Books + Covers + Judging = Well-known phrase

I'm just going to go ahead and say it: I'm a sucker for good ("good" obviously being entirely subjective) design. Hold up. Not just good design. I'm a sucker for clever design. For design that has been thought-out with its intended audience firmly in mind. For design that is unabashedly there as a marketing ploy, whether it is an idea that's being sold, a message, a product, a service.

The best illustration of this that I can think of can be found in my book-buying behaviour.

I believe I'm on the verge of a bank-destroying book-buying binge.  Emails confirming the dispatch of goods bought are popping up in my inbox. Padded envelopes have started appearing on my frontdoor mat. And after the initial cheeky grin that accompanies the opening of the envelope, which is swiftly chased by surprise at the book that's now in my hands ("I do not remember ordering this. Someone's sending me books through the post in a passive-aggressive manner, surely? I've obviously picked up the world's nicest stalker!"), an inevitable sinking feeling hits as I remember the night three days before that found me entering my card details for this object. Do I really need this edition of Romeo and Juliet, which was bought purely because the design included laser-cut images of key scenes? What precisely am I going to do with a copy of 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design? On which Sunday afternoon am I actually going to sit down and read Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda, and Art? This isn't healthy, surely?

My bookcase has actually become unusable, with books haphazardly stacked in front of and on top of books. I'm not entirely sure of the contents of the case anymore, and any attempt to mine a particular vein will undoubtedly result in a collapse of horrific proportions. And I'm not ready to be crushed by a pile of books of which the majority have not even been read yet.

They're obviously organised using the standard Dewey Decimal Classification system.

There's a deeper issue at stake here, to do with buying physical books to simply own them, and the comfort of having your books around you as a projection of who you are, what your interests are, what you want your interests to be. I'm sure this is how Nick Hornby's protagonist Rob feels in High Fidelity, surrounded by his categorised vinyl records.

But the reason I'm mentioning this behaviour is that, because I can now recognise the beginnings of a binge, I have determined to avoid all book shops for the near future. I know that if I find myself making my way into one of these havens of temptation whilst in the grips of my fever, I will inevitably be making a furtive exit half an hour later, with a heavy bag accompanying me. In that bag will be books that I either already own but have now bought in a well-designed edition, and/or books that I have never heard of and had no intention of buying, bar from the fact I was drawn to them by their cover and then convinced by the blurb that they are books that I should own and read.

And this is the crux of it: I reckon you can judge a book by its cover (and here's an article from 2011 agreeing with me; hooray for validation). Those covers have been designed with a set audience in mind. There's a language of book covers, just as there's a language of film posters. In the colours chosen, the fonts, the imagery, the publishers are saying that the contents will appeal to a particular demographic. The dozens of copy-cats that emerged after the success of Fifty Shades of Grey all had a *very* familiar style to their jackets. Those adventure books, fantasy series, romantic stories, all of them use a very particular design vocabulary to communicate their genre in a blink of an eye to those that speak the language.

So, here's to the artists who so callously lure us in with their limited edition covers for books we already own. Here's to the publishers such as Foyles who provide heavily bounded books at a purse-busting price. And here's to those bibliophiles who will continue to binge buy their books, no matter the Kindle that is our more common travel companion.

Getting back in touch with a long-forgotten part of myself

An inordinate, embarrassing amount of my time is increasingly being spent on a pastime traditionally associated with teenage boys.

I sit in my room, the screen glaring at me, my hands and fingers feverishly working away.

I think I have a problem. It's affecting the way I see the real world. I find myself thinking about it at inopportune moments. I wonder if I can make excuses to slip away from social situations to continue.

In my defence, it's a pastime that legitimate, intelligent grown-ups also partake in. And women have been found to make up at least 48% of the population who admit to spending their time this way, in one form or another.

I'm not sure it's even my fault. I blame my other half (who shall henceforth be referred to as Thing Two). He's the one that reintroduced me to the pleasures and pains of it.

He is the one who so nonchalantly suggested he leave his Xbox 360 at my place. And he is most definitely the one who introduced me first to Fallout: New Vegas and then, after a long period of negotiation, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. (Not Pacific Rim, as he so plaintively told me when I informed him nowhere had a copy of it.)

I also blame one of my brothers (Thing One), who lent me his copy of Arkham Asylum.

I had my revenge. It was Thing Two who had to watch on - a resentful and exasperated mother vulture who has to teach her vulture chickling how to scavenge, after finding out said chickling has grand notions of vegetarianism - as I became reacquainted with gaming and tentatively took my first steps into the world of modern RPGs (role-playing games).

