors."
That applies to the cheerleaders. Listed examples include exotic dancing, posing in nude or semi-nude photos, participating in swim suit contests (which sounds absurd when the highest selling Sports Illustrated issue is its stupid swim suit edition), and publishing memoirs of their time as a cheerleader (probably because they know how horrible they are towards those women and want to keep it under wraps).
It seems a little strange that this applies to their cheerleaders - a group of women the organization regularly refers to as "invaluable" to their operations and as "ambassadors" - but not, you'll note, to any of their players. The Ravens are an organization in which two of the best selling jerseys in franchise history were Ray Lewis and Ray Rice. And another highly popular player is Terrell Suggs. So apparently, involvement in a murder and obstruction of justice, knocking out your fiancee and casually dragging her body around, and more beating of wives are not detrimental enough to the organization, but models posing in string bikinis on their free time (because they're told they're part-time employees and should seek alternative income elsewhere) is over the line.
(As an aside, the Buffalo Jills sent their cheerleaders to an event called "The Man Show," which had all the women walking around the casino in their bikinis. So apparently, the women aren't allowed to use their looks for personal gain, but the Bills organization sure doesn't mind profiting from it!)
These organizations are also extraordinarily controlling over the lives of these women. Teams give out guidelines that sound like an 19th century "Lady Etiquette" book. It ranges from how much bread to eat at a formal event to how to properly polish nails. It even covers how to "properly" clean their lady bits. In many cases, they're forbidden from posting selfies on Facebook, and often, they'll pull images from someone's Facebook (without their permission) and display it for all of the other women as examples of what not to do.
Oh yeah, and you know those calendars? Yeah, the cheerleaders themselves have to pay for them. Not just one, but ten a month. Yes, apparently, the cheerleaders are expected to spend their own money and are required to sell as many as they can on their own. You know, kind of like one of those elementary school candy fundraisers! If women weren't able to buy the required number of calendars, they would be benched.
Not enough nonsense? The cheerleaders are also expected to pay for their own uniforms, which are about $650. Even more, the women are required to subject themselves to a physical inspection in their final rehearsal before game day. Coaches and managers stand with clipboards, scribbling down all the physical flaws that must be addressed in order for these women to be allowed to work the game. One would imagine that at best, it's all slightly dehumanizing and demeaning. Quite literally, they're often required to subject themselves to a "jiggle test."
One woman from the Buffalo Jills reported that she was pulled aside and told her hair was not "game ready." She was told to see the squad's stylist to fix the color. Ok, reasonable enough (well, considering everything else, at least). Except that she was expected to pay for the coloring herself. For a $90 hair coloring, being part of the Jills netted her a measly $5 discount.
One of the ultimate problems, of course, is that in this multi-billion dollar industry, with organizations making hundreds of millions on their own and sharing billions in collective bargaining revenue, the cheerleaders don't have any representation. NFL players have been gaining more power in the business - and rightfully so - because they have the Player's Association. The NFLPA has been hugely critical in stopping owners from enacting abusive and exploitative policies. The NFL referees also have a union that participates in collective bargaining agreements. Officials and players, on the most part, get a fair share. (Perhaps an article for another day is how they might not actually be getting a reasonably "fair share" of the NFL pie, but they're in much better positions than other stadium and team employees.)
NFL cheerleaders don't. There's been talk of unionizing, but cheerleaders are less central to the overall product. We've already seen what damage replacement officials can do, and there's a reason they don't even bother trying to have a season if the players hold out. If the cheerleaders unionize, there's a good chance the NFL teams just replace them and try to sweep everything under the rug.
What's strange is that with five teams involved in lawsuits for unfair wages and demeaning workplaces, the NFL should try to get ahead of this. The NFL has something of an image problem. With all that's happened with the Ray Rice incident, and the Greg Hardy incident, and the Terrell Suggs incidents, and the Ray McDonald incidents - all domestic violence cases involving some pretty horrifying violence against women -news has also surfaced of their breast cancer awareness scam.
Each October, the NFL pushes pink to the fold in an effort to raise awareness for breast cancer. It's one of the ways they claim to support women, which makes sense to do that given women are an increasingly important part of their fan base. (All this, mind you, while the NFL has told Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams - who practically started the entire thing - that he can't wear pink on his uniform all season long in memory of his mother and four aunts who died of breast cancer.)
Breast Cancer Awareness is a popular cause, and it makes it appear as if the NFL cares about women. But Business Insider crunched some numbers and found that a little over 8% of profits from the month go cancer research. They tout the whole $4.5 million thing too, but that's not even half a percent of the annual NFL revenue. Even more though, their Crucial Catch program has met criticism for being overly simplistic. It doesn't help either that the whole "annual screenings save lives" thing isn't even factually true. So on top of giving a tiny percentage to cancer research - and if anything, actually profiting from the Pink Ribbon - they're also dolling out inaccurate health information. (Surprise, surprise.) It's even been argued that what the NFL is doing on this might actually be more harmful than beneficial.
Oh, and by the way, only a portion of that 8% donated goes to actual cancer research. The numbers boil down to about $3.50 for every $100 in pink merchandise revenue going to actual cancer research.
So now that we've gone down that rabbit hole, it's kind of hard to look at the NFL as something of a positive force in anyway. (Mix in Lance Armstrong-to-the-nth-degree behavior in covering up concussions, and you've got an organization that is incredibly, morally reprehensible.)
Look, I love football. I do. And I've spent a lot of time and money on the NFL. Part of me is cringing at the fact that I am currently missing Tom Brady's "Revenge Tour," as he has thrown 20 touchdowns to 0 interceptions.* I'm super bummed that I'm missing one of Brady's best seasons, at a time when the Patriots have actual characters like Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman, who are hilarious and great and go against the normal idea that Bill Belichick is just this grumpy old man who chases players like Wes Welker out of the organization for being too personable in the media.
I would love nothing more than to be able to actively care about the NFL again, and to watch it, and to go to games. But it's impossible to do now. The NFL is the worst organization in America, clean and simple. Walmart doesn't even have half the dirt and stink on it that the NFL does, frankly.
In the grand scheme of things, paying the cheerleaders fairly and treating them like, I dunno, humans and employees rather than just a collection of jiggling body parts, is literally the smallest thing a $10 billion business can do. No one is saying they should make what the players make. Few are even arguing they should make what officials make. Everyone understands their roles in the overall game.
But if the NFL and its thirty-two organizations have no problem using their images to promote their club and objectifying them at fundraisers and in calendars, the very least they can do is pay them reasonable and actually treat them like employees. Teams like to talk about cheerleaders as being ambassadors for their clubs. They are, in fact, one of the many faces. They're held to a higher standard than the players and owners, but they aren't even paid as well as the mascot.
Well, Kevin Durant knows:
*Yes, yes, I know Brady has actually thrown one interception. I don't know why other people don't use this metric, but I've long separated interceptions from drops. My personal format works a bit like hits versus errors in baseball. If it doesn't count as a hit because an infielder made an error, then a quarterback shouldn't be credited with an interception if it came off of a dropped pass. Brady's one interception was the result of Edelman's drop (which he actually dropped twice, since it hit him in the hands, popped out, and then he hit it again to pop it up again).
Friday, October 30, 2015
Thursday, October 29, 2015
BioShock 2 (2010)
The original BioShock was a critical success and a sequel was quickly put in the works, only done a different studio than the previous installment. In many ways, BioShock 2 tries to stay true to its predecessor, all while feeling fundamentally different.
Returning the player to Rapture immediately feels a bit hollow. It's not to say the environments aren't wonderfully rendered and realized; it's just not as interesting and engaging since it was familiar. A large draw to the original experience in Rapture was that you had no idea what it was. You hadn't been there before. BioShock 2 takes a bit of a different approach to the dystopian civilization, however. Where BioShock set off to create narrow tunnels, small rooms, and a claustrophobic environment, BioShock 2 sprawls it all out a bit more. Rooms are larger and more open. Often, there are multiple pathways to a location. Sometimes, there are multiple levels of buildings within the same room.
This opens itself up to the more chaotic and action-oriented combat style of the game. For all the criticism BioShock: Infinite took for feeling a bit like a more generic shooter, that trend actually can be found in BioShock 2 first. With the open spaces, more enemies are thrown at you. There's more room to maneuver. There are additional splicer types that require quick movements and reactions. In essence, the suspense was removed, replaced with faster-paced, combat-focused gameplay. Additionally, you have access to both plasmids and weapons at all times.
Playing as a Big Daddy, you walk around Rapture with a gun in one hand and your other hand waiting to shoot a plasmid power. Gone are the days of having to switch between weapon and plasmid, which helped create a more tense and suspenseful style of combat in the first game. Here, there is literally no delay between hitting someone with Incinerate and shooting them with .50 caliber rounds. This only adds to the quickened combat.
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| Quick and easy access to both weapons and plasmids makes combat smoother, but that's because the combat is bigger and faster paced. Can't say I was a huge fan of that change, but it's not bad. It's just different. |
The inclusion of Big Sisters further solidifies the need for faster combat. As the name implies, Big Sisters are not too unlike Big Daddies in appearance. However, they are fast and agile, easily dodging shots and becoming a moving target. This is a divergence from the Big Daddy formula, which was more of an intense, power-driven format. Both still require planning, of course. Trap ammo and proximity mines do a world of wonders here just as they did in the previous game. Still, it's hard not to see just how different the combat style is in BioShock 2. It's more about the thrills than the chills.
There is an interesting element involving acquisition of ADAM. Instead of rescuing or harvesting Little Sisters, you must first find them, then fight off their Big Daddy. After defeating their original protectors, you can then choose to harvest the girls or adopt them. When you adopt, the Little Sisters will guide you to corpses filled with ADAM. While she's draining the deceased splicers, you must face off against an onslaught of other splicers eager to take you and your Little Sister out in order to get that ADAM for themselves. Each Little Sister is good for two drains. After you are finished and return them to their vents - in which the Rescue or Harvest prompt appears again - a Big Sister will come and attack. This element of adoption and gathering ADAM is one of the most interesting and fun additions to the game.
BioShock 2's story is probably the weak point of the game. It's not that it's a bad story at all; it just lacks the same kind of political and philosophical power from the last game, which tied in many different thematic elements to the plot. Here, we have a relatively simple story that, while revealing the philosophical differences between Lamb and Ryan, doesn't even feature them in the same game. This conflict is revealed through Audio Logs, but at this point, Ryan is already dead from the last game. In many ways, the story is a lot more traditional to video games as well, with a clear-cut villain from the get-go.
Overall, the game is fun and solid and more or less stays true to the basic elements of the first BioShock. Featuring plasmids, the chaos of Rapture, and a plot driven by Audio Logs and radio transmissions, it attempts to keep the same tone and general format of the narrative. However, the openness of the level designs, the increased number of increasingly agile enemies, and the streamlined power/weapon system all serve to showcase how essentially, they appeared to be making a BioShock game catered to people less familiar with the Shock series. It's hard to say if it worked. It generally received positive reviews, with some saying it did a lot of things better than the original. Generally though, I wouldn't agree with that sentiment. In all, I personally felt as if they took the suspense out of Rapture with its quickened, more typical shooter style game play and its larger, brighter environments.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Fez (2012)
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If you've the documentary Indie Game: The Movie (which is on Netflix - you should check it out), then you've probably heard of Fez. At its core, it's an amalgamation of many different games, riding high on something of a nostalgia trip. Influences include The Legend of Zelda, Super Paper Mario, Myst, with, as strange as it sounds, a little bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The story is pretty basic. Gomez lives in a completely two dimensional world. It's a simple place and a simple time, until one day he is recruited to save his world. After obtaining his signature red fez hat, he learns that his 2D world is actually just one side of a three dimensional one. You then set off to find little yellow cubes, artifacts, keys, and anti-cubes.
Designed as more of a low-stress type game, players must figure out how to get through the levels by adjusting the perspective. Quite literally, you rotate the world, changing the 2D perspective so that you can move onto the other sides. It's an interesting mechanic, even if not wholly original, but it's also executed well.
Beating the game doesn't require a ton of brain power, but getting all of the secret anti-cubes and special items for a 100% completion rate can. Scattered throughout the game are classic Tetris symbols that evidently make up a sort of code. The game also features something of its own little language. At one point to unlock an anti-cube, there's a giant QR code in the background, so you have to scan that with your phone, which then takes you to a site with a new input code that unlocks the anti-cube.
A number of puzzles can't be solved until after you've beaten it once and replay it in New Game Plus. This means not everything is accessible your first go. To beat the game, you must find thirty-two cubes total, which sounds a lot easier than it is. In fact, one of the constant criticisms of the game is how much backtracking you are likely to do. You go back and forth throughout the worlds a lot, and the warp system in place is not adequate enough to traverse the whole universe efficiently. It's also pretty easy to get lost, given how many levels there are and how the map itself is also a three dimensional thing you rotate to read.
