Category: Commentary

Why Bioshock Infinite Probably Isn’t As Good As We Think It Is

4

My mind’s bouncing a bit around the Buddy shaped hole in our lives. But I wanted to say this about Bioshock Infinite since I finished it last week.

Let me state right off the bat, Bioshock Infinite is a must play game. It’s worth your money and you should play it. No, really I’m dead serious. Stop reading this and go play it then come back so we can talk about it. I’ll wait.

Second point, this post is going to be more spoilery than that sandwich the creepy eye transplant doctor fooled Tom Cruise into eating in Minority Report.

I mean it, I am going to spoil the living hell out of Bioshock Infinite if you keep reading.

Ok?

Ok.

I’m serious though.

Ok.

Endings are tough. As a writer they are incredibly daunting. Sometimes you get lucky and you come up with an ending before you even have a story. That’s the best scenario from a work perspective because you already understand how things turn out. Working backwards is just a matter of giving your ending some justice.

Then sometimes you come up with an ending in the middle of the story, which is harder but also a bit of a relief.

The absolute worst is starting off without an ending. Because holy shit, where is this all going?

And yet the best stories, at least in my mind, are the latter ones. Sometimes when you start off with an ending, you often can’t do it justice because in the working backwards you concentrate too much on that wonderful ending.

Bioshock Infinite has, in my opinion, a bad ending. One that it feels like someone thought was a wonderful ending.

Now, I don’t mean that the ending is cheap, or that it didn’t involve a lot of thought, or that it’s a cop out or anything.

If anything, it’s just a bridge too far. The story builds up to it backwards in a way.

Let me explain, and here is where I will TOTALLY GO INTO SPOILERS.

During the third act of the game it’s beating you over the head that all this time you are Father Comstock. They even mix Dewitt’s voice into Comstock’s voice at a couple of intervals. The Voxaphone extras are equally blunt. As I was playing, I actually said out loud once “Ok I get it I’m Comstock. Jesus, stop already.”

Then at the end, Elizabeth takes your hand and shows you the lighthouses. I was a bit annoyed because at this point I was waiting for her to just go “SURPRISE YOU’RE COMSTOCK!”

But that didn’t happen. That didn’t happen at all. Instead I spent the next few minutes gobsmacked as the game walked me through the alternate worlds and the fact that Elizabeth was my daughter, a daughter I had sold to Comstock years ago to erase my debt. What debt? Well it could have been my debt of guilt over Dewitt’s participation at Wounded Knee, or a financial debt, or perhaps even a dimensional debt required to balance the alternate universes.

I was floored, here I thought it was just going to be this cheap twist ending that I was the bad guy the whole time (which didn’t make sense that Dewitt was Comstock given his guilt over Wounded Knee but ok whatever) and instead I was offered this amazing tantalizing ending that would leave me with philosophical questions and something to ponder. What debt was I paying? The emotional payoff of Elizabeth losing her finger was deep and satisfying. The idea of the amorphous debt, the twins’ manipulations, the baptism metaphor, Dewitt killing Comstock in a rage, and the thrilling final battle sequence before the game’s end reveal left me reeling and thinking I had just played one of the best games ever written.

They had head faked me into thinking I was Comstock with the obvious voice tricks and dialogue and the baptism metaphor etc etc. I mentally congratulated the writers in their ingenuity at giving me a much more satisfying ending than just making me the villain all along and fooling me into thinking they were taking the easy way out.

Then the game continued and NOPE! SUPER DOUBLE TWIST YOU WERE COMSTOCK ALL ALONG!

I don’t think I’ve ever been more let down in a game in a long time in just a few minutes, which is a testament by the way to how good the vast vast majority of the game is.

It just makes no sense that Dewitt is Comstock, even in the multi-universe sense. It’s deeply unsatisfying. Guilt ridden Dewitt over his massacre of innocent Indians at Wounded Knee is, in an alternate universe (or maybe even the same one), racist Hitler-esque Comstock? Comstock who in at least one universe is sterile yet still Elizabeth’s father? Or bounces around dimensions made him sterile but Dewitt isn’t, so what’s the point of that except to make you think you’re not Comstock? I….there’s so much…what? Yes the baptism created a different person yet the drowning at the end…makes Comstock? Or not?

