Request hour: Sound effects, great writers, and PC vs. console

We're nearing the end of the increasingly inaccurately named "request hour."

Jorge Albor asks:

What has been your favorite audio effect in a videogame (ambient sound, music, etc.)?

Sometimes I think we underestimate the importance of sound in a video game, particularly as a feedback mechanism. I love the way coins chime when Mario picks them up, and the jingle that plays when Link opens up a secret area. You learn to associate these things so closely with success or failure that when you hear something in real life that sounds similar, you feel a little jolt. Some of my favorite sounds in games have been:

• Mega Man teleporting ("blort" is what it sounds like in my mind)
• The high-pitched death rattle of the Combine soldiers in Half-Life 2
• The whispering priests in Resident Evil 4
• Hadoken!
• The wind in ICO
• Reloading the double-barrelled shotgun in Doom 2

And my all-time favorite background music is in Ridley's Lair in Super Metroid.

Iroquois Pliskin asks:

Which video games writer do you read, and say to yourself: "Man I really wish I could write like *that*"

I'll give my my answer: Tycho Brahe.

Maybe you aspire to write like some non-video-game critic instead. Like, I really love Dave Hickey; I'd push quite a few old ladies down the stairs in order to write like that.

Tycho would be one of my answers, as well. He has a way with metaphor and visual imagery that seems effortless, although it's probably not. And he's damn funny. I often find myself saying exactly what you do when I read his stuff. I also admire the elegance and lucidity of Tom Chick's writing, and the raw knowledge that Jeremy Parish drops in every sentence. A bit closer to home, I'm always impressed by Duncan Fyfe's creativity, N'Gai Croal's insight, Michael Abbott's humanity, and, yes, Iroquois Pliskin's erudition. Often when we get talking about what's wrong with the way people are writing about video games, it's easy to forget how many people are doing an awesome job these days.

In the non-game but still-critic arena, there's no one I hold in higher esteem than Roger Ebert. I also think Anthony Lane is hilarious (David Denby is fine, but when it's a Lane issue of the New Yorker, I always read the movie reviews first).

I'm also gonna throw out kind of a weird one: I have always been in awe of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 writing staff. I was flipping through The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide the other day, and I laughed all over again reading a sentence about an "oily" guy "lazing about on his grimy, sticky sheets." Their word choice is always perfect.

Ed Borden also has two questions:

Why do game on a console over a PC?

Growing up, I always did both, although I've always felt a greater affinity for consoles. I'm not sure why that is -- I have fond memories of playing Dark Castle on our Mac Plus, and then later Wolfenstein and Doom on the PC. In my high school years, I actually spent a good bit of money on graphics cards (3D accelerators!) for the family computer, so I could play the Quake games. I'm not even sure how many hundreds of hours I put into Quake 2 CTF. Had a clan and everything. A bumbling, incompetent clan, which placed dead last in the only competition we ever entered.

These days, I'm not sure I could really tell you why I don't play computer games. I almost said that it costs too much to buy a decent computer, but I've spent $1,250 on consoles since I bought my last desktop four years ago, so that can't be it. One of the reasons I bought the computer I'm using now was to play Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. I did that, and then proceeded to play nothing else. The funny thing is, I still prefer the mouse-keyboard combo to dual analog sticks in a FPS, and I'm far more proficient with it.

So the answer, clearly, is that I've been brainwashed.

Are you real, or just a construct for an ARG ad campaign?

I have some bad news for you.

That does it for request hour. Thanks to everybody who participated. I thought it was great to have the chance to explore a lot of different topics. We should do this again.

Request hour: Dinner for four, emulation nation, and the future of games criticism

Continuing with our reader-requested topics...

I love this one. Shoinan wants to know:

If you could have dinner with three video game characters, who would they be and why?

Phoenix Wright. He's the opposite of almost every other video game hero, most of whom preach honor and glory as they indiscriminately slaughter thousands of people. Phoenix is a bumbling, self-conscious dweeb, who also has an unshakeable sense of truth and justice. I think he'd be a great guy to hang out with. You know he'd probably suffer stoically through poor service and subpar cuisine, but if the bill was calculated wrong, he'd take care of everything.

Guybrush Threepwood. I picture him sitting there, practically breaking a sweat as he tries to remember which utensil he's supposed to use for each course. Plus, as we know from several Monkey Island games, the guy's a hell of a conversationalist. He always has at least four responses ready, no matter what you say to him.

I guess we'd need to invite a villain, just to make things interesting. There are a lot of good options here, but for some reason I keep coming back to Dracula in his Symphony of the Night incarnation. I would ask him to repeat his lines from the beginning of the game and see who else at the table cracks up first. My money's on Phoenix Wright.

From brilliam:

What gaming systems have you owned in your life? Which ones did you want most and never manage to get? Would you consider going back and buying those systems now, or would you more likely just emulate whichever older games you wanted to play?

Or, to put it in a more bookish way: how important is the artifact vs. the information?

The first part is easy, at least. I've owned:

• Atari 2600
• NES
• Sega Genesis
• Sega 32X (really!)
  
