Grow up...sheesh

Salad bowl brain blast incoming! I am a pretty negative person, and that may not always come through in my posts, here. That's the benefit of writing over saying something: you have time to control your ideas. Any jackass who tweets jackass things probably doesn't realize that tweeting is writing, and those people have the boon of time to...maybe not say racist things and lose a bunch of work for a bunch of people *cough Roseanne cough*. So, without further ado, it is TIME TO RANT.

Gaming trends

Fallout 4. Ark. Daylight. Fortnite. PUBG. Terraria. Breath of the Wild. State of Decay 2.
What do all of these have in common? Crafting and survival. Trends have the potential for creators to take familiar routes and hopefully break left when everyone else broke right and make something new. Developers usually rest that divergence on narrative, characters and/or aesthetics. However, if you're like me and really don't value the resources-and-survival genre, it's easy to feel like there's no new content. I personally feel like the developer stopped making the game and left me purchasing their full-priced dev kit. Minecraft looks like LEGO and gets credit for being a big deal early on (though I'm not sure if it was the first.) But the fact that so much of modern releases are now these glorified physics engines is getting obnoxious. Oddly enough, I highly favor RTS games, which have a lot in common with this list of games I started with. Maybe the player perspective is what I don't like about these?

Solution: give me a narrative!

Playstation Network

Speaking of gaming trends: smaller developers have been my lifeblood, especially in the last year. It's incredibly frustrating how rudimentary marketing tactics prevent games that aren't trendy from seeing more money. I'm going to pick on SONY for having a poorly-executed Playstation marketplace for more than a decade. A better system helps everyone! If you're a AAA title, you get your own page: the 5000 people who weren't already going to buy Destiny 2 were treated to a menu option in the store with a huge banner and a neat little video. However, maybe you want to play a game that isn't a shooter or maybe you've grown sick of Bethesda games and want to try one of the thousands of games that don't fit these two overdone categories of games.

I usually go to the sale pages, and filter GAMES out of the ADD-ON, BUNDLE, (dashboard) THEMES or DEMOS. There's a GENRE filter as well, but not on the main storefront page. You have to know what you're looking for: the browsing is so limited, and there's no way to know just how many games are available on the PSN. Also, searching is atrocious. You search, one letter at a time, from a shrinking choice of options. You can't just search by keyword. The ratings should be more robust than a star system. Perhaps with more detailed feedback options, gamers might be willing to spend more money. They could stick with the 5-star system and break it down into categories: Gameplay, Difficulty, Controls, Visuals/Audio and Pace. I'm sure someone who works for the company and gets paid for ideas could come up with something better than me, but the store they've had since even the PS3 days has been garbage. A better system helps everyone. Also, on a technical note, the store crashes all the time from not being able to keep up with loading preview media of games. Also, the video still plays despite skipping over it and trying to go to pictures. This has gone on since the PS4's launch. The volume of movie clips is so much louder than whatever you're playing that it's quite jarring, and I just don't watch their stupid previews unless the remote is within reach. A better system helps everyone: fix your shit, SONY.

Movies

When Avengers: Infinity Wars came out, I was still winding down from Black Panther being the big deal it was, with it's showcasing Black Excellence, compelling villain and strong women. Then, Avengers kicked my ass all over the place with Thanos being THE ultimate badass. And now, some idiot or collection of idiots decided to release a Star Wars movie barely after Avengers, and half a year after The Last Jedi. I really liked Solo. It had my favorite musical score of the movies, other than a few choice tracks from the saga, of course. The movie was really enjoyable and the dude who played Han was as much of a rascal as he should have been. I did my best to ignore the secondhand warnings I got from people who read and value professional critics' declarations of disapproval and saw the movie in a reserved-seating theater with reclining chairs. That is my first gripe with this movie: the critics got to see the movie first and ruined it with their crappy opinions. I realize the irony of this, considering that I primarily review games on this blog. But seriously, between unimpressed critics who only revere old movies and "fans" who were still burned from The Last Jedi not perpetuating some outdated elitist belief that every advantage is hereditary, this movie didn't get a fair chance to shoot first...Also, the idiot studio not waiting until December to release it lost that movie millions of dollars of revenue. These things are external as hell, but they still did affect the experience of seeing Solo. My only gripe with the movie is the trope of absolutely needing to unmask characters that wear masks. Screw that, keep the mask: retain the mystery.