I’ve now played the ending two or three times over again and tried to make sense of it and sorry, it doesn’t work. And what’s worse is that it’s constructed in such a way that it’s somehow proud of its insights. And what are we to make of the coda at the end of the game’s credits? Dewitt is alive? Elizabeth is in the crib? I…what?

Dewitt being Comstock robs the game of some emotion and, I think, is a bridge too far. The coda at the end of the game’s credits compounds the issue.

I hate the ending of the movie Wall-E. It’s one of the best films I think I have ever seen but its ending is a cop out. When Wall-E suddenly for no reason regains his memory it negates the emotional impact of his previous sacrifice for Eve. What would have been a better ending? He loses his memory and then during the credits sequence (which features the story of humanity reclaiming the Earth), we see Wall-E slowly becoming who he was again over time and with Eve’s help. Wall-E is probably the best example I have of a movie that faltered fatally in its ending, for the payoff of not wanting to make the audience work too much. It’s almost like Bioshock Infinite failed in the same way, because the writers felt like the dimensions, the lighthouses, and how Elizabeth lost her finger just wasn’t enough twist.

I’m no expert on ending stories. I have taken that tone here I know. But at the end sequence of Bioshock Infinite when the multiple versions of Elizabeth kill Dewitt through the baptism metaphor I rolled my eyes and put my controller down.

So let me stop and remind you that if you made it this far and yet have not played the game GO PLAY IT. I might hate the ending, but I love the care that went into the game and it is, above all else, fun and beautiful and a piece of art that deserves support.

But having talked to a number of friends who have played it and were blown away by the ending I just wanted to express I think it would have been cleaner and more satisfying to stick solely with the Elizabeth emotional payoff. It feels very much that since Bioshock had a wonderful twist, they needed to one up themselves. Like a third movie from M. Night Shyamalan.

I’m saying all this only because I care about it. For sure if you hate the endings of my own stories please feel free to tell me how I don’t actually get endings at all.  Open-mouthed smile

Oh and one more time, yeah buy this game. I do want to see more like it.

Why Bioshock Infinite Probably Isn’t As Good As We Think It Is

4

My mind’s bouncing a bit around the Buddy shaped hole in our lives. But I wanted to say this about Bioshock Infinite since I finished it last week.

Let me state right off the bat, Bioshock Infinite is a must play game. It’s worth your money and you should play it. No, really I’m dead serious. Stop reading this and go play it then come back so we can talk about it. I’ll wait.

Second point, this post is going to be more spoilery than that sandwich the creepy eye transplant doctor fooled Tom Cruise into eating in Minority Report.

I mean it, I am going to spoil the living hell out of Bioshock Infinite if you keep reading.

Ok?

Ok.

I’m serious though.

Ok.

Endings are tough. As a writer they are incredibly daunting. Sometimes you get lucky and you come up with an ending before you even have a story. That’s the best scenario from a work perspective because you already understand how things turn out. Working backwards is just a matter of giving your ending some justice.

Then sometimes you come up with an ending in the middle of the story, which is harder but also a bit of a relief.

The absolute worst is starting off without an ending. Because holy shit, where is this all going?

And yet the best stories, at least in my mind, are the latter ones. Sometimes when you start off with an ending, you often can’t do it justice because in the working backwards you concentrate too much on that wonderful ending.

Bioshock Infinite has, in my opinion, a bad ending. One that it feels like someone thought was a wonderful ending.

Now, I don’t mean that the ending is cheap, or that it didn’t involve a lot of thought, or that it’s a cop out or anything.

If anything, it’s just a bridge too far. The story builds up to it backwards in a way.

Let me explain, and here is where I will TOTALLY GO INTO SPOILERS.