On the other hand though, it speaks to the size of the world that this is a problem. A little game like Fez could easily feel small or linear. While many levels aren't particularly large overall, they've also got four sides each, and often lead off to another section of the world. It is surprisingly large, making non-linear exploration a big part of the game too. It just also means that it can be easy to get lost.
Unfortunately, the game is often riddled with bugs. This is probably the result of a small team that ultimately became increasingly rushed. Most of the tech issues aren't bad, but there is one nasty bug that prevents you from even loading the game at all. (I had to delete the game file and save file, then redownload and start all over again just to be able to play it again.) It happens on a very small percentage of players, but it is killer when it occurs. (It also gives you a heart attack when you get to one of the "staged glitches" that come up as part of the game's story.)
The final noteworthy element of the game is its incredible and atmospheric chiptune score, composed by Disasterpeace. It further pushes the nostalgia factor, and is a glowing example of excellent sound design the way he works sound effects into the musical track. And it only slightly terrifies you by reminding you of It Follows.
All in all, there was a reason Fez became this little indie heart throb of a game, and garnered much attention and critical praise before it even released. It is a great game with plenty of noteworthy design elements. Its creator, Phil Fish, is a controversial figure, and understandably so, but his game is a fun and clever game.
Hmmm...why does that sound a tad familiar? Why does it creep me out so bad? Waaaaait a minute...
Monday, October 26, 2015
Dan Solo Episode 4: Life Is Strange
There was a lot to unpack with the finale of Life Is Strange. Certainly, it isn't without flaws, but people seem pretty divided on the endings. Thing is, a lot depends on what you see as the point of the game. If you feel the whole thing was about saving Chloe or unraveling this mystery, then you're probably disappointed. But, I think the true point of the game is that it's about Max and having her learn how to deal with guilt and how to live life without regret. That the whole point is about Max learning to make the most of the time we do get with others, and learning how to avoid living a life full of "what ifs."
A lot more thoughts on it, and as always, lots and lots of SPOILERS!
Archived Link:
Thursday, October 22, 2015
Thomas Was Alone (2012)
"Thomas was alone," begins the charming yet simultaneously sad-sounding narration to the hit indie game of that very name. A simple, yet very compelling game, Thomas Was Alone sets off to mix and match simple human personalities and emotions with its simple yet occasionally challenging game play. As a small puzzle platformer, it's easy to pass it off as a game that shoehorns its story and emotion in, but creator Mike Bithell intertwines the story with the gameplay that at times, is a textbook example of mechanics as metaphor.
The game puts the player in control of several rectangles. Navigating them through each level, the goal is to guide all available blocks into their appropriate "portal" (the outline of the portal matches a particular shape). Mostly, this process is accomplished through jumping, climbing, and building steps with other blocks. The beauty of the game is in its simplicity. While none of the puzzles are overly difficult, being a platformer as well requires a bit of skill. Unlike some other indie puzzle game I played - like The Swapper, where the puzzles were at times extraordinarily challenging - here I was mostly frustrated with my own inability to make certain jumps or pull off certain tricks. In a way, it plays a lot more like a basic platformer than it does a puzzle game.
Each rectangle is different in size, shape, color, and has a unique ability. Thomas, the red rectangle who kicks off the game, is arguably the "normal one." His jumps are average in height and distance. He is medium in size, so he's a good stepping stone for shorter blocks, but doesn't often need one himself. But there are about half a dozen additional rectangles. There's Chris, a short orange block who can't jump high or far and often needs help to get through the puzzles. Then there's the tall yellow one who can jump really high (John), the large blue square who can't jump high but has the ability to float in the deadly water (Claire), the elongated flat pink one that others can bounce on (Laura), the green one whose gravity is reversed and moves across the ceiling (James), and a short purple one who can perform double jumps (Sarah). The game ends following a bunch of grey rectangles that can inherent properties of the original batch of parallelograms.
Thing is, they're just rectangles, but if you noticed in the above paragraph, I refer to each one as "who." They are indeed characters. As you progress through the levels, the narrator fills you in on each character's personality. Each one is based around his or her respective power. Laura, for example, is a rectangle that others can bounce off of. The narrator informs us that she is wary of joining this group, concerned they're just using her like everyone else did. Then there's James, the one who falls up instead of down. He is unique and weird. The narrator reveals that that has been the source of bullying and thus, James has grown isolated. John, possessing the greatest jumping abilities, is overly confident and self-absorbed, thinking himself a superhero aiding the lesser rectangles to their destination. And Thomas? Well, he starts the journey simply curious about his world and his own purpose.
Each rectangle is a character, and a flawed one at that. Few video games feature such relatable characters, and Thomas Was Alone just features blocks! It's a credit to Mike Bithell's writing, and his philosophy to keep the design simple, that these characters stand out. And it gives this indie heart-throb of a game an edge over almost everything else.
All of these blocks come together. To be clear, these blocks are actually self-aware AI programs in the story. Between each new section of levels, we get a snippet from what might be a report or a book about the first AI programs that became aware. That plot is kind of funny and interesting, but the main plot is about these characters - blocks with personalities that are built around their special abilities - working together and overcoming their character flaws. John, for example, eventually realizes that he isn't a superhero leading these other characters. Instead, he is their equal and they are working as partners. Chris, ever the cynical block, learns that there are other AI programs that he likes. Laura realizes the difference between being used by others and being friends with others. Claire, who is self-conscious of her bulky size and poor jumping abilities, finds out how important she is with her ability to cross the water traps.
Though simple in design and writing, it is quite excellent. When plots get mixed in with puzzle games, it's easy to see it as forced in, seemingly unnecessary and borderline pretentious. With Thomas Was Alone, however, it is an integral part of the game. Each individual block and his or her respective abilities are tied to their characterizations and their subsequent development. This is where a basic puzzle platformer turns into a great, heartwarming game. It would also be disingenuous to suggest that the plot doesn't really matter to the game, as it is every bit a part of it as the game play, visual art style, and soundtrack (which is incredible and atmospheric - really hammering home some of the emotional impact of the narration).
Overall, there aren't too many negatives about it. It's a short game, which isn't necessarily a negative, but at some point I found myself really hoping it would keep going because I enjoyed it a lot. The levels are mostly solid, but there are a few moments here and there where if you don't do something correctly, you get stuck in No Man's Land. There's no where for you to go, so you can't die, but you also can't continue. In those moments, you must restart the level. I only noticed it a couple of times, so it's not a persistent issue.
But what's really refreshing about it is that the game wants you to get to the end. There's a line in one of the early stages from the narrator that mentions that the world seemed to be pushing the characters to a certain destination, and making it a point to include obstacles that could be overcome. "The world doesn't want us to fail," he says. That's the perfect way to describe the design of the game. There are occasional challenges, but nothing crazy. The game doesn't want players to fail, which might be unappealing to some gamers, but is something I really appreciate about Mike Bithell games.
For me, the fact that I could weirdly connect and relate to a bunch of geometric shapes more than I could most video game (or movie characters, for that matter) is a huge reason why I immediately took to the game. It's short, but it's worth the price of admission. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with a lot of indie games, but this is easily one of my favorite games of the past decade.
Thing is, they're just rectangles, but if you noticed in the above paragraph, I refer to each one as "who." They are indeed characters. As you progress through the levels, the narrator fills you in on each character's personality. Each one is based around his or her respective power. Laura, for example, is a rectangle that others can bounce off of. The narrator informs us that she is wary of joining this group, concerned they're just using her like everyone else did. Then there's James, the one who falls up instead of down. He is unique and weird. The narrator reveals that that has been the source of bullying and thus, James has grown isolated. John, possessing the greatest jumping abilities, is overly confident and self-absorbed, thinking himself a superhero aiding the lesser rectangles to their destination. And Thomas? Well, he starts the journey simply curious about his world and his own purpose.
Each rectangle is a character, and a flawed one at that. Few video games feature such relatable characters, and Thomas Was Alone just features blocks! It's a credit to Mike Bithell's writing, and his philosophy to keep the design simple, that these characters stand out. And it gives this indie heart-throb of a game an edge over almost everything else.
All of these blocks come together. To be clear, these blocks are actually self-aware AI programs in the story. Between each new section of levels, we get a snippet from what might be a report or a book about the first AI programs that became aware. That plot is kind of funny and interesting, but the main plot is about these characters - blocks with personalities that are built around their special abilities - working together and overcoming their character flaws. John, for example, eventually realizes that he isn't a superhero leading these other characters. Instead, he is their equal and they are working as partners. Chris, ever the cynical block, learns that there are other AI programs that he likes. Laura realizes the difference between being used by others and being friends with others. Claire, who is self-conscious of her bulky size and poor jumping abilities, finds out how important she is with her ability to cross the water traps.
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| My favorite piece of narration. (Read the text if you can.) |
Though simple in design and writing, it is quite excellent. When plots get mixed in with puzzle games, it's easy to see it as forced in, seemingly unnecessary and borderline pretentious. With Thomas Was Alone, however, it is an integral part of the game. Each individual block and his or her respective abilities are tied to their characterizations and their subsequent development. This is where a basic puzzle platformer turns into a great, heartwarming game. It would also be disingenuous to suggest that the plot doesn't really matter to the game, as it is every bit a part of it as the game play, visual art style, and soundtrack (which is incredible and atmospheric - really hammering home some of the emotional impact of the narration).
Overall, there aren't too many negatives about it. It's a short game, which isn't necessarily a negative, but at some point I found myself really hoping it would keep going because I enjoyed it a lot. The levels are mostly solid, but there are a few moments here and there where if you don't do something correctly, you get stuck in No Man's Land. There's no where for you to go, so you can't die, but you also can't continue. In those moments, you must restart the level. I only noticed it a couple of times, so it's not a persistent issue.
But what's really refreshing about it is that the game wants you to get to the end. There's a line in one of the early stages from the narrator that mentions that the world seemed to be pushing the characters to a certain destination, and making it a point to include obstacles that could be overcome. "The world doesn't want us to fail," he says. That's the perfect way to describe the design of the game. There are occasional challenges, but nothing crazy. The game doesn't want players to fail, which might be unappealing to some gamers, but is something I really appreciate about Mike Bithell games.
For me, the fact that I could weirdly connect and relate to a bunch of geometric shapes more than I could most video game (or movie characters, for that matter) is a huge reason why I immediately took to the game. It's short, but it's worth the price of admission. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with a lot of indie games, but this is easily one of my favorite games of the past decade.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Life Is Strange Episode 5: Polarized
Oh god. Where do I even begin sorting these thoughts? Well, let's just get this out of the way:
SPOILERS. SERIOUSLY. DON'T READ BEYOND THIS POINT IF YOU HAVEN'T PLAYED THIS YET.
For real, Life Is Strange is certainly a contender for my Game of the Year, and the finale continued its trend of making me feel a diverse range of emotions (but mostly, sad). It's impossible to talk about it without getting into specifics, and if you haven't played it, I recommend you close this, download it, play it, and then come back. Don't deprive yourself of such a great story.
Let's start by backtracking a little bit to the events closing out Episode 4. When we last left our heroine Max Caulfield, she had been captured by the psychotic Mr. Jefferson and Chloe once again lay dead somewhere. The post credits scene was this disturbing sequence where we could see Jefferson filling his needle with a drug while a presumably tied up Max begged for mercy off screen.
And so, we dive right into it. The episode starts with Max coming to in the Dark Room, desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this situation. There isn't really much she can do, and her time rewind powers won't help much. Instead, she's able to focus on some pictures and jump into that moment of time. (I don't think I mentioned it last time, but on top of being able to rewind time, she can also transport herself back even further in time by looking at photographs - or moments of time captured.)
Most of the game is split into two main sections. There's the constant back and forth through large chunks of time as she tries to get out of her captivity. But it gets kind of confusing, and the effects of her timeline changes are unpredictable. At times, she finds herself coming to right back in the thick of things in the Dark Room. All of this is ultimately to find some way to save Chloe for a forth time.
The second big chunk of the game is this super weird dream sequence (or something?) that kind of doesn't make much sense, but it's weird in a really cool and interesting way. I suppose that this part of the game might be kind of "polarizing" among players, with some loving it and some hating it. (It does get really weird.) Personally, I was pretty into it. These sequences take place after Max figures out how to save Chloe, and she gets a huge headache which causes her to pass out as the giant tornado closes in on Arcadia Bay.
