Borderlands and Media Intimacy

Game trailer for mature audiences

I have a friend who is an absolute Borderlands nut. He has internalized all of the lore, all of the characters and settings, and I'm pretty sure he knows every line of dialogue in the second installment. So naturally, during the run of the first Borderlands, he one day gifts me the game over Steam with demands that we play together. It's a big-name game and it has my good friend so riled up to play it, so I gave it a shot.

For the uninitiated, the Borderlands series is of the first-person shooter genre. You assume the role of an adventurer exploring the world of Pandora. The goal of the first game is to find a mythical stash simply called "The Vault," so adventurers of your kind are known as "vault hunters." You have four vault hunters to choose from, each with distinct weapon affinities and abilities that make their play styles very unique. It's a completely different game to start a new file as another vault hunter. As for the world of Pandora itself... well, the only way I can put it is "violently quirky." Imagine wild west with alien creatures, some future technology, and some of the most endearingly shameless dark humor I've seen in a game. Add in roleplaying elements and an impossible amount of weapon varieties, and you have a game formula that can last the avid gamer a very long time.

So I play Borderlands in a group of three. I had fun, but I really wasn't feeling the game. I was the only person playing for the first time, so the other two just tore through knowing exactly where to go and what to do. I meandered behind them by comparison and maybe got a few shots off. I was basically dragged through the game without any chance to catch my breath and try to get a feel for the game. I should have said something, but I was expecting to pick it up along the way. Coming off from these play sessions, I found Borderlands to be merely a solid shooter with a nice animated design and a sense of humor. For some reason, having this lukewarm response to the game didn't sit well with me, so I played some more. My friends were busy at the time, so I started a new character solo.

The original four vault hunters - Roland, Brick, Lilith, and my man Mordecai.

My friends, the difference was night and day. Playing the game at my own pace allowed for me to truly have a personal playing experience. I could slow down and take in the scenery without anybody having to wait on me. I could actually explore around the landscape and go off the beaten path to see what was over there away from the objective. Without my friends acting as a combined shield and battering ram, all the enemies shot at me and I had to fend for myself. I got to use different weapon types and see which ones suited my playing style and my skills. Heck, I even became aware of an entire aspect of the game.

You see, weapons in the original Borderlands came plain or in one of four "elements." Your weapons could simply cause damage, or also light an enemy on fire, destroy shields faster, destroy armored enemies quickly, or simply have their bullets explode. In a group, I was completely unaware of this because everything died so fast. But alone, I was forced to experiment with elemental weapons. Through my own trial and error, I saw which situations called for which types of weapons and I was able to build my own assembly of weapons that I switched through and used.

Furthermore, I got to learn about my character. I simply picked him because I liked his design, but I came to realize he was perfect for my play style. I tend to favor the handgun weapon types in shooters, and it turns out my character, Mordecai, had skills and abilities dedicated solely to this one weapon type. By building Mordecai into his "Gunslinger" abilities, I became my own wrecking ball of quick reflexes and precise shots. I was finally having the immense fun that was expected of me when playing this game. Nothing against my friends and their most well-meaning approach, but I only could have reached this level of intimate familiarity with the game playing it by myself.

A typical weapon in Borderlands. These things are as plentiful as rain and their attributes are almost always completely randomly generated. You will have lots and lots of guns pass through your hands.

And that brings me to the topic of this article, a concept that I have preliminarily dubbed "media intimacy." I would have called this "game intimacy," but I have realized over time that this concept applies to more than just games. In fact, oral tradition may have the honor of being the first media to engage people in media intimacy. The idiom "curling up with a good book" is a great example of media intimacy as well.

So, what is media intimacy exactly? As I define it, media intimacy is the connection between a person as an individual and any sort of media. If you've ever "gotten into" a movie, TV show, book, or even a live performance, you've experienced media intimacy. You're more than just a consumer. You feel like you're part of whatever it is that you're watching, listening to, or playing. A "fan" of something is a person who is intimate with the media that they are a fan of. Even if all of someone's experiences with the media have only been as with a group, it takes just one individual thought or interpretation to spark an interest. And when this person engages in just thinking about the media on their own terms with nobody else to influence it, media intimacy begins.

Thus, when I played Borderlands by myself and engaged with it on my own terms, I became intimate with the game. The gameplay was more significant to me. The characters were more significant to me. The story, the setting, the individual events and lines of dialogue, all significant. I could more appreciate the game as a sum of its parts and not just as another example of its genre.

