Am I a Writer?

One of my good friends has just "officially" become a professional writer. He's getting paid to produce material for a small, still in production game project which should be popping up in the sometime this year. It's interesting stuff too, tons of ideas that make me go "damn I wish I'd come up with that"and there's a large group of very talented people working on it, all of whom are also very likable.

Unfortunately I find myself livid with jealousy over my friends success in the writing field, mostly because that kind of thing was something I've always wanted from myself but never been able to achieve. This has led to a bit of soul searching on my part as I honestly cannot recall the last time I seriously put some prose to page. I haven't even given it a good attempt within the last several months, what with my workplace being thrown into chaos and my baseless melancholy crippling my creativity. All I've written are notes for my numerous Roleplaying Projects and the occasional discussion thread or review on The Escapist and even these feel like crap lately.

What have I become? Am I even a writer anymore?

I cannot recall the last time I created a character, established a scene, wrote an action sequence or even tried to seriously convey an idea or meaning through indirect means. I haven't even tried to prose up my Roleplaying notes, not since the summer and the last description piece I tried to write turned out like complete crap.

I am seriously down on this...

However I can only see one solution, I need to pick up the pen once more and kick my own ass until I actually write something I can look at with some measure of contentment. Yes sir, I must do this once more, I WILL be a writer again even if I'm only writing for myself.

Best of the Year 2009 Videogames Part 1

Well since it is January and it's been a whole year since I did any regular posting I thought I might enlighten all of you as to my favorites of the last year.

Video Games

2009 was the year of the Action/Adventure game, seeing an unprecedented glut of high quality releases all focusing around this hard to pin down genre that nonetheless endears as a mainstay of the industry and a favorite of this particular gamer and while there were some other major releases none of them really held a candle to the Action/Adventure titles that dominated the stage. Anyway here's my obligatory list of titles that made the grade this year...

Infamous
In June gamers were treated to a one-two punch of Sandbox Superhero games, one where you play as a misanthropic mutant in a blood filled rampage through New York, the other where you play as an Electrical Superman who can choose the role of Hero or Villain while he searches for the secret behind the events that empowered him and that have been laying waste to his city. Infamous developed by Suckerpunch and exclusively for the Playstation 3 is the second of those. You play as Cole McGrath, a man who gains electrical super powers, destroys a large portion of Empire City, his home and must now contend with a bevy of superpowered foes in a quest to learn about the disaster and himself. Two things about InFamous really stood out to me, for one it's a 3rd Person Shooter rather than a Brawler and it's the only super hero game I've played that really makes you FEEL like a HERO. This is something that oddly defines the game in a way you might not expect as I noticed something about reviews of InFamous, those who took the Villain Path did not enjoy it much and gave it a low score. Those who took the path of the Hero seemed to get a whole lot more enjoyment out of the game since when playing the hero path you get to see your actions inspire the population of Empire City, they put up posters of you, rally against the supervillains taking over neighborhoods, clean up the streets and cheer you as you go by. You feel like a hero who has made a difference in the world, this city is BETTER and it's because of you and the choices you've made. I have yet to go through the villain path myself, but a friend assures me that it's not really worth it, being a Hero is where it's at and InFamous is good at conveying that idea.

Some thoughts on Storytelling in Videogames

With the recent release of Mass Effect 2 I've been thinking pretty regularly about storytelling methods in Videogames. See to me Mass Effect 2 represents probably the pinnacle in Player Driven Narrative, where the player can not only decide through their actions the outcomes of various stories but can also effect personality and relationships on a much deeper level than in most other games. In fact it beats out November's Dragon Age, a game soaked in choice and depth of consequence, purely through its focus on "personality" because unlike Dragon Age, in Mass Effect one actually gets the feeling that Cmdr. Shepard is a REAL character, not simply an extension of the players will. Yes you get to put the words in Cmdr. Shepards mouth, but those words are translated into the voice of the character, a character you define but one that is still somewhat separate. As I see it this is the key to developing a real "Roleplaying Game" in an electronic medium, where you play AS a character who is still a CHARACTER, not just an avatar for your actions.