Random Thoughts on 8/17/2015: Harry Chapin, Mortality, and Gaming

Lately, me and life haven’t been seeing eye to eye. I have a lot of questions and feelings and life seems to have no answers.

I’ve been listening to Harry Chapin lately, and his music has me pondering about life, and death and what it all really means.

“Baby’s so high that she’s skying,
Yes she’s flying, afraid to fall.
I’ll tell you why baby’s crying,
Cause she’s dying, aren’t we all.” – Harry Chapin, Taxi

Harry Chapin- Taxi and Sequel Live

That verse has been haunting me lately. Sometimes it’s really hard to reconcile that I will die. That was hard to type. Like typing it makes it real. I just ponder…my life is wonderful in most measurable ways. I have the wife, kid, job, car… loving family. The pit of despair runs deep and it doesn’t take very much to trigger an unrelenting relapse into this dark void that I imagine is me coping with with my own eventual death.

When I play video games especially “open-world” games, sometimes I just think about the ramifications of my actions. not from the sense of “how is this story being affected” but more like what did I just do to this living world. I am playing Saints Row 2 and run over a female pedestrian in a business suit. The game shows her bleeding out on the sidewalk. She’s dead. I’ll just keep driving to the next story mission or side quest but the implications of her death mean nothing.

She doesn’t even have a name. What if she was walking home from a job interview, about to tell her family the good news about her new opportunity. What if she just got fired. Is her significant other waiting for her come home? Or will anyone notice she’s gone. Then you watch the news and hear about a tragedy and realize all the death tolls, and numbers are dehumanizing these lost people the same way the video game does.

I love when death matters in games. The games that have resonated with me most are games that have me wanting to cry. Sleepings Dogs when Jackie dies, When you have to choose to save Roman or your love in GTA 4. I had a hard time killing my girlfriend in Prey when she had been mutated at the hands of the aliens. It’s so poignant. How can you not relate to these moments? Death is the great equalizer. People still cry over Final Fantasy 7’s death of Aerith.

Sometimes I wonder what games would be like if you, the protagonist died and the game went on dealing with that loss. I always remember in Metal Gear Solid when Snake dies and Otacon screams “SNAAAKE, SNAAAKE!” and you know it matters. his loss is felt. If small things can resonate so much, what if you died in a game and it cut to your best friend finding out. Or maybe, a wife or co-worker. You play through their reactions. Maybe if death was simulated in games more, it would help me understand it… but in most games you just come back. In real life you can’t.

Maybe Harry’s music is resonating with me as I think the story of my life and realizing that life is a ballad. It has to be right?

Random Thought on 3/11/2015- Back from my Honeymoon! Hawaii was awesome!

My apologies for being away so long. I got married and went on a honeymoon in Hawaii (watch our wedding highlights here). The wedding was great, and so was the honeymoon. A unexpected occurrence during the honeymoon was that Hawaii was oddly familiar to me. It took me a minute then I realized, I had spent countless hours driving around Hawaii in Test Drive Unlimited.

A few things to note about driving in real Hawaii- It’s so slow. The weather is perfect and I had a Mustang convertible rented and ready to be driven hard but. the. roads. are. so. slow. The slowness is a culmination of there only being one main road (Maui) and the speed limit PEAKS at 45mnph. I love driving, and I drive in the Midwest where 70mph is the damn school zone. We were moving so slow I had to shake my head to get my hair to blow in the wind. It was painful.

That said, it is gorgeous driving in Hawaii. It is like driving in a postcard. The ocean is so close and there are public beaches littered everywhere. The low speeds give you ample time to view the scenery.

Back to the original point, my Hawaii Deja Vu came from a video game. I played a lot of hours with Test Drive Unlimited on Xbox 360. I was living in Washington D.C. and was unemployed. I would cruise from race to race for hours. I was in a weird place musically at the time lots of Empire of the Sun, Postmarks, and Neon Indian.

Neon Indian’s awesome album cover

Driving down a Hawaiian side street listening to the Postmarks “Looks like Rain” is quite the cathartic experience. I was kind of depressed at the time, being in a new place and unemployed was rough. The Postmarks melancholy tones really set the mood.

At the time, this looked great. Like 2 Cameron Diazes and a Hot Wheels.