During the third act of the game it’s beating you over the head that all this time you are Father Comstock. They even mix Dewitt’s voice into Comstock’s voice at a couple of intervals. The Voxaphone extras are equally blunt. As I was playing, I actually said out loud once “Ok I get it I’m Comstock. Jesus, stop already.”

Then at the end, Elizabeth takes your hand and shows you the lighthouses. I was a bit annoyed because at this point I was waiting for her to just go “SURPRISE YOU’RE COMSTOCK!”

But that didn’t happen. That didn’t happen at all. Instead I spent the next few minutes gobsmacked as the game walked me through the alternate worlds and the fact that Elizabeth was my daughter, a daughter I had sold to Comstock years ago to erase my debt. What debt? Well it could have been my debt of guilt over Dewitt’s participation at Wounded Knee, or a financial debt, or perhaps even a dimensional debt required to balance the alternate universes.

I was floored, here I thought it was just going to be this cheap twist ending that I was the bad guy the whole time (which didn’t make sense that Dewitt was Comstock given his guilt over Wounded Knee but ok whatever) and instead I was offered this amazing tantalizing ending that would leave me with philosophical questions and something to ponder. What debt was I paying? The emotional payoff of Elizabeth losing her finger was deep and satisfying. The idea of the amorphous debt, the twins’ manipulations, the baptism metaphor, Dewitt killing Comstock in a rage, and the thrilling final battle sequence before the game’s end reveal left me reeling and thinking I had just played one of the best games ever written.

They had head faked me into thinking I was Comstock with the obvious voice tricks and dialogue and the baptism metaphor etc etc. I mentally congratulated the writers in their ingenuity at giving me a much more satisfying ending than just making me the villain all along and fooling me into thinking they were taking the easy way out.

Then the game continued and NOPE! SUPER DOUBLE TWIST YOU WERE COMSTOCK ALL ALONG!

I don’t think I’ve ever been more let down in a game in a long time in just a few minutes, which is a testament by the way to how good the vast vast majority of the game is.

It just makes no sense that Dewitt is Comstock, even in the multi-universe sense. It’s deeply unsatisfying. Guilt ridden Dewitt over his massacre of innocent Indians at Wounded Knee is, in an alternate universe (or maybe even the same one), racist Hitler-esque Comstock? Comstock who in at least one universe is sterile yet still Elizabeth’s father? Or bounces around dimensions made him sterile but Dewitt isn’t, so what’s the point of that except to make you think you’re not Comstock? I….there’s so much…what? Yes the baptism created a different person yet the drowning at the end…makes Comstock? Or not?

I’ve now played the ending two or three times over again and tried to make sense of it and sorry, it doesn’t work. And what’s worse is that it’s constructed in such a way that it’s somehow proud of its insights. And what are we to make of the coda at the end of the game’s credits? Dewitt is alive? Elizabeth is in the crib? I…what?

Dewitt being Comstock robs the game of some emotion and, I think, is a bridge too far. The coda at the end of the game’s credits compounds the issue.

I hate the ending of the movie Wall-E. It’s one of the best films I think I have ever seen but its ending is a cop out. When Wall-E suddenly for no reason regains his memory it negates the emotional impact of his previous sacrifice for Eve. What would have been a better ending? He loses his memory and then during the credits sequence (which features the story of humanity reclaiming the Earth), we see Wall-E slowly becoming who he was again over time and with Eve’s help. Wall-E is probably the best example I have of a movie that faltered fatally in its ending, for the payoff of not wanting to make the audience work too much. It’s almost like Bioshock Infinite failed in the same way, because the writers felt like the dimensions, the lighthouses, and how Elizabeth lost her finger just wasn’t enough twist.

I’m no expert on ending stories. I have taken that tone here I know. But at the end sequence of Bioshock Infinite when the multiple versions of Elizabeth kill Dewitt through the baptism metaphor I rolled my eyes and put my controller down.

So let me stop and remind you that if you made it this far and yet have not played the game GO PLAY IT. I might hate the ending, but I love the care that went into the game and it is, above all else, fun and beautiful and a piece of art that deserves support.

