My son is about to turn 13… become a teenager as it were.
His mother and I have been pretty careful about what he gets to watch on TV, see in the cinema, listen to on ipods, and play for video games. I think it is important, regardless of circumstances, for parents to stay on the same page and present a united front in family policies, and that includes what the kids take in for entertainment.
Up to now it has been pretty simple to clearly divide what is inappropriate content-wise from what is okay. Sex and violence, dubious morality, drug use, torture, and all that… pretty easy to say ‘no’ when your kid is grade-school age. But like the Harry Potter films’ and their gradual creep up in dark tone and violence, so one’s children gradually expand their sphere for what is appropriate for them to see. It is every parent’s judgment call just how much to let in the sphere.
The film rating PG-13 is pretty terrible. I mean the usefulness of it. I find myself paying a lot more attention to those little black and white words underneath the rating to get a better idea of content. PG-13 is so far-ranging that I find myself expending a shitload of effort trying to find out just where on the scale this or that particular film is falling. A film with this rating can be a family film with the word ‘damn’ in it or a few too many scat jokes. Or it could have the levels of violence, including the occasional decapitation, of an R-rated movie but without mature levels of cussing. More than once I’ve had to go to the movies a day or two ahead of my kids just to be able to make this call.
I’m no prude and I’m not easily shocked—certainly not by entertainment content. In fact my commitment to pushing my own boundaries in film viewing may make me the best filter on content that I know of. I’ve been determined to observe my children, their behavior and their reactions, and introduce various levels of onscreen mayhem if and when I think they can handle it. If I’ve gotten a bad reaction, then I dial it back. Unless I’m feeling mean on Halloween or something. Because my daughter is almost two years younger than my son, she has sort of set the bar for what I can allow, since keeping two separate standards going for the two is not really manageable. So she probably sees things a little too early (but she’s mature), and he sees things a little late (he isn’t mature) so it has been made to work out.
TV is simple. I can use the cable box to simply lock all programs above a certain rating, and look at individual programs on a case-by-case basis as they come up. With music, we’ve sort of gone with a looser policy altogether. Given the lack of visual component, the content seems less impacting. So I’m not going all ‘parental advisory’ on the kids about what they listen to. I just keep an eye on it, and if I see playlists that start to lean towards gangster rap or graphic deathgrind, I’ll bring the hammer of censorship down. Lady Gaga and Rhianna have me wincing a bit at times, but I’m letting it go for now.
Games are more complicated. In terms of keeping a different game standard for my younger kid… there’s no issue because she isn’t interested in the games that push that envelope. The worst I have to worry about here is a bit of cussing or some of the sexual content in her DDR games, the same as her music basically. But with my son there’s a whole different need for monitoring in place.
It has only been about two years since I loosened up the reins on violence in first person shooters and let him play Halo. The lack of violence to humans (little conventional ‘gore’) and the emphasis on the game world’s aesthetics and the music, made it more palatable. And this turned out to be a positive decision. He became enamored with the whos and the whats of the Halo universe, including getting toys and books… and not just focused on painting the walls in neon-bright Covenant blood.
BUT. Like his friends, the baseline favorite game genres are first and third-person shooters. So as he’s gotten older, and shown he has been levelheaded, I’ve moved him on up to more mature material. Not too long ago he was playing Serious Sam. This game is pretty violent, with tons of enemies to mow down in a sort of abstractedly gory manner. But the type of enemies, the stylized graphics and the whole over-the-top attitude of the game tempered it for me. When I was his age I was drawing big pictures of war scenes or underwater views of boatloads of people getting attacked by sharks. It had the adults around me rolling their eyes, but not calling for a straightjacket.
Later still, I let him play Wolfenstein. Now this game ups the ante, being by far the most realistic representation of violence he’d yet played. Along with seriously creepy or scary enemies and a sound effects aspect that will make you duck your head from incoming fire even days after you’ve started playing it. But Wolfenstein also has clear-cut, no-ambiguity enemies—Nazis. And their historically supported penchant for occult artifacts. So y’know? No drug dealers, no prostitutes, not much in the way of dubious moral choices, unless you count slaughtering Hitler’s minions a dubious choice. It’s still pretty clearly not in Grand Theft Auto territory. So at this point, the violence is becoming almost secondary, helped in large part by the fact that he isn’t showing an increasing tendency to punch his sister or talk about headshots at the dinner table.
So this brings us to the present. At the moment he is pressing his way through the various episodes of Half Life 2. Half Life is kind of on the order of Wolfenstein. Realistic human enemies mixed with otherworldly fiends. There are also no morally questionable paths through the game. Gordon Freeman is a standup guy whether the player wants to be or not, but the game does a good job of not making it feel too restrained. Half Life is also a cut above almost anything else in terms of drama, story, and overall quality and has seriously given Halo a run for its money in my son’s list of favorites. The world built by Valve has him thinking about a lot more than just the killing, and he really cares about the people populating the resistance against The Combine. By association he also likes the Portal games which emphasize puzzle-solving over blowing things away, though death for your avatar(s) is never far away.
