Thee Incredible Weirdness of Being
Created | Updated Oct 14, 2004
Humatons have infested areas other than music. One of the main areas where they now hold sway is video games. Initially, video games were weird-looking, square, 2D images which required a bit of imagination to make sense of. As time went on, graphics improved, but
most games remained 2D. Since it was fairly difficult to generate images which did not look like they came from a microchip, games had to rely on a few other things to keep players interested. These included challenge, length, originality, and most of all gameplay as in creating something specifically intended to be enjoyable, in a similar way to a good book or a game of football.
Originality was considered important back then as well. While there were a whole lot of generic games, the ratio of good to bad was much better than it is nowadays. Games sold for only around IR£5, which was good for everyone. It was good for gamers as they could get a lot of games very quickly, maybe buying one with their weekly allowance. Also, if a game turned out to be bad, it was no serious loss. It was also good for developers, since such a low price suggests to me that a game did not need a whole lot of money to make; indeed, many early games such as Space Invaders, Defender, and Wolfenstein 3D were all literally developed in people's bedrooms. Pong was made as a tourist novelty by a single programmer on a room-sized computer used to calculate missile trajectories. Low development costs also meant that companies were much more free to try new ideas, since if a new concept or game didn't sell well, they would suffer no great loss. Games rarely took more than six months to make, meaning that any company would have a relatively steady flow of cash. Then along came Sony.
There is an interesting story as to how the PlayStation came into existence, but I am not going to go into it here. The PlayStation was a great machine. It was the first games console specifically designed to allow for 3D games to be made on it. Thanks to the PlayStation, we have such video game genres as survival horror and stealth. Unfortunately,
as the PlayStation enhanced the video game world, it also ruined it.
Development costs skyrocketed, and game prices rose to about IR£30 - IR£40. Nowadays, they tend to sell for about €60. It is rare for a game to have less than a year-long development cycle, and they require budgets of sizes that had once been the sole preserve of Hollywood blockbusters. All this means that if a game fails, the company is likely to be in trouble. Hence we lose a lot of originality, since nobody wants to take a risk anymore.
This has led to the unfortunate case of Electronic Arts. The largest and most successful third party video game developer on Earth, EA has not released anything with the slightest hint of originality in over a decade. This is because it knows what sells: sports games,
film licenses, and games in the more popular genres which take all the best bits from other games and stick them all together. Their sports games are released every year with only minor updates; typically, the only difference between this year's FIFA game and last year's is the names of the players. Other than that, they might as well be selling the exact same code. What is especially depressing here is that EA is one of the few development companies with enough money to take a chance and release an original, unproven game with relative impunity.
Humatonic ideals penetrate everywhere. I remember the TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch used to be pretty good. At first, Sabrina was the sort of girl one can actually relate to, ostracized and deemed a freak for being nice. The series where she went to college was very good. She had three roommates - femme fatale Roxie, conspiracy theorist Miles, and superditz Morgan. Morgan's materialistic attitudes were for the most part frowned upon, which is a good thing. However, humatons managed to break through, and this is seen in Roxie's dramatic fall from grace. At the end of the second last series, Morgan has to put on a fashion show for her (gaah) fashion class, while Miles makes a documentary of it for his film class. During the filming, Roxie sticks her head in the camera and gives a big speech about how the sole purpose of clothes is to cover our bodies, and fashion designers should
be ashamed of themselves for making women feel inferior merely for not wearing proper brand name clothes. Tired statements, but true. At the end of the same episode, she does a U-turn and suddenly sees Morgan has a lot of talent for making people look good... etc.. For the final series, she was totally lost. The show totally got rid of her entire personality to make way for a more generic, 'popular' person. There was a bit of a revival when she joined an environmental group and campaigned to stop an ancient tree being cut down. Morgan insisted on helping, but was only interested in enjoying herself. She gave a speech about how that is important in life, which it is, but one should at least have a conscience. She did not, and was in fact spreading the message that a conscience is only good if it is for a fashionable cause. The ultimate message here: humatonism always beats truth.
Sabrina fared no better. She was top of her class in secondary school, and in college started working as an intern reporter for a small newspaper. She contributed a number of exposé articles, then battled with her conscience as people she cared about (not loved,
oddly) suffered for it. However, they tended to work out, and everyone went home happy and better off. In the final series, she got a new job at a pop music magazine, and it was all downhill from there. Virtually all moral messages which had been present were lost in favour of the spreading of humatonic ideals, and the portraying or women as little more than sex objects.
The Matrix corrupts all it can. I cannot tell precisely how it sustains itself. Perhaps it feeds on originality, sucking it out of people's minds. On the other hand, it may thrive on genericism, and finds originality toxic; hence, any creative thought must be stamped out ASAP. I gravitate towards the second idea.
Until we meet again, my friend, this is Hussassan, signing off.
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