It had been a long hiatus. Memories of Goldeneye on the N64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Gamecube, and earlier still Tomb Raider on the PC, came flooding back as we exchanged our respective gaming histories. Others soon emerged from the darkened folds of rememberance: Croc: Legend of the Gobbos, Burnout, Gauntlet Legends, Championship Manager, a whole host of other games on various consoles. I remembered treating myself to a copy of Forza 4 one birthday, a racing game that tapped into a latent desire to be a boy racer. I remembered playing Hover! on our Windows 95 PC. Even further back than that was Granny's Garden, on the BBC Micro off of an 8" floppy disc. Played as a kid, I was in constant terror of making a wrong move and stumbling across the wicked witch, with her terrifying soundtrack.

And then it hit me: I've always been a gamer. I'd just forgotten.

Goldeneye's pimp slap; for the gentleman gamer. 

Two things that I'd never truly conquered, however, were the sandbox environment, and the first-person shooter. As the technology developed, another source of frustration had emerged: I'd never managed to fully grasp the concept of moving through a 3D environment, where you have to control camera angles with one thumb and movement with the other. Aiming to shoot became an exercise in "spray and pray".

And so I had never felt like a trueblood gamer, particularly when I had found myself failing with simple tasks such as walking up stairs in BioShock. This was all much to the distress of Thing One, who had mastered stairwalking and quickly progressed to stealth killing very early on in his gaming career.

It was not he, however, who had to sit by watching whilst I tried to overcome these brick hurdles as I fumbled through Arkham Asylum. The initially linear storyline was a blessing in disguise, hand-holding me through the process of learning how to control Batman to do my bidding, without having to worry about which quest to do or how to navigate. (Yes, my poor sense of direction transposes to the digital world.) With Thing Two's guidance and show-and-tell method of passing the controller between us, I slowly got to grips with manipulating the camera angles, and how to fight without relying on button mashing. Okay, with a minimum of button mashing.

It was like learning to drive all over again. It was reminding me that with practice, improvement comes. And it was satisfying, oh so very satisfying. The storytelling was pulling me in (for people who have played it: that Scarecrow sequence), and I was finally playing instead of watching with envy.

And then came Fallout: New Vegas. Thing Two knew me too well, and picked his weapon with care. From the moment I was able to build my own character (an awesome lady for whom I still hold an affection), I was hooked. If Arkham Asylum was my gateway drug, it was Fallout that finally pulled me in for good.

And now. And now. There's Skyrim.

And oh what a foolhardy kill it was.

I realised the extent of my addiction when the two of us suddenly found ourselves on a bug-ridden quest that culminated in having to abandon our lovingly-crafted 30+ level character (also a kick-ass lady). We went through the full five stages of grief, at first denying that we were stuck, then cursing Bethesda for creating such poor quality games. We mourned having spent so much time (75+ hours) on something it was progressively looking like we were going to have to abandon.

Eventually, after trying everything we could think of - which included deleting previous save points before realising we were no longer able to simply reload from an earlier stage - we declared ourselves defeated. A new character was crafted. A new game approach was adopted. We learned from the mistakes of that first. And we're once again at a point where we'll be engaged in productive, worthwhile endeavours, will catch each other's eye, and whisper guiltily and furtively to each other, "Skyrim?".

This new character isn't as beloved as that first, despite the fact his considerable skill with a two-handed weapon is far superior to the stealthy bow-and-arrow-wielding character I'd initially created. The recent death of a companion was possibly a little too keenly felt (Armoured Troll, we hardly knew ye), suggesting we've not fully learnt how to emotionally detach ourselves. And an article on the pleasures of wandering through terrains and exploring made me realise that I've begun zipping between locations and quests a little too quickly, and have stopped revelling in the pure scale of the game. But despite all these things, it's just as enjoyable as the first time round. Perhaps even more so, as I'm that much more experienced. And am now find fighting dragons an exasperating experience, rather than one of terror.

A small part of me wonders if I'm wasting an unhealthy amount of time on something that is ultimately just video games. But then, these new games are increasingly crafted in a way that brings them more in-line with Hollywood blockbusters and films and, to a lesser extent, the TV series so many of us are now hooked on. For example, Skryim is slowly becoming inexorably intertwined with Game of Thrones in my mind, as I watch and read the series in parallel with playing the game; the two feel so similar in story and experience (incest and the wonderful Peter Dinklage aside). The virtual environments we find ourselves in whilst gaming are becoming more and more beautifully rendered, making it an experience of appreciation and wonder at those that have created these behemoths.

And you find yourself making dubious moral choices. The things I've done in Fallout and Skyrim are unmentionable, fodder for those who blame video games for real-world violence. But being confronted by those choices are exhilarating in and of themselves, done within a safe environment that allows you dabble in playing 'the bad guy'.