Far and away the most extreme thing he’s played is the new Mortal Kombat. And I really had to think that one over. It is extremely violent, never mind the somewhat scantily clad sexed-up looking women. And it encourages matches to be finished in as violent a manner as possible. I kind of looked at it like some old monster drawings I might’ve done as a kid. Gory, yeah. But MK is also populated by otherworldly creatures and almost every human has superpowers and is dressed accordingly. It is pretty far removed from reality. I actually found The Krypt, where players buy the various unlockables, to be the most objectionable part of the game. You basically have to push a button to kill some hapless prisoner in order to ‘unlock’ his soul, which then flies off to provide you with your ‘reward’. These deaths are by torture device and creature infestation. They don’t provide the meat of the game, and actually get tiresome after a while owing to the amount of shit that’s in The Krypt. But it is still ‘push a button kill an innocent dude’. A didn’t stop my kid from playing MK because it IS just a sidebar to the game, but it was a moment of realization in how casual ‘murder’ has gotten to be even apart from the obvious ‘murder simulators’ that are the typical first person shooters.
But his friends are all about this graphic killing. And apparently have parents knowingly or unknowingly abetting the carnage. When his friends talk about their coolest games they are almost invariably talking about a Call of Duty game or something like it. The only real-world war FPS I’ve really let him play are the Battlefield Bad Company series for Dice. The first one actually didn’t even get up to a Mature rating and what I saw of it, emphasized tactical thinking with its destructible scenery and the comradery between you and your comrade NPCs more than it did running up to the enemy and capping them. So the Battlefield games got a pass. He’ll probably get to play the new one just coming out soon. His friends know these games and think they’re ‘okay’… I’m sure they don’t rate super-high for the very reasons I green lighted ‘em. They’re not in-your-face enough about the killing.
I have since put the nix on some other games, almost always coming up because some friend of his has recommended it. It makes you wonder if these parents really have no fucking idea what their kids are doing, or have just written them off because their ‘only games’. Remember in the old days of Dungeons and Dragons when some kids showed marked behavior changes from taking their characters too seriously? Yeah. Those were only games too.
This brings us to Fallout. Specifically Fallout 3. Fallout is the cat’s ass as far as my son’s buddies are concerned. I knew these games probably had objectionable material in them, because I knew enough about the Fallout game world. I hadn’t played any Fallout games since previously they’ve been PC titles. The Fallout titles I knew about were also role-playing games. So when my kid asked to get Fallout: New Vegas after seeing it briefly at a friend’s house, it was not too difficult to dissuade him since I knew FNV was also an RPG, albeit one with some real-time action aspects. I just knew he wasn’t into games to manage inventories and get into long conversations. He’s done a bit of RPG stuff on his handhelds and is currently stalled in Chrono Trigger on the VC, but it is amongst the least appealing genres to him.
Then some friend let him borrow Fallout 3.
I don’t know if it is because of the way Bethesda actioned-up specifics of the game that were strictly RPG staples before, but the game appears to have changed enough things to where my son wants to get into the Fallout world. Or maybe he has matured enough to where the RPG aspects don’t hinder him. Either way, he took the game home along with Portal 2. I looked at it thinking ‘hm, I don’t know…’ but put it off because I figured burying himself in Portal would buy me some time to research just how bad Fallout 3 is. Nope. He apparently went straight to Fallout. I know this because I his Mom heard screams of agony coming from some NPC he was working over. So she pulled the game for his Xbox 360 until such time as I could render a verdict. I had some explaining to do on how he had a game where the rating box out shows ‘sexual situations and drug use’ right under the M rating.
Needless to say after doing a bit of poking around about what-all is in the game, he’s not going to get to play Fallout 3 for the foreseeable future. Drug use, prostitution, and the ability to murder innocents, are dodgy enough when seen in some RPG-typical isometric view, but Bethesda’s work to make the experience immersive and ‘cinematic’ pretty much shreds any rationalizing I might do. Oh, and hearing ‘fuck’ about five times in as many minutes kinda does that too. Fallout has a karma system where doing the civil thing clicks you towards a certain ending, and doing evil another. But that’s not enough for a kid still in formative years. If he CAN do the horrible thing, he’s going to do the horrible thing. Just to see how the game handles it. If he gets a shitty ending for it, he won’t be happy, but it’ll have been worth it just to see all the forbidden crap we’d never let him watch in a movie.
And I don’t blame him for doing it. I tried to see inappropriate sex and violence when I was kid. But my Mom went apoplectic catching me at it sometimes. Back in the day, the film Jaws (understandably) had a serious public rep for excessive violence. Based on everything she’d seen and read there was no way I was going to see it. So I snuck. And she caught me. Now there were worse things I’d seen and read. But THAT movie was the one she specifically had inside her blinders. I think parents today are doing the same thing. They all have their shields up for Grand Theft Auto, the scapegoat of today, but are missing the Fallouts getting by them. So my kid? Not happy. Not at all. He got caught watching Jaws. There won’t be any disciplinary action to speak of—I mean I looked right at the damn box and handed it back to him. But that’s another game his Dad cut off.
He’s found compensation though, and the irony is almost suffocating.
Yesterday we downloaded the demo for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. The full game releases next week on September 6th. If you’ve read my previous post about Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, you know we played that little lead-in download to death and are eagerly awaiting this game, its big brother.