What I generally appreciated about the weirdness is that, for as weird as it is, it does make some sense. A lot of the things echoed in her mind are her insecurities and doubts. Many events of the past are replayed here, reminding players of their adventures with Max and Chloe. At times, other characters show up to question the choices Max has made - or more precisely, the choices you made.
Now it's time to get into the bigger specifics of what makes all of this work, so again, play the game first!
I think it was a pretty common thought among fans that the game might end with Chloe dying. Certainly, that seemed a likely outcome. It had been noted how frequently she seems to bite the bullet throughout the series. Everything starts when you encounter her getting shot and killed by Nathan in the bathroom way back in Episode 1. Then she gets stuck on the train tracks and gets run over in Episode 2. And then she's seemingly killed off for good at the end of Episode 4. With most of Episode 5 about finding a way to bring her back again, and with more weird stuff happening in Arcadia Bay, it certainly seemed like maybe Chloe was just destined to die, no matter how much effort you put into fixing it.
It all ultimately culminates in one of the biggest and most profound choices of the series. After figuring out how to "fix" the time line so Chloe is alive, she and Max kind of figure out what had been assumed for a while, but never really discussed: the weird stuff - the snow in July, the beached whales, the unexpected eclipse, the two moons, and the giant twister - were connected to Max's timeline altering powers.
As an aside, I really appreciated that they didn't really explain that very much. Sometimes less is more, and if they had spent too much time getting too into the nitty gritty details of how Max's powers were causing these super natural events, it could have come off as too "explainy," and likely would have been widely open up nitpicking. Instead, they just sort of go, "These things are connected!" and that's all there is to it. There doesn't need to be a greater explanation.
Anyway, Chloe gives you one last choice to make, and it's a doozy. With the tornado fast approaching Arcadia Bay, already having killed a bunch of people, she asks you to back in time to that first moment you "fix" the time line - when Chloe was killed in the bathroom. Worse, she asks you to let Nathan kill her. Interfering in the first place is exactly what caused this storm. And if Max doesn't go back to let it play out as it originally did, many more people in Arcadia Bay would die.
That's basically the choice: do you go back and let Chloe die, or do you let the storm hit Arcadia Bay and just move forward from there?
There are a number of angles I want to approach this from, so let's just break it down one step at a time.
First and foremost, this was yet another "Oooooooh man, WHY!?" choice to make. Life Is Strange does choices better than perhaps any other video game out there. It's done better than the decisions in Mass Effect, and it's far superior to anything in a TellTale game - especially The Walking Dead. This wasn't the first time I groaned very loudly, then took my time really mulling over the options. Sacrifice Chloe? Sacrifice Arcadia Bay? I feel like this should be an easy choice, but...it wasn't.
Games have long been introducing these sort of moral choices into the fold, but they've all been relatively simple. BioShock gave us the option to harvest Little Sisters for more Adam now, or we could rescue them and gain more Adam later. It was basically good versus evil. And there wasn't exactly much reason to care about the fate of Little Sisters. The Walking Dead often presented scenarios in which you had to pick which characters to save, but lacked much power behind them. When you're confronted with saving Sean or saving Duck, it doesn't matter. Sean dies either way; Duck lives either way. Choice is meaningless. Then later, we are forced to rescue either Carly or Doug. But there's no power there because we only get one measly conversation with each of them. That choice is basically a coin flip. (And also meaningless since whoever you save dies at the same point in Episode 3 anyway.) Mass Effect is a little better in that way when you have to choose between rescuing Ashley or saving Kaiden, again at the cost of the other. In this scenario, we have history with those characters. They're both part of our crew, and we've presumably had many conversations with them. It's still a little weak though, in part because they're both the brave and heroic soldier. They both knew they could die in combat when they joined the Alliance military. Plus, they aren't exactly the most interesting squad mates in the game, so it isn't much of a loss if you didn't use either of them in your party much.
At its core, the final decision of Life Is Strange is a classic thought experiment, and something people regularly debate. Would you sacrifice one life to save a hundred? Would you let a hundred people die if it meant saving 100,000? That hypothetical scenario is fairly straight forward for a lot of people, but in order to be so, you must break the lives down into numbers. It's mathematics, clean and simple. Of course a hundred lives are more valuable than one. One hundred is greater than one.
What this decision here does though is put context behind those lives. Would you sacrifice one life to save an entire town if that one life you were sacrificing was your very best friend? Would you sacrifice that one life if you knew the person and had an emotional connection to them? Even more, what if you spent a huge amount of time and energy specifically trying to keep that one person alive? And now you're being asked to sacrifice them? Is that one versus one hundred still that simple? It isn't very often that that hypothetical situation accounts for such connections and human emotion. Life Is Strange does though. That's what makes it tough. (It took me about ten minute to finally reach a conclusion.)
It's hugely and entirely heartbreaking. I was sad for Chloe, and I was sad for Max, and I was sad for Joyce and David. It seemed like they had finally figured out a way to make everything perfect, but doing so created the storm. There are some things you just can't change, no matter what. And there are things that just can't be "fixed." Sometimes, things just have to move forward, for better or worse.
If much of the focus on photography was about capturing a moment in time, then most of what Max is trying to accomplish is the same. Everything she does is about stopping time from moving on. Any time something drastic changes, she seeks to change it. In essence, she's trying to stop time from moving, like a photograph.
What makes this decision even more painful is the connection it has to the other major decision at the beginning of Episode 4. In that time line, Chloe is paralyzed and slowly dying. She's also very depressed as she feels like a huge burden on everyone. She asks you to kill her and put her out of her misery. When that choice came up, I just couldn't do it. I refused. I was unwilling to be the person who "pulled the plug" on her, as it were. And yet flash forward to the end, and they managed to present a scenario in which I suddenly had to agree. It was a tough pill to swallow, and felt all the more tragic as a result.
I don't know why, but I had some strange idea that this might end on an upbeat note. Maybe it's that the tone of the first couple episodes were so innocent, and Max is so pure and such a good person, I guess I just naively thought that she would find some way to have her cake and eat it too. Boy was I wrong. It makes sense though. Mr. Jefferson's whole schtick as a psychopath photographer was that he loved capturing that moment when someone young loses their innocence. The game functions pretty much the same, slowly removing the innocence from it until there's little left.
The final episode is sweet, strange, and horribly gut wrenching, but it's also nearly perfect. It works in a lot of the mechanics that made the game so strong in the first place. There's more "photo jumping" than ever. Time rewind is back and perhaps more significant than before. There are limited choices, but it features one of the biggest and toughest decisions to make in the whole series. There's still some uplifting moments with Max interacting with Warren and Joyce and even reconciling with David.
The general rule of thumb is to abandon hope that your game will have a great ending. It's hard to make a great ending to something people pour hours of their time into. I can probably count the number of games with a good ending on one hand. Yet I can't think of a game with a more emotional ending than Life Is Strange. I can't think of a game that made me feel such a complex set of emotions at the same time. I admittedly get a bit teary when I watch the series finales of my favorite shows, and I felt the same way here. It was just one big punch in the stomach.
Max is no longer innocent, and the game stopped being so well before the finale. But that time with an innocent Max and an innocent Life Is Strange is what makes that change so compelling and emotional. All of that is what makes Life Is Strange such a great game. Easily my Game of the Year, hands down.
Now I just need to figure out what I did with my tissues...
Thursday, October 15, 2015
VVVVVV (2010)
Are you one of those gaming fans who feels that games have gotten "too easy" lately? Do you miss dying a ton? Were games more rewarding when it had the potential to make you rage-quit due to its difficulty? If so, you'd probably enjoy the retro-style 2D platformer, VVVVVV - a fun, challenging game complete with a death counter, so you can see exactly how many times you died.
Nothing about the game is particularly complex. It's entirely built on one mechanical premise - what if instead of jumping, we simply flipped gravity? That's right, you can't even jump in the game. You're either touching the ceiling or floor, or you're falling toward one. Yet it's wrong to confuse simplicity with difficulty. The game is filled with challenging levels to navigate through that range from pretty straight forward to fairly elaborate and tricky. By removing any complexity with the controls though - quite literally, you will only hit the left arrow, the right arrow, and space bar - the game always feels within your control. When you die (and you will - a lot), it always feels that there's no one to blame but yourself. There isn't a strange glitch or a poorly designed mechanic, and even the levels - though sometimes having some pretty enraging design elements - never feel overly complicated. It's just...tough.
You begin the game on board a spaceship with six colorful little humanoids. The ship suffers some sort of strange malfunction which sends all the crew members scattered all over another dimension. As Captain Viridian, it is your job to navigate the minefield of spikes and jumps trying to find your crew. Spread throughout are also little orb prizes, as well as computer terminals that fill you in with the story of what exactly happened. (It's actually kind of like the way The Swapper tells most of its back story.) When you find a crew member, you're often near to a teleportation device which warps you back to your ship.
As simple and straight forward as the game is, it's surprisingly not that linear. Yes, when you are inside of a level, it's pretty clear where you're going; there's only one path. However, there's no specific order in which to do the puzzles. You're given a large area to search through in order to even find the next puzzle, so you also have a feeling of exploration as well. However, it can be a negative thing. After about twenty minutes of play, I made my way through the early, relatively easy part of the game and accidentally stumbled upon one of the really difficult sections. It's worth noting that you can always leave and go back to that area later when you get more experience with the game, but it can be a bit overwhelming to find yourself trapped in the middle of one of the trickier levels too early.
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| It's a good game to test your reflexes on. Got to be quick! |
VVVVVV is not really a punishing game, despite it's level of difficulty. To give balance, most screens have a check point so when you die, you respawn right there. Though making it through some sections can be really challenging, it's not trying to make you rage-quit. It's a bit like Thomas Was Alone in the sense that it wants you to succeed; it just doesn't want to hand you the objective. You have to earn it. At times, the level can be so tricky that you have to just call it a day after fifteen minutes. The game is short (I beat it in about two hours and fifteen minutes), but each individual screen can be crossed in anywhere from three seconds to thirty minutes. It's easy to get stuck on one screen for ten minutes, then take a break because you just get so frustrated trying the same thing over and over and over and over again.
Yet it's weirdly addictive. It tests your patience here and there, but overall it always maintains the fun element. A couple of my house mates are online gamers who play things pretty seriously, and you can always hear them shouting in frustration when they fail. It's always filled with a bit of rage. While my loving nickname for this game was "God Damn It!" I never felt that kind of anger playing it. The frustration built on several levels (particularly near the end of the game and a section where you have to survive an onslaught of incoming bricks for a full minute - which I'm pretty sure is impossible to do in one try), but it was always a curse shouted followed by a laugh.
One other time, near the end, I got stuck on a section for what must have been about thirty minutes. (Time flies, by the way. You might find yourself saying, "I'll just try this bit for a few minutes," then realize you've been attempting to get through that part for an hour.) It was at that point that the frustration started to boil over and I thought, "This is getting dangerously close to not being fun anymore." About thirty seconds after that, the trial and error saw a major breakthrough and fifteen minutes later I had beaten the game. Granted that's primarily on me as a player, but I thought it was the mark of a well designed game intending to be challenging, but not trying to get me to rage-quit.
Apart from its Commodore 64 inspired visuals and rewarding challenges, the soundtrack might just be one of my favorites out there. Like everything else, it is retro-style chiptune. It's so energetic and fun that it helps ease the frustration. The soundtrack alone is probably worth picking up separately. (The game is called VVVVVV because all six crew members have a name that begins with V. The soundtrack is similarly called PPPPPP and features songs that only start with that letter as well. It's a strange sense of humor.)
Generally, I don't subscribe to this ideology of games being "too easy." I acknowledge that this is true; that a lot of games are easier than older games, but I don't buy that as being a bad thing. (Did I review the first Final Fantasy game here? That game was torture and it felt like work to get through it.) VVVVVV mixes linearity of platformer levels with open exploration of the world. It's simplicity makes you as the player feel completely in control. The score is awesome. And it's challenging without being built around making you fail. Even though it wants you to muscle through and succeed, it still feels extremely satisfying to get through the challenges.
And it's only $5 on Steam. You won't necessarily get a ton of time out of it - it took me a little over two hours over about a week (off of 873 lives) - but I'd definitely say it's easily $5 worth of enjoyment.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
LIST-O-MANIA: 7 Great Games with Female Protagonists
Contrary to popular belief, gaming doesn't lack many great female characters in general. We could easily list dozens of female characters that are well written and totally awesome. Still, contrary to what a lot of gamers think too, gaming does lack a little something in the diversity department when it comes to central protagonists. By and large, games default to a white male perspective. When they don't have that, it's more likely that they instead either force you to completely customize your character (a la Skyrim) or have you pick among several defaults (a la Borderlands). There aren't a ton of games that specifically build its game around a central female protagonist, but they do exist!
