rainworlds - Tumblr blog

rainworlds · 6 years

Text

The Blur

We are beset by static—in the thrall of constant, relentless movement, we lose ourselves to the permanent accumulation of momentum. We have been primed to charge forward, into a direction unknown, and while everything else recedes into periphery, there are other things coursing through the slipstream, catching up with us. All this movement, this ‘progress’—where does it lead?

Contemporary reporting, in all its breathless, pounding rhythm cares little for the context out of which movement emerges, nor how momentum steers us towards the void. The result is a kind of blur that systematically annihilates our sense of history and, with it, our capacity for Déjà vu. Memory is subject to the corrosive effects of capital, so how do we recognize that something has been lost—that we have been here before?

* * *

Wrapped in the briar of enterprise, critics under capital are incentivized to perform discovery—that is, framing their critique as the first, unique approach to any given topic—which remains convention because it places individual contribution at the center of an ongoing conversation. Of course, credit must be given where credit is due: critics perform labor, after all. But as capital pushes the communal components of all labor further into the margins, the erasure of pre-existing work for the sake of building personal legacies seems all-encompassing; we must, as Devyn Springer put it, cleave individualism from our practice, reject the description of ‘creatives’ and think of ourselves as participating in the production of a culture from which to strike at reactionary elements that seek to prevent harmony and productive labor. We must remember that we do not conjure from the void.

It should be noted that this culture does not have to be ‘popular’ in the sense that ‘popular culture’ is; it can remain separate for as long as it is necessary. But, in the same vein, the totality of ‘popular culture’ and its many fragments cannot be conceded to reactionary ideology.

* * *

People are taught to breach the confines of lines and letters—explicit text—to do excavations upon marginal spaces. This, of course, holds financial benefits in an age where the rapid pace of communication complicates how we capture attention and revenue: it should be apparent, then, that to drape the self in discovery is a practice of domination; it is the colonizer’s impulse. Avant-garde, a term with decidedly militaristic connotations that originates in the Metropole, should clue us into its use: artistic expression and thought are delineated as a ‘frontier’ unto which ‘pioneers’ may move to mark territory, but, of course, not all are permitted to do so equitably.

To perform discovery in this way can be read as a desperate attempt by subjects under kyriarchy to rupture the relentless rhythm of enterprise and insert permanence into capitalist structures driven by the demands of mobility and flexibility. But, of course, that is an extraordinarily charitable reading. To practice discovery means to cut deeper into wounded flesh: it romanticizes a heightened individualism under which writers must fend for themselves. Violently obscuring foundations is not a trivial offence, regardless of whether it happens consciously or not; after all, intent is not required to produce negative consequences.

Attribution of marginal work as a counter-practice has been discarded almost entirely. To bring it to the forefront demands conscious effort. Stitching back together the histories that ‘discovery’ has torn thread from thread to weave a propaganda of the ego requires a delicate sort of restoration; the seams are scars, after all, and the needles must puncture flesh. Of course, it comes at great personal cost: the market demands the performance of discovery: participants are required to frame themselves and their work as products; the profitability of commodities, in contemporary economy, hinges on being distinct and separate from those that came before; the market adores novelty. Historicizing within the constraints of word count limitations can be a difficult proposition, but it must be undertaken whenever possible.

Marginalized ingenuity has been openly sacrificed on the altar of novelty, but as aspiring keepers of the record, we may attempt a resurrection of sorts: the task of reconstructing histories must serve to train an audience that has previously been unwilling or unable to confront the injustice of life at the margins. ‘Critics’ who present themselves as ‘charting’ or ‘taming’ a previously ‘wild’ and ‘uninhabited’ space in contemporary discourse need to be exposed for what they are: their discovery is nothing but the colonization of the vast landscapes of marginalized thought and criticism that have been violently cast aside. But exposure is not enough: radical attribution and the re-thinking of our relationships under capital must follow.