So the kid has started in on the demo, and it is one of the most violent games I’ve ever seen. And I've seen A LOT of video game violence.
Games Workshop’s 40K universe isn’t replete with sex or drugs or the exploitation of fuzzy kittens. Controversy around it mostly has to do with the fascist nature of the Imperium of Man (though all the ‘armies’ take a sort of kill-everyone-else stance since the species’ survival is frequently at stake), or the demonic imagery associated with the forces of Chaos. The Space Marines, though the most elite and haughty of human forces, are also frequently far enough above politics that they are shown taking something resembling moral high ground. That is, a Space Marine commander can follow what he believes is right and there’s precious little the more pragmatic human forces like the Imperial Guard or Inquisition can do about it. So playing a Marine captain as you do in this game, you will probably be taking as noble a road as possible given the context, that of protecting humanity and its resources against the invading Ork hordes. So, in terms of narrative choices, I’m not too worried that my kid will be complicit in holding some human victim’s testicles over an open flame. A Marine isn't going to do that.
But cripes. I love GW and 40K, but this is like Mortal Kombat with about a dozen combatants on the screen at the same time. Amongst the 'goodness' is performing ‘executions’ (of Orks mind you) that GAIN YOU BACK SOME HEALTH. I realize they need a healthup mechanic but turning the paragons of humanity into vampires? Actually, there is a precedent for that amongst the Blood Angels Chapter of the Space Marines.
But that’s a long, complicated story. The protagonist in WH40K: Space Marine is by default an Ultramarine—a chapter based in Greek imagery and who run their own empire of Ultramar about as close to 21st century standards of fairness and equality as you’re going to get. So the boy is using his Marine to hack about with a chainsword (chainsaw sword) throwing up clouds of blood and popping off the occasional Ork head with a bolt pistol. Of course he stops every now and then to EXECUTE an enemy which is usually shown as hoisting them in the air on the chainsword while the blade chews through their abdomen and bursts them apart in a shower of blood that then stains the Marine’s armor for the remainder of the combat. Yay!
When I get involved in 40K games or painting or drawing or whatever, yeah BLOOD is implicit or explicit in all of it. The novels are probably the place where the violence actually gets the strongest, particularly where anything has to do with Chaos (the really uber bad guys). But the video game is VISUAL. I’ve rarely seen a GW spinoff that so revels in carnage. And this is the ‘good guy’.
Now for me, this would be fine. I still look askance at the vampire health thing (what the fuck?)… it just seems like there’d be a canonical 'Ultramarine way' to make this happen instead of such a weird, macabre manner. But graphic gore doesn’t rattle me. The problem is that I set this up to my kid as, ‘yeah, you’re gonna love it!’ And boy does he ever! Right down to the smoking, headless, eviscerated Orks lying all over the landscape. He plays the 40K tabletop game, but the brutality is still totally abstract even if the body count was the same… which it isn’t. If the ten minutes I saw is any guide, before the game is completed this Marine is going to kill twenty times more enemies than a similar character would manage in a dozen tabletop matches.
I’m just dismayed looking at this as a parent. It IS over-the-top like Serious Sam. It IS about facing non-human alien enemies out to destroy humanity like Halo. And he isn’t being exposed to any attitudes or philosophy he doesn’t already see in the 40K wargame literature.
So I won’t put the brakes on for this. It might be difficult to explain to another parent the nuance here that makes Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine different from Fallout 3. But there’s a difference. I'll admit to bristling less at violence than the other objectionable sorts of content that Fallout has on display, along with its giving the player the ability to indulge in some of it. He's already been exposed to everything in Space Marine except the execution mechanic. So, though it is off-putting, I'm not lumping it in the same league as Fallout 3.
At least with this new Space Marine game, he’ll be on the hip side with his other blood ‘n’ guts buddies for a little while. He's just going to have to wait awhile longer to be allowed to be totally amoral.
Showing posts with label WH40K. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WH40K. Show all posts
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Monday, October 18, 2010
Quick Update
Quick update so everyone knows I'm still alive:
Had to put Okami down for awhile and refresh my gaming brains on a bunch of 2d shooters... a sort of palate cleanser if you will. I've picked Okami back up and am going to try to plug through the second half of this before the huge spate of great new games starts coming out. To wit:
Quantum Theory (already out)
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Vanquish
Guwange
Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage
All shit threatening to totally derail the time I should be spending painting my Eldar army for 40K. Is it just me or is the new Sonic 4 reallly really weird looking? I tried the demo out, and although it plays fine and my old Sonic reflexes seem to be dialed in... the look of it is just off-putting. Shiny and plastic-looking and the controls are kind of floaty too. I'm not sure I'm going to play this, though I was anticipating it so much. I'm not thrilled that the levels are supposedly remakes of older Sonic levels, though I"m not sure there's a ton they could do that was totally original and wouldn't hearken back to levels from various Genesis and DS episodes.
Work on the Eldar army is proceeding but is kind of slow owing to my continually having to buy new materials since all my old stuff is packed away. I also spend a fair amount of time helping my son with his Tau force but I consider that pretty productive in spite of the distraction. Pics of this work soon I hope.