1. LIFE IS STRANGE (2015) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
Dontnod made headlines with their previous female-centered game Remember Me for some crazy reasons. The creators were talking about how hard it was to shop the game to studios because no one wanted to put out a game with a female protagonist. Even after it managed to find a home, word came out that they had to cut most of a romantic subplot because it was assumed the audience was mostly men and wouldn't feel comfortable seeing that side of things.
Remember Me is a fun, solid game, but nothing all that amazing. However, Dontnod came back in a big way with their much lauded episodic game Life Is Strange. Telltale seemed to have a stranglehold on the choice-based narrative-driven games, but Life Is Strange is done so well that it really highlights just how dated and weak Telltale games seem today. Choices are done much better, even if some inevitably don't lead anywhere in the end. Exploration is more a part of the game. Interacting with other characters gives the world more life. The soundtrack is amazing. The time rewind power, and the way it gets incorporated is fun and, at times, profound in the narrative sense.
Most importantly though, Max is an amazing character. She's awkward and sweet and relatable and heroic and normal and super all at the same time. Sometimes the dialogue feels a bit contrived, like what adults think teenagers sound like, but she really does just come off as a real person you probably knew in high school. Though it could be argued that Max doesn't need to be a girl for the game to work, it's important to note that they commit to it. Max is a girl, and she's in a dorm with only girls. It centers on her and her old girl friend Chloe rekindling their friendship. There's teenage girl drama at the center early on. There's hostility towards one female character for reasons that are only realistic if its targeting a female character (to highlight how horrible it is that young women have to deal with that nonsense).
Point being, Life Is Strange isn't just a game with a female protagonist. It's a game from a female perspective. And it's great. And it's been successful. And - surprise surprise - such a game has drawn out a lot of female gamers voicing their satisfaction with the game. Sure, it's not appealing to the dudes playing Call of Duty or Halo, but such a game never would have in the first place. And frankly, a lot of guys who I've got to play it love it too. Life Is Strange is a good example of how you totally can make a game from a female perspective and have it be great.
It is often argued that the sign of true progress is to create more games that are gender neutral. Certainly, that is a good thing to have. A lot of games already are, but still default to "straight white male" anyway. Having games like Portal - in which the protagonist's gender is irrelevant, but default to female anyway - are certainly good things to have. By and large, it's people who are very well represented in video games (or media as a whole) who often argue that it doesn't or shouldn't matter. But it's clear that to a lot of people, it does. Young women who are getting into gaming probably appreciate being represented, just the same was as us dorky, socially awkward guys appreciate having such characters in comics and movies all the time too.
And certainly, some of these games don't need to have female protagonists. Tomb Raider would probably work as well if it were Lenny Croft instead of Lara. Similarly, Alien Isolation would be a great game if it were a totally new character bearing no relation to the original film. (Although having it be Ripley's daughter gives it a nice parallel, and makes it feel even more like the movie.) There are elements of their gender and that perspective that inevitably spill into the game, but nothing so blatant that the game couldn't work if the gender were swapped.
But making everything gender neutral isn't, nor shouldn't be, the end game here. There is nothing wrong with games focused on a male perspective, and indeed, some games do work best because their protagonist is male. Progress should be measured by the availability and accessibility of games that swing the other way. Life Is Strange wouldn't work as well if it were a male perspective. Never Alone wouldn't work as well if it were a young boy. The problem has, by and large, been that games are often told specifically from a male perspective, or gender neutral but defaults to male. More games that swing the other way serves to balance it. And we need more of that in all forms of media and entertainment.
Gaming has - despite the ugliness of GamerGate - made some big efforts to push female characters in recent years. In an earlier post looking at some of the most interesting looking games coming up during E3, it was worth noting how many of those games featured a female protagonist. So developers are hearing that consumers want variety, and that women are a part of the market that has largely been untapped. Still, there could always be more.
These games are certainly a good start.
So are you looking to change it up a bit though? Want to experience a game in which the central protagonist - not a side character or AI-controlled squad mate - is a great female character? Here are seven games for you!
Here are the rules to the list. First rule is that the default character must be a woman. This means that games like Mass Effect are out, even though we prefer Jane to John Shepard a little bit. Similarly, it can't be a choice, so games like Borderlands are out, even though that series offers among the most diversity in protagonists. The idea is to suggest games that are entirely built around a female protagonist. Not optional. This also cancels out a game like Final Fantasy VI which starts with a female protagonist, but shifts around a bunch. I'm also ignoring a game like Final Fantasy X-2 since generally, I want to keep it at decent games. And yes, I know Metroid games are absent, which is perhaps the biggest female-led franchise in the industry. Just find it to be kind of hit or miss, and while I plan to get back to some of them to finish, I still have never made it through an entire game. (Blasphemy, I know. It's on the list of things to do!)
Certainly, there are more than seven. But these are the ones worth mentioning.
7. NEVER ALONE (2014) - PS4
Never Alone is not exactly the cleanest, smoothest little game on the market, but it's also pretty cute and informative. The game was built primarily as means to share the culture of the Inupiaq, natives of Alaska. At its core, it's an educational game. A basic puzzle-platformer, you unlock videos covering different aspects of Inupiaq culture. The game itself focuses on Nuna, a little girl who must flee her home after it's attacked by a crazed man. She is assisted by a fox as she traverses the cold, fights against wind storms and spirits, and must avoid deadly polar bears as she works to stop this man. Along the way, she must also stop a giant who is causing the horrible blizzard. While sometimes the game feels a bit clunky, and Nuna doesn't get too much characterization, it's still a nice little game, with a pretty art style. What's nice about having it focus on a young girl is that the story itself - one that is a traditional Inupiaq story - is built on the idea that the least expected person is often the one who steps up to become incredible. In this case, it's a young girl, and in a video game.
6. PORTAL 2 (2011) - XBox 360, PS3
Chell is one of the most well known and beloved female protagonists in video games, but she gets next to no actual characterization. What's nice about both Portal and Portal 2 is that the other main character, the evil robotic overlord GLaDOS, is also presented as a female voice. (Technically not a woman, given she's a robot, but it's a female voice actor, so for all intents and purposes, she really is.) The fact that Chell's personality is mostly up to the player's imagination is what lands this game so low on our list, even though it might actually be the best overall game on it.
Some have argued that the game isn't a good one to list as a beacon of feminism because of this fact. Still, the fact that Chell didn't have to be a woman, but the folks at Valve made her one, actually is kind of a big (ish) deal. 99% of the time when that's the case, developers default to 20 or 30-something year old white dude.
5. THE WALKING DEAD: SEASON 2 (2013) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
The first season of Telltale's episode The Walking Dead game is something of a mixed bag. The characters are pretty bland, the story is pretty typical, the shock value is pretty predictable, and the game itself can get a little boring given the only mechanic is making choices, and the game is pretty bad at masking that those choices are more often than not totally irrelevant. The emotional core though is fantastic. In the first season, you play as Lee, a man who finds himself in the role of a father figure as he takes care of young Clementine.
Season 2 is noticeably better than the first, in part because now you're controlling Clem. It's an interesting dynamic shift, to go from raising this girl to playing as this girl. Left on her own, it's now her in the lead. She makes the calls. Even though she ultimately isn't much older, you really see the impact of the previous season's events, regardless of how you played it. At the same time, she's still a great protagonist. You simultaneously use what you learned from the last game with new information from this season. The game does a great job highlighting the growth of Clementine, and really allows you to determine how much of what you taught her really stuck.
4. TOMB RAIDER (2013) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
Lara Croft has something of a checkered past. Her original creation was meant to be something of a highlight for women. She was one of the earliest female action stars of video games. She's also arguably the most recognizable female character in gaming - even if only because of those mediocre Angelina Jolie films. Yet at the end of the day, the studios decided to sexualize her (against her creator's will). Big breasts and short shorts became her look, and so this character who should have been a great representation of women in gaming became a prime example of the objectification.
Square-Enix has done much to change that, however. With their recent relaunch of the character, they decided to make her look like, ya know, an actual woman. Proportions are much more reasonable. This sounds like such a small thing, but it's actually quite important. That, along with better writing, all work wonders to make her an actual character. The relaunch also reinvigorates the franchise with expanded gameplay that takes cues from other great action/adventure games. The exploration and combat are fun, and does a lot to allow new fans to get on board.
3. MIRROR'S EDGE (2008) - PS3, XBox 360
With a lot of male-driven games, the action tends to be about shooting people or blowing stuff up or some other form of killing. When Mirror's Edge came out, there hadn't been a ton of female-driven action games. Apart from the fact that it is lead by a female protagonist, and most of the key relationships in the story are also among women, the game also changes up the style of play. The emphasis of this action game is not on gunplay, but rather in its first person parkour and melee action. True, in some cases, you're going to have to pick up a gun for a moment, but it's actually detrimental to hold onto it too long.
Instead, it's in the player's best interested to keep moving. Staying still too long will result in being overwhelmed by enemies. Spending too much time shooting guards will go just as poorly. The game itself can be a little unforgiving with how precise the player must be at points to get across certain sections of the game, but that can be part of the charm if you've got the patience. It is a lot of trial and error. And Faith is a pretty kick-ass protagonist. It's hard to say how much of the shift away from typical FPS action came from centering it on a female character, or if making Faith the main character was the result of DICE trying to get completely away from everything it does with its Battlefield franchise. Either way, it's a welcome change. The argument for female characters hasn't exactly been that games should feature completely interchangeable roles. It isn't that the character's sex is literally irrelevant - although that would be nice too. It's about adding difference perspectives, and Mirror's Edge does that with its gameplay and its narrative.
2. ALIEN ISOLATION (2014) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
Ridley Scott's best film, Alien, has regularly been used as an example of a strong female protagonist in a genre typically dominated by male characters. Sigourney Weaver kills it in the role of the iconic Ellen Ripley. She's smart, brave, and capable. But she isn't your typical action hero. Alien Isolation does everything it can to make itself feel as much like the original film as possible. (In fact, it does a much better job than any of the sequels.)
In the game, players control Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley's daughter, as she follows clues to her mother's whereabouts after the events of the original film. Long story short: she's trapped on a giant space station after the alien shows up. Amanda features many of the same traits as her mother. She's intelligent, brave, and capable, but she isn't your typical action hero. Where a lot of games have male characters just go, "What the heck was that?" and that's it, Alien Isolation makes it a point to highlight that Ripley is scared too. That's what makes her and the game so compelling. She's terrified, just as her mother was in the film. What makes her so strong is that she pushes forward through the fear. It kind of all ties back to the point of Never Alone's story, which is that sometimes, the least expected is the person who makes a great impact. Alien was like this in the sense that we hadn't really seen many female characters as survivors. And Aliens pushed it another step by making her more of a traditional action hero. Alien Isolation continues that trend.
Also doesn't hurt that the game is one of the best survival horror games out there, and it's the best Alien thing since the original film.
Certainly, there are more than seven. But these are the ones worth mentioning.
7. NEVER ALONE (2014) - PS4
Never Alone is not exactly the cleanest, smoothest little game on the market, but it's also pretty cute and informative. The game was built primarily as means to share the culture of the Inupiaq, natives of Alaska. At its core, it's an educational game. A basic puzzle-platformer, you unlock videos covering different aspects of Inupiaq culture. The game itself focuses on Nuna, a little girl who must flee her home after it's attacked by a crazed man. She is assisted by a fox as she traverses the cold, fights against wind storms and spirits, and must avoid deadly polar bears as she works to stop this man. Along the way, she must also stop a giant who is causing the horrible blizzard. While sometimes the game feels a bit clunky, and Nuna doesn't get too much characterization, it's still a nice little game, with a pretty art style. What's nice about having it focus on a young girl is that the story itself - one that is a traditional Inupiaq story - is built on the idea that the least expected person is often the one who steps up to become incredible. In this case, it's a young girl, and in a video game.
6. PORTAL 2 (2011) - XBox 360, PS3
Chell is one of the most well known and beloved female protagonists in video games, but she gets next to no actual characterization. What's nice about both Portal and Portal 2 is that the other main character, the evil robotic overlord GLaDOS, is also presented as a female voice. (Technically not a woman, given she's a robot, but it's a female voice actor, so for all intents and purposes, she really is.) The fact that Chell's personality is mostly up to the player's imagination is what lands this game so low on our list, even though it might actually be the best overall game on it.
Some have argued that the game isn't a good one to list as a beacon of feminism because of this fact. Still, the fact that Chell didn't have to be a woman, but the folks at Valve made her one, actually is kind of a big (ish) deal. 99% of the time when that's the case, developers default to 20 or 30-something year old white dude.
