TKO Creations

There’s going to be a few changes to the site/blog in the coming weeks… if you’re a regular visitor, you may notice some of them already.  Don’t worry… the missing short stories will come back in time, but there are changes coming to the series (which I think will be good) and the second clump of short stories would be a bit of spoilers for new visitors that won’t have all the information once things change.  They’ll come back, I promise!

Some of you may have known that for Youmacon 2012, a preview of the first full-length MegaToyko:Endgames light novel was prepared for reading. Well, as a matter of course, I don’t like restricting those sort of things to only people who have the time and money to attend one of these conventions.

So, for the benefit of those who couldn’t make it, here it is!

The Battle of Kuith Preview

Granted, it’s just a very short snippet, but I think it’s a good look at the sort of prose you can expect, as well as a taste of the splendid artistic talents of a man named Patrick Coyle, who has been most gracious and helpful not just with the art, but in the editing process of the manuscript as well.

Truly, I am surrounded by men of many talents.

As you all may know… I do a lot of writing projects.

One of them is my own attempt at a science-fiction setting.  The first book in that series, The Second Gate, has been sitting largely finished with no real hopes of being published seriously.  It had a short e-book run that no one cared about, and for good reason.  It was just the barebones manuscript with no bells and whistles… and wasn’t even worth the $.99 it was sold for.  But even then, it’s chances of seeing the light of bookshelves is somewhere between slim and none.

“Why is that, Tommy?” you ask.

Okay, you don’t ask that.  You really don’t care.  But I’m gonna tell you anyway, because this is my blog post, and I’m morose and cranky.

Firstly, getting a major publisher to sign onto it has been an exercise in futility.  All these discussions have gone the same way (pretty much to a fault):

Publisher: “Yes, we have your manuscript.  We like it.  We’d like to publish it.”

Me: “That’s great!”

Publisher: “We’ll contact you shortly with a contract and the sale of copyright forms.”

Me: “Uhh… I have no interest in selling the copyright…” (hears clicking noise) “Hello?”

Basically to sum it up, it’s reached the point where major publishers don’t even want to talk to me.  Their line in the sand is the line they try to take with ALL authors.  Any refusal to transfer all copyrights to the publisher is a non-starter, and ends any negotiations.

“But Tommy… there’s self-publishing options!” You might say, if you cared enough to entertain my bitter rambling.

Well there are problems with self-publishing options too.  First of them is my problem… I can’t sell myself.  Mostly because I have next to no worth in my own abilities.  It’s something I’ve been getting better at, but I still have a hard time with the idea of saying, “Hey!  I wrote this!  You should buy it!”  I can’t fake enthusiasm in myself very well (can’t you tell?).

Secondly is a problem that frankly all of the publishing world shares… the price they charge prospective readers is just too damn high.  If I wanted to produce a short run of my novel (a 500+ page novel) would cost you the reader about $25… for a PAPERBACK.  Even if I split it into two parts (which is possible in the manuscript), I’d still be looking at roughly a $15 cover price in order for me to make anything resembling a decent profit margin. 

And the e-book option?  Yeah, I went down that road.  Amazon and Barnes&Noble gouge the living hell out of those (you make a pittance if you attempt to charge less than $10 for an e-book… which to me kinda defeats the purpose of a medium that supposedly costs a fraction of print media.

Anyway… I’m sorry for the rant.  But that’s my adventures in publishing.  Any of you try to break into that world?  Got any secrets, ideas, or commiserating of your own?  Misery loves company, they say.  Feel free to share your tales.

Having stumbled back from the Motor City at about 10pm yesterday (I’m not always a night person, exceptions will be explained below), it took me a while to kinda get back into something resembling an equilibrium.  But I’m back, as back to “normal” as you’d call it, and ready to get back to work.

Youmacon was actually a blast… probably the first time I’ve actually enjoyed myself at a convention (something that is rare for a person who no doubt suffers from some degree of social anxiety).  A lot of great memories and awesome people… probably stories that will only interest me, but ya know what… this is my blog post.  So there!