There's probably going to be some effort for me in my local shop's promotion of the GW hobby too. They're cleaning out a case for a miniatures showcase. We'll see what the response and quality level is to that.
Haven't been doing much on the movie or DVD front. When I do watch television its been to put something educational from the History Channel or somesuch in the background when I've been painting.
I'm not sure I'm going to be less boring as winter closes down around us here, but I'll make an effort!
Had to put Okami down for awhile and refresh my gaming brains on a bunch of 2d shooters... a sort of palate cleanser if you will. I've picked Okami back up and am going to try to plug through the second half of this before the huge spate of great new games starts coming out. To wit:
Quantum Theory (already out)
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Vanquish
Guwange
Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu
Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage
All shit threatening to totally derail the time I should be spending painting my Eldar army for 40K. Is it just me or is the new Sonic 4 reallly really weird looking? I tried the demo out, and although it plays fine and my old Sonic reflexes seem to be dialed in... the look of it is just off-putting. Shiny and plastic-looking and the controls are kind of floaty too. I'm not sure I'm going to play this, though I was anticipating it so much. I'm not thrilled that the levels are supposedly remakes of older Sonic levels, though I"m not sure there's a ton they could do that was totally original and wouldn't hearken back to levels from various Genesis and DS episodes.
Work on the Eldar army is proceeding but is kind of slow owing to my continually having to buy new materials since all my old stuff is packed away. I also spend a fair amount of time helping my son with his Tau force but I consider that pretty productive in spite of the distraction. Pics of this work soon I hope.
There's probably going to be some effort for me in my local shop's promotion of the GW hobby too. They're cleaning out a case for a miniatures showcase. We'll see what the response and quality level is to that.
Haven't been doing much on the movie or DVD front. When I do watch television its been to put something educational from the History Channel or somesuch in the background when I've been painting.
I'm not sure I'm going to be less boring as winter closes down around us here, but I'll make an effort!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Down With The Iron Warriors
Walking in to my local comic (and game) shop last Sunday, I escorted my son back to the wargame tables at the rear. Every Sunday Games Workshop wargames, mostly WH40K, are played in an informal ‘bring and battle’ format. Usually it is pretty well-attended and the previous week my kid had met other players his own age, and that got him all fired up to bring in some of the Tau squads on which he’s been working so hard to paint.
He’s been working so hard on them because I’ve insisted that he do so, and not just show up with a bunch of drab plastic and metal guys.
In common with a lot of players (and the immediate gratification mentality they have) he doesn’t really want to get much painting done before he plays. Truth be told, he’d probably just as soon do NO painting. But having built several Gundam models he at least understands the positive aspects of a modeling hobby and putting something of your own creativity into it. We discussed this at length before the first dollar was spent: ‘Son, your Dad is a beardy old gaming git and you’re going to have to do this right if you want me to throw in with you’…or something to that effect. But he’s only twelve. Eagerness to get to the fun part and ‘aw geez’ the work part is to be expected.
We’ve gone to watch the games played a few times before he even bought his first models, and the example set by the other players is NOT helping my cause. While he does vaguely remember the ‘old days’ when he was around tons of amazing miniatures, intricately designed scenery and enthusiastic GW staff, seeing what goes on at this local shop it’s understandable (even if he wasn’t a kid) why he’d think the non-playing side of things could or should be neglected.
Because The Iron Warriors dominate.
This references an old joke when I was employed at GW. At that time when our staff were going around to game stores trying to promote the hobby, they were constantly confronted with players using armies of unpainted or barely-painted figures. And in those days almost all the models were made out of so-called ‘white metal’, which is a silvery alloy consisting largely of tin. In Warhammer 40,000 there is a chapter of Chaos Space Marines called the Iron Warriors whose predominant color is, as their name suggests, iron or steel. So the preponderance of bare steel-colored models eventually generated a running gag about how all these different players had all these loads of models but at the end of the day they were all using ‘The Iron Warriors’. So everywhere we’d go there they’d be… more Iron Warriors. Progeny of lazy or ignorant players everywhere. They might be shaped like Eldar or Orks or Tyranids but still…
Iron Warriors.
I think the joke is outdated now. Since that educational crusade by GW it has become common opinion that you at least need to get a basic coat of color on ‘em. While the overall effort is still pretty lackluster, in general it seems most players do at least the minimum so that the won’t look totally lazy if they wind up against someone who did a good job. And so many of the models are plastic, the whole ‘iron’ descriptor doesn’t really fit as well.
As Jervis Johnson is always going on about in White Dwarf magazine, immersion is a huge part of this hobby. Like books, films and video games, with any of our diversions we want to be drawn in to a created world, even if that world is largely the same as our own. We want to experience the drama or the humor as closely as possible and the more effective the break from the real world around us the better. Tabletop wargaming is no different. Immersion in the battle is important to the experience. But with gaming of this type, there are so many rules to follow, so many discussions that need to take place, and so much potential distraction (if you’re gaming away from home especially) that it isn’t an unbroken entertainment experience like reading a book in your favorite chair or watching a film in the theater. Wargaming has to generate its atmosphere and color, its ‘hooks’, from the models, the scenery, the narrative behind the battle and the personalities of the players because it is a competitive pastime. It requires a lot of communication that isn’t WITHIN the game’s world.