But having talked to a number of friends who have played it and were blown away by the ending I just wanted to express I think it would have been cleaner and more satisfying to stick solely with the Elizabeth emotional payoff. It feels very much that since Bioshock had a wonderful twist, they needed to one up themselves. Like a third movie from M. Night Shyamalan.

I’m saying all this only because I care about it. For sure if you hate the endings of my own stories please feel free to tell me how I don’t actually get endings at all.  Open-mouthed smile

Oh and one more time, yeah buy this game. I do want to see more like it.

On the Eve of the Playstation 4

2

It’s become kind of a cliché, because technology is the basis for the delivery method, but there’s never been a better time to be a gamer. I was perusing my game collection on my iPad the other day and in a portable high quality format I have a perfect edition of almost every single solitary arcade video game I have enjoyed since I was 5. On my Xbox and PS3 I have faithful renditions of many of my favorite 90’s PC and console games, and my Wii has me covered with Mario and other titles.

The present console generation has unfolded in a way unlike any previous. 

The Wii managed to illuminate an entire user base no one really had figured out how to tap.  Its lower resolution was almost a comfort to parents who wouldn’t have to upgrade the entire living room, and the motion control paved the way for technologies like Kinect.  Most of all, while Sony and Microsoft were concentrating on connecting distant players, Nintendo reminded us what fun four people in a room could have. To say it sold like hotcakes is a disservice.  Hotcakes could only dream of Wii sales numbers.  “Hotcakes”, to be clear, is not a euphemism.  They are delicious.

The decision to include an ethernet port in the original Xbox over a modem was lambasted by the industry in general. Remember that in 2000 when it was announced Wi-Fi b with its paltry 6 to 12 megabits a second was still a corporate luxury and your average home connection was either dial up or 1-5mb broadband.  But from the beginning the idea of connected services being the long term bet that differentiated the Xbox was firmly cemented in that decision to go with a network port over dial up or some type of adapter. When the Xbox 360 launched in 2005 the whole landscape of home Internet had changed.  And with it a new service launched in Xbox LIVE that incorporated not just multiplayer, chat, and messaging but quickly evolved into video and music. It introduced achievements and system-wide leaderboards. Most importantly, it made the Xbox 360 a general purpose entertainment device by constantly upgrading and changing the capabilities and experience. Today Xbox LIVE is the gold standard all console services are compared to, and many of the services other devices have were pioneered first on Xbox LIVE. Titles that are cross platform sell by far more copies for Xbox because of LIVE’s user base.

The PS3 launched in 2006 with the promise it was a better console than the 360 in terms of raw power, and the strength of Sony’s amazing first party exclusives. But what really resulted in the PS3’s success was a pretty bold choice on Sony’s part to pack in an expensive Blu Ray drive.  A bold bet that paid off, as within 2 years they killed off HD-DVD through the strength of the PS3 sales and the Sony movie catalog. It was the only “future proof” Blu Ray player, as the device was much more powerful than a standalone one.  While some Blu Ray players became quite literally obsolete and had to be replaced due to changes in the Blu ray spec, Sony simply updated the PS3 firmware. Sony also did very well with first party exclusives such as the God of War franchise, the Uncharted series (fantastic games, I’m a huge fan) and wonderful titles like Little Big Planet. But Blu Ray was the bet that paid off the most.

I’m leaving out a lot here, Nintendo had some huge success with their own exclusives, Microsoft took motion and voice control to the next level with Kinect, and Sony adapted their own services to make their moves in video streaming and by far the easiest digital game purchasing system.

The point is, back in the earlier generations people talked about “winning” and “losing” a generation.  The Winner usually sold an outsized number of consoles more than the Loser.  Sometimes the loser flat out killed their console (RIP Dreamcast Never Forget).

This generation all three could be said to have won in some key way, and all are on track to break 100 million units (Wii got there this month I believe) assuming certain price cuts over the next three years as the new generation starts.