From drinking out of something that came from a resin skull (it was claimed to be vodka, and since it was unlabeled and my alcoholic palette is non-existent to put it gently I can only take the bartender’s word for it) with Mookie of Dominic Deegan fame and Jon St. John of Duke Nukem and damn near everything else fame… to kicking back until 2:30 am Saturday morning chatting about the creative process with Linkara, That Guy with Glasses, and Sonny Strait of We Shadows… to crank calling my friends with the help of Mr. St. John Sunday afternoon… it was a whole ton of fun and the whole bunch of people I ran into helped me come to terms with something about myself.

The people and guests I met at Youmacon made it quite clear to me I belonged, that I wasn’t any more of a hack than anyone else, and that I’ve got a really good thing going.  For much of that, I have all of you to thank.  The people who vote on the Top 100 listing (and still do), helping keep this comic relevant, who didn’t run off screaming when they heard “new writer, hi”, or merely stop in every so often, check things out, then leave… you’re what make this happen.

Apparently, I also need your help again.  A big part of exposure is going to conventions like this, meeting more people and spreading the word.  Of course, I’m a fairly destitute writer-type person, so I can’t just jet off whenever I want, but if you have a con in the area, and want to see me there, let the people in charge there know.  I’m certainly in no position to turn down chances to prostitute the site for greater views and exposure, so hey… give a shot.  Help me help you… or help you help me?

Maybe just “help?”  Because that might be what this is all a cry for.

Oh well.  Catch you all later.

Hey, folks… if you happen to be in the Motor City November 1-4, why not stop by Youmacon? I’m gonna be there, tooling at the MegaTokyo booth (panel appearance to be determined), with a preview of my next MegaTokyo:Endgames light novel, and might even be scribbling up some Exiern scripts. Maybe I’ll bump into some of you there!

It’s a pretty whiny complaint from some players in the Guild Wars 2 community… that the game lacks the “endgame”, that challenge after you’ve completed the leveling process, the tiers of gear grind for that ever increasing next level of gear and challenge.

And while it is true that there is no endgame gear grind… for those who think there is no challenge in that endgame, I have three words for you.

Legendary Searing Effigy.

No challenge in Guild Wars 2 endgame?  I cordially invite you to bend over and kiss me where the sun don’t shine.

I can honestly say that was right up there with some of the most difficult and intense MMO boss fights I have ever experienced, every bit the equal of the best any other company has offered to date.  Make no mistake folks, there is challenge to be found, and Arena.net is well up to the task.

“There’s no way we can escape.  There’s too many, and if we try to run, they’ll simply catch us.  So, I’ll hold them off here.  You get everyone else to safety.”

And so the valiant hero stood firm… only to be swallowed by the horde and eviscerated in a blink, not even slowing down the approaching army for even a second.

His companion watched with enraptured horror, and said moments before she herself was torn asunder by the frenzied foe, “Well, that was pointless.”

—

Of course, that’s how such a scene would really play out, but that’s of course not how its done in our entertainment.

The heroic sacrifice is a staple for stories… it’s the go to card when a creator wants to tug the heartstrings of his or her audience.  It’s like a “hit ’em right in the feels free” card.  What better way to keep people talking than something poignant as a loss of a beloved character, giving everything they have for someone else?  It resonates somewhere very deep and personal with nearly everyone, even when it is done badly.

And, by God, is it usually done badly.

Now, I’m not one to criticize the writers at Arena.net all that much.  They’re among the best in the field when it comes to video game writing, and could even probably teach me a thing or to about how to keep a fanbase happy.  But this time, they pretty glaringly drop the ball, so I’m gonna have to take ’em to task for it.

*** SPOILERS INCOMING ***

In the Order of Whispers path, we’re introduced to Tybalt Leftpaw, a self-depreciating, devoted, dedicated Charr who was finally getting his first chance as a field agent for the Order after years of being a glorified file clerk.  For two or three missions with the order, your character is Tybalt’s partner, and you’d have to be a pretty cold person to not be a little charmed by the fella.  Even with all he went through in his life, he’s a genuinely light-hearted Charr, who believes in what he does, and feels like he is serving a greater purpose.