If you think it’s okay to just throw the unpainted models out there on a flat surface, then why don’t you just play chess? Or one of the tabletop wargames that doesn’t require figures (think Avalon Hill style cardboard chits)? Or in this generation, play a strategy-based video game? They even got ‘em based on the WH40K universe, the Dawn of War series.
Why not pursue other strategy pastimes that don’t have so much manual work involved? Because those pursuits don’t have little toy soldiers you get to push around miniature battlefields. That’s why.
The tactile aspect is a huge part of the attraction. At GW, as much as it was believed that the painting is important, it was also understood that the actual doing of it is a lot of labor—daunting in fact. But no one expected every soldier to be a masterpiece and no one expected the whole thing to be done before you start playing or even to have been done quickly. At the actual GW stores, staff insisted that you get started on painting your models before playing with them in the shop, and that every time you brought them in they showed a bit more progress.
My town, as removed as it is from civilization, appears to have a population of wargamers who have no idea what paints and brushes are for. At least not why they are sold in that very shop right next to the figures. Watching them play presents a laundry list modeling yuck I thought had been driven out back in the 90s. They’ve got unpainted or primer-only model. Models not glued to bases or vehicles (constantly falling over or off). Wrong weapons on models. No weapons on models, including vehicles. Substitutions galore, that is ‘my marine seargeant model here is actually a chaplain’.
That doesn’t even touch on all the wackiness play-wise like not having a list prepared (flipping constantly through the books) or not using counters so the players can’t remember wounds taken on big models or weapons lost on vehicles.
The players spend so much time backtracking, looking shit up, and reminding each other just what the hell they are using on the table… I couldn’t see how it was fun. These games are complicated enough as it is. Further crap that takes you out of the spirit of the game is something to be avoided. Having a painted, correctly assembled and modeled army doesn’t just help with the atmosphere and coolness… it helps the game move along more smoothly. There’s no question what the guns are on the tank. No argument about which model was the hero or heavy weapons trooper in the squad. No struggle to remember that this group of shuriken catapult armed guys are actually carrying shuriken pistols and power swords…. THIS time around. For all that these players (and others like them) seem to think the PLAY is the thing, they sure don’t do a lot of the shit necessary to keep the focus on the play and not on all the exceptions and goofiness spread around their rag-tag ‘army’.
And assuming someone DOES show up with an army with a decent paint job, the Iron Warriors player is doing that guy a disservice by being pathetic about the hobby end of things. THAT guy made an effort and he wants a cool, immersive, atmospheric game. He wants to fight a ‘believable’ force. And you bring the equivalent of an expanded Civil War Chess Set.
Nice.
What happened to making it look cool? People think the art looks cool. The sculpting of the models is cool. This is entertainment in which the consumer gets to participate. What happened to their contribution?
I know a lot of these players like the background. They discuss the troop types and name their forces (I’ve heard ‘em). They must be buying the novels and art books because I frequently need the next one in some series and it is sold out. So why shouldn’t a player do their best to capture this color?
Trying to convey this to my kid is difficult but seems to be working. He showed up with two fully painted squads and third halfway done. And everything was as depicted on his models (and he had some little unit cards with him so he didn’t have to flip through rulebooks!). He knew the game less well than his opponent but his own turns went much smoother and faster.
I don’t actually want to be a snob about it…. But I am. And I want him to be a snob about it too within reason. We can’t make our local shop do what GW does with their must-be-painted policy. But we can try to encourage and be an example. My son should still play against unpainted armies and be a gracious player, but I really hope his work rubs off vis a vis the painting aspect.
I have seen some regular Warhammer (fantasy) players in there too. And they seem more resolved to do the work correctly. While I saw a lot of unpainted or primer-only models, the ranked up nature of Warhammer units kind of forces the players to be more organized, and get those weapons correct and get everything glued down.
I find it staggering that it takes ‘convincing’ to get players on board with this. I see them over in the miniatures racks picking up boxes or flipping through books with ‘wicked’ or ‘those look badass’ spouted all the time. So don’t you want your shit to look badass? I mean you spent all that money (things are NOT cheap) and you’re just going to leave it an Iron Warrior instead of trying to make it look like what attracted you in the first place? And these players have the internet. There are kajillions of online examples at all skill levels that this shit is done and, in fact, MUST be done. You don’t get a fucking bye just because you live in the sticks.
I need to take the word to the heathen.
He’s been working so hard on them because I’ve insisted that he do so, and not just show up with a bunch of drab plastic and metal guys.
In common with a lot of players (and the immediate gratification mentality they have) he doesn’t really want to get much painting done before he plays. Truth be told, he’d probably just as soon do NO painting. But having built several Gundam models he at least understands the positive aspects of a modeling hobby and putting something of your own creativity into it. We discussed this at length before the first dollar was spent: ‘Son, your Dad is a beardy old gaming git and you’re going to have to do this right if you want me to throw in with you’…or something to that effect. But he’s only twelve. Eagerness to get to the fun part and ‘aw geez’ the work part is to be expected.