And all of this happened in the course of 7 years while at the same time the iPhone and iPad came about, and Android tablets, and oh by the way let’s not leave out PC gaming which is stronger than a lot of people think between standalone titles, Steam, MMO’s, and flash games.

Games are *everywhere*.  Characters play them to unwind in our sitcoms now, and our dramas and movies. Bitching about losing in Words with Friends is reaching an epidemic level. Halo has crossed over to have top science fiction authors like Greg Bear writing in its universe. We now demand even single player games have some level of online capability to issue challenges to friends or check leaderboards. Games are living and breathing forms of entertainment with downloadable content and the capability to provide instant fixes or tweaks on server backends. As of December 31, 237 million consoles have been sold across three platforms not even counting iOS or Android or PC/Mac.

All this happened in this current generation.  What’s going to happen in the next?

There’s only one clear winner of the “Seventh” generation of console gaming.  Us.

Do not ask for whom the Douchebag trolls, he trolls for thee.

5

One of my favorite webisodic* shows is Extra Credits.  Despite their Twitter handle (@extracreditz) sounding like it couldn’t afford to buy an “s” and had to rent to own a “z”, it serves up four minute video slices of interesting geek related epiphanies or as a friend of mine described it, “epipheo’s.”

I don’t know what that word means.  I think it means they couldn’t afford the letters for both Video and Epiphanies to do “Video Epiphanies” then, once they could afford the letters for a shortened version, put the wrong part first.  I would have gone with, if I had to, “Vidphanies".

Wait, I’ve just been informed their Twitter handle had nothing to do with affording the “s” and everything to do with @extracredits the Twitter handle being squatted by someone with the unlikely name of “Lindsay Lohan.”  pfft.  Like anyone would be named something so silly.

Still, that doesn’t explain why someone would call something “epipheo’s.”

I’ve now written epiphany or a variation of it enough times in this blog post to have that thing happen where it no longer sounds like a word.  But I digress.

Extra Creditz [sic] this week had an episode** where they covered online harassment. Specifically Xbox LIVE was called out, and viewers were encouraged to provide feedback to Microsoft to provide the tools to “stop harassment.”

Before we discuss, please to be viewing the videpiphaneo. (I’d embed it, but PATV doesn’t seem to allow that)

Ok now that you’re back, although my setup has been jokey snarky, the topic and the video are very real and very serious. I’m really glad that they made this video. There are several messages in the video that I feel need to be called out:

Gamers as a group are the people who tend to accept the people most commonly ostracized.

Anonymity breeds douchebags.

Douchebags who misbehave online just want attention and don’t represent gamers as a group.

The tools people have to deal with harassment are woefully inadequate (on Xbox LIVE, but one must assume other places as well)

This, as they say in the slang development bureau at Oxford, is right in my wheelhouse.

The problem isn’t solely Xbox LIVE.  Yes, I know, the problem is most commonly associated with Xbox LIVE.  And yes, I agree that objectively evaluated, the Xbox LIVE complaint system and tools for the customer have not been altered at all since 2005 despite the changes in functionality in the service. Note that in that statement I’m setting aside parental controls, because the problem of harassment online at it’s core isn’t the problem of child accounts or parent restrictions. It’s the fact any 10 year old or miscreant can quickly and easily create an adult Xbox LIVE Gold account in seconds, and a normal adult account can’t really prevent interaction with that account.

And with that, the problem of online harassment is actually the problem of adult customers, especially those who love the platform and the games and play online a lot. 

Believe it or not it’s a problem of the Internet, not just Xbox LIVE.  Certainly (again objectively speaking) it’s clear Xbox LIVE lags way behind in helping people self select their matchmaking pool, truly and fully block bad users, and orienting matchmaking on a reputation based system to increase positive experiences like some systems do.

But the root problem is one of anonymity and the allowance of anonymity on the system to wreak havoc. This is a problem on Xbox LIVE specifically by the lack of any form of delineation from a completely anonymous Gold account made with completely fake information, and an account where all of the information might be completely accurate. Again however it’s not unique to that system, merely that it’s commonly used to tarnish the reputation of the platform.