The most recent game that showed me a good time via media intimacy is Bravely Default. Such a deceptively complex game, but the most rewarding when you put in what little effort is needed to learn its ropes.

When I came back to playing Borderlands in multiplayer with my friends as my custom-built Mordecai, I was far more proactive. I got right into the fray and knew what weapon to use against which targets. I knew what events were happening, so it didn't bother me when we glazed over the cinematic sequences. I knew what went into a good weapon, so I didn't just pick up and drop anything just because it had an impressive design. We finally were all playing the same game. I was truly a vault hunter and I couldn't be happier.

And by all means, if we can be intimate with our media, why can't we be intimate in other areas of our life? How about business intimacy, or professional intimacy? Art intimacy or, hear me out, social intimacy? The common thread here is you engaging with your chosen topic on your own terms. You need to want it for reasons all your own. That's not to say you can't be influenced by the ideas of others, but the way you process those ideas need to be yours and yours alone. Thinking or acting some way just because someone else said so isn't intimacy. Or at least that's how I see it. After all, if you're taking any of my words to heart, you're engaging in media intimacy right now by taking in my words and processing that information.

Case in point, I am currently taking classes to learn programming. And as it stands, I'm hard-pressed to really get into programming when I just think about it in terms of assignments, grades, and lectures. But when I'm by myself and think of programming languages as fun tools with which to build fun programs, I find it much easier to learn and love programming.

Now I'd like to hear from you. Now that you have some idea of what I'm talking about, what are your experiences with media intimacy? What are you a fan of? Has a game, book, movie, TV show, etc. really made an impact on you? I want to hear about it.

Dark Cloud 2 and Zealotry

Ah, Dark Cloud. This series has been on the sidelines of gaming culture since the days of the PlayStation 2. Far too long in my opinion! My passion for the series was recently reignited when I came into contact with a fellow video maker and I saw he has Dark Cloud videos on his channel. All of this remembering Dark Cloud reminded me of a story I want to share with you all!

For the uninitiated, Dark Cloud is a series of action/adventure games where the player takes control of a number of characters on a quest to save the world. Part of saving the world requires the player's party to venture into multi-floored dungeons as part of the storyline. The second game in the series differed from the first by featuring only two playable characters. But it made the most of those characters! Max, an inventor, is able to jump in a giant robot to completely whoop on enemies. Monica, a magic-using princess, is able to transform into monsters and use their abilities. And there is where my story begins.

At one point in the game, the player needs an item called the "Sundrop" in order to progress. The only way to get a Sundrop? Transform into the "Himarra" monster and talk to a Himarra. That's right, while your character is transformed into a monster, she won't be attacked by monsters of a similar type. You can even talk to your fellow monster as if they were a friendly non-player character. When you obtain the Sundrop, you even hear the Himarra's voice! I don't know about you all, but I got attached to the Himarra I talked to. Did I mention that you can just pick any Himarra wandering around the dungeon? That's right, the game doesn't just give you a monster to talk to. You actually have to find one yourself. That made the mission all the more personal to me.

This is a Himarra. Isn't it adorable?

That's why I was shocked at what happened next. After obtaining the Sundrop, I naturally thought "No reason to stay as a monster anymore," and transformed back into Monica. Imagine my surprise when the Himarra I was talking to moments before starts attacking me! "What's going on?" I thought. I pleaded to the screen, "Why are you doing this? It's me! We were talking a minute ago! You helped me!" but the Himarra would not - or could not - listen.

Eventually, I had to act. Putting on my best action movie drama face, I muttered, "Don't make me do this." But I had to. I forced Monica to cut down this monster that she had been fraternizing with moments before. Monica herself didn't even flinch to destroy the monster. She acted with the same neutral conviction that the monster had. I alone harbored this connection that didn't even involve me.

Okay, perhaps I'm embellishing the drama of this anecdote. A little. Especially considering I know why things turned out the way they did. In reality, the monster was nothing more than a construct of a game. It was a set of pixels on the screen programmed to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances. In this case, the monster was programmed to be hostile to the player unless the player assumes the form of a similar creature. In no capacity is the monster able to observe, learn, think, and defy its original programming. There's just no need for that in the game.