We’ve gone to watch the games played a few times before he even bought his first models, and the example set by the other players is NOT helping my cause. While he does vaguely remember the ‘old days’ when he was around tons of amazing miniatures, intricately designed scenery and enthusiastic GW staff, seeing what goes on at this local shop it’s understandable (even if he wasn’t a kid) why he’d think the non-playing side of things could or should be neglected.
Because The Iron Warriors dominate.
This references an old joke when I was employed at GW. At that time when our staff were going around to game stores trying to promote the hobby, they were constantly confronted with players using armies of unpainted or barely-painted figures. And in those days almost all the models were made out of so-called ‘white metal’, which is a silvery alloy consisting largely of tin. In Warhammer 40,000 there is a chapter of Chaos Space Marines called the Iron Warriors whose predominant color is, as their name suggests, iron or steel. So the preponderance of bare steel-colored models eventually generated a running gag about how all these different players had all these loads of models but at the end of the day they were all using ‘The Iron Warriors’. So everywhere we’d go there they’d be… more Iron Warriors. Progeny of lazy or ignorant players everywhere. They might be shaped like Eldar or Orks or Tyranids but still…
Iron Warriors.
I think the joke is outdated now. Since that educational crusade by GW it has become common opinion that you at least need to get a basic coat of color on ‘em. While the overall effort is still pretty lackluster, in general it seems most players do at least the minimum so that the won’t look totally lazy if they wind up against someone who did a good job. And so many of the models are plastic, the whole ‘iron’ descriptor doesn’t really fit as well.
As Jervis Johnson is always going on about in White Dwarf magazine, immersion is a huge part of this hobby. Like books, films and video games, with any of our diversions we want to be drawn in to a created world, even if that world is largely the same as our own. We want to experience the drama or the humor as closely as possible and the more effective the break from the real world around us the better. Tabletop wargaming is no different. Immersion in the battle is important to the experience. But with gaming of this type, there are so many rules to follow, so many discussions that need to take place, and so much potential distraction (if you’re gaming away from home especially) that it isn’t an unbroken entertainment experience like reading a book in your favorite chair or watching a film in the theater. Wargaming has to generate its atmosphere and color, its ‘hooks’, from the models, the scenery, the narrative behind the battle and the personalities of the players because it is a competitive pastime. It requires a lot of communication that isn’t WITHIN the game’s world.
If you think it’s okay to just throw the unpainted models out there on a flat surface, then why don’t you just play chess? Or one of the tabletop wargames that doesn’t require figures (think Avalon Hill style cardboard chits)? Or in this generation, play a strategy-based video game? They even got ‘em based on the WH40K universe, the Dawn of War series.
Why not pursue other strategy pastimes that don’t have so much manual work involved? Because those pursuits don’t have little toy soldiers you get to push around miniature battlefields. That’s why.
The tactile aspect is a huge part of the attraction. At GW, as much as it was believed that the painting is important, it was also understood that the actual doing of it is a lot of labor—daunting in fact. But no one expected every soldier to be a masterpiece and no one expected the whole thing to be done before you start playing or even to have been done quickly. At the actual GW stores, staff insisted that you get started on painting your models before playing with them in the shop, and that every time you brought them in they showed a bit more progress.
My town, as removed as it is from civilization, appears to have a population of wargamers who have no idea what paints and brushes are for. At least not why they are sold in that very shop right next to the figures. Watching them play presents a laundry list modeling yuck I thought had been driven out back in the 90s. They’ve got unpainted or primer-only model. Models not glued to bases or vehicles (constantly falling over or off). Wrong weapons on models. No weapons on models, including vehicles. Substitutions galore, that is ‘my marine seargeant model here is actually a chaplain’.
That doesn’t even touch on all the wackiness play-wise like not having a list prepared (flipping constantly through the books) or not using counters so the players can’t remember wounds taken on big models or weapons lost on vehicles.
The players spend so much time backtracking, looking shit up, and reminding each other just what the hell they are using on the table… I couldn’t see how it was fun. These games are complicated enough as it is. Further crap that takes you out of the spirit of the game is something to be avoided. Having a painted, correctly assembled and modeled army doesn’t just help with the atmosphere and coolness… it helps the game move along more smoothly. There’s no question what the guns are on the tank. No argument about which model was the hero or heavy weapons trooper in the squad. No struggle to remember that this group of shuriken catapult armed guys are actually carrying shuriken pistols and power swords…. THIS time around. For all that these players (and others like them) seem to think the PLAY is the thing, they sure don’t do a lot of the shit necessary to keep the focus on the play and not on all the exceptions and goofiness spread around their rag-tag ‘army’.
And assuming someone DOES show up with an army with a decent paint job, the Iron Warriors player is doing that guy a disservice by being pathetic about the hobby end of things. THAT guy made an effort and he wants a cool, immersive, atmospheric game. He wants to fight a ‘believable’ force. And you bring the equivalent of an expanded Civil War Chess Set.
Nice.
What happened to making it look cool? People think the art looks cool. The sculpting of the models is cool. This is entertainment in which the consumer gets to participate. What happened to their contribution?
I know a lot of these players like the background. They discuss the troop types and name their forces (I’ve heard ‘em). They must be buying the novels and art books because I frequently need the next one in some series and it is sold out. So why shouldn’t a player do their best to capture this color?