Math

Yeah! I'm on a roll, here. So far I've talked about entertainment stuff, which is easy to argue that I should let it go because we're lucky enough to have access to it in the first place. Grab your Maslov Pyramid for a moment, cause I'm gonna rant on something that has REAL WORLD FUNCTION!
At some point in my early education, I was two years ahead in math. This means that I took algebra and geometry in middle school, and I can see the value of basic formulas and measuring space as life skills. However, high school further explored Algebra and then I studied Calculus, which was completely useless to me, who became an ESL teacher. Calculus is useful in the world, and probably to scientists who don't have calculators or internet connections.

Solution:
However, finances, debt management and credit should be priorities in (middle and) high school. Every. Single. Person. Uses. Money. My point here is that the Math Directive needs to teach students about money and credit before rates and advanced formulas.

Republican Party economics

There isn't one person who is both competent and not evil in that group. How can you possibly believe that Republicans "create jobs" when they slash funding for social programs that...help people work? Planned Parenthood helps people decide whether or not to have kids and...work! Slashing that funding means a bunch of social workers lose their jobs, as well as the parents who were on the fence about working now have to either balance baby life and work life. Whether working more or less, the result is a family that suffers quality of time and life. Same thing for healthcare, except now you've got sick and dead people's debts. Who do they expect to pay for this?

Then there's this nonsense about economic trickle down. Squash. That. Noise. I live outside of Seattle but work downtown. I don't work at Amazon; their AI decided my resume didn't have enough keywords and boom, no job. That's fine, but the only evidence of trickle down with Amazon that I see is that it's now okay for salads to cost $14, and a 400 sq ft studio is $1600 per month. The surrounding neighborhoods are super gentrified and homelessness has skyrocketed. Go trickle-down!

If you're not from here, the recent politics are that the City of Seattle wanted to charge a special tax to large corporations and use it to address homelessness. Obviously they pushed back and said the City should get better at financial planning (true) and the spineless council caved. I personally think that if Amazon left, smaller businesses would have more of a fighting chance, rent would go down, and so would the ridiculous cost of eating. Also, smaller businesses will likely pay taxes instead of keeping their money in Ireland. Amazon is both online and global, so it's not like I can't use their business if they move away from here. I really don't feel like there's any trickle down besides those gorgeous globes they built in the middle of the city.

Solution: Never, ever believe in trickle down. It forces you to pay taxes that corporations should be paying.

May Play

Readers! It's been a busy couple weeks, seeing and then reading Ready Player One, and changing my freakin life with the viewing of Avengers: Infinity War. I'm not going to spoil it more than the fact that I really enjoy good villains, and Thanos was able to capture my attention away from the two dozen personalities that are trying to beat him. Black Panther was uncomfortable because you don't really feel good about the opposing force not winning, just as watching some of the protagonists "succeed" in Breaking Bad isn't necessarily a good thing. Good writing and acting can do that. I'm trying to say that I only just realized in the last few years that just because I'm reading/watching a point of view doesn't mean I have to cheer for them. That said, I cheered for Thanos because I like to sympathize with a good villain. Thanos isn't particularly complicated, but he's strong (and thus cool) and opens the movie with a badass speech. I was hooked.

Totally taken from https://ourviolentchild.wordpress.com/

I saw it again this weekend and was once again shocked by how insanely violent this movie is. There are tons of kids in that audience watching people get tortured, impaled, slammed, smashed, blown up and simply annihilated, and their parents are more riveted than they are. But we didn't see a titty or hear, "Fuck!" so it's all good for the scores of 5-year-olds that saw that movie, right?

Anyhow, going back to narrative, I'm reminded of how the story unfolds in Metroid Prime, which I finished over the weekend. As you collect the story in fragments through scanning and downloading your oppressors' computer, the narrative turns tone as the Space Pirates react to Samus. As she beats bosses and gains abilities, Samus graduates from a nuisance to a threat to a superior force that the colonizing Space Pirates have to prioritize. This gets to the point of their scientists conducting risky experiments on organisms and throwing the ones that didn't die in some horrible failure at you. I spent the majority of April revisiting this classic, as well as Nex Machina (twin-stick shooter) and Overwatch.

