Repost from my main, new, super shiney blog Papapishu.blogspot.com

A few weeks back, the following video by made the rounds on Digg:


Cute huh? Apparently it's a short film called Bendito Machine and was created by an artist named Jossie Malis (he has a site for it too!) but wait...this reminds me of something. What ever couuuuld it beeee....



Yep. It's everyone's favorite games-as-art portable RTS "Patapon" for the PSP on Sony. Now, here's the rub; Bendito Machine came out in 2006 as far as I can tell (it at least won awards for it). Patapon came out 2007, just a year later.

Is it possible that everyone's favorite artsy tactical rhythm strategy game is a work of plagiarism?

I don't know about you, but what bugs me about it isn't simply that the animation style is similar and that certain key elements (the eyes that the god machine crap out, the color scheme, the outlines) are similar, what really gets me is that it's also thematically similar. In both cases we have a tribe of small people combating huge monsters, in both cases there is a focus on tribal dance or reverence doing something and in both we get the sensation that the little tribal people are going to be stomped into so many tiny pieces (which, consequentially, happens).

What's your take? Is Patapon ripping off this guy? Did he have a hand in making this game? If the former, I'm kinda miffed. If the latter, I'm surprised we haven't heard about it. Or maybe, oddly enough, it's just one big coincidence.

Update: a LINK to the artist responsible for Patapon's art thanks to good friend SuperJenn. She comments that he doesn't seem the type. I'm willing to concede that it's coincidental.

Over the course of the last few weeks, a lot of bloggers have been absolutely gushing about Bioshock, and as much as it pains me to jump on that wagon, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to.

Bioshock is a game blogger's wet dream; Art deco, deep and ammo for the dreaded and somewhat tiresome "games-as-art" debate. But with a game so richly dunked and deep fried in symbolism, you got to be careful that you aren't readin' too much into it. Otherwise you start to write posts like "The usage of the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical in Shadow of the Colossus" or "The Post-Rock zeitgeist as it applies to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty" and disappear quickly up your own asshole.

Which is why I tread this ground very cautiously when I ask this question: Is Bioshock trying to say something concrete about Stem Cell research?



Let's take a look at the game's primary morality mechanic that makes the whole crux of the game. You can either "Harvest" the children that wander around the world or "Rescue" them. Killing them makes you genetically stronger and more powerful, while saving them lets them keep on living and gives 'em a chance at life.

Sound familiar?

What complicates the issue further is that the game itself tells you that ADAM is actually a type of unstable stem cell produced by a breed of Sea Slug, "the Gatherer", that exists within the little sisters themselves. The result of ADAM? Brothers killing brothers, babies stragled in their cribs and a bunch of freaky deeky, ugly-as-the-devil's-asshole splicers in cute little bunny masks swinging pipes and on the whole being a bunch of dicks to everyone.



Could Irrational be making a concrete statement that Stem Cell research is evil and that the extracting of stem cells is tantamount to killing children, or is it merely coincidence? Or could it be that the theme is merely window dressing that exists somewhere in-between; a specter of the modern age meant only to cause fear, doubt, and set the mood.

I could go on. I could make connections that aren't there ("Clearly, the Big Daddies are representative of the Religious Right and the game is an attack on Richard Dawkins and amoral, godless, libertarian Atheists!") but the point has been made and the question has been asked.

What do you think?

I've shouted this from the mountaintops, yet nobody seemed to listen.

I tried my damnedest to drive this fucking point home, yet it fell on deaf ears.

I try to beat this drum whenever the stupid, pointless, masturbatory "Games as Art debate" comes up, but everyone seemed too busy with the topic to get it.

Roger Ebert loved a videogame. No, it wasn't Doom or Mario; the idea that Ebert is just some senile old that doesn't understand us and yells angrily at those "Electronic Games" is just not accurate. He's a smarter dude than that, despite the fact that we can't see eye to eye.

And it wasn't just some pointless game; it was a game so obscure and artsy fartsy that it would make the most diehard Shadow of the Colossus fan get a twelve foot erection and die instantly.

The year was 1994. The magazine was Wired. The game was "The Cosmology of Kyoto".



Cosmology of Kyoto
By Roger Ebert

"The Cosmology of Kyoto CD-ROM comes with a bare minimum of instructions, informing me in a few words how to move within the images. No goal is established and no points are scored; the game never informs me what the object is, although it discreetly tracks the levels of karma and cash I have attained and keeps an inventory of my possessions. The disc comes packaged with a large fold-out map showing the streets and principal buildings of Kyoto - circa 900, when, as Heiankyo, it was the capital of Japan. I begin to wander the streets.

The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side with the divine.