His story comes to a culmination at the fortress on Claw Island, as Zhaitan’s forces muster a large invasion of Lion’s Arch.  As the island is steadily overrun, ol’ Tybalt comes to a conclusion… that someone needs to lead the evacuation of the island, and someone needs to stay to keep them busy.  It’s pretty obvious what he decides.  With a cheerful smile, and a life free of regrets, dear Tybalt Leftpaw turns around, walks through the gates with his rifle on his shoulder, and the doors slam shut behind him as he issues a war cry.

Queue the tears.

Unless you’re like me and go a little cross-eyed… because that, my friends, is a heroic sacrifice done badly.

In case you can’t figure out why… what sense does it make for one single defender to be outside the gates, where he is exposed to the entire advancing horde?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to be on the inside of the gates, and picking them off as they break through?  One method actually does what the sacrificial soldier set out to do… delay the enemy advance.  The other just turns into a smear within seconds and might as well have not been there at all.

The problem here is that when a writer goes for the heroic sacrifice, it tends to be solely for the emotional impact, and logic is either secondary or is abandoned entirely.  It’s become so cliche and so expected that the audience often doesn’t even care anymore.  I, however, prefer a heroic sacrifice that makes sense, and has a distinct and obvious change of the outcome.  That’s where a writer can really show his or her chops; with a heroic sacrifice that people can look back on with more than raw emotion, but with respect for the execution as well.

I’ll give you a couple examples of heroic sacrifices that not only tugged the heartstrings but also fulfilled the logical expectations of the sacrifice as well.

The first comes from the game Assassin’s Creed, and the character of Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad.

But wait… you might say… Altaïr died of old age.  How is that a heroic sacrifice?

Well, first of all, a sacrifice does not necessarily have to mean the character dies.  In fact, death following sacrifice is more often a mercy than anything else.  In Altaïr’s example, he gave up pretty much everything in his life, gave up nearly every happiness, any sense of peace throughout his years, dying alone in a forgotten vault deep within what could become an abandoned keep for centuries, too keep the Apple of Eden out of Templar hands.  He watched two lovers die, one in his arms.  One of his sons was executed in an attempt to get at him.  That is a very cynical, yet very well executed, form of heroic sacrifice… to give up everything for a greater cause, and forcing yourself to live through it all.

Secondly… I invoke one of my favorite books; The Fellowship of the Ring.  Boromir’s suicidal charge in an attempt to give Pippin and Merry a chance to escape actually makes strategic sense.  The Uruk-Hai are scouring the area largely at random on a search for hobbits.  One lunatic running a diversion actually would potentially work.  But what really sells the scene is that, in the end, it actually doesn’t.  And yet, despite the effort being all for naught, even though there is no immediate triumph, the sacrifice itself does not lose any emotional weight.

That honestly is actually a pretty good gauge as to whether or not a sacrifice actually truly delivers the power the creator hopes it will.  The next time you see such a scene, ask yourself, “would I feel the same way about this if the attempt failed?”  If not… if it would feel like a character throwing his or her life away senselessly… then what you have is a badly executed scene.

On a rapidly approaching game that I have absolutely fallen in LOVE with, Guild Wars 2.

http://www.examiner.com/review/guild-wars-2-not-a-revolution-but-a-renovation

I try very hard to be balanced in the positives and the negatives for the article, but here I feel no such compulsion.

I’m totally in love with this game… it is quite possibly the most fun I’ve had in a very, very long time.  The combat is crisp and fluid, the level of detail is astonishing… even the parts I don’t like in the article (honestly) aren’t so much that I don’t like them, but that I like them less than other elements.

If anyone wants to me down once the game goes live, I’ll probably be on the Isle of Janthir server, going by the name Crimson Deadeye.  Looking forward to seeing some of you there!

As I was trolling the Bioware Social Network today (yeah, I kinda troll the whiners on that forum, guilty as charged), I remembered an element to the “RPG niche” that I shouldn’t have forgotten, because it is actually a major bone of contention for “RPG purists” as they feel increasingly turned away from major developers and publishers.

The push for multiplayer elements in games.