We spend untold hours on TV series, reading, films, and consuming other cultural artefacts. Video games have a legitimate place to take in amongst all that.

And so the guilt doesn't last for too long. Thing Two and I are now in a constant state of negotiation, involving whether we're allowed to play Skyrim outside of each other's company, in a mirror image of negotiations involving various TV boxsets. If I was seeking to convert, I'd urge the non-gamers out there to consider giving it a go, in much the same way as I did for comic books back in 2012. But be warned. You may find yourself being pulled in to this sordid world, and finding you have no desire to turn back.

Men are from Earth, and women are from... well, also Earth.

There's a real trend at the moment that's drawing attention to the way in which women are portrayed in fashion, in media, in advertising, and in culture. This trend states something that we've all known for a long time: unattainable depictions of beauty and body have a negative impact on women's self esteem; there's a shortage of complex female characters depicted in film (check out Olivia Wilde speaking eloquently on this topic, as well as Natalie Portman); and girls' gendered toys move them away from gaining confidence in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and maths).

I get this outrage. I support it. I want to see more realistic depictions of women in the media and in the cultural artefacts that I consume. I'm tired of seeing women take a back seat in stories in video games and films because they are written as props for the male characters. I'm tired of women having their imperfections airbrushed out (as Cindy Crawford once said, "I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford."). I'm tired of there being so few women cast in stories that they suddenly find themselves having to account for all the variations of what a woman can be. And girls should be able to play with whatever toys they wish to play with, without having notions of what it is to be female foisted on them.

But I'm also tired of the way that men are becoming increasingly sidelined in this narrative. I'm all for equality. As long as it's not in the name of inequality.

If women are impacted by unattainable images of what the perfect woman should be, how are men impacted by the numerous images of toned torsos, bulging biceps, and adverts aimed at shaming men into being 'real men' for their ladies? If women are tired of being cast as the damsel in distress in video games, films, and books, how do men feel about being cast as playing the role of the knight in shining armour, albeit under different guises? And if women are wary of their girls adopting mainly nurturing and looks-based roles during playtime, should we not be equally wary of our boys adopting mainly hyper-macho and conflict-based roles? These are questions I'm genuinely interested in hearing a discussion about, but ones that I so rarely see.

I am, of course, putting forward an over-simplified, sweeping argument. There are countless children whose play doesn't conform to gendered stereotypes; there are cultural creations that aren't founded on gendered tropes; there are (increasingly) campaigns that give us alternative depictions of what 'beauty' means. This is all great and - even if some of the campaigns are driven by marketing goals - if it means we're seeing a greater variety of different types of people (male and female, as well as transgendered) then that is not a bad thing.

I am, of course, also aware that the reason there's such a focus on women is because it's been such a battle to get to where we are, and that there is still a long way to go. I am a feminist. I passionately believe that women can't be sidelined if we are to live in a rich society, and that it is dangerous for society if they are. The many development studies focused on the positive impact of educating women and giving them agency is testament to this fact.

But I also believe that, as we raise our voices against the way women are treated and depicted in the media we consume, we can't in turn sideline the other half of the population. Do we really want men and boys - who, believe it or not, also suffer from insecurities, who also constitute a whole spectrum of interests, sensitivities, neuroses, work/life concerns, hopes, dreams, and ambitions - to feel as though their voices are of any less value than women's, purely based on their gender? Do we really want to ignore how the mainstream so often fails to depict all the different nuances of what it is to be human, regardless of (biological) sex?

I don't know what the answer is. I do know that we could go for cries of boycott against that which we don't agree with; that the media delivers what it believes will appeal to the widest demographic; that we could create our own media to more accurately reflect the huge variations that exist within the experience of what it is to be human. I know that the Internet and user-generated content does a great job of serving 'The Long Tail' of niche interests and audiences.

But I also know that the issue isn't just in the creations themselves; it's also in the way in which we discuss those creations, and choose to shape our protests. Yes, we should speak out against one-dimensional depictions of women (as Neil Gaiman said, "...people say, 'Well how do you write such good female characters?' And I go, 'Well I write people.''). But in doing so, we should also encourage a discussion of one-dimensional depictions of men. Just because there are more of them in the media, it doesn't mean that those characters are always by default any richer. So, I'm all for equality. But not at the cost of equality.

Game Over. Reload.

"Insanity is repeating the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results."as

Narcotics Anonymous

As I head dive into the vast array of spikes ahead of me, dying instantly for what feels like the hundredth time, I am reminded of the above quote. 

Go, again. Dead. Again. Dead. Again. OH! OOHHHHH!! HOLY SHIT! I TOTALLY FORGOT YOU COULD DO THAT! I'M GONNA GE... Dead.