Test Drive Unlimited prided itself on being an accurate representation of O’ahu. You go from city streets to rain forest and back in one trip. You can see mountain vistas and ocean horizons. It’s almost too daunting at times to drive in TDU’s O’ahu. Learning the streets and familiarizing yourself to the island is a game in and of itself.

I lived out my fantasy driving of driving a Lotus Esprit V8. The cool thing about Test Drive Unlimited is that it was a life simulator as well. You could pick clothing and build a home. It was great. I am amazed at how well TDU captured the essence of driving through Hawaii. I have played a lot of driving games but few have the captured the feel of driving through a vista in such a real way. Test Drive Unlimited failed in a way as an MMO Racing game, but as a single player Hawaii simulator it was a masterpiece.

Those are my thoughts. TDU is basically free and the sequel that was a complete disaster is set in Hawaii as well. Check them out. Peace!

Black Characters in Gaming- Dwayne Forge (GTA 4)

Footsteps in the Dark – Please click link and have this song playing while reading this post. Thank you!

Here the Isley Brothers crooning in the background, setting the mood. Beauty, sadness, betrayal… and that’s just the beginning of the song. Every time Dwayne Forge had a cut scene in GTA 4 this song played in the background. It sets the perfect back drop for Dwayne’s experience. 

Dwayne was not a playable character in Grand Theft Auto 4, he was a friend you could choose to work with or kill. Spoilers but at one point in the game you have to choose between helping Playboy X (young upstart rapper and former colleague to Dwayne) and killing Dwayne (former crime boss, just released from prison and back at ground zero) or helping Dwayne and killing Playboy X. I don’t know how you could not help Dwayne. He’s so real, he has one hell of a sob story. Gameplay wise if you hang out with Dwayne enough he gives you access to his old gang members and weapons to help you on missions.

Dwayne represented a few major things for me. He is black, he has a moral code, and he is depressed. Full disclosure, I was playing GTA 4 heavily when I had broken up with my seemingly first “love” (wrong.) and I felt like the world was turning its back on me. Dwayne was feeling the same way. Dwayne had it all when he was running the drug game but he took the fall for his friends (loyalty) and realized that when he got out everybody he thought had his back left him behind. His girl left him, his boys wouldn’t associate with him or treat him with respect. He became a pariah (like most released prisoners he was unable to find work and lost his social networks, he was left helpless and hopeless). Dwayne was feeling hopeless but in the game Niko Bellic came along and fought with him and gave him hope.

I have never had a black character in my gaming life that was as multifaceted and relevant to my experience as Dwayne. Dwayne was a guy trying to give it all for his people and he loved his people. That’s how I see myself, and his pain when they don’t reciprocate it is a pain I feel. Yeah, Dwayne is a criminal and a convict but he had feelings. Very rarely do characters in games have real feelings and certainly not black characters. Rockstar, the developers of GTA 4, humanized Dwayne. The problem with stereotypes is that they dehumanize the groups of people they effect. Black men get watered down to statistics and become vehicles that either subvert or reinforce stereotypes and very little else. It is so refreshing to have a character like Dwayne who seems to reinforce these stereotypes while breaking through them all by making us care for him as a person. I would also argue that Dwayne subverts a lot of male stereotypes due to his openness with his feelings. He allows himself to be sad. 

Is Dwayne a problematic representation of black characters in gaming? He showcases emotions, deals with a reality that many black men face post incarceration, and brings light to mental health issues that flare up in our community but go untreated…. it would be too easy to focus on him being a criminal and calling him problematic because of that. In a weird way Dwayne represents old school values preaching loyalty and community where Playboy X represents new self centered values that neglect community. I personally love what Dwayne represents on that level. 

Stereotype: Black man as criminal

That speaks for itself. We haven’t moved passed this trope much in gaming. As always, it’s problematic because it is not juxtaposed with positive black images in gaming. 

Stereotype: Mass Incarceration of black men

I can’t really put it better than this infographic. I will add though that as a country we refuse to acknowledge the disservice we do these men when we let them out of prison. They lose the right to vote and can’t find jobs. Every sentence should not be a life sentence. We need change. 

Stereotype: Mental health issues in the black community

It exist, yet as a community we try to act like it doesn’t. On a broader scale, black people and minorities in general have a lot to be depressed about and we shouldn’t shy away from that reality should embrace it and work through it. 

What does all this mean? In my mind Dwayne is a beacon of excellence in black representations in game. I just wish he was playable….