5. THE WALKING DEAD: SEASON 2 (2013) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
The first season of Telltale's episode The Walking Dead game is something of a mixed bag. The characters are pretty bland, the story is pretty typical, the shock value is pretty predictable, and the game itself can get a little boring given the only mechanic is making choices, and the game is pretty bad at masking that those choices are more often than not totally irrelevant. The emotional core though is fantastic. In the first season, you play as Lee, a man who finds himself in the role of a father figure as he takes care of young Clementine.
Season 2 is noticeably better than the first, in part because now you're controlling Clem. It's an interesting dynamic shift, to go from raising this girl to playing as this girl. Left on her own, it's now her in the lead. She makes the calls. Even though she ultimately isn't much older, you really see the impact of the previous season's events, regardless of how you played it. At the same time, she's still a great protagonist. You simultaneously use what you learned from the last game with new information from this season. The game does a great job highlighting the growth of Clementine, and really allows you to determine how much of what you taught her really stuck.
4. TOMB RAIDER (2013) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
Lara Croft has something of a checkered past. Her original creation was meant to be something of a highlight for women. She was one of the earliest female action stars of video games. She's also arguably the most recognizable female character in gaming - even if only because of those mediocre Angelina Jolie films. Yet at the end of the day, the studios decided to sexualize her (against her creator's will). Big breasts and short shorts became her look, and so this character who should have been a great representation of women in gaming became a prime example of the objectification.
Square-Enix has done much to change that, however. With their recent relaunch of the character, they decided to make her look like, ya know, an actual woman. Proportions are much more reasonable. This sounds like such a small thing, but it's actually quite important. That, along with better writing, all work wonders to make her an actual character. The relaunch also reinvigorates the franchise with expanded gameplay that takes cues from other great action/adventure games. The exploration and combat are fun, and does a lot to allow new fans to get on board.
3. MIRROR'S EDGE (2008) - PS3, XBox 360
With a lot of male-driven games, the action tends to be about shooting people or blowing stuff up or some other form of killing. When Mirror's Edge came out, there hadn't been a ton of female-driven action games. Apart from the fact that it is lead by a female protagonist, and most of the key relationships in the story are also among women, the game also changes up the style of play. The emphasis of this action game is not on gunplay, but rather in its first person parkour and melee action. True, in some cases, you're going to have to pick up a gun for a moment, but it's actually detrimental to hold onto it too long.
Instead, it's in the player's best interested to keep moving. Staying still too long will result in being overwhelmed by enemies. Spending too much time shooting guards will go just as poorly. The game itself can be a little unforgiving with how precise the player must be at points to get across certain sections of the game, but that can be part of the charm if you've got the patience. It is a lot of trial and error. And Faith is a pretty kick-ass protagonist. It's hard to say how much of the shift away from typical FPS action came from centering it on a female character, or if making Faith the main character was the result of DICE trying to get completely away from everything it does with its Battlefield franchise. Either way, it's a welcome change. The argument for female characters hasn't exactly been that games should feature completely interchangeable roles. It isn't that the character's sex is literally irrelevant - although that would be nice too. It's about adding difference perspectives, and Mirror's Edge does that with its gameplay and its narrative.
2. ALIEN ISOLATION (2014) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
Ridley Scott's best film, Alien, has regularly been used as an example of a strong female protagonist in a genre typically dominated by male characters. Sigourney Weaver kills it in the role of the iconic Ellen Ripley. She's smart, brave, and capable. But she isn't your typical action hero. Alien Isolation does everything it can to make itself feel as much like the original film as possible. (In fact, it does a much better job than any of the sequels.)
In the game, players control Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley's daughter, as she follows clues to her mother's whereabouts after the events of the original film. Long story short: she's trapped on a giant space station after the alien shows up. Amanda features many of the same traits as her mother. She's intelligent, brave, and capable, but she isn't your typical action hero. Where a lot of games have male characters just go, "What the heck was that?" and that's it, Alien Isolation makes it a point to highlight that Ripley is scared too. That's what makes her and the game so compelling. She's terrified, just as her mother was in the film. What makes her so strong is that she pushes forward through the fear. It kind of all ties back to the point of Never Alone's story, which is that sometimes, the least expected is the person who makes a great impact. Alien was like this in the sense that we hadn't really seen many female characters as survivors. And Aliens pushed it another step by making her more of a traditional action hero. Alien Isolation continues that trend.
Also doesn't hurt that the game is one of the best survival horror games out there, and it's the best Alien thing since the original film.
1. LIFE IS STRANGE (2015) - PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XB1
Dontnod made headlines with their previous female-centered game Remember Me for some crazy reasons. The creators were talking about how hard it was to shop the game to studios because no one wanted to put out a game with a female protagonist. Even after it managed to find a home, word came out that they had to cut most of a romantic subplot because it was assumed the audience was mostly men and wouldn't feel comfortable seeing that side of things.
Remember Me is a fun, solid game, but nothing all that amazing. However, Dontnod came back in a big way with their much lauded episodic game Life Is Strange. Telltale seemed to have a stranglehold on the choice-based narrative-driven games, but Life Is Strange is done so well that it really highlights just how dated and weak Telltale games seem today. Choices are done much better, even if some inevitably don't lead anywhere in the end. Exploration is more a part of the game. Interacting with other characters gives the world more life. The soundtrack is amazing. The time rewind power, and the way it gets incorporated is fun and, at times, profound in the narrative sense.
Most importantly though, Max is an amazing character. She's awkward and sweet and relatable and heroic and normal and super all at the same time. Sometimes the dialogue feels a bit contrived, like what adults think teenagers sound like, but she really does just come off as a real person you probably knew in high school. Though it could be argued that Max doesn't need to be a girl for the game to work, it's important to note that they commit to it. Max is a girl, and she's in a dorm with only girls. It centers on her and her old girl friend Chloe rekindling their friendship. There's teenage girl drama at the center early on. There's hostility towards one female character for reasons that are only realistic if its targeting a female character (to highlight how horrible it is that young women have to deal with that nonsense).
Point being, Life Is Strange isn't just a game with a female protagonist. It's a game from a female perspective. And it's great. And it's been successful. And - surprise surprise - such a game has drawn out a lot of female gamers voicing their satisfaction with the game. Sure, it's not appealing to the dudes playing Call of Duty or Halo, but such a game never would have in the first place. And frankly, a lot of guys who I've got to play it love it too. Life Is Strange is a good example of how you totally can make a game from a female perspective and have it be great.
It is often argued that the sign of true progress is to create more games that are gender neutral. Certainly, that is a good thing to have. A lot of games already are, but still default to "straight white male" anyway. Having games like Portal - in which the protagonist's gender is irrelevant, but default to female anyway - are certainly good things to have. By and large, it's people who are very well represented in video games (or media as a whole) who often argue that it doesn't or shouldn't matter. But it's clear that to a lot of people, it does. Young women who are getting into gaming probably appreciate being represented, just the same was as us dorky, socially awkward guys appreciate having such characters in comics and movies all the time too.
And certainly, some of these games don't need to have female protagonists. Tomb Raider would probably work as well if it were Lenny Croft instead of Lara. Similarly, Alien Isolation would be a great game if it were a totally new character bearing no relation to the original film. (Although having it be Ripley's daughter gives it a nice parallel, and makes it feel even more like the movie.) There are elements of their gender and that perspective that inevitably spill into the game, but nothing so blatant that the game couldn't work if the gender were swapped.
But making everything gender neutral isn't, nor shouldn't be, the end game here. There is nothing wrong with games focused on a male perspective, and indeed, some games do work best because their protagonist is male. Progress should be measured by the availability and accessibility of games that swing the other way. Life Is Strange wouldn't work as well if it were a male perspective. Never Alone wouldn't work as well if it were a young boy. The problem has, by and large, been that games are often told specifically from a male perspective, or gender neutral but defaults to male. More games that swing the other way serves to balance it. And we need more of that in all forms of media and entertainment.
Gaming has - despite the ugliness of GamerGate - made some big efforts to push female characters in recent years. In an earlier post looking at some of the most interesting looking games coming up during E3, it was worth noting how many of those games featured a female protagonist. So developers are hearing that consumers want variety, and that women are a part of the market that has largely been untapped. Still, there could always be more.
These games are certainly a good start.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
The Yearly MLB Salary Cap Rant
Well, would you look at what time it is? It's post season time for baseball! Admittedly, despite not being a particularly big baseball fan, I'm kind of interested in it this year. Maybe it's because it doesn't feature all the same familiar faces - though there are some - or maybe it's because I've slowly been becoming something of a casual Mets fan (I know, I know, bandwagon guy here, but most of my family are Mets fans, and I have a couple friends who are weirdly so - it's been a years-long process by assimilation, really), but I think I might very well follow this year's post season beyond just checking the scores and watching a couple of games.
But, it also means it's time for my yearly rant about Major League Baseball's lack of a salary cap, and how I find it to kind of ruin the league. Allow me to update the numbers a bit. Here are the last twenty-three World Series winners, and their respective ranking in highest payrolls of that year:
2014 - San Francisco Giants - $154 million (7th highest)
2013 - Boston Red Sox: $159 million (4th highest)
2012 - San Francisco Giants: $138 million (6th highest)
2011 - St. Louis Cardinals: $105 million (11th)
2010 - San Francisco Giants: $97 million (10th)
2009 - New York Yankees: $201 million (1st)
2008 - Philadelphia Phillies: $98 million (13th)
2007 - Boston Red Sox: $143 million (2nd)
2006 - St. Louis Cardinals: $88 million (11th)
2005 - Chicago White Sox: $73 million (13th)
2004 - Boston Red Sox: $125 million (2nd)
2003 - Florida Marlins: $63 million (20th)
2002 - Anaheim Angels: $61 million (15th)
2001 - Arizona Diamondbacks: $81 million (8th)
2000 - New York Yankees: $92 million (1st)
1999 - New York Yankees: $89 million (1st)
1998 - New York Yankees: $64 million (2nd)
1997 - Florida Marlins: $48 million (7th)
1996 - New York Yankees: $53 million (1st)
1995 - Atlanta Braves: $46 million (3rd)
1993 - Toronto Blue Jays: $43 million (1st)
1992 - Toronto Blue Jays: $44 million (1st)
1991 - Minnesota Twins: $23 million (13th)
Anything in particular stand out? Well, in case you haven't read any of these posts for the past two or three years, allow me to point out that teams in the top ten highest payrolls (the top third) account for 16 of the last 23 World Series victors. That's 69.5% of the time! Or, if you're more into fractions, that's over two-thirds.
Notice anything else though? Well, there are 30 teams in the Major Leagues. With that in mind, how many teams in the bottom third of payrolls do you see have won a World Series? Yes, that's right. In the past 23 World Series, not a single one of them came from the bottom third. In fact, only one winner came from the bottom half (the 2003 Marlins) of payrolls. Which means, by the way, that 95.7% of World Series winners come from the top half of payrolls.
Well, ok, but not every team in the top third financially even get to the playoffs. Sure, sure. Let's break down the last six years of post season teams:
2015:
AL: New York Yankees (2), Houston (29), Kansas City (16), Texas (8), Toronto (10)
NL: Pittsburgh (25), Chicago (13), St. Louis (11), New York Mets (21), Los Angeles Dodgers (1)
4 of 10 in top third. 3 out of 10 in the middle third. 3 out of 10 in bottom third. 6 out of 10 in top half.
2014:
AL: Oakland, Kansas City, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles Angels
NL: San Francisco, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Los Angeles Dodgers, Washington Nationals
5 of 10 in top third. 3 of 10 in middle third. 2 of 10 in bottom third. 7 of 10 in top half.
2013:
AL: Cleveland, Tampa, Boston, Detroit, Oakland
NL: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta
4 of 10 in the top third. 3 of 10 in the middle third. 3 of 10 in bottom third. 5 of 10 in top half.
2012:
AL: Texas, Baltimore, New York Yankees, Oakland, Detroit
NL: Atlanta, St. Louis, Washington, Cincinnati, San Francisco
6 of 10 in the top third. 4 of 10 in the middle third. 0 of 10 in the bottom third. 7 of 10 in top half.
2011:
AL: New York Yankees, Detroit, Texas, Tampa
NL: Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Arizona
3 of 8 in top third. 3 of 8 in the middle third. 2 of 8 in the bottom third. 5 of 8 in top half.
2010:
AL: Tampa, Texas, Minnesota, New York Yankees
NL: Philadelphia, Cincinnati, San Francisco, Atlanta
3 of 8 in top third. 3 of 8 in middle third. 2 of 8 in bottom third. 5 of 8 in top half.