I don't own this photo.

Also, in celebration of May the 4th and Revenge of the Fifth, Star Wars Battlefront 2 did a double xp weekend. This is a huge deal because you actually earn 2.5-3x. I say this because the game is poorly optimized. If you're playing half the amount of games, that's a LOT less time waiting for players to fill the queue, as well as the post-battle tally screen and level loading transition. I understand that managing all the resources for the awesome graphics and sound requires loading time and that's fine. However, the game is built so that you constantly have to return to the main menu to upgrade heroes after they gain levels, and this main screen takes over a minute to load. It's like if every domestic flight in the US were required to pass through LAX, despite being Seattle to New York or something.

There isn't much else to say. I hope set up another themed gaming month in 2018, but there is some non-trophy-hunting I want to do like replay the Final Fantasy XIII games. I've always struggled with story coherence in those games, and would really like to play through without side missions and collectibles and just focus on experiencing the story, the same way I did with FFVI last month. What classics are you revisiting?

FPMC: Fall Passive Media Consumption

Well, before Demonspawn Ajit Pai, Comcast and the FCC totally ruin the internet as we know it, I might as well continue to reflect on some entertainment with no major spoilers.

You can pretend like you don't hear the title music playing...

I blew through Stranger Things 2, and was glad to see every character have something to do; instead of the 4 boys working on one thing together, the teens their thing, and the adults on another, they were divided and mixed and the parallel storytelling was awesomely done.

I saw a chart earlier in the year that explained how sophisticated television is now compared to what our grandparents grew up with. My only gripe with shows/movies with multi-layered storytelling is when the smart-ass creators also try to time warp. Cloud Atlas, anyone? Not everyone can direct a Memento, and when the visual communication gets lost, so do the poor suckers that have to watch it. This makes me think of my first gripe with Justice League 2017.

Who turned out the lights on all of these movies?

The first hour or so of Justice League is like reading the first paragraph of 5 different essays with no transitions. That would result in a B- in English 090. You still pass, but that paper ain't being put up on the fridge. It's hard to have 5 different characters intersect, but that movie cost $300m. Perhaps having a director could have helped. Anyway, an hour in, the movie gets to the good stuff, and has its funny moments, a few awesome brawls, and was more enjoyable than I'd imagined. I wished the score was better and the heroes didn't dumbly let the bad guy steal a really important weapon, but I thought it was cool.

Next up: Disney/Pixar's Coco, the movie set in Mexico during the Day of the Dead festival. Disney's stepped up its culture game fo sho. Moana had Polynesian voice actors and was based on Pacific Island mythology and Coco's main VA cast had Jon Ratzenberger, a Pixar staple, as the only non-Hispanic. The movie was gorgeous as expected, and I hadn't seen any previews to tell me what to expect. The only gripe was the neglectful parents nearby who let their kids wander the dark theater while they were on their phones, as well as the too-long-for-a-short-film Winter Special about Olaff from Frozen trying to find a new "chra-dish-shin" (tradition) for that time of the year. The last Pixar short I saw was the Hawaiian Islands lava video before Inside Out that had my eyes...err, sweating.

no te metas con la abuela!

Most importantly, I got to see the culture's views on the afterlife as opposed to sometimes gruesome, immediate and sad elements of death I'm used to seeing. Dia de Los Muertos has a lot in common with Japan's Obon and Korea's Chuseok, visiting family graves, making shrines and offering food to the dead. In the US, we have Memorial Day, which I've never seen more than a visit to a deceased serviceman's grave, some flowers and kind words. It's easy to feel like there's no culture in the US when our sparse holidays are more about the general concept of family togetherness than anything purposeful. By contrast, every Korean and Japanese person I've ever met could describe their family's rituals in great detail, adding where their family differs from the cultural norm. Ahh well, I still enjoy the togetherness.

'Ey, man.

I also saw Thor 3, which was delightfully weird and funny. The planet most of the movie took place on was eclectic, somewhere between The Fifth Element and Tron. The movie's director and voice actor for Korg (the blue rock dude), is none other than Taika Waititi, who makes really funny movies like The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which I also watched recently.