The video makes a lot of suggestions.  Most of the automated ones that are suggested are problematic although they sound like simple to implement common sense. 

Without violating my confidentiality agreement, let’s just say when you decide to say “User n muted x number of times results in action z” then very quickly online hacker forums will spring up whereby someone says “hey everyone add user n as a friend then mute them because they kicked my ass in Halo”.  Don’t believe me?  To this day the rumor exists that if you complain enough times against a non-offensive gamertag that it’s offensive you get a free gamertag change.  Or if you complain enough against the motto for a permabanned account on Xbox LIVE, the system will override the permaban with a temp ban and eventually unban the account.

Neither has ever been the case when I was in charge of enforcement.  Ever. 

But get just one person saying it works and BAM, even against actions that don’t even work my old team had to deal with the volume of false complaints by people who will do anything low friction in order to mess with the system.

We even presented all of the above facts at PAX and other places and the problems continued. There’s tons of forums where people say “Complain against n because they beat me” or “Do x so that z happens” even if it’s not true ever, people will try it. At any given time a significant labor amount on enforcement is spent making sure automated processes aren’t being misused.

So, pretty much every automated suggestion the video makes has been examined, and proven to be problematic.  The douchebags don’t just talk their game, they game the game, from Xbox LIVE to Steam.

It’s true the system could be developed to take that into account.  That’s a great point of feedback that should be passed on to various online systems, not just Xbox LIVE.  It’s important to communicate to those systems that you don’t want new avatar hats, you want these safety features.  This is important when features are being cut during the inevitable cut time during the process of shipping software.

I have certainly in my time in online systems provided my opinion on these matters.  But it seems to me the best results are probably driven by abandoning participation in them from a financial standpoint if you want to truly drive change.  In the end, the community that cannot encourage participation because the members of that community do not feel safe is the community that cannot help continue a financial reason for being. You truly have to vote with your dollars.  Your community will never become safer if you spend all your money there despite the abuse.  Resources will always be diverted to getting you to spend more money over anything else unless there is a real risk you will simply leave.  It’s the nature of business.

Beyond that fact, let’s move onto the tools people can use to help limit their exposure to the bad guys.  There’s always going to be the John Gabriel Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.  How can online communities stop this?

One way is simple, provide a striation between anonymous users and those willing to trade a small amount of identity for greater security. (Note to the libertarians ready with their founding father quotes: not liberty, identity.)

By this I mean those that provide Google voice phone numbers and fake credit cards are relegated to only being matched with others of like unverifiable fake info.  You want to be unknown?  No problem.  You are cast with the other unknowns.

Those people who can prove their identity at least at some level would then only be matched with others of a same level of verification.  Somewhat like “verified” PayPal users.  Or go the route of saying: if so many individuals who are “identified” in the system have a verified opinion of those who are jerks (verified meaning investigated by an enforcement team) then they are only match made or can interact with individuals at their level of reputation or below. In essence, those who are judged by those verified customers to be jerks will only be matched or allowed to interact with those otherwise verified to be jerks.

Gaming the system is prevented by setting the bar to be “verified”. Why bother “verifying” people if there isn’t a method to make a concrete punishment for faking things.  If my verified account ties to my actual bank or driver’s license number, there is a concrete reason for me not to participate in automated circumvention schemes. Herein the user has the choice: total anonymity at reduced level of privilege, or more accountability and a higher level of privilege in the system.

To me, this is the minimum an online interaction system should provide at this point.  The days of “just provide a 5×5 code and we let you fake name, address and everything else while still allowing you the same privilege as someone paying with verifiable information via PCI” are long gone.

Yet for many online systems, they are still here today. That’s stupid.

Lastly:  provide verified users who have that level of accountability in the online system the ability to truly (from an interaction perspective) block players, block players friends, and report all of the above with evidence to a team that reviews it. Sorry, if you are unverified, you cannot reach the top of the Call of Duty leaderboards. If you are unverified, your opinion of online interaction weighs less. This isn’t “pay to be ranked” it’s “verify” to be trusted to be ranked.