Sure, 2015 is a bit different from the norm. Nearly a third of the teams come from the bottom third, which has only happened once before since 2010. By the way, in this instance, the difference between the lowest payroll in the top third and the highest payroll in the bottom third is about $20 million. Houston and Pittsburgh are the only teams in this year's post season that did not spend over $100 million. The disparity between the Dodgers (the highest payroll, by far) and the Astros (the lowest in the post season) is insane. It's almost $200 million difference.
Anyway, let's put these numbers into totals and percentages, for those who are into that sort of thing. Here's the breakdown over the last six years, out of 56 playoff slots (8 per year in 2010 and '11, 10 per year after, with that silly wildcard business):
Teams in the top third: 25 (44.6%)
Teams in the middle third: 19 (33.9%)
Teams in the bottom third: 12 (21.4%)
Teams in the top half: 35 (62.5%)
Teams in the bottom half: 21 (37.5%)
World Series Winners (of the past 5 winners, since 2015 is TBD):
4 out 5 came from the top third. (The 2011 Cardinals were 11th in payroll that year.) That's 80%, to do some simple math.
Without knowing anything about baseball, I can pretty much guarantee that Houston and Pittsburgh are out. No chance to win the championship. I can also pretty reasonably rule out the Mets, as well as the Royals and the Cubs. That leaves us with really only half the teams having a reasonable, statistical chance at the title. And look, if it turns out any of those five teams I just listed even make the World Series - never mind win it - I will come back here and post about it.
But frankly, either way, the point doesn't change. The numbers and statistics are pretty clear: the more money you spend, the better your chances are. It's almost like baseball is America's past time in the sense that it really embodies that idea that those with money just have better odds. It's true in baseball. Again, my argument is not that money guarantees anything. It clearly doesn't. If it did, then the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Phillies would have won practically every title in the past ten years.
No, my point is quite simply that the money clearly has some impact. It increases your odds. And, frankly, it's entirely unfair that teams in huge markets like Los Angeles and New York get to compete against markets like Kansas City or Houston. Even if you don't think money makes much of a difference, certainly some of these stats must seem a little strange, right? Surely, you can recognize that the money does make some impact, at least, right?
Really though, no team should be able to spend almost $200 million more than other teams. That cannot be considered fair play...
Anyway, that's my yearly update to the increasingly skewed-in-favor-of-those-with-money statistics. Certainly, I'm hoping for an outlier this year. I'm just not holding my breath.
EDIT: I realized that I incorrectly stated that no wild card team had won the World Series yet. This is, of course, false. The San Francisco Giants were the National League wild card team and won the World Series. Don't know how that slipped through. Was using a previous installment of this rant and forgot the time stamp on it.
Monday, October 5, 2015
Dan Solo Episode 3: The Martian
First and foremost, after our recent reviewing of Star Wars, I realized that I liked Dan Solo better as a title. So the companion podcast to Random Encounters - formerly known as Solo Features - returns with the title change. This episode, I talk - probably longer than I should - about The Martian, one of Ridley Scott's best films in a long time.
Archived Link:
Friday, October 2, 2015
The Gun Conversation
PREFACE: Listen, I know this blog isn't political, generally. I don't plan on taking too many detours. I just need to get some of this out of my head and put it somewhere. I know it doesn't fit the theme of this blog, but this is one rant I just have to get out, for my sake, at least. Indulge me this one time, or alternatively, just skip it. (Especially if you're the type who doesn't want to hear anything negative about guns.)
Sorry, fellow nerds. I'll get back to video games and comic books and movies shortly. And hey! Baseball's postseason is around the corner, which means another required analysis of payrolls and their impact on a team's chances is due soon! But for now, something divisive and political...sorry...
I will also mention that these ramblings might not go anywhere in particular. Just have had a lot of thoughts on the issue, so again, indulge me as I meander through. Or don't. It's fine either way. No one's making ya read this!
Let's get this out, front and center: guns are kind of cool. See, I'm a man. Which means I grew up a boy. Which means I've had a society and culture telling me for most of my life that guns are cool. That wielding one is cool. That the biggest, manliest badasses use them all the time. It's more than just the idea that GI Joe was marketed to boys - as well as other shooty shooty bang bang type cartoons and toy lines. The military was the pinnacle of manliness. To see if you had what it takes to endure the battlefield. That's what it means to be a man. It's no wonder why you can't watch an NFL game or flip through a comic book without seeing advertisements promoting this idea.
This is not meant as a knock on the military, of course. Turns out, I'm not very manly. Despite what 13 year old me thought (or 17 year old me, or 22 year old me, or...26 year old me, for that matter), I would never have what it takes to get through a battle. It's truly great that we have a volunteer military, and that we have men and women who do have what it takes, plus that willingness to basically give up years of their lives in service to the country, full of people who are not willing to do that.
No. The point is more about how prominent the idea that carrying a gun is. And that it's not just "cool," it's important. Of all the freedoms granted in the Constitution, none have been supported as vehemently as the Second Amendment - the right to own a firearm.
At this point in time, we have several decades of Hollywood blockbusters reaffirming the cool factor of guns. It's almost a given that everyone will have at least one film on their "top 10 all time" list that heavily features guns. You just can't escape it.
It's made even worse by video games, where one quick glance at popular titles indicates how popular shooting games are. I play a lot of them! I play realistic military shooters that turn war into a fun, consequence-free game. I play games with guns that are also chainsaws. I play games where the bullets also light enemies on fire. And I play them, and I laugh at the absurdity. And you know what? It is fun.
But contrary to what everything on this blog seems to indicate, I am an adult. I - like an overwhelming majority of gamers and movie lovers - absolutely know the difference between real life violence and media violence. I love guns in video games, but that doesn't mean I love guns in the real world. Video games and movies get a ton of flack from even older adults who just don't seem to get this whenever there is a shooting and no one wants to look for actual reasons. Whenever there's a school shooting, they blame video game guns or movie guns. What they are totally unwilling to put any emphasis on? Real world guns. You know, the kind of actual guns that actually kill actual people in the actual world?
The science is in on that, by the way. Video games and movies (or violent music, if this were the '90s) don't cause violence. The links between the two are pretty slim at best, though it's mostly nonexistent to begin with. I don't buy the argument for one second that someone plays a game like Modern Warfare 2, then decides they're going to shoot up an airport because that was fun! If anything, the opposite seems true, given that games have never been more violent and, often, more realistic, and yet the number of murders has dropped to some of the lowest rates since 1970.
Still, the big problem we have with guns in this country is one of cultural values. Media is a big part of that. A society that views guns as dangerous weapons to be wielded with the utmost responsibility presumably doesn't make tons and tons of movies, games, shows, and comics inherently built on the idea that you need guns to succeed. A society that acknowledges and recognizes the dangers of guns doesn't spend a ton of time trivializing them, or start normalizing life with guns by selling toy versions to kids.
The most disingenuous argument gun supporters make in the entire "conversation" is that guns are just tools, that they're no different than knives. Sure, on one hand, it turns out that the mortality rate of gun shot victims is not that much higher than that of stabbing victims. In Philadelphia, studies indicated they both hover around 25%, indicating there isn't much of a difference between getting stabbed and getting shot. Some have interpreted this to mean guns are no more dangerous than knives. In terms of injury, I think that stands to reason. Both involve an object penetrating the body and doing internal damage. I don't think many people would argue that getting shot in the stomach is - from the victim's perspective - all that different from getting stabbed in the stomach.
But this ignores the other reality. For the past twenty years, guns have been behind almost 70% of all murders in the US. In 2012, there were over five times as many gun-caused murders than stabbing ones. More importantly, practically every "mass murder" event is committed with a gun, because a gun is not like a knife or an ax.
The fact that we can't even start there is, frankly, disturbing. If we want to talk about the merits of guns, and why the Second Amendment is important and valuable, that's fine. But we have to be able to accept the reality that a gun is not like other weapons. That's just insane. They were specifically invented to be different, more effective, and more deadly than other weapons. You don't need to look hard in history books to see just how critical it was that guns be different than swords. Time and time again in history, if you see one side is armed with guns and the other is not, it's pretty obvious which side is going to win. Alternatively, you can ask samurai if they think guns aren't much different than swords...
Studies on the effectiveness of gun control laws can get a little murky. Track the numbers and you'll find that the states with the five highest gun deaths per 100,000 citizens are also states with more lax gun laws. In 2013, Alaska (19.95), Louisiana (19.15), Alabama (17.79), Mississippi (17.55), and Wyoming (17.51) have the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000. Conversely, the five lowest gun deaths per 100,000 were Hawaii (2.71), Massachusetts (3.18), New York (4.39), Connecticut (4.48), and Rhode Island (5.33), on the most part, states that would be considered as having stricter gun control laws.
On the surface, it does seem like there's a correlation between gun laws (or lack there of) and rate of gun-related deaths. Some might then point out gun deaths in cities. By far, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City have the most gun deaths in terms of total numbers. It isn't even close, really. Philadelphia comes in at number four, and they're about 400 deaths shy of the big three. But those cities are in places that most would consider pretty liberal. These are cities that tend to have more strict gun control laws, thus implying that there isn't a correlation between the laws and violent gun crime.
Of course, there are many reasons for this to be true. It shouldn't come as a surprise though that New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the three most populated cities in the country, and that a lot of their gun crime come from places hit heavy with poverty. The simple math indicates that these cities would have higher numbers of gun deaths, just the same as they would presumably have higher numbers of everything.
A funny thing happens when you look at the gun death rates, though. The cities with the five highest rates of gun deaths per 100,000 people? New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Birmingham, and St. Louis. In fact, Chicago - a city often pointed out as a clear failure of gun control laws - isn't even in the top twenty. Another city popularly cited as proof gun control doesn't work is Washington D.C. And yet, DC has seen its murder rates drop pretty substantially in the past twenty years. Though this year marks a concerning rise in murders, the numbers basically dropped from 361 in 1995 to 105 in 2014.
To be clear, there should still be deeper studies into the effect of gun control laws. All of these numbers are a little difficult to interpret without much context or perspective. As mentioned, you can look at the numbers in Chicago and say, "See? Gun control doesn't do anything!" But at the same time, you can just as easily look at the numbers in Chicago and say, "See? Gun control helps!"
My personal takeaway from some of these numbers indicates what I've always believed to be the root of the issue, which is cultural perspectives on guns. Let's look at the five states with the highest rates of gun deaths and the five states with the lowest rates. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that those states with the higher rates of gun deaths and more lax gun control laws are also states with substantially higher rates of gun ownership. Alaska (60.6%), Louisiana (45.6%), Alabama (57.2%), Mississippi (54.3%), and Wyoming (62.8%) all have a noticeably higher percentage of guns per household than Hawaii (9.7%), Massachusetts (12.8%), New York (18.1%), Connecticut (16.2%), and Rhode Island (13.3%).
To be honest, this implies to me that gun violence does seem to be somewhat correlated to the cultural attitude towards guns. States with more lax gun control also see the highest percentage of households with guns. They also see higher rates of gun related deaths. This also, presumably, means that there are more guns and, more significantly, easier access to guns. If you want to get your hands on a gun in Mississippi, it's a lot easier to do than it is in Massachusetts.
One of the biggest victims of gun deaths in the country - a group few people talk about publicly for various reasons - are those suffering depression. In 2012, 64% of gun deaths were suicides. Gun deaths by suicide typically outnumber gun deaths by homicide two to one. Again, interpretation of the numbers makes the picture quite muddy. One might look at that and see that we don't even really have much of a gun problem in the first place. If there were 6.3 gun deaths by suicide in 2010, according to Pew Research, then there were only 3.6 per 100,000 gun deaths by homicide. Only about a third of gun deaths are actually crime related. Surely, the numbers are skewed to make the US look worse than it actually is.
Well, yes and no. It's true that looking at the total number of gun deaths doesn't give you the complete picture, gun related homicide rates are still higher in the US than almost any other "first world nation." For comparison, the US's homicide-by-guns rate was 3.55 in 2013. Comparatively, Switzerland was at 0.23. Denmark is around 0.22. Australia is around 0.11. Canada is around 0.51. France is around 0.22. German is around 0.20. Shoot, Japan and South Korea's gun-related death rates are practically non-existent! Frankly, the best thing you can say about the US at this point is that while our rates are similar to Mexico's, at least our homicide rate is noticeably lower. (Mexico's rate was about 11.17, but theirs is mostly comprised of homicides while the US's rate is mostly comprised of suicides, so...we win?)