And it’s true.  Multiplayer is the next big thing in gaming, damn near everybody does it now in some form.  Even franchises that had traditionally been single player campaigns are implementing multiplayer features.

Hell, if you remember yesterday, I pointed out that Square/Enix has spawned two outright multiplayer only games out of their Final Fantasy franchise.  Games like Assassin’s Creed and Mass Effect have introduced multiplayer options. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the Witcher 3 introducing at least a Co-op mode.

It makes sense.  People generally like multiplayer games.  Humans are in general social creatures.  We like playing games with others.  We like having other people to experience things with.  It’s why we prefer to travel in groups, and the solo traveler is sometimes regarded suspiciously.

Even roleplayers (this is not the same group as “RPG purists”… which will be in that promised rant at a later time), understand this.  They also like playing games with others.  You don’t see too many D&D modules with the DM by himself behind the screen, right?  That would be… kinda silly, and completely defeating the point of the game.

That game developers and publishers are leaning towards including multiplayer into their games should not be a surprise.  People want it.

The “RPG purist” however, seems to be a fairly anti-social critter.  Multiplayer elements to their games are a threat to them, rather than something to embrace.  They don’t like the idea of such elements theoretically taking time and money and other resources from their isolated and solitary game experience, and are quick to blame such multiplayer elements if a game does not meet the standard they set for it.

It’s the major reason they feel neglected, and why they are also very bothered by it… because they can see it’s not going away any time soon.

One thing I have noticed over the last handful of months, is a sense of increasing anger and rage and hatred from “RPG” fans towards “casual” gamers, especially as more and more game developers and publishers are turning their efforts to catering to those “casuals” and less towards the “hardcore RPG” group that saw a lot of love at the turn of the century.  RPG purists feel that they are being ignored and dismissed by major “AAA” game companies as a rapidly vanishing niche.

Well… there is a reason for that.  Because they are.

What “RPG purists” (who are really purists in the same sense that video game RPGs are really RPGs… but that’s a rant for later) are looking for in games are increasingly not what the majority of gamers want to see; while said “purists” are bemoaning the fall of story and narrative in the video games that they fought so hard to see (replaced by “mindless shooters” like Call of Duty) and are nigh comically missing the point.

Yes, it does seem that companies are abandoning the RPG, and it’s not hard to see that on the surface.  In 1997, Squaresoft released Final Fantasy VII, and demonstrated to the general populous that yes, games CAN be driven by a narrative and not solely gameplay, and that yes, gamers can and even should expect more from a game’s story than “our princess is in another castle.”

And before some Final Fantasy VI fanatic completely loses their mind, I am not saying that FF7’s story was the best.  Not even close.  It was the one that finally pushed RPG’s into the collective conscious and set the expectations for narratives in video games.

Look at Square/Enix now.  It’s like they can’t run away from their roots fast enough.  Deus Ex?  That’s not the Final Fantasy I grew up with.  Hell, the Final Fantasy series is running like hell from the traditional RPG.  In their last four numbered titles (I refuse to acknowledge the existance of X-2. Like the last two Matrix movies, Final Fantasy X-2 never happened, got it?)… two of them (XI and XIV) have been MMOs and the third (XIII) played more like an interactive movie rather than a game.

Or how about Bioware?  They were supposed to be Squaresoft of this generation.  Baldur’s Gate… Neverwinter Nights… Mass Effect… Dragon Age… hell, they even made an entertaining Star Wars: Extended Universe game!  If that’s not the touch of a minor god, what is?

Now look at them.  Mass Effect couldn’t have slipped out of their RPG clothes faster if it had been named Sos and Victoria.  Mass Effect 3 plays like a shooter with RPG elements rather than the other way around.

Even the current golden child of “RPG purists”, CDProjekt Red, are facing grumbling from some fans that they’re about the follow the same route after the Witcher 2 turned towards a more action oriented combat system than the strategic system it used in the first installment.

How did this happen?  How could gaming be about to take such a tragic step back?  How could RPG purists have fought so hard to see gaming become a legitimate storytelling medium only to see it on the verge of falling back into the Stone Age of jumping over barrels to save your girlfriend from an angry gorilla?  How could we have possibly lost after coming so far?