• Sega Saturn
• Nintendo 64
• Sony PlayStation
• Super NES
• Game Boy
• PlayStation 2
• Nintendo GameCube
• Nintendo DS
• Xbox 360
• PSP
• Wii
  
• PlayStation 3

That's in order of when I got them, as far as I can recall. The big systems that I missed were the Dreamcast and the original Xbox. I regret never owning a Dreamcast, but given that the 360 is at least somewhat backwards compatible, I don't mind missing out on the Xbox. I never really wanted some of those crazier ones, like the Neo Geo, 3DO, or Jaguar.

The funny thing is, I've held onto most of those systems, even the truly useless ones like the GameCube and the PS1. The artifact does seem to matter. If I felt the urge to play Super Metroid, say, it would be easier to simply download it onto the Virtual Console. It would look better and wouldn't take any setup time. But it would be more satisfying to hook up the SNES and play it for real. That I didn't even hesitate to say "play it for real" probably illustrates the point nicely.

I think it's basically impossible to separate your idea of a game as software from the context in which you played it. I can't think of games like Puzzle Fighter, Mario Kart, or GoldenEye without remembering where I played them, who I played them with, and, yes, what I played them on. Emulators are a valuable way to broaden your gaming horizons, but something about playing it on the original hardware -- getting that controller in your hands -- makes the experience seem authentic.

Brian asks a few questions, which I'll split into parts.:

As both a writer who is paid by a major publication to cover games, and a blogger who writes personal pieces on his own, what are the biggest differences in your approach to the two? Which do you prefer?

The biggest difference between writing for the paper and writing in this blog is my idea of who is reading. I think of the person reading a review in the Phoenix as not a committed gamer, who would therefore be turned off by jargon and highly detailed descriptions of gameplay mechanics. I have to assume that the reader is not an expert. I'm trying to write for the person who picked up the arts section for the movie reviews, say, and is now flipping past the half-page game review. Can I get their attention? Can I make them stop and care about this?

On the blog, I assume you're already interested. I can assume a level of knowledge on your part, and a shared set of reference points. Really, though, when I write in the blog I'm just writing for myself. That is, I'm trying to produce content here that I would find interesting if I read it elsewhere. Then I hope that there are other people who feel the same way.

And if you had your way, what would games writing look like 5 years from now?

I'd like it if game writing were less time-sensitive and less event-driven. It seems like the bulk of game reviews and game topics are all about trying to rank everything, and write history as it happens. A friend of mine recently complained about the modern state of arts discussion by saying that it's all an "attempt to determine if [album, movie, game, book, or show] is the most [Adjective] of the [Time period]." He's exactly right.

I'd like to see more people try to take games on their own terms, and ask: what's this really about? What is the game asking me to do, and how are my in-game actions affecting this world? What's the fiction here? How consistent is that fiction? How meaningful is it? And so on.

Especially in light of the fact that newspapers and even sites like 1up falling apart hint that some of the current avenues may not even be available by then. Is it possible there will be no professional, full-time games writing jobs left?

I think there will always be full-time writing jobs available, but they may take different forms. Things are bad all over in print media, but web readership is only expanding, and there will naturally be winners and losers in this landscape. 1up in particular is a sad story, but it may be cause for hope that it was their online publishing that UGO felt was worth preserving. Ziff's print properties were an anchor around 1up's neck.

Hey, we're almost done. More tomorrow.

MTV Cribs: Insult Swordfighting

Inspired by the recent Kotaku series, here's a look at my personal gaming space. This is where the magic happens.


My Xbox 360 shares space with my PC. The 360 is hooked up this way because I bought it before I had an HDTV, so it seemed to make sense to buy the VGA cable and run the picture through my monitor. The Xbox's audio also runs through my PC speakers, which are pretty decent, if nine years old at this point. Yes, the Guitar Hero guitar is in an actual guitar stand.


Close-up shot. That's the DS Lite over there against the wall, but it's hard to make out among some scraps of paper. Note identical bottles of hand sanitizer under monitor, from my Christmas stocking in two consecutive years. Notice also fiancee's skin care products on the dresser behind my desk.

Okay, those are actually mine.

No, not really.


I turn 180 degrees and this is what I see. The Samsung and the PS3 are both just under a year old, which is hard to believe. You SDTV holdouts may think that going HD will not improve your life in any appreciable way. You are wrong. This thing still brings a tear to my eye. A progressive-scan tear, with 720 lines of resolution.

The problem with this setup is that I can't really jump around to play the more physically involved Wii games, but that TV stand is on a swivel so I can point it toward the middle of the room, where there is a little space. And also a ceiling fan that I've almost knocked down several times while playing Wii Tennis.


I keep most of my games on some wall shelves above the TV (the PSP is currently hanging out there, too, as you can see). Generally, the rule is that as soon as I can't fit any more games on the shelf, it's time to trade some in. I have not been following this rule too closely. The PS2 games that you see there are the ones I couldn't bear to part with, plus Karoake Revolution Vol. 3. The rest are some combination of games I really liked or games I couldn't be arsed to trade in yet. The coffee can contains my retirement fund.

If the spirit moves you, please post your own setup in the comments. I'd like to see how people are customizing their own game space.