Trying to convey this to my kid is difficult but seems to be working. He showed up with two fully painted squads and third halfway done. And everything was as depicted on his models (and he had some little unit cards with him so he didn’t have to flip through rulebooks!). He knew the game less well than his opponent but his own turns went much smoother and faster.
I don’t actually want to be a snob about it…. But I am. And I want him to be a snob about it too within reason. We can’t make our local shop do what GW does with their must-be-painted policy. But we can try to encourage and be an example. My son should still play against unpainted armies and be a gracious player, but I really hope his work rubs off vis a vis the painting aspect.
I have seen some regular Warhammer (fantasy) players in there too. And they seem more resolved to do the work correctly. While I saw a lot of unpainted or primer-only models, the ranked up nature of Warhammer units kind of forces the players to be more organized, and get those weapons correct and get everything glued down.
I find it staggering that it takes ‘convincing’ to get players on board with this. I see them over in the miniatures racks picking up boxes or flipping through books with ‘wicked’ or ‘those look badass’ spouted all the time. So don’t you want your shit to look badass? I mean you spent all that money (things are NOT cheap) and you’re just going to leave it an Iron Warrior instead of trying to make it look like what attracted you in the first place? And these players have the internet. There are kajillions of online examples at all skill levels that this shit is done and, in fact, MUST be done. You don’t get a fucking bye just because you live in the sticks.
I need to take the word to the heathen.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Other Type of Gaming Nerd
The color scheme and first guys for my Eldar force for Warhammer 40,000. I have four soldiers painted and the pic above is more or less showing them actual size if on your screen the round bases are one inch across.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Apologies
Between kids going back to school, the wrapup of summer doings, and various medical or health-related shenanigans I have not been making time to update this blog.
On the video game front I haven't progressed much owing to the above-listed time killers but also because I'm just bogged down in Okami. Almost bored with it you might say. It isn't that it is a bad game, it is just so long. I'm having similar problems to my play-through of Odin Sphere awhile back. What little time I do manage on my consoles is mostly dicking around with the digital pinball games from Kaze. About as far from Okami as you can get. The only thing video game wise that really has me excited is all the shit Cave has announced at their August Matsuri festival. Just about every old STG they've ever designed seems scheduled over the next year.
If anything my pastime-time is taken up with getting back into GW stuff. I've been reading a lot of Black Library novels set in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes to get hepped up, and I've made some progresss in buying and starting an Eldar army for 40K. I don't get anything like the great deals on this stuff that I used to so I have to be a lot more strategic with my purchases of figures. Most of my old paints aren't good either so I have to rebuild that setup. My son has gotten inspired and is beavering away on a Tau force. I've got an infantry model done to completion so I could figure out my army's color scheme and three more troopers following on from that. I'll post pics soon. I like my ideas, but my son hates it! Ha.
He'll double hate it when my force rolls over his.
I'm actually more of a Warhammer (fantasy) player. I will be firing up a force of High Elves before long and dividing my painting time between the two. I'm working 40K earlier because that, of course, is what the boy is into. Even my daughter is getting in on the act. She knocked out a decent Space Marine, but really wants to paint some Wood Elves.
Nerdy nerdy family.
On the video game front I haven't progressed much owing to the above-listed time killers but also because I'm just bogged down in Okami. Almost bored with it you might say. It isn't that it is a bad game, it is just so long. I'm having similar problems to my play-through of Odin Sphere awhile back. What little time I do manage on my consoles is mostly dicking around with the digital pinball games from Kaze. About as far from Okami as you can get. The only thing video game wise that really has me excited is all the shit Cave has announced at their August Matsuri festival. Just about every old STG they've ever designed seems scheduled over the next year.
If anything my pastime-time is taken up with getting back into GW stuff. I've been reading a lot of Black Library novels set in the Warhammer and Warhammer 40K universes to get hepped up, and I've made some progresss in buying and starting an Eldar army for 40K. I don't get anything like the great deals on this stuff that I used to so I have to be a lot more strategic with my purchases of figures. Most of my old paints aren't good either so I have to rebuild that setup. My son has gotten inspired and is beavering away on a Tau force. I've got an infantry model done to completion so I could figure out my army's color scheme and three more troopers following on from that. I'll post pics soon. I like my ideas, but my son hates it! Ha.
He'll double hate it when my force rolls over his.
I'm actually more of a Warhammer (fantasy) player. I will be firing up a force of High Elves before long and dividing my painting time between the two. I'm working 40K earlier because that, of course, is what the boy is into. Even my daughter is getting in on the act. She knocked out a decent Space Marine, but really wants to paint some Wood Elves.
Nerdy nerdy family.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Ghosts
In case anyone is interested in what I used to do. The above photo is for a Thousand Sons Space Marine, what are now called Rubric Marines in the current edition of Warhammer 40,000. The photo above comes from the second edition rulebook, but I cribbed it from the current online fan standard wiki for 40K lore, the 40K Lexicanium site.
The link for the Lexicanium page:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Rubric_Marine
This is my marine. I painted it and set up the photo for it. It is part of a set of four chaos marines that Jes Goodwin originally sculpted and the designs became the standard by which all subsequent marines dedicated to specific Chaos power were based. In the same way that Jes's designs set the stage, this is MY interpretation of the text-described blue and yellow scheme for this troop type, and it became the standard. I expect my 'blueprints' for the other powers are probably also still floating around out there.