* * *

The rhythm of contemporary journalism (of capital) cultivates the impression of movement to obfuscate not just the pace at which popular culture moves but the direction in which it moves: it is the grand theater of progress, a sleight of hand. To speak of ‘growth’ or ‘dynamism’ is foolish, because we know these acts of accumulation are performed to distract from the elemental truth that there is no ‘automatic progress’ in all this movement. It is a mechanism meant to prevent introspection, the act of ‘taking stock’ that would reveal the tides of history.

It is a conventionally held position that the financial viability of platforms that practice criticism depend in large part on their ability to capitalize on the rapid pace of information that flows from industry; this applies, in particular, to those that cover popular culture. But that information comes with an expiration date; access is compromised. It is the speed with which such information needs to be processed that requires writers to navigate corporate content at breakneck pace. This relentless schedule occupies a disproportionate amount of any worker’s most precious resource: it devours time, all of it.

Observing and describing the status quo in this way are crucial activities, because the minuscule shifts and adaptations performed by capital to capture wholly our discourse horizon are pre-requisites for understanding and envisioning an alternative future. But, we need to see these shifts and adaptations as what they are: minuscule. This requires knowledge that can illuminate the contexts in which these adaptations occur.

As analytical tools with which we see the world, observation and description thus require constant re-calibration; they cannot remain static. Rather, what needs to be observed and described are trends over time, so that the context of individual events is not lost in the furious rhythm of digital publishing. Otherwise, organized thought perishes in our desperation to capture a permanent moment that, in truth, does not exist.

* * *

Curation is frequently presented as a natural process built on the observation and subsequent interpretation of publics. As such, the process is often directly linked to the behavior of publics. It should be clear, however, that the practice of curation is not a natural process in which actors possess a supernatural disposition to sense the ‘zeitgeist’ and act accordingly, but a series of decisions made by institutions that determine the boundaries of their actions.

We tend to frame curation as if publications are receptacles for publics, as if the direction of reporting naturally emerges from a realm external. But this has become part of a larger strategy to relocate and externalize the labor of curation unto systems perceived to be ‘organic’, such as social media, to shun and obfuscate a responsibility for elevating the margins that every self-respecting institution of journalism should embrace.

A refusal to see the ways in which our work may produce culture, of course, reiterates on a politics of apathy, and seamlessly transitions into the reproduction of the status quo. To rely on technology is seen as a way of observing the world on its own terms, a lens unto ‘objective’, ‘natural’ reality that arises organically from the will of the public. But even as we accept this dubious claim, the observation of such unreliable, massive amounts of data still requires the observer to make a series of decisions: attention is limited, so it follows that what we may observe is limited, too.

Information and communications technology cannot be permitted to slip into the role of an invisible hand that determines what appears on any platform. It is not autonomous, neutral or objective: algorithms, as experts never tire to tell us, are crafted by people. It is important to recognize the myriad ways in which the technical architecture of popular networks and platforms shape what individuals and publications are able to see online. But the limitations of such architecture do not provide salient justification for publications to capitulate in the face of the enormous task that curation presents.

Rather, publications need the resources to engage in an active process of seeking out material that constitutes real alternatives to the doctrines of industry. Observing social media is part of the repertoire, but, even there, unpaid labor engages in a process of curation that remains invisible, and visible only if it acts in aggregate; attribution is crucial. Popularity determines coverage, when coverage, ideally, should introduce publics to new works, which may or may not become popular; curation is work. We cannot rest on the assumption that what is ‘worth covering’ will somehow ‘trickle up’—defying gravity—to the editorial board, re-asserting the primacy of viral success and/or corporate backing. Publications are active participants, complicit in a process that turns our collective understanding of ‘value’ into something that is not a threat to the status quo.

* * *

Attribution, contextualization and curation are tools with which we can avoid making the same mistake as the institutions currently writing about popular culture; they have become so thoroughly compromised that 'transformation’ is not longer a sufficient prescription. It must be annihilation. The short-term memory evident in the problem-of-the-week dynamic is a problem that is rooted in the rhythm of digital publishing and capital, which seems to ward off any attempts to build momentum for causes that are capable and robust enough to support more radical ideologies. To break this cycle, these institutions need to be fought.

6 notes · View notes

rainworlds · 8 years

Text

Practicing Genre #1

Mentioning genre in discussions on digital play—like introducing any scheme of classification—should not be an invitation for commentators to set up boundaries and police them in their work.