And yet, I still reacted this way. Who am I to be feeling this way, anyway? If this mission didn't even exist in the game, I wouldn't have second-guessed chopping down that Himarra in the first place. And that certainly didn't change anything afterward. What is it about connecting with that one video game enemy that's getting me to think so hard? I dove into the very core of the human condition to find an answer and I have come up with something.

At 14:45 you see the player get a Sundrop from a Himarra

You see, I humored the idea of the Himarra as a free-thinking being and went from there. The question then became why the Himarra would choose to attack me as soon as I presented myself as a non-Himarra creature. And, well, perhaps I'm not giving Dark Cloud 2 enough credit. What I'm chalking up to game mechanics may, in fact, be something more complex and tragic.

Where I'm more open to friendship, the Himarra may be more discriminating. After all, it lives in the wild where survival instincts take hold. The Himarra knows it can trust its own kind and probably has experience that tells it that there is no such guarantee with other types of creatures. Thus it stands to reason that when I transformed back into a human, the Himarra had a logical negative reaction. It could have thought that I was a spy amongst its ranks, or, even more heart breaking, it could have felt a sense of betrayal at seeing this new friend lie about who they are. Heck, this Himarra probably knows that humans are the most dangerous, destroying monsters left and right with ease. With this logic, the choice to attack as a pre-emptive defense is understandably obvious.

I got a little scared thinking this way. In a matter of seconds I took a course of action that was based on false assumptions, but phrased it in such a way that anyone would agree it was the right thing to do given the circumstances. I'm even more scared now because I am all too familiar with that way of thinking.

Attack-on-sight mentality of very common in our world, both in instinct-driven creatures and deep-thinking individuals. You do have the people who use pride in their identities to strengthen their roots and improve their character, but history shows conflict is in the blood of any culture and "us versus them" has been a time-tested mantra for unifying people, albeit of specific ideologies, for better and worse.

I remember when the first Dark Cloud was called a "Zelda-Killer." At least it gave us this great art!

Showing hostility as a roundabout way of showing support makes sense from a passion standpoint, but is flawed and stunts a person's growth as a cultured and free-thinking individual. For instance, I remember when Harry Potter was in full swing and I saw a news report on the series' exploding popularity. One interviewed mother said that she didn't care about Harry Potter nor will she bother reading it. The reason? Her family were already fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events and she resented Harry Potter for taking the thunder of her preferred series. Whether you prefer either book series, imagine that. A person willing to turn away from something new just because it was more popular than what she already knew.

There is a word for this sort of uncompromising conviction: Zealotry. Don't get me wrong, one can be a zealot for good causes and work their zealotry for the betterment of the world. But in general, I feel there's something uncanny about being too sure of yourself. This comes from personal  experience. Throughout my life I've found groups I can identify with and do well to fit in until I was expected to join in on badmouthing other groups or ways of thinking.

For instance, I talk to people all the time about watching what I eat. I do believe that a good life includes indulgence, and at the same time I'm still open to new things and trying the "less is more" approach to eating right. A few people I talk to, however, are deeply entrenched in one or the other and are very passionate about playing down the other half. I'll tell a calorie-cutting friend that I really enjoyed a meal out with a group last night and be told in return that I should stop letting my company coerce me into unhealthy eating habits. On the other side, I'll try getting water with a meal instead of soda to see how much I really miss it. Seeing this, my more wining-and-dining friends will tell me I'm acting like one of "them." I assume "them" refers to the insufferable sort of fitness enthusiasts who often go on record condemning common eating habits. Even if my friends don't mean to tear down the other side, their word choice still reflects that sort of mindset.

Without staying specific to one group, you can still see where I'm coming from. People can love what they love, but when they try to love through hate, that's going a bit far for me. If it gets to the point where someone could say "You're one of THEM," for any reason, then we're no better than the Himarra who's only following his programming.

I planned on putting in video game zealotry, but my search turned up nice consoles so I'm going with that instead. Found here. I really want to credit the source.

We're going leave this off on a community note. Let's share our own zealotries and see how or identities shape us. As for me, anyone can tell I'm zealous about video games and further the study of video games as a serious cultural medium. I may not agree when it comes to all criticism of video games, but only because I prefer to talk things out. Behind every piece of criticism is a story and a topic to explore further. If we just take the criticism at face value, that's no good. How about you? What are you zealous about? Games, movies, sports, comics, food, exercise, or even your work?

