Gobblin.net

Saw Coraline today — what an amazing film! Director Henry Selick and team did an incredible job adapting Gaiman’s book — a glisterbox of awe and wonder, scares and laughs. The jumping mice, the wuss puss cat, the oddball neighbors and especially Coraline herself… they’re all animated with such loving detail. I can’t recommend it enough.

Then I left the theater, looking for a place to deposit my 3D glasses, and the theater attendant says, “just throw them in the trash.” Really? For reals? These thick, easily reusable glasses (that came sealed sealed in a plastic baggy) were intended for one-time use? Suddenly, my perfect matinee movie had a dark tint to it.

As movie studios and theaters scramble for new ways to bring people into the theater to compete with DVDs and dowloads, 3D is in the beginning of a major comeback. Up until now it’s been something of a novelty with only about 1,000 screens using it. That’s going to tick upwards in a big way as Pixar, Dreamworks, James Cameron, Tim Burton and the Jonas Brothers make the jump to 3D. Toy Story‘s being rereleased in 3D, so might be Star Wars. Cool right? Not if each of those tickets equals a pair of disposable glasses!

A Pixar movie is guaranteed to sell upwards of 20 million tickets. Even if just a quarter of those are 3D, that’s millions of pairs of plastic glasses just for the novelty of 3D. Sure, Coraline convinced me that 3D can be used artfully for more than the in-your-face effects of the past efforts I’ve seen, but I cannot in good conscience justify that extra waste for the effect. Maybe the throw-away mandate was just for my theater. Can anyone else testify to having a theater collect used glasses? Is the only way to deal with a hygiene-obsessed culture’s needs to deliver millions of pairs of disposable glasses on what now looks to be a monthly basis? If 3D with disposable glasses is here to stay, I hope people will take it upon themselves to keep the glasses and take them with them to future shows, forgoing that factory-sealed pair. Free or not, we’re all paying for it.

Much has been made over the past two years about the appeal of the Nintendo Wii to people who don’t traditionally play video games. Like many gamers who have had access to games pretty much since birth, I just don’t find the Wii philosophy and catalog of games that compelling. I understand why it’s such a brilliant machine and why it is successful–I really do!–and I believe that with more imagination, the catalog of games could interest me and other “traditional” gamers. For now, though, I’ll stick to my Xbox, Playstation and DS.

That should be it. I should let my grievances lie, as really, my gamer needs have been served pretty darn well for 25+ years, so it’s about time the grandmas, little sisters (no, not these little sisters) and the unfanatical masses got a turn at gaming. But I still can’t quite quash those niggling feelings that there’s more to this equation than different strokes for different folks. Are savvy branding, motion-sensing gadgets and familiar activities all that that the new-to-gaming Wii fans want from a console?
Since my mom’s spending the week with me, I decided to try a little experiment. I gave her a brief tour of the current gen systems, not asking her to play at first, but just to see what her reaction would be to the latest technology in all its HD splendor. First up was Far Cry 2, my current console favorite and hands down the most gorgeous gaming experience I’ve ever had. Seriously, this game is photo-real with amazing sound design and lush African vistas.

With coaxing, mom admits that it’s pretty, but clearly her interests are waning. Okay, on to Little Big Planet. Here’s another game that achieves unheard of graphical sophistication, only with realism replaced by a handcrafted fantasyland– it’s like sitting at the helm of Michel Gondry’s imagination. Again, mom is unmoved. Now I switch to the Wii and Wii Fit. From the moment the balance board hits the floor, mom is fascinated. Clearly she’s heard about the device, but this is her first time seeing it. The idea that a common bathroom scale can also detect shifts in weight – that is the mind-blowing leap. Nevermind that the gameplay consists of leaning left or right, or that the graphics are decidedly last gen. Mom was moved. And a thousand kotakuites screamed in pain.

I entered into this experiment knowing what the results would be. Again (he protests!), I really get why. And yet part of me still refuses to accept. It’s not that I want my mom (as a proxy for all nontraditional gamers) to play GTA 4 or Bioshock or Shadow of the Colossus—it’s that want to believe that mom can feel a sense of awe and wonder from exploring a virtual space. You know, the feeling you get the first time you ride your Kodo into Feralis and just gape at the size of those trees?

Back to my first demonstration, I realize that mercenary subject matter doesn’t appeal to mom, but what if Far Cry 2’s world was repurposed to make a photo safari game or an interactive National Geographic trip through tribal villages? Maybe then she could feel the awe and wonder? No. It’s a fool’s desire to wish my mom could get an emotional rise from Sony’s emotion engine technology. This is the same fanatic desire I used to have (and still do, at times) for more folks to give animation, comics and visually fantastic films a chance, and it’s still a battle not worth fighting.

We gamers, otakus, fangirls and fanboys, whatever the label and whatever our geek poison, are united by a common ability to have a profound emotional response to fantasy. (Will scientists locate this “geek gene,” or is it environmental?). Sometimes it’s associated with childlike innocence, sometimes it’s the mark of a misfit, sometimes it’s frowned on as antisocial. Increasingly, it’s just…normal. It’s ironic that as nerds increasingly rule the world, we still rally behind little tokens of acceptance (Obama doodles!) and unite in outrage when our needs aren’t met (Nintendo, why hath thou forsaken us?!). How much more mainstream do we want to be?

Despite having several cartoonist, friends, I’ve never been very good at keeping up with webcomics–the only ones I read with any regularity are Dinosaur Comics, Penny Arcade and Achewood. Thanks to the link from Ryan North of Dino Comics, I’ve got a new favorite comic to follow up with — MS Paint Adventures! It’s basicaly an old school King’s Quest 1 era adventure game in comics form where the artist, Andrew Hussie, sets up a scenario and page by page, readers suggest the actions for the character to do, and then the next day, there’s new pages based on the suggestions. It’s really quite brilliant. Considering how deep his archives are, I’m probably quite late to the party, but for those like me who have never read it, there’s plenty of content to keep you reading!

For more choose-your-own-adventure style comics, I highly recommend the works of Jason Shiga. Whereas MSPA is a community-driven game, filtered through an artist, Shiga’s works are the insanely clever creations of one man whose brain must be structured like a moebius strip of neurons. You can try out several of his interactive works online, but to really get a sense of how amazing they are, you have to see the hand-crafted printed copies. Such is his brilliance that the comics medium alone cannot contain him! He is also a blackbelt in LEGO technic wizardry, as demonstrated by a hand-cranked arm wrestling machine that he built out of the plastic bricks. Does his brilliance know no bounds? Recently he has (no joke) taken up performing raps about Tupac’s sexual orientation. Perhaps it does.