Rather, in recognizing the fluidity of genre definitions, we may gain new insights about how games are perceived as interwoven compositions of play and aesthetics, and how they make statements about the world.

In constantly refining and adjusting our understanding of genre, we may become better at reading and interpreting the gradual paradigm shifts at work in the sometimes wildly disparate corners of our field.

So, what are we really doing when we attempt to demarcate ‘genre’ boundaries in video games?

Taxonomy—that is, the act of categorization—becomes possible by identifying sets of common markers that are similar enough across different works so that they may be grouped together, primarily as an analytical instrument for further engagement.

It is a continuous practice that is primarily descriptive and, by that measure, requires constant adjustment.

It immediately prompts additional questions as to the nature of not just what it is that we are categorizing, but, more importantly, who is involved in these particular practices of categorization; what is their relationship towards the object? Are there notable asymmetries of power that have led practices to become exclusive in any way?

To be clear, since observation is not merely the act of uncovering existing structures, none of these practices are natural, nor are they necessarily binding or deterministic, which is not to say that they lack power: after all, as examples of stylistic decisions and practices that have proliferated over time and became convention, they are history.

Before we can identify common markers, we have to ask foundational questions about the make-up of the works we intend to categorize, which leads us to inquire about the structure of video games. Conventionally, we seem to have concluded that video games are classified according to sets of recurring mechanics so works may appear to be representative of larger trends.

Fundamentally, I think, these are obviously questions of value.

This means that ‘genre’ consists of conversations and practices that are beyond recognition, demarcation or clarification: ‘doing genre’ is a creative incision meant to ground contemporary discussions on works of play and embed them into a wider media landscape. This might be more important than we realize—video games need to be torn from isolation—but it comes with a few familiar difficulties.

After all, it requires us to decontextualize aspects of a work in order to re-contextualize them as part of larger patterns we claim to identify in the media landscape.

Nevertheless, we insist on using pattern “recognition” to solve this problem, which should give us pause as critics, because it obscures the inevitable decontextualization that takes place when we categorize thoughtlessly: simplification may appear helpful in explanation and description, but retaining and emphasizing the original context often provides a measure of nuance that recognizes how ‘mechanical’ aspects of play are interwoven with narratives and aesthetics to produce meaning.

Comparisons that build on simplistic systems of classification are precarious, because they may easily gloss over these synergies in order to reduce friction between the objects compared. This can result in an erosion of difference.

Mechanical rules of play may be the decisive component we use to classify video games, but they are certainly not the extent of what constitutes them as a whole, nor should every conversation on genre center these types of elements.

‘Open-world’ may be a useful instrument only for as long as it can retain its descriptive power and consistency across multiple works. Austin Walker recently pointed out that the term has lost some of that descriptive-ness in recent years, because it is simply not specific enough to capture the divergence taking shape in games we classify under its umbrella.

There are ways to cope with this problem.

There could be an introduction of ever-more specific sub-genres that pinpoint the individual contributions of new components to the concept of a play-world that is, to some degree, openly accessible in spatial navigation.

There is a temptation to abandon the term entirely, and while it might appear to have exhausted its merit as an analytical tool, I am reluctant to discard it. Instead, I think it would be vital to understand how genre can be used in practice as a modular tool. Video games may be classified according to sets of ‘mechanics’, but which ones should we prioritize? Are there primary ‘genres’ and secondary ones? It has always been about what we value most about the works we enjoy.

Realizing that ‘genre’ manifests as modular in video games renders classification a matter of addition and eventual subtraction: first-person shooter is a combination of two well-known mechanisms, it’s just that we sometimes lack the breadth of descriptive genre components to make our statements about games more precise.

In such a way, ‘open-world’ is a useful descriptor, but it cannot necessarily stand on its own anymore. It would immediately prompt the question: yes, but what kind? I would know that said game has a particular disposition towards the immediate accessibility of its spaces, but I would need more information: recent games have diversified the ‘genre’ to such a degree that additional descriptors are required.

And that’s exactly how ‘genres’ should work in practice. They cannot afford to be static.