If anything, this all highlights two key issues in the gun discussion. The first - with attention to suicides - is that guns make it easy to act impulsively. In 2013, guns were the most common source of suicide, by far, coming in as the cause of death in 51.5% of the time. By comparison, the second most common cause - suffocation - came in at 24.5%. There's probably a reason why guns are the most common cause of suicide. They're more deadly, and it's a lot quicker. You put the gun up and pull the trigger and BLAM! It's done. Other methods require some time, which can increase the chances that you reconsider, or that someone might find and help you. It's also worth noting that some of the states with the highest rates of suicide are also places where it's pretty easy to get your hands on a gun.
Again, on the surface, it isn't likely to sway anyone that guns are bad. After all, suicide doesn't harm anyone but the person pulling the trigger. Yet I think it speaks to something else, which is the ease at which it is to commit an act with a gun on impulse. Sometimes, the proposed solution is to make sure more people have more guns. That concerns me for that very reason. Knowing how many suicides occur on impulse, and how frequently gun crimes happen almost on impulse makes me really reluctant to accept that idea as having any real merit. (It also doesn't make sense given how rarely mass shootings are actually prevented by the Armed Samaritan. Not that it's never happened, but by and large when it does, it's someone who has a background in policing, military, or security and has had some training. Giving Joe Localbody a gun and expecting him to stop a shooter has not worked out very well, statistically speaking.)
Impulse is a dangerous thing, which is what leads me to believe that there very well is a correlation betweent more strict gun laws and gun deaths. If you're angry and feel like shooting someone, you can pretty easily do it in a state that requires no background check, no waiting period, no training, and no license. Here in Massachusetts, if you wanted to buy a gun, you have to take a little training seminar and buy a license that requires several weeks of waiting (plus being finger printed and having your firearms registered when you buy them).
This ties into the very reality we must all be willing to accept, which is that guns are not like knives or swords or close quarter weaponry. Yes, if you really want to kill people, you can do that. But by nature of a knife, you have to get up close, which fundamentally gives victims a fighting chance. It also reduces the chances of mass murders, since in a largely public space, people might be more willing to try and tackle you. More importantly, like with suicides, it forces you to take time to do it. Frankly, if it all came down to an argument of "well, if you want to kill someone, you will find a way," then making people work harder to do it should definitely be the right way to go. We don't have to make it easier for people to commit crimes or suicide.
But those comparisons to other countries is indicative of what I find to be the biggest problem - the cultural attitudes. In Japan and South Korea, gun crime is practically nonexistent. Why is that? What is the real difference between Japan or Germany or Switzerland and the United States? Well, those nations seem to lack the same cultural obsession over guns. The United States sees about 88 guns per 100 residents. The rest of the "first world" isn't even close. Switzerland is at 45.7, France at 31.2, Canada at 30.8, Germany at 30.3. Even more, South Korea has about 1.1 guns per 100 residents and Japan 0.6! This, to me, is a pretty clear indication of cultural differences. Those other nations - the ones with noticeably lower rates of gun deaths - just don't have as many guns period. They don't seem to care so much about guns. They aren't as obsessed.
It's telling that in the United States, the common argument is that guns keep the government honest. We need guns to keep our other rights (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to vote - other rights that people don't care half as much about infringing upon as the right to own guns). And yet, you'd think that all of these people making such an argument would notice that all of their complaining about the government overstepping its power indicates their guns have done little to stem the tide of government abuse. All of our guns did not stop the government from spying on us. All of our guns did not stop the government from intentionally avoiding transparency and attacking whistleblowers. All of our guns didn't stop the government from dipping into social security. All of our guns have done virtually nothing to stop our nation from becoming something of a police state. It wasn't our guns that stopped the spread of idiotic legislation like SOPA. And for those who hate Obamacare, your guns haven't done anything to sway that.
Bottom line, if your guns are "keeping the government honest," or are preventing tyranny, then you may need a new plan.
Personally, I also find the idea that gun control laws somehow "infringe" upon the right to own a gun ridiculous. Saying that you can't own a fully automatic rifle does not prevent you from buying a shotgun, or a pistol, or any other type of rifle. Saying you need a license does not prevent you from getting a license and then a gun. Saying you need a background check again, would only prevent you from owning a gun if your background indicates you've done something that forces you to forfeit that right - just the same, by the way, as ex-convicts forfeit their right to vote (which is a right, by the way). It's strange that a lot of the people arguing that gun control infringes on their right are also some of the same ones who want more strict voter registration laws. Somehow, voting laws are not an infringement of that right, but gun laws are an infringement of this right.
It's increasingly clear that we have a problem. Sticking our fingers in our ears going, "LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU" has proven to do virtually nothing to stem the tide. Ignorance has never been effective policy. It's also worth noting that admitting we have a problem is not the same thing as saying no one should own guns. For the high rate of gun deaths we do have, violent crime rates are still among the lowest they've been, despite gun ownership being at an all-time high. There are some studies that suggest that a gun in the home can stave off home invasions. In one poll, almost two-thirds of prisoners admitted to having been chased off during a home invasion with an owner with a gun, or knowing someone who experienced it. At the end of the day, people have the right to feel safe in their homes. If a gun in the house makes you feel safer, then go for it. Again, I'm concerned about impulsive behavior, but I support the right to own a gun and to do what you feel is best for your home and family.
For all this talk, I'm actually kind of skeptical of gun control's effectiveness against crime. I think what needs to change is the cultural atmosphere. I'm not necessarily for "more" gun control, but I'm for reasonable gun control. Background checks should be a given. Licenses should be a given. A safety course should be a given. If we really want to argue that guns are no different than, say, cars (which, by the way, don't actually kill more people than guns in some states), then let's treat them the same. You need to get a license to buy a car, right? You need to register it, right? And that's with cars, something that rarely kill people on purpose or impulse.
Look, I get the appeal of guns. I do. As I said, I think guns are cool and interesting. No piece of technology has shaped human history more than guns, not even the atomic bombs! They're fascinating machines with intelligent designs behind them. I have friends who own guns, and I've gone to the range with them. I've fired pistols, revolvers, and rifles.
I myself was a gun owner. I enjoyed going to the range and shooting for a while. It's quite a kick. That power does create a stir. It's exciting. It's fun. It's loud, and powerful, and frightening, and awesome, and crazy, and memorable. And for a lot of people, it makes them feel safer (even if it makes others feel less safe as a result). I get it.
But let's stop pretending like we don't have a problem. Let's stop pretending these guns are doing anything to prevent government overreach. Let's stop pretending like gun control is a huge violation of our Constitutional rights. Let's stop pretending like guns are no different than cars or knives. Let's stop pretending that this is all the fault of our movies or video games. (No, our media is a reflection of us. Do you suppose movies and games would be so gun-heavy if people didn't already have a strange obsession with guns?) Let's stop pretending that the only issue here, really, is mental health. Let's stop pretending that guns aren't weapons, and that they aren't specifically designed to be as deadly as possible.
Let's stop pretending that we don't have an unhealthy obsession with guns.
I gave up my guns and let my license expire in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. Even though I used them for recreational shooting, I never had any misgivings about them. I would never be able to shoot someone. So they clearly weren't for self-defense. I'm also not paranoid about the goings-on of the government, so they clearly weren't to defend against the government (plus, I'm more a believer in the First Amendment - the freedom of speech is more important in democracy than guns). At the end of the day, I owned firearms simply because they were cool. Tragedy after tragedy, mass shooting after mass shooting, and it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the belief that guns are cool and the fact that these things are dangerous weapons. It became clear at that point that I was part of the problem. I gave the gun industry money, which they will use to lobby against sensible gun control everywhere, and for no real reason other than "guns are cool."
At the end of the day, there is clearly a discussion to be had. We should be able to talk about guns and their impact, especially in the aftermath of a tragic shooting. In nothing else would you find the lack of discussion or investigation to be an acceptable and appropriate response. If a plane crash, we would demand to know why and what the airlines will do to prevent it going forward. If food had been contaminated, we would demand answers. If the US were attacked by Muslim terrorists, you bet your ass no one would shrug it off as "stuff happens," like some presidential candidates. When it comes to guns though? We can't talk about it. It's too soon. It's politicizing tragedy.
Because guns are cool. That's the side of the argument we're allowed to see.
Sorry, fellow nerds. I'll get back to video games and comic books and movies shortly. And hey! Baseball's postseason is around the corner, which means another required analysis of payrolls and their impact on a team's chances is due soon! But for now, something divisive and political...sorry...
I will also mention that these ramblings might not go anywhere in particular. Just have had a lot of thoughts on the issue, so again, indulge me as I meander through. Or don't. It's fine either way. No one's making ya read this!
Let's get this out, front and center: guns are kind of cool. See, I'm a man. Which means I grew up a boy. Which means I've had a society and culture telling me for most of my life that guns are cool. That wielding one is cool. That the biggest, manliest badasses use them all the time. It's more than just the idea that GI Joe was marketed to boys - as well as other shooty shooty bang bang type cartoons and toy lines. The military was the pinnacle of manliness. To see if you had what it takes to endure the battlefield. That's what it means to be a man. It's no wonder why you can't watch an NFL game or flip through a comic book without seeing advertisements promoting this idea.
This is not meant as a knock on the military, of course. Turns out, I'm not very manly. Despite what 13 year old me thought (or 17 year old me, or 22 year old me, or...26 year old me, for that matter), I would never have what it takes to get through a battle. It's truly great that we have a volunteer military, and that we have men and women who do have what it takes, plus that willingness to basically give up years of their lives in service to the country, full of people who are not willing to do that.
No. The point is more about how prominent the idea that carrying a gun is. And that it's not just "cool," it's important. Of all the freedoms granted in the Constitution, none have been supported as vehemently as the Second Amendment - the right to own a firearm.
At this point in time, we have several decades of Hollywood blockbusters reaffirming the cool factor of guns. It's almost a given that everyone will have at least one film on their "top 10 all time" list that heavily features guns. You just can't escape it.
It's made even worse by video games, where one quick glance at popular titles indicates how popular shooting games are. I play a lot of them! I play realistic military shooters that turn war into a fun, consequence-free game. I play games with guns that are also chainsaws. I play games where the bullets also light enemies on fire. And I play them, and I laugh at the absurdity. And you know what? It is fun.
But contrary to what everything on this blog seems to indicate, I am an adult. I - like an overwhelming majority of gamers and movie lovers - absolutely know the difference between real life violence and media violence. I love guns in video games, but that doesn't mean I love guns in the real world. Video games and movies get a ton of flack from even older adults who just don't seem to get this whenever there is a shooting and no one wants to look for actual reasons. Whenever there's a school shooting, they blame video game guns or movie guns. What they are totally unwilling to put any emphasis on? Real world guns. You know, the kind of actual guns that actually kill actual people in the actual world?
The science is in on that, by the way. Video games and movies (or violent music, if this were the '90s) don't cause violence. The links between the two are pretty slim at best, though it's mostly nonexistent to begin with. I don't buy the argument for one second that someone plays a game like Modern Warfare 2, then decides they're going to shoot up an airport because that was fun! If anything, the opposite seems true, given that games have never been more violent and, often, more realistic, and yet the number of murders has dropped to some of the lowest rates since 1970.
Still, the big problem we have with guns in this country is one of cultural values. Media is a big part of that. A society that views guns as dangerous weapons to be wielded with the utmost responsibility presumably doesn't make tons and tons of movies, games, shows, and comics inherently built on the idea that you need guns to succeed. A society that acknowledges and recognizes the dangers of guns doesn't spend a ton of time trivializing them, or start normalizing life with guns by selling toy versions to kids.
The most disingenuous argument gun supporters make in the entire "conversation" is that guns are just tools, that they're no different than knives. Sure, on one hand, it turns out that the mortality rate of gun shot victims is not that much higher than that of stabbing victims. In Philadelphia, studies indicated they both hover around 25%, indicating there isn't much of a difference between getting stabbed and getting shot. Some have interpreted this to mean guns are no more dangerous than knives. In terms of injury, I think that stands to reason. Both involve an object penetrating the body and doing internal damage. I don't think many people would argue that getting shot in the stomach is - from the victim's perspective - all that different from getting stabbed in the stomach.
But this ignores the other reality. For the past twenty years, guns have been behind almost 70% of all murders in the US. In 2012, there were over five times as many gun-caused murders than stabbing ones. More importantly, practically every "mass murder" event is committed with a gun, because a gun is not like a knife or an ax.
The fact that we can't even start there is, frankly, disturbing. If we want to talk about the merits of guns, and why the Second Amendment is important and valuable, that's fine. But we have to be able to accept the reality that a gun is not like other weapons. That's just insane. They were specifically invented to be different, more effective, and more deadly than other weapons. You don't need to look hard in history books to see just how critical it was that guns be different than swords. Time and time again in history, if you see one side is armed with guns and the other is not, it's pretty obvious which side is going to win. Alternatively, you can ask samurai if they think guns aren't much different than swords...