In this medieval Kyoto, people exist alongside ghosts, demons, and goblins. On my travels I have met - and interacted with - a dog eating entrails, long-winded old farts, tradespeople (who offered me medicines, dried fish, cloth, rice cakes, amulets, and a chance to lose money on a cock fight), a monk leading a prayer meeting, kids playing ball in the streets (one is beheaded by a passerby), a friendly guide dog, a maiden with an obscenely phallic tongue, and a gambler who taught me a dice game.

The graphics are hauntingly effective, using a wide-screen landscape format. The individual characters are drawn with vivid facial characteristics, a cross between the cartoons of medieval Japanese art and the exaggerations of modern Japanimation. The speaking voices are filled with personality, often taunting, teasing, or sexy. There is the sense, illusory but seductive, that one could wander this world indefinitely.

This is a wonderful game."

And he's right. It IS a wonderful game. But it makes you wonder what went wrong, what happened to make him so jaded. Where did he get disappointed? When did he change his mind? When one contemplates this, a narrative not unlike the story of Ebenezer Scrooge begins to take shape: imagine a once robust and young Ebert playing Pac Man in the zest of life slowly aging, becoming bitter and then finally yelling to the world his own bah humbug: "Games aren't art"

Well, it doesn't matter. What matters is that people know this history, that people are aware that this rash, embittered man loved a game once, enough to call it rich, overwhelming and wonderful. Remember, my friends, so that next time this man tries to take us and the games we love down a peg we can just smile, utter three words and become untouchable.

You don't try to argue with the devil, boys and girls. You beat him at his own game.

It's the rule of the jungle. I'm not sure if it was Buckminster Fuller that said it first or that hot robot chick from Ghost in the Shell, but this much is true; When it comes to evolution, overspecialization leads to extinction.

Wait! Wait...Don't click back or refresh the main page yet! This IS gaming related. Just sit back and indulge me a second.

Specialization in evolution is a means of survival, just take Darwin's crazy ass birds or the wild and untamed Crocostimpy. But when a species becomes specialized to fill a niche to the point where they cannot adapt, small changes within that niche can kill the species off.

Now, lets take a look at the following games; Megaman, Metal Gear Solid, Legacy of Kain, Psi-Ops. What do they have in common? It's a certain trope, a certain meme that's the heart of the post: It's the idea that the maverick, the Jack-of-All-Trades will ALWAYS beat the specialist. Overspecialization leads to extinction, and whether it's Naked Snake in a sniper battle with The End, Megaman Offing Gutsman with a pair of scissors to the dome or Raziel plunging his evil, glowing, demon sword into his former brothers, the message is the same: Adapt or die.




Just look at the enemies in those games. In each instance, they become emblematic of a certain trait or quality that is admirable. Gutsman is strong. The End is good at distance. That crazy psychic vampire is good at...well...crazy psychic vampire shit. They have adapted to fill their niche (or, in this case, stage), but they do so at the cost of adaptability. If an outside element is introduced that can adapt to them or worse, exploit their specialization, then their biological strengths get turned into weaknesses and they face death.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The funny thing about this whole strange metaphor is that it doesn’t stop with the hero; evolution is nothing without competition. In all of those instances, what boss is the hardest, tougher-than-a-fistful-of-nails bastard on the block? Which one runs the evil three-ring circus in town? Which boss is always going to give you a run for your money? The Jack of All Trades, your match that's who; Megaman has Protoman, Raziel has Kain, Snake has Liquid. The only thing that can defeat a maverick is another maverick.

But it can get deeper if you want it to. There is the Megaman trope: the idea that the hero adapts as he goes along, that he uses the tools of his fallen foes to better adapt to the situation at hand.

It’s funny, as I was thinking about this idea I was listening to a wonderful speech by the late Douglas Adams. He can put it better than I can.

“Take a very simple example; maybe a bunch of animals suddenly finds itself in a place where the weather is rather colder. We know that in a few generations those genes which favour a thicker coat will have come to the fore and we'll come and we'll find that the animals have now got thicker coats. Early man, who's a tool maker, doesn't have to do this: he can inhabit an extraordinarily wide range of habitats on earth, from tundra to the Gobi Desert - he even manages to live in New York for heaven's sake - and the reason is that when he arrives in a new environment he doesn't have to wait for several generations; if he arrives in a colder environment and sees an animal that has those genes which favour a thicker coat, he says “I'll have it off him”.

Tools have enabled us to think intentionally, to make things and to do things to create a world that fits us better.”

In that sense, perhaps the main character is allegorically early man trying to survive against the harsh and unyielding climate. Perhaps what makes us “heroes” is not our drive towards being just but our willingness to act intentionally, our humanity, our spark of consciousness.

So there you have it. If you are like me and like to make mountains out of molehills, than this particular kind of design in games can be seen in a very strange way as a symbol for the biological principals that underpin survival of the fittest or as an allegory for the struggle of early man to survive in the harsh world. I doubt that Inafune had that in mind when he made Megaman.

Kojima on the other hand…