#genre #video games #videogames

2 notes · View notes

rainworlds · 8 years

Text

The Eye of the Storm

Mercy is an alien concept in nature’s mastery of all things living. The Yawhg captures this sentiment in roughly thirty minutes, the desolation and hope of it all flaring beyond the comfy coat of illustrated fairytale.

Leisurely, it dances towards the precipice until it cannot anymore, and it starts to consider what it would be like to run over the edge. Standing amidst fresh ruins contemplating the end of everything, it whispers a gentle reminder:

“You are not alone.”

I imagine the faint silhouettes of most non-player characters would write down the same things across the walls of their virtual worlds. Who are the interlopers that cannot contain themselves, who fuck up everything all the time?

In The Yawhg, Emily Carrol’s delicate artwork of a medieval city inhabits the screen with an unwavering permanence, nestled against the grey sentinels of a forest to the north and a large body of water to the south.

Even when the core of its play springs into action and tiny vignettes take up a large part in the center of the frame, the city is never completely gone from view. A spectre of civilization, it looms shadowy in the background of the digital lens, behind translucent fields of text and artwork.

Moving characters across this drawn cityscape feels like pushing wooden pawns on cardboard, evoking marginalia and board games and fairytales all at once. Play is a series of mildly randomized hypertext encounters. Every week, player(s) get to move their little character sprite between eight locations, each split into two activities that will trigger bits of story in the shape of no more than a paragraph of prose. Most involve a series of choices that might lead to other choices or events, but rarely have lasting consequences past the accumulation of some basic attributes like intelligence or strength or magic.

Ryan Roth’s and Halina Heron’s symphonic tempest builds in the distance, accompanies the titular Yawhg as the weeks fade away and calamity draws us closer. In the last weeks, it decelerates and loses its playful strings; those pleasant unrelenting chords that made the opening so enticing and dynamic, that never lost a beat and pushed to progress, are gone as the vocals swell and tempo slows to a crawl.

Instead, the sound becomes cavernous, complementing the storm that is about to swallow the town whole; it is a sound that has always been there, buried beneath layers of seductive adventure and shifting melancholy.

It envelops the unsuspecting town.

Triumph and misery may be shared, too: the turn-based nature of play lends itself to quiet evenings with groups of people, where everyone might be able to control one of the four characters by passing the controller around.

However, even lone players are expected to control at least two characters. Pitted against fate, this works to hammer the message home: saving this town cannot be done alone. Social composition in urban environments matters on a foundational level.

In fact, saving this town cannot be done at all without the survival of the community that inhabits it; how individual members of that community may contribute to the urban landscape and how they produce a larger whole after a period of relative self-centeredness lies at the heart of The Yawhg’s play.

Yet, the lives of the town’s inhabitants do not intersect in explicit ways. The character’s vignettes capture adventures that emphasize communal belonging but never quite tether to anything specific; community remains an abstraction in The Yawhg.

The endings are numerous, but for our purpose of pitting the abstract value ‘community’ against nature’s whims, it could be boiled down to two:

1. Once upon a time, in a town somewhere between the woods and the sea, many stood united against tragedy and prospered.

2. Once upon a time, a town somewhere between the woods and the sea was swallowed whole, caught up in selfishness.

Rallying together to face crisis, however, will not simply create a healthy understanding of community, or even amplify communal values. Empathy past the buzzword surface is required: players have important decisions to make before they are brought face to face with their character’s fate: what kind of profession will they take up in the new world order after the Yawgh has delivered devastation and tragedy on their very doorstep. The attributes accumulated over the duration of play then determine the success of the character’s performance in that profession.

Creating and shaping communities for the sole purpose of temporary unity turns them hollow; it allows them to be taken up by more powerful agents and manipulated in unforeseen ways.

I fear The Yawhg neglects to show much of the consequences and introspective qualities that calamity irrefutably triggers. Its greatest danger is that we may turn inwards further, where individualism may flourish but ‘we’ do not.

Can we locate the unexpected value of calamity in its disruption of egotism, then? Certainly, we can see The Yawhg coming, as the game reminds us every week before the characters are allowed to move, but it is something the characters are entirely unaware of.