So. Why isn’t the feature set laid out above present today?

It’s a fair question not just for Xbox LIVE customers but also for any online service. Sure, the response might be the wonderful progression in child safety settings on any given platform, but that’s not the issue. Everyone’s made progress on child safety issues. But the adult account gamer today on Xbox LIVE and other services has only the same limited options the adult gamer of 2005 had. 

Surely the online environment, as evidenced by FatUglyorSlutty.com or the Extra Credits video, helps prove there’s an ongoing systemic problem that, while not unique to the Xbox LIVE platform, is at least exacerbated by whatever the platform interaction is implemented on?

The Extra Credits video links to an online form asking Xbox LIVE support for help. I sincerely hope that method has more impact than I did in my previous position.

I still feel strongly there is a simple solution to at least the problems facing most online interactions:

Provide easy to use, concrete tools for users to avoid or limit negative experiences.

Provide punishments to encourage users to obey Wheaton’s law.

Provide incentives for people to engage with each other in a positive manner and “be excellent to each other”

Ah but hey, I’m just a writer now.  What do I know.  Open-mouthed smile

To the crew at Extra Credits, thanks for prompting the discussion.

 

 

 

*The phrase “Webisode” makes my heart hurt.  Because it’s not a word right now but in five years if it’s not a part of your elevator pitch (“it’s a series of webisodes about how if Deckard from Blade Runner was *not* a replicant”) than you won’t get off the ground.

** See above except “episode” becomes like “mimeograph.”  look it up kids.

Why the Fantasy Genre Sucks

2

With a title like that I suppose I’m going to have to explain what I mean because I can already sense my fellow geeks sharpening their crossed bows and loading their broadlong swords made from mithrilarian steel as they prepare to cast firefrost orbs at me. Hear me out.

You see, I was introduced to the world J.R.R. Tolkien created at an early age. I’ll pause here to let my more jaded geek friends sniff disapprovingly at my failure to put away childish things.  But much like the reaction people have today to viewing Citizen Kane (namely “what’s the big deal”) reading the Lord of the Rings after the movies doesn’t really convey the fact Tolkien practically cast the mold for the fantasy genre.  It was like a writer had taken all of the things I loved about Dungeons and Dragons and created archetypes not just of the classes and characters, but of what a fantasy plot should be. Like Citizen Kane is responsible for so much of what modern film has become, so too in my mind Tolkien’s work was so rich and realized as to be the fantasy work every fantasy work tried to be. I devoured The Silmarillion (which is like reading the entire bible, except more slowly paced), the Book of Lost Tales, and even the really obscure works like the “J.R.R. Tolkien guide to writing lyrics about bathing and the summer barley harvest”. I couldn’t believe someone had defined a world and history so thoroughly.

Oh, given my Dungeons and Dragon’s love I tried to read other fantasy.  But every story had Elves (but these aren’t Tolkien’s elves!) and Dwarves (but these are different than Tolkien’s) and magic rings (but totally different than Tolkien’s!) and there came a point where after around age 20 or so I stopped reading new fantasy and started just re-reading Lord of the Rings every couple of years.

To me, fantasy had been done to the best it was going to be done. The only Fantasy I read in the past few decades was Harry Potter, and I still compared it to Tolkien at every turn.*

Now, granted forming an opinion like that is about as well founded as the religion of Cheeto Christ of Latter Day Saints. It’s not like Neuromancer or the Foundation novels or Ringworld stopped me from consuming copious amounts of bad sci-fi on my way to the good stuff.  Fantasy writing however seemed to have a lot of the same tropes, and I just couldn’t be bothered to find the stories that didn’t. It isn’t so much that the fantasy genre sucks, I think it’s more that I formed the opinion that the genre was living in the shadow of a magnum opus to which all would be compared.

So I considered the fantasy genre somewhat sucky and dead to me.