Studies on the effectiveness of gun control laws can get a little murky. Track the numbers and you'll find that the states with the five highest gun deaths per 100,000 citizens are also states with more lax gun laws. In 2013, Alaska (19.95), Louisiana (19.15), Alabama (17.79), Mississippi (17.55), and Wyoming (17.51) have the highest rate of gun deaths per 100,000. Conversely, the five lowest gun deaths per 100,000 were Hawaii (2.71), Massachusetts (3.18), New York (4.39), Connecticut (4.48), and Rhode Island (5.33), on the most part, states that would be considered as having stricter gun control laws.
On the surface, it does seem like there's a correlation between gun laws (or lack there of) and rate of gun-related deaths. Some might then point out gun deaths in cities. By far, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City have the most gun deaths in terms of total numbers. It isn't even close, really. Philadelphia comes in at number four, and they're about 400 deaths shy of the big three. But those cities are in places that most would consider pretty liberal. These are cities that tend to have more strict gun control laws, thus implying that there isn't a correlation between the laws and violent gun crime.
Of course, there are many reasons for this to be true. It shouldn't come as a surprise though that New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago are the three most populated cities in the country, and that a lot of their gun crime come from places hit heavy with poverty. The simple math indicates that these cities would have higher numbers of gun deaths, just the same as they would presumably have higher numbers of everything.
A funny thing happens when you look at the gun death rates, though. The cities with the five highest rates of gun deaths per 100,000 people? New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Birmingham, and St. Louis. In fact, Chicago - a city often pointed out as a clear failure of gun control laws - isn't even in the top twenty. Another city popularly cited as proof gun control doesn't work is Washington D.C. And yet, DC has seen its murder rates drop pretty substantially in the past twenty years. Though this year marks a concerning rise in murders, the numbers basically dropped from 361 in 1995 to 105 in 2014.
To be clear, there should still be deeper studies into the effect of gun control laws. All of these numbers are a little difficult to interpret without much context or perspective. As mentioned, you can look at the numbers in Chicago and say, "See? Gun control doesn't do anything!" But at the same time, you can just as easily look at the numbers in Chicago and say, "See? Gun control helps!"
My personal takeaway from some of these numbers indicates what I've always believed to be the root of the issue, which is cultural perspectives on guns. Let's look at the five states with the highest rates of gun deaths and the five states with the lowest rates. Perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that those states with the higher rates of gun deaths and more lax gun control laws are also states with substantially higher rates of gun ownership. Alaska (60.6%), Louisiana (45.6%), Alabama (57.2%), Mississippi (54.3%), and Wyoming (62.8%) all have a noticeably higher percentage of guns per household than Hawaii (9.7%), Massachusetts (12.8%), New York (18.1%), Connecticut (16.2%), and Rhode Island (13.3%).
To be honest, this implies to me that gun violence does seem to be somewhat correlated to the cultural attitude towards guns. States with more lax gun control also see the highest percentage of households with guns. They also see higher rates of gun related deaths. This also, presumably, means that there are more guns and, more significantly, easier access to guns. If you want to get your hands on a gun in Mississippi, it's a lot easier to do than it is in Massachusetts.
One of the biggest victims of gun deaths in the country - a group few people talk about publicly for various reasons - are those suffering depression. In 2012, 64% of gun deaths were suicides. Gun deaths by suicide typically outnumber gun deaths by homicide two to one. Again, interpretation of the numbers makes the picture quite muddy. One might look at that and see that we don't even really have much of a gun problem in the first place. If there were 6.3 gun deaths by suicide in 2010, according to Pew Research, then there were only 3.6 per 100,000 gun deaths by homicide. Only about a third of gun deaths are actually crime related. Surely, the numbers are skewed to make the US look worse than it actually is.
Well, yes and no. It's true that looking at the total number of gun deaths doesn't give you the complete picture, gun related homicide rates are still higher in the US than almost any other "first world nation." For comparison, the US's homicide-by-guns rate was 3.55 in 2013. Comparatively, Switzerland was at 0.23. Denmark is around 0.22. Australia is around 0.11. Canada is around 0.51. France is around 0.22. German is around 0.20. Shoot, Japan and South Korea's gun-related death rates are practically non-existent! Frankly, the best thing you can say about the US at this point is that while our rates are similar to Mexico's, at least our homicide rate is noticeably lower. (Mexico's rate was about 11.17, but theirs is mostly comprised of homicides while the US's rate is mostly comprised of suicides, so...we win?)
If anything, this all highlights two key issues in the gun discussion. The first - with attention to suicides - is that guns make it easy to act impulsively. In 2013, guns were the most common source of suicide, by far, coming in as the cause of death in 51.5% of the time. By comparison, the second most common cause - suffocation - came in at 24.5%. There's probably a reason why guns are the most common cause of suicide. They're more deadly, and it's a lot quicker. You put the gun up and pull the trigger and BLAM! It's done. Other methods require some time, which can increase the chances that you reconsider, or that someone might find and help you. It's also worth noting that some of the states with the highest rates of suicide are also places where it's pretty easy to get your hands on a gun.
Again, on the surface, it isn't likely to sway anyone that guns are bad. After all, suicide doesn't harm anyone but the person pulling the trigger. Yet I think it speaks to something else, which is the ease at which it is to commit an act with a gun on impulse. Sometimes, the proposed solution is to make sure more people have more guns. That concerns me for that very reason. Knowing how many suicides occur on impulse, and how frequently gun crimes happen almost on impulse makes me really reluctant to accept that idea as having any real merit. (It also doesn't make sense given how rarely mass shootings are actually prevented by the Armed Samaritan. Not that it's never happened, but by and large when it does, it's someone who has a background in policing, military, or security and has had some training. Giving Joe Localbody a gun and expecting him to stop a shooter has not worked out very well, statistically speaking.)
Impulse is a dangerous thing, which is what leads me to believe that there very well is a correlation betweent more strict gun laws and gun deaths. If you're angry and feel like shooting someone, you can pretty easily do it in a state that requires no background check, no waiting period, no training, and no license. Here in Massachusetts, if you wanted to buy a gun, you have to take a little training seminar and buy a license that requires several weeks of waiting (plus being finger printed and having your firearms registered when you buy them).
This ties into the very reality we must all be willing to accept, which is that guns are not like knives or swords or close quarter weaponry. Yes, if you really want to kill people, you can do that. But by nature of a knife, you have to get up close, which fundamentally gives victims a fighting chance. It also reduces the chances of mass murders, since in a largely public space, people might be more willing to try and tackle you. More importantly, like with suicides, it forces you to take time to do it. Frankly, if it all came down to an argument of "well, if you want to kill someone, you will find a way," then making people work harder to do it should definitely be the right way to go. We don't have to make it easier for people to commit crimes or suicide.
But those comparisons to other countries is indicative of what I find to be the biggest problem - the cultural attitudes. In Japan and South Korea, gun crime is practically nonexistent. Why is that? What is the real difference between Japan or Germany or Switzerland and the United States? Well, those nations seem to lack the same cultural obsession over guns. The United States sees about 88 guns per 100 residents. The rest of the "first world" isn't even close. Switzerland is at 45.7, France at 31.2, Canada at 30.8, Germany at 30.3. Even more, South Korea has about 1.1 guns per 100 residents and Japan 0.6! This, to me, is a pretty clear indication of cultural differences. Those other nations - the ones with noticeably lower rates of gun deaths - just don't have as many guns period. They don't seem to care so much about guns. They aren't as obsessed.
It's telling that in the United States, the common argument is that guns keep the government honest. We need guns to keep our other rights (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to vote - other rights that people don't care half as much about infringing upon as the right to own guns). And yet, you'd think that all of these people making such an argument would notice that all of their complaining about the government overstepping its power indicates their guns have done little to stem the tide of government abuse. All of our guns did not stop the government from spying on us. All of our guns did not stop the government from intentionally avoiding transparency and attacking whistleblowers. All of our guns didn't stop the government from dipping into social security. All of our guns have done virtually nothing to stop our nation from becoming something of a police state. It wasn't our guns that stopped the spread of idiotic legislation like SOPA. And for those who hate Obamacare, your guns haven't done anything to sway that.
Bottom line, if your guns are "keeping the government honest," or are preventing tyranny, then you may need a new plan.
Personally, I also find the idea that gun control laws somehow "infringe" upon the right to own a gun ridiculous. Saying that you can't own a fully automatic rifle does not prevent you from buying a shotgun, or a pistol, or any other type of rifle. Saying you need a license does not prevent you from getting a license and then a gun. Saying you need a background check again, would only prevent you from owning a gun if your background indicates you've done something that forces you to forfeit that right - just the same, by the way, as ex-convicts forfeit their right to vote (which is a right, by the way). It's strange that a lot of the people arguing that gun control infringes on their right are also some of the same ones who want more strict voter registration laws. Somehow, voting laws are not an infringement of that right, but gun laws are an infringement of this right.
It's increasingly clear that we have a problem. Sticking our fingers in our ears going, "LA LA LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU" has proven to do virtually nothing to stem the tide. Ignorance has never been effective policy. It's also worth noting that admitting we have a problem is not the same thing as saying no one should own guns. For the high rate of gun deaths we do have, violent crime rates are still among the lowest they've been, despite gun ownership being at an all-time high. There are some studies that suggest that a gun in the home can stave off home invasions. In one poll, almost two-thirds of prisoners admitted to having been chased off during a home invasion with an owner with a gun, or knowing someone who experienced it. At the end of the day, people have the right to feel safe in their homes. If a gun in the house makes you feel safer, then go for it. Again, I'm concerned about impulsive behavior, but I support the right to own a gun and to do what you feel is best for your home and family.
For all this talk, I'm actually kind of skeptical of gun control's effectiveness against crime. I think what needs to change is the cultural atmosphere. I'm not necessarily for "more" gun control, but I'm for reasonable gun control. Background checks should be a given. Licenses should be a given. A safety course should be a given. If we really want to argue that guns are no different than, say, cars (which, by the way, don't actually kill more people than guns in some states), then let's treat them the same. You need to get a license to buy a car, right? You need to register it, right? And that's with cars, something that rarely kill people on purpose or impulse.
Look, I get the appeal of guns. I do. As I said, I think guns are cool and interesting. No piece of technology has shaped human history more than guns, not even the atomic bombs! They're fascinating machines with intelligent designs behind them. I have friends who own guns, and I've gone to the range with them. I've fired pistols, revolvers, and rifles.
I myself was a gun owner. I enjoyed going to the range and shooting for a while. It's quite a kick. That power does create a stir. It's exciting. It's fun. It's loud, and powerful, and frightening, and awesome, and crazy, and memorable. And for a lot of people, it makes them feel safer (even if it makes others feel less safe as a result). I get it.
But let's stop pretending like we don't have a problem. Let's stop pretending these guns are doing anything to prevent government overreach. Let's stop pretending like gun control is a huge violation of our Constitutional rights. Let's stop pretending like guns are no different than cars or knives. Let's stop pretending that this is all the fault of our movies or video games. (No, our media is a reflection of us. Do you suppose movies and games would be so gun-heavy if people didn't already have a strange obsession with guns?) Let's stop pretending that the only issue here, really, is mental health. Let's stop pretending that guns aren't weapons, and that they aren't specifically designed to be as deadly as possible.
Let's stop pretending that we don't have an unhealthy obsession with guns.
I gave up my guns and let my license expire in the aftermath of Sandy Hook. Even though I used them for recreational shooting, I never had any misgivings about them. I would never be able to shoot someone. So they clearly weren't for self-defense. I'm also not paranoid about the goings-on of the government, so they clearly weren't to defend against the government (plus, I'm more a believer in the First Amendment - the freedom of speech is more important in democracy than guns). At the end of the day, I owned firearms simply because they were cool. Tragedy after tragedy, mass shooting after mass shooting, and it became increasingly difficult to reconcile the belief that guns are cool and the fact that these things are dangerous weapons. It became clear at that point that I was part of the problem. I gave the gun industry money, which they will use to lobby against sensible gun control everywhere, and for no real reason other than "guns are cool."
At the end of the day, there is clearly a discussion to be had. We should be able to talk about guns and their impact, especially in the aftermath of a tragic shooting. In nothing else would you find the lack of discussion or investigation to be an acceptable and appropriate response. If a plane crash, we would demand to know why and what the airlines will do to prevent it going forward. If food had been contaminated, we would demand answers. If the US were attacked by Muslim terrorists, you bet your ass no one would shrug it off as "stuff happens," like some presidential candidates. When it comes to guns though? We can't talk about it. It's too soon. It's politicizing tragedy.
Because guns are cool. That's the side of the argument we're allowed to see.
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