Calamity certainly contains potential to destabilize social organization, and The Yawhg accounts for positive and negative outcomes: individualism has to bow in service of the community. In times of crisis, this dynamic seems hyper pronounced. Only there and then, in the wet rubble may someone transcend individuality and contribute to the survival of a larger whole. In that sacrifice, of course, individuality is simultaneously affirmed, because the attributes built and adventures lived have shaped the character and their chosen profession after the disaster.

Self-centeredness still exist within the confines of The Yawhg’s city walls. You may decide to adopt a profession that your attributes are not well suited for, and not only will you falter under the weight of something you cannot accomplish, the town will, too.

Sacrifice can be glorified in a variety of ways, and The Yawhg certainly believes that personal fulfilment is located in a kind of devotion to community. Solidarity. It holds, however, that it is happiness that can be found there, too.

The Yawhg shows us only the beginning. Weathering external circumstance, a group of people may begin to flourish – and that is a rare message in the time of heightened, tortured anti-heroes and lone survivors. There is only one question remaining: was the initial period of unsuspecting adventure and blissful ignorance of the storms to come not already fraught? Utopia cannot be achieved, but should we not at least strive to rebuild society, and commit ourselves to solidarity every day of our lives? Without that, I am afraid, a different kind of calamity may overtake us through complacency.

#earlywork

8 notes · View notes

rainworlds · 8 years

Text

Arbitrary Choices

In popular writing on play, it has become common wisdom to proclaim that choices without recognizable consequences are either “less meaningful” or entirely “devoid of meaning”. Instead, it is said that choices should represent a branching of the narrative framework, have a direct mechanical impact and/or have distinct outcomes that should be referenced over the course of play.

This sentiment is particularly widespread in the response to games that present players with choices, but do not offer direct feedback to these choices in their own bodies of play; the result is a distinct sense of betrayal on the part of players who expected their choices to have discernible consequences, but whose perceived impact was either minimal or non-existent.

Players have argued that these kinds of choices are evidence for a deficiency of design: they have, supposedly, neglected their inherent potential as avenues for player expression, i.e. they are arbitrary and meaningless; these are the “choices for choices’ sake”. It should be noted that this line of reasoning frames these choices as fundamental flaws of design, rather than preference.

This normative framing is unfortunate, because it centers player agency as the only desirable reason for implementing choice in play, when the possibilities are theoretically infinite: choices do not have to represent player expression but may manifest as character expressions, amplify themes already present in the game or make statements wholly of their own; in other words, there are meaningful choices to be implemented, without built-in, direct-feedback interactions.

In contrast to the celebration of expression, these choices may explore various modes of introspection that have received comparably little attention.

And that’s because valorizing agency has long since become part of the corporate vocabulary of play and a crucial selling point throughout the industry: video games are a medium of interactions, we are told, but this description is, of course, insufficient. Nonetheless, it seems an enduring perspective that has normalized itself as the one and only stance on how to implement choice.

It is a persuasive argument that caters to the relative solitude and narcissism rampant in the communities of digital play.

Real, lived agency is subject to constant limitations, without immediately recognizable consequences or feedback; we may not even be able to recognize these limitations at all. It would be a power to behold, to possess the ability to make choices whose consequences may be predictable, and which will influence the world for generations to come; it would require a kind of clairvoyance.

It is precisely this assurance that our decisions matter and hold decisive sway over a world’s collective memory that have become an integral part of the power fantasy of choice, to build an empire of the self and establish legacy.

Adverse approaches to choices may be a scary proposition, and undesirable for some, but designing systems, narratives and choices that are subject to sometimes severe limitations have the potential to interrogate and uncover the material conditions and socio-cultural forces that shape human agency in the realm of flesh and blood.

We do not know the outcomes of our decisions, and we often do not recognize the tipping points in our own lives: these moments of choice remain shrouded in the momentum of the self, and are only revealed in the ongoing processes of narration that shape our perspective on personal as well as collective history. Agency is incremental and rarely revolutionary, it comes to us quietly and without our knowledge; we reassert our will, but there is nothing that guarantees we are heard, especially not in the noise of our age.