The answer is that storytelling in games hasn’t lost.  In fact, it won.  It won long ago, to the point where game companies don’t even try to fight it anymore.

About the only way you can get away with not having narrative progress in your games is to sell it in the Apple App Store or host it on Facebook.  Anywhere else, a game simply must have a story to tell.  Even the “mindless” Call of Duty series has a single player story campaign.  They’re never very long… they often aren’t even all that good… but every single game in the series has one.  It’s certainly not because they want to put it there.  If Activision felt they could drop the story campaign and focus entirely on the multi-player battlefields, they would retroactively go back and delete in the previous patch.  But they don’t.  Why?

Because (and this may shock the RPG purists), they feel that a Call of Duty game without some sort of story that ties into their multiplayer campaign, gamers would not be the slightest bit interested… and they are probably right.  If for no other reason than to set the stage, CoD must have some narrative behind it.

Hell, we have reached a point where Nintendo feels compelled to give the vast majority of Mario games (outside of the ones that are programmed specifically for the nostalgia value) some sort of story line.  Let me reiterate: a game franchise based on a fat, Italian stereotype plumber getting pulled down a fucking drain pipe, feels they have to give those games some attempt at a logical narrative, or the game won’t sell.

Ladies and gentlemen, the war for stories in video games has been over for years, and game companies surrendered unconditionally about a decade ago.  In that sense, the RPG purist won the battle so resoundingly and with such overwhelming force that they never even realized the fight ended.  They’re still marching, looking for the enemy, not realizing they ground the enemy to dust just from marching forward.

Well, if that’s the case… then why are so many developers running away from what RPGs stand for?

It’s actually pretty simple.  Now that damn near every game on the market has some sort of narrative driving it, the battlefield has turned to gameplay, and that is frankly where computer RPGs have traditionally stunk to high heaven (sorry, FF6 fans, but really… even that wonderfully told story had a gameplay system that was painful to suffer through at times.  I really am sorry, but it’s true).

Believe it or not, most gamers really don’t like having to load up a spreadsheet to itemize seventeen pages of inventory, cluttered with inferior garbage they keep finding on the ground, scenario specific items that are useful for maybe one battle (and then never again), three stacks of 99 potions that stopped being effective the moment they hit level 20, but can never quite seem to get rid of because every monster in the game drops at least one of them, a page devoted entirely to “key” items that you can’t actually “use” (the game doing so for you at “key” points in the story), etc… etc…

Even inventory clerks don’t like bringing their work home.  Not too many people like playing Microsoft: Excel, especially for $60 when it comes pre-packaged on most PCs nowadays.

Side quests, mini-games, and optional dungeons are another point of contention.  For most gamers, it’s seen as a cheap attempt to make a game feel longer than it really is at best, and aggravatingly narrative breaking at worst.  “Yeah, Cloud, we have to get the Black Materia as quickly as possible before Sephiroth finds it and destroys the world!  What’s that?  You wanna go to the casino and fight arena battles for ten hours to get a new Limit Break?  Yeah, that sounds like a perfectly efficient use of our time!”

Or what about random item generation?  How the hell does anyone think that is a good idea anymore?  Certainly not gamers as a whole.  “Okay, I brought Tali because I know I need a high decryption to even have a chance to break into this locker… Sweet!  Nice job, my little quarian hacker goddess you!  What did we find… a Hydra II?  Really?  That was worth putting in that locker?  What retarded Blue Suns mercenary thought that was valuable?”

Hell, even World of Warcraft is seeing the writing on the wall, and steering players towards set vendor rewards rather than RNG loot tables.

Elements like these (and there are others, like how droll and tedious most RPG combat systems tend to be) are why the RPG niche is shrinking… they are things that RPGs have done for so long that “purists” feel they’re supposed to be done that way, or the game isn’t a “true” RPG.

Unlike story in video games, the general populous is not the least bit interested in RPG gameplay elements, because by and large, those elements are terrible.  They were things that most gamers put up with because they felt the story was more important than clunky mechanics.  Now that they don’t have to… they don’t want to.