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to reading about how diverse this audience is!

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Tales of the Abyss and Mobile Storytelling

For the last two months of 2012, my Nintendo 3DS was more than just a portable gaming console. It was an interactive movie on the run. It was like a book with gamification tossed into the mix. At any time, I could open my system up and immediately be back in the world of Auldrant; either to train my characters or to advance the storyline happening within.

This may sound melodramatic, but it is accurate to how I felt about the game. So what did I do special that gave me such an in-depth experience? Nothing, really. I just carried my 3DS around and played the game whenever I was otherwise indisposed. I suppose it was just the fact that the game being so close to me physically allowed me to feel close to the game in a figurative way.

What I experienced with Tales of the Abyss is called "immersion." Immersion is somewhat of a buzzword in the gaming community that may have lost a little meaning because of how often it's tossed around. Immersion is the phenomenon of being so focused on something that you lose awareness of the world around you. I was immersed in Tales of the Abyss, and not necessarily only when I was playing the game. It sort of stuck to me as I went about my day. I would be thinking about the game's storyline or planning ahead which abilities I wanted my characters to learn next. If ever I had a moment, I could just dive right in and either push towards the next plot point or change my team around.

You see, Tales of the Abyss is a Japanese Role Playing Game. JRPGs tend to pack a lot of story content. Since I had that story content literally in my pocket, my book analogy is appropriate. Let's say that I played Tales of the Abyss on a home console. I would be setting aside time to play it and probably in long sessions. Because I played it mobile, I only played small bits of it at a time in situations where I didn't necessarily set out to play it. Rather than think of my ToA sessions as dedicated "game time," ToA was instead interwoven into my day. My routine. My life, even.

It doesn't hurt that the game itself is really good. The storyline takes place in a typical medieval fantasy setting, the world of Auldrant. The people follow a religious organization called the Order of Lorelei and live their lives according to a scripture called the Score. You follow the main character, bratty aristocrat Luke Fon Fabre, as he is wrenched from his life of luxury and sent on a fantastic quest to save the world. The game world is just full of interesting locations, the plot twists and turns to avoid being predictable, and the characters evolve in rewarding ways.

This crew will become family. Mark my words.

This stellar presentation is backed with very engaging gameplay. Most of the game takes place in 3D environments that you can run around and explore, but fighting takes place on specialized 3D planes. Combat in ToA is a mix between old-school RPG and fighting games. If you know what that means, you should be at least a little curious. If you don't, just rest assured that combat is fast, has a learning curve, and can be very rewarding when you do well. Your characters gain stats, learn new abilities, and develop the more you play.

Between the storyline and the game content itself, I could be sure that whenever I came back to the game, what I played would be rewarding. By the time I was watching the final scene of the game, I had built up enough investment in the game that I could fully appreciate the events of the game's climax. Once the credits were done and I could fully turn the game off, I just had a moment where I sat back and realized to myself, "It's actually over." I came to the realization that I didn't have Tales of the Abyss to come to for more adventure and training. I wasn't addicted, that game had just been such a consistent part of my days that not having it would take some getting used to.

This, my friends, is why I know that complex mobile games are here to stay. My creativity and zeal for life were kept at steady levels because of the fun and intrigue this game injected into my days. Games can be therapeutic in different ways for different people. The consistent quality of Tales of the Abyss is how it was therapeutic for me. Just having fun and satisfying gaming experiences peppered through my day kept me feeling fresh and chipper.

With an introduction movie this good, you know you're in for a good time.

And now, I want you to think about games which have had these effects on you. A game which you got completely immersed in. A game which helps you relax. A game which gets you fired up for the rest of your day. A game that didn't feel like "a game" when you played it. Remember that zen you feel when you're playing the game. Perhaps you'd prefer to call it "being in the zone." Either way, that feeling is great. If we could bottle that feeling and call upon it whenever we wanted, we would all be much happier with our lives and much more emotionally prepared for whatever may come.

If something comes to mind, feel free to share it in the comments below. Perhaps you'd like to ping me on Twitter, PM on tumblr, or mention on Facebook. I'm available on all social media and will be all too happy to feature your idea. I want to start discussions, not just have them with myself.

I also think I'll be settling into a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule with this blog. Perhaps I'll bring in other articles from around the web to feature on my off-days. Either way, I'm on a roll so you can expect another post by the end of the week. Until then, game out.