Choice and feedback, we have to recognize, are luxury, after all.

1 note · View note

rainworlds · 8 years

Text

“The World Could Always Use More Heroes”: Overwatch & Accessibility

Overwatch seems to embody a return to simplicity in online play: it reconfigures the first-person shooter by appropriating elements of multiple other genres, and transforms them in order to retain and maximize accessibility. Its conception of simplicity through cartoon aesthetics and streamlined interface design, nevertheless, barely manages to conceal an underlying complexity; this is a kind of simplicity that might be easy to comprehend at first glance, but not necessarily easy to play or master.

Its extensive marketing campaign has dramatized the specificity of the 21 playable heroes, each with their unique abilities and their place and history in a larger Overwatch universe. This ancillary information paired with an immediately recognizable aesthetic style has proven propulsive to the popularity of Overwatch and managed to at least partially breach the stigmata of inaccessibility inherent in approaching the infamous landscape of online multiplayer games.

In contrast, the response to Overwatch has been dominated by the implications of its marketing material pre-release, which has included comics and animated shorts that emphasize levity, an international cast and a seemingly welcoming attitude towards beginners of all kinds, as well as the spatial and temporal dimensions of a larger narrative framework: each and every one of these characters have histories that might intersect, with their own conflicts to resolve and bonds to uphold.

There is strife in the world of Overwatch, but its insistence that “the world could always use more heroes” points to the exuberant optimism and binary morality suggested by its aesthetic style and stilted one-liners, which leave enough negative space for fan engagements to provide depth.

* * *

Fundamentally, Overwatch copies and only slightly alters several familiar modes of play from other first-person multiplayer games, most notably Team Fortress (2) with its nine specialized character classes and cartoon aesthetic. Overwatch, however, takes the character specificity and hero management aspects of games like DOTA2 or League of Legends and transports them into the dynamic, fast-paced action of a first-person multiplayer game. While Smite might have tried something similar, the remarkable feature of an average match of Overwatch is its brevity and the ability to switch heroes at any time during the match. This might seem like an insignificant change, but remember that matches of DOTA2 or League of Legends can last anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes, with averages ranging around 40 minutes; being stuck with the wrong team composition, or simply a rude, toxic group of people for that amount of time can be extremely exhausting.

The average match of Overwatch rarely goes beyond the 10-minute mark. It is precisely the length of individual matches that might be responsible for a lasting impression of accessible play. Currently, jumping into the dynamic action of Overwatch merely requires clicking on Quick Play and the game will promptly make you join a game in progress or, more often than not, start a new game in roughly 30 seconds with the full roster of 12 players already loaded in.

This solution is relatively elegant and does not dilute the learning experience with too many modes or maps, and will be slowly expanded with a separate, competitive progression system that caters to the familiar clientele of online shooters. The Weekly Brawl is the only current alternative mode of play, which changes its parameters every week: for instance, every player gets assigned a random hero or the cooldown timers on abilities are drastically reduced, health is increased and other variables may be tweaked. Randomizing hero choice in a separate mode that is always available, however, would make for an excellent opportunity to familiarize players with heroes and their abilities.

Regardless, this impression of relative accessibility obscures a hard truth: Overwatch remains a complicated game. Despite its plethora of user-friendly control options, which include hero specific controls, and its streamlined user interface that emphasizes clarity, these elements of traditional accessibility are not necessarily communicated as well as they could be. Knowing how to utilize the hero abilities, three per character -excluding passive abilities- may be a piece of cake for veteran DOTA2 or League of Legend players, but it presents new and different kinds of players with challenges that might be entirely unfamiliar: how do my abilities work and how do they interact? When should I switch my hero? Which hero might be best suited against this enemy team? When should I use the abilities to best support the team?

Learning the answer to these questions is a long process, but it is key to achieving victory. It is not, however, necessarily required to enjoy the brief matches of Overwatch.

