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A couple of thoughts about the writer’s strike. The first is this Video that made me laugh.

Anyone who’s perused fanfiction.net can tell you that the comic embellishment here is at a minimum. These people do exist and that fact is both sad and hilarious. But after a bit of rumination, I felt that this video had some wider implications beyond brightening my coffee break.

This skit takes the producer’s optimum position to its hilarious conclusion. The ability to buy labor using non-monetary benefits. Workers who are just happy to be there! It’s manager heaven! I worked as games tester for about a year, and one thing I learned was that any passion you have for your job can be used to bend you over a barrel. My work was repetitive and there were thousands ready to take my place, so it’s no wonder I didn’t get re-hired after my second contract with the company. 10 dollars an hour and 60 hour work weeks seem like a fair price for the chance to work at a video game company. It’s same deal for the Writer’s Guild, the Director’s Guild and the Screen Actor’s guild. Without them, management could easily do whatever they wanted to workers because people would pay to do the work that they do.

The second item is this blog post by Ryan Sohmer. If there ever was a case for an internet-only entertainment universe, Sohmer would be it. His comic strip, Least I Could Do has run for over five years with four books out and an animated series deal on the way. However he may have trouble getting any help writing said animated series if he maintains his line of thinking. Sohmer believes that if the producers and guild just bucked up and compromised, everybody would get back to work. Everyone MUST get back to work, otherwise all the actors and studio janitors will go hungry, this great 70 year old infrastructure will crumble and America would no longer be the cultural epicenter it once was. Oh no! The actors will have to choose between their dignity and a little gold statue at the Oscars! If you ask me, this sounds like a good thing.

The producers are about to get hit with a terminal case of useless, a disease that few occupations recover from. Back in the days of a three channel, one newspaper, one movie screen universe, the producer’s job was much more important. Making sure that the most appealing if not best content got out there to attract the best viewers and the best advertisers was a task that required strategy and tough decision-making. When the internet came along and made sure joe nobody was as accessible as NBC, creators are now able to make money from a small audience without the interference of committee thinking. Networks and corporations simply are not able to maximize revenue from the personal, specific stories that make mass media what is today. Technology is going to replace the functions of producers until they are simply providers of production capital, and holding money is something the banks have covered pretty well. The Producers know this, and they are attempting every under-handed trick in the book to keep themselves relevant and swimming in cash, from anti-net neutrality bills to copyright extensions. Every trick that is, except serve the consumer and pay a decent price for labor.

Every day the writers remain on strike brings the entertainment industry to a more robust and equitable business model. Furthermore, it’s not like any of the workers on those shows haven’t been unemployed before. In the Vancouver where they film Battlestar Galactica, an unemployed tradesperson is pretty much an oxymoron with this job market. When you lose your job, you don’t dress up like G.I. joe and go shoot up a happy burger. You look for work, you retrain, and you adapt. It may take only a few hit shows on the internet to change the game completely. Besides, if enough actors and directors boycott the oscars, things will really start to get interesting.

Ryan Sohmer’s Strike Musings, Part Deux

Fanfic Video via Writer’s Life

Right now the internet is awash with the controversy that is the firing of Jeff Gertsmann, better known as Gertsmann-gate. According to Gamespot, his employer, Jeff Gertsmann was let go as a game reviewer for reasons related to his “tone”. However, many in the gaming community suspect that this was due to Gertsmann’s less than glowing review of Io Interactive’s latest crime shooter, “Kane and Lynch: Dead Men”. Since the publisher of the game is a major sponsor of Gamespot, the fans were quick to construct a conspiracy involving Gamespot and the publisher. This comic from Penny-Arcade illustrates the situation brilliantly.

I thought I would read the review and see the video to figure out what the hubbub was all about. Curiously, I found myself siding with the editors at Gamespot. I felt a little uncomfortable for the developers of “Kane and Lynch”. Gertsmann described the game as “ugly”, starring characters that were “completely unlikable”. There are ways to pull of off a negative review with flare and personality, but Gertsmann’s generic gripes led me to believe that he was simply seen as a weak link on the writing staff. He immediately points out the game’s faults, where a more skilled reviewer would have built the game up a little before taking down Greek tragedy style. It may have just been bad timing that he was let go after reviewing the game of a major sponsor. Despite all this, I think he was on the verge something important. Something that the video gaming industry in America and Europe is just not ready to deal with.

If this game is “ugly”, then by what standard is it ugly? What are we comparing it to? Bioshock? Gears of War? Clive Barker’s Jericho? Any other M-rated shooter on the market? And who’s to say the characters are unlikeable? Surely we can identify with the faceless chap ripping slugs out of creepy little girls in Bioshock! And who wouldn’t want to have a beer with the over-muscled chainsaw-wielding hulks you play in Gears of War?

What I got from Gertsmann’s review is that we consumers are drowning a sea of games where every character is the most badass mofo in the universe, kicking the asses of badasses who are supposed be even more badass than the badass you are playing. Never mind that the government is trying to legislate these kind of games off the shelves. Companies are pouring resources into these Next-Gen titles, for which they may see little return profit. Developing new characters has to be THE weakness of Western game studios. JC Barnett over at the blog Japanmanship suggested we should just give up and outsource all of our character designing to Japan and Korea. And why shouldn’t we? Contra 4 and Metroid Prime are proof positive that Western Video Game companies can do wonders with foreign intellectual property.

“Kane and Lynch” is a logical game to produce. The developer, Io Interactive, previously produced the game “Hitman”, which was quite popular with its strategic approach to murder and mayhem. Making a heist game in the tradition of “Heat” or “The Italian Job” implemented with the strategy of “Hitman” should have been money in the bank for these guys. But it seems that in the haste to make the game more palatable for the Western market and on the shelves by Christmas, the fun and character development of those films was lost in the quest to make absolutely everyone in the game the hardest case on the planet.

Gertsmann seems like he would never be happy working to assess an industry that was so lacking in its self-awareness. The editors may have had the company’s best interests at heart when they let him go, but unless developers treat character and story-line as integral to their process as graphics and gameplay, we are going to see a lot more game reviewers with “tone” problems.

Japanmanship on the Art of Character

The Penny Arcade Comic

Gertsmann’s review of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men.