UPDATE: How could I forget the most off the chain show of them all. I am 100000% a Trekkie after re-watching The Next Generation earlier this year. Now I understand a bit of the sting of watching the occasionally corny, clever insight into humanity and philosophy the show would drop on you went to the flashy sci-fi action flicks that JJ Abrams brought us. Take this aesthetic (the show looks absolutely gorgeous), add back the humanity with some witty quips and smart shit and you get my new favorite thing in the universe: Star Trek: Discovery.

She's thinking of some clever shit.

This show is badass. Michael Burnam...half a season hasn't explained her name yet...is passionate to her own demise, and puts a lot of people in their places. I love watching Sonequa Martin-Green perform. I am upset to read that she is already married. She's gorgeous, but this is a case where I admire both the actor and the character. The captain she serves ends up sending your mind thinking the worst only to have something else happen. Get caught up, y'all. There are 11 episodes right now, as it's on its mid-season break til January.

Marketing Gimmicks I think are cheap...

"But wait!!" I live in a house that runs cable tv for most hours of the day. The Internet is so ubiquitous, we rarely use the term anymore...it's just an extension of life. Either way, with the ability to make one-click orders from your phone or pc, it baffles me why tv commercials still do this gimmick. I'm glad I watched the whole commercial to get the deal. If I had picked up the phone, I may have paid full price!

Out-of-genre shots in marketing. The slick action shots in this Paul Blart fat-guy-comedy trailer are just incongruous. I'm not saying we shouldn't have quality parts to a movie, but I think it's a cheap laugh.

I...just made you watch that. This lame contrivance is related to the "least expected" lazy humor. Remember that foul-mouthed bear Ted? What about the cute white girl Sarah Silverman who cusses like a sailor? These lousy acts are funny because bad words are coming from where you least expect them.

Next up: ultra-HD-uber-colorful-commercials-with-super-crisp-colors-and-graphics that take no loading time, during your choppy, constantly buffering streaming videos. I get it, we need sponsors, but (internet speed) throttling is wrong. (Source: youtube.com, especially on 3G)

Teaching ESL, you run into this everywhere.

Now, the next one is a humdinger for friends and other folk who want to call me a hypocrite. *Takes a breath.* Websites that hide everything behind an even-free login. I_don't_want_to create an account before I know what your site is about. I'm talking to you, Pintrest! I'm preemptively attacking myself because once I get a big website, I'll hide content behind a login. That's right, friends, get ready to throw this one in my face!

Music tropes. For a while, there were parodies of the flat, blasting trumpets from the Inception trailer, and now all action movie trailers use this. In comedies, you know the black characters are on screen because it sounds like 80s rap instrumentals with record scratching. Me, Myself and Irene, one of my favorite comedies, is a great example of this, though I can't find a clip to prove. Towards the end of the movie, his three black sons show up in a helicopter and save the day to this music. Other examples are the saxophone to tell your stupid ass the movie is supposed to be funny. And don't forget that it's a spooky comedy because there are pizzicato stringed instruments. Get outta here with that corny stuff! I'm not going to pick on every single genre and music type, but I have seen these a bit too often and wonder if it's time for an update. The trope with the strong trumpets and male choir for a swords and sandals flick never gets old, though. Always cool.

This article made it pretty far without a video game reference.

...pre-orders...

Pre-orders. The granddaddy of them all in my orb-clutching-gesture-causing marketing gimmicks. Fuck pre-orders. I see that it's a good gauge for how many games will sell, that's very important to the company. But how often do we get games that could have used another week of bug-testing because of "Day-1" releases? The company makes a decision that the million preorders means we want a buggier game now, more than a polished game next week. There is one exception to this, and that's companies that simply lower the price for preordering. Amazon Prime members can get select presales for $47.99, which is slick. Bonus gripe: why is digital content the same price as physical?

Season passes are another bullshit marketing ploy. That's where you plunk down another $20-60 on the game to ensure you get the often-tiny expansions to the game. You get an extra 10% of content for another 30% of what you paid initially. Some games are so great, you don't want them to end, and DLC is a blessing. However, the most frustrating part about these is that the season pass often go on sale for ~50% right after the first season release, meaning early adopters simply get financially punished for not waiting to purchase it. Thrifty Mark don't like that. Don't like that one bit. So, I never buy season passes until after their first release / price drop.

I hope to kick out some positive examples of great marketing troupes in the coming weeks! What are your favorites and least favorites?