* * *

Even though Overwatch comes with a basic tutorial that teaches the fundamentals of movement in a first-person game, there is no significant mechanism to facilitate the process of learning the hero abilities outside of online play. Hopping into a match might be relatively frictionless, as is playing some of the more accessible heroes for the first time, but cultivating a growing understanding of Overwatch requires players to go beyond the game itself and find helpful material online. Unfortunately, many of the guides available online are not consistent either and frequently espouse hyperbolic language in their self-conception as the ultimate way to play, rather than as highlighting a particular strategic or tactical approach to certain heroes, which remain incomplete at this point in time, because -hot tip- everyone is still figuring out how to play.

Learning these heroes can be an immense challenge, but for the corresponding kinds of players, they may prove intensely rewarding, too: each hero comes with its unique sets of animation routines, which, even in first-person, articulate the hero’s personality and play style. Getting the hang of switching to the hero best suited in a given situation and supporting your team in an efficient manner is accompanied by visual cues and animation feats that underline and reward fluid play: reacting and counteracting to enemy heroes with a deflect ability sends your katana buzzing around the screen, catching bullets and repelling them back to their origin, inflicting a surprise attack. The reflexes necessary are not enormous, it just means triggering the ability at the right moment and taking joy in watching the animation routine play out. There are heroes that are particularly well suited for beginners and others that are not; of course, the community has taken it on itself to shame these heroes as “non-skill” or “noob” options.

Unfortunately, the more accessible heroes are not labeled as such either; all that remains is trial and error, which might significantly sour a first impression. An offline training arena and matches against artificial intelligence do exist, but they offer next to no guidance on any of the remaining twenty characters, nor are there character-specific challenge modes that teach particular abilities or how and when to use them. The current design choices cater to specific kinds of players, who are willing to experiment in AI matches or the training arena for prolonged periods of time, or simply do not mind making mistakes online and/or que with friends to avoid the potential of abuse and shaming in the communication functions.

To date, this seems to be the game’s most pressing oversight as potential players who were charmed by the specificity of the hero design and the explosive emergence of a Overwatch universe with its own history teased by persistent marketing and fan engagements, were confronted with the relatively familiar modes of play present in Overwatch.

Overwatch does not refuse to teach its players outright, but its methods of doing so are subtle and remain mostly hidden in tool-tips or rely completely on social bonds and fan engagements. That is insufficient. Overwatch has useful tips on how to utilize heroes, which, impressively, react contextually to the way players may have just died or give players tips on what to do against the hero that keeps besting them.

There is, however, no further guidance on the advantages and disadvantages of an individual hero; there is no training that focuses on what to do in any given situation or that informs players on which heroes to avoid and which heroes they might want to pursue while playing a specific character; the tips are simply not consistent enough and their short appearance at the right side of the screen forgotten in the fray.

* * *

People claim that with the exception of a few lines of voice work, the “game itself” remains a purely multiplayer combat experience without much narrative context, the lack of which must have felt like a betrayal after what had been teased in animated shorts, character descriptions and comics. Though this sentiment seems to be relatively wide-spread and I do not mean to belittle it in the slightest, I think we need to recognize the crossmedial potential of properties like Overwatch, whose elegance and ease of use might be further enhanced by modes brimming with narrative flavor, but whose decision to offload these elements unto other media, including fan engagements, is not necessarily inferior to the traditional choice of a more overt narration style.

Rather, it has become necessary to blur the lines between the “game itself” and what might surround it, which is a distinction that has never been clear cut in the first place; why do we find it necessary to demarcate and draw boundaries in how we talk about games, marketing and fan engagement outside of personal preference?

It remains to be seen how Overwatch chooses to expand its universe post-release, not just as a competitive community with its tightly-knit, interlocking system of play, but as a site of intense fan engagement and narrative complication. It needs to amend and bolster its teaching apparatus to reach entirely new audiences as well as elaborate on a promising foundation of narrative to endow the game with a sense of progress that is decoupled from the (Skinner-) Loot Box; relegating narrative contextualization to the para-text is just one strategy amongst many.

Access might have been relatively simple, but inviting players to stick with Overwatch beckons for more variety and realizing the promise of accessibility implicit in its presentation.

by Philip Regenherz

#i love overwatch but #overwatch

1 note · View note