Until I stumbled across a simple word: Hodor.

Paul (of Paul and Storm) was wearing a shirt with the word on it at the Seattle w00tstock I performed at.

Hodor-Paul-Storm

I have no idea why in the above photo Storm looks like a 19 year old version of himself and Paul looks like a young George R. R. Martin.

Anyways, I asked Paul what the word meant and he explained it was from a fantasy series called A Song of Ice and Fire.  I told him my opinion of fantasy and he informed me I was stupid.  This was also about the time the buzz on Game of Thrones** was hitting a fever pitch because of the HBO adaptation.  Paul suggested that he would be highly surprised if I read it and didn’t like it.  A couple weeks later I picked up a copy on my kindle app for iPad.

Over the next eight weeks I had my misconceptions about the fantasy genre completely rebooted as I devoured every book in the Song of Ice and Fire series. For the first time in 20 years I had rediscovered a fiction genre. Not long after I finished the Song of Ice and Fire series to date, I started Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy.  Much like George R. R. Martin had taken the Tolkien out of his fantasy series with the lack of magic, adept application of incestuous sex and long term breastfeeding, so had Sanderson with his concept of Allomancy. The Mistborn Trilogy was just as fun to read and as interesting to me.

So I told you all that story so I could tell you this one.

Recently on Twitter I asked for people to recommend their favorite fantasy series so that I could continue rediscovering the genre.  The response was overwhelming and people asked me if I wouldn’t mind blogging the results so as to share which ones I chose to pursue. Here’s the reading list in order I narrowed things down too, note I have not read them yet:

1. Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles

Young George R. R. Martin (Paul) recommended this straight out of the gate, along with many of my followers.  Reading Mr. Rothfuss’s blog leads me to believe he’s just the kind of author I like, meaning the only thing I would rather do than read his books is buy him a beer.  Especially for his goodreads review of Alloy of Law, a side novel from the Mistborn universe. I can’t wait to start this series, it came so highly recommended.

2. The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I got this one quite a bit too.  Apparently it’s one of those universes that managed to outlive its author since Robert Jordan died before its completion. This one intrigues me because amongst Fantasy aficionados there’s tons of debate about the merits of individual chapters of the story but almost no disagreement that it’s a worthy investment. I normally abhor universes that continue past their author’s death by other writers.  But I make two exceptions: situations where the author opened up the universe prior to their death for other authors, or situations where the author authorized expansion after their death and left specific guidance.  The latter appears to have happened here and since the author is Brandon Sanderson I’m kool moe dee with that.

3. The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

The tell tale warning of this series was simply how much content has been written by the author in a mere 4 years (8 books) but then I came around to my chief complaint about George “Trenchers of Bread” R. R. Martin writing too slow and decided I was, in the words of Young George R. R. Martin “Stupid.” This series combines several elements that intrigue me: a military-esque mindset describing conflict, political intrigue, and a well defined universe.

So those were the top three although there were many more I plan to explore.

For now at least, there’s a genre I can rediscover and luckily most of the stuff is written so I don’t have to wait for the next chapter.

*I’m looking at YOU, George R. R. Martin*.

 

Side note:

Books that I love that somewhat fit the borderline of fantasy:

A Canticle for Leibowitz

The Dark Tower (books 1-5)***

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

 

*Joseph Scrimshaw nails the very essence of the pollution of Tolkien with a Harry Potter joke with Young George R. R. Martin and Storm.

**Look let’s get something fucking straight.  Game of Thrones is a book in the series Song of Ice and Fire. I hate that HBO is marketing the entire thing under “Game of Thrones" because people get confused when looking for the follow-on books.  It’s like the opposite of the Jethro Tull problem, where Jethro Tull *is* the band but people think it’s the lead singer.

***SPOILER Stephen King wrote himself into The Dark Tower series in books 6 and 7.  It’s the worst most idiotic author hubris I have seen since George Lucas wrote his fever dream fantasy about a space Stepin Fetchit being the key reason the Galactic Empire was formed.