My day in/day out job there was not to paint miniatures, but getting involved in the hobby end was pretty standard for staff, including some fairly high profile stuff like this. I was first out of the gate with painted versions of this set of four models, and GW liked them so much they were figured pretty prominently whenever Chaos Marine stuff came up.
Painting models is so much more obscure than being a writer, painter, or filmmaker, but I'll admit to quite a bit of gratification that something I did is STILL relevant even if it is in a really nerdy niche corner of the universe. Most of my models are packed away, but I was kind of missing them the other day. I don't have any of the photos of them handy either. So I looked about on the internet to see if someone else had pics.
Yes they do apparently.
Monday, January 5, 2009
What Goes Around Comes Around, Eventually
Hm.
For about two months now, my son has been expressing an interest in starting up a Warhammer 40,000 army. Briefly, for those not in the know, Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop wargame. It uses models (british english: toy soldiers) to represent the personnel and vehicles of an army based in Games Workshop's science fiction universe. You battle an opponent who has their own army on a set of miniature scenery. WH40K, as the game is usually abbreviated, is Games Workshop's most popular game, although not my personal favorite.
In any case, it was probably only a matter of time. My son remembers, dimly, a time when he ran around a warehouse full of toy soldiers, or barged in on friends of mine slaving over layouts and copy for White Dwarf magazine. UK design studio staff have met my kids. So now that he's ten suddenly he's put two-and-two together and realized he has some sort of heritage in this stuff. He probably would have found it cool and gravitated to it even without my employment history with them. It's hard to say. But knowing what he knows just injects that much more fervor into the hobby for him.
I left GW on good terms. My years with them were almost all positive, and I will never say a bad word about the company. A lot of GW fans and stockists have held negative opinions about them (as any popular company is going to generate), but being on the inside, and hearing the reasons why some decisions had been made I 'get' GW and why it does what it does. Really the only reason I'm not still working there is the move of their manufacturing facility from Baltimore to Memphis, and not making that move with them was my choice.
So I have no hard feelings. But I do miss that job. It was a large part of my identity and a lot of the residue still informs me today, even though I don't actively cultivate the hobby itself into my daily activities any more. Really my avoidance has more to do with feelings of melancholy and nostalgia than any sort of dislike.
But as I've said, it was probably only a matter of time before I had to face GW again. I don't know how ramped up I'll get about this stuff, I have enough things on my plate in both responsibilities AND pastimes... but I know that if my kid shows enough persistance to actually build this hobby for himself, I'll work with him. After Christmas when I started to help him paint some of the new soldiers he got, I found the old methods and rhythm to doing the work just fell right into place. Like riding a bicycle. Often when I worked for GW, people would quit, only to find themselves back there after months or even years. I used to joke that it was like the mafia. Once GW had their hooks into you, you could never leave.
I may be finding this to be true for myself. Truer than even I knew.
For about two months now, my son has been expressing an interest in starting up a Warhammer 40,000 army. Briefly, for those not in the know, Warhammer 40,000 is a tabletop wargame. It uses models (british english: toy soldiers) to represent the personnel and vehicles of an army based in Games Workshop's science fiction universe. You battle an opponent who has their own army on a set of miniature scenery. WH40K, as the game is usually abbreviated, is Games Workshop's most popular game, although not my personal favorite.
In any case, it was probably only a matter of time. My son remembers, dimly, a time when he ran around a warehouse full of toy soldiers, or barged in on friends of mine slaving over layouts and copy for White Dwarf magazine. UK design studio staff have met my kids. So now that he's ten suddenly he's put two-and-two together and realized he has some sort of heritage in this stuff. He probably would have found it cool and gravitated to it even without my employment history with them. It's hard to say. But knowing what he knows just injects that much more fervor into the hobby for him.
I left GW on good terms. My years with them were almost all positive, and I will never say a bad word about the company. A lot of GW fans and stockists have held negative opinions about them (as any popular company is going to generate), but being on the inside, and hearing the reasons why some decisions had been made I 'get' GW and why it does what it does. Really the only reason I'm not still working there is the move of their manufacturing facility from Baltimore to Memphis, and not making that move with them was my choice.
So I have no hard feelings. But I do miss that job. It was a large part of my identity and a lot of the residue still informs me today, even though I don't actively cultivate the hobby itself into my daily activities any more. Really my avoidance has more to do with feelings of melancholy and nostalgia than any sort of dislike.
But as I've said, it was probably only a matter of time before I had to face GW again. I don't know how ramped up I'll get about this stuff, I have enough things on my plate in both responsibilities AND pastimes... but I know that if my kid shows enough persistance to actually build this hobby for himself, I'll work with him. After Christmas when I started to help him paint some of the new soldiers he got, I found the old methods and rhythm to doing the work just fell right into place. Like riding a bicycle. Often when I worked for GW, people would quit, only to find themselves back there after months or even years. I used to joke that it was like the mafia. Once GW had their hooks into you, you could never leave.
I may be finding this to be true for myself. Truer than even I knew.
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