Right. Pause. Take a deep breath. Flex the hands. And... that's it, that's IT, just a little further, just - got to get - to the bottomofthislittlebitshitshitshitnonoYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! 

Right, from here on in, it's plain sailing. Easy. All I need to do is jump - up  - this - wall, and... Dead. Fuck.

This, my friends, is the world of Super Meat Boy.

There are all sorts of video games. There's the first person shooter. The RPG. The racing game. The strategy-based, the point-and-click, turn-based. On, and on it goes. For anyone that has ever played a game that involves manoeuvring an object or character around a landscape of some description, you will no doubt recognise the above feeling of being on the edge of sanity.

It starts off calmly enough. The learning curves on these games are designed to help you become accustomed to the controls, the sensitivity of response to different keystrokes (who knew video gaming could be so racy), and the different elements of the world you're moving around. You feel comfortable. You know what you're doing. You're the master of this. The pixels glide around the screen, bending to your every will, as if through telekinesis.

And then, before you know it, you're mashing frantically at the keyboard or the controller (depending on your platform of choice), swearing, wondering where it all went so wrong, dying every couple of seconds, any semblance of control a mere memory, left frolicking back in the earlier levels where everything was rainbows, fluffy clouds, and rabbits.

I was first introduced to Super Meat Boy while watching the documentary Indie Game. And you, out there, who so calmly suggested we watch it on a nice, quiet night in. I blame you for my current predicament. 

Indie Game is a great documentary, and I heartily recommend it (it's on Netflix). As the developer behind current mobile gaming trend Flappy Bird threatens to remove his game from the app market, this documentary provides a painfully intimate peek into the world of those who create the independent games we play. 

But what possessed me to think, after watching footage such as that below, that this was a game I wanted to master? (Hit 'Play' then click into anywhere in the middle of the video timeline.)

Just to give you some sense of scale, I am currently stuck on the level that comes in at 3 minutes 10. I've had the game since New Year's Eve (2013). Whoever has recorded the game play in the above video has made it look ridiculously easy. My own game play is far closer to these boys' attempts below. (Again, hit 'Play', click into anywhere in the middle.)

And yet, despite the Narcotics Anonymous quote, this isn't quite "insanity". It's close. Infuriatingly close. But there are a few little elements that, technically at least, save me.

While it feels like I'm repeating the same mistakes over, and over, and over again, I'm not. Through trial and error, working out how far you can push the character (and how far you cannot), you incrementally build up a bank of knowledge around how to complete the level. It may feel like you're playing in a totally unhinged way. But every fresh attempt carries with it the lessons from the cumulative failures of the past. And this is where the satisfaction comes from that drives you forward to continue. While you play, you are constantly improving, constantly learning. The feedback loop is instantaneous. The 'fix' is within reach, and is totally within your hands. These are things that we don't often get to experience in 'real life'.

So, manically but uncertainly slowly but surely, you finally navigate the various obstacles. By hook, crook, or pure gut instinct combined with that cumulative knowledge, you get to wherever it is you've been aiming for. In the case of Super Meat Boy, it's that most enduring of tropes, the damsel in distress. You are safe, Bandage Girl! you think to yourself, with a smug, self-satisfied inward grin, before she gets whisked away to the next level by a foetus in a jar, who happens to have also achieved a PhD.  

It's the same in a lot of other games. Most allow you to learn by trial and error, by regenerating characters that are inevitably going to die as a result of your painfully rookie attempts to lead them through the Dantesque worlds created for them. It's infuriating. It's heartbreaking. It's a black hole of time. It's fantastic.

Apart from XCOM. Where you need to become 'Save Scum' if you don't want to suffer the heart-wrenching experience of losing your most-lovingly trained and crafted characters to the 'Memorial Wall'. Goddamn you, XCOM.

I could pontificate on the benefits of gaming, such as how a well-designed game can provide a sandbox for exploring ethics, risk-taking, societal issues, an environment for real-life training. I could mourn a lack of well-rounded female characters within many of these games; how games designers often seem to be focused on appealing to a narrow demographic of a particular type of male gamer, instead of acknowledging that there are other types of gamers;* and the debate surrounding the way that women are treated within the gaming industry.**

But, screw it. The love of Super Meat Boy's life - Bandage Girl - isn't going to save herself from Dr. Fetus. If you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to killing myself over and over and over again, staving off insanity by just... trying... to make it past... this... rotating metal... Fuck.



* One of the reasons I loved being introduced to Fallout: New Vegas was that it lets you craft the type of character you play with, meaning you can play as a totally bad-ass woman of your own making. You can choose your sex, then decide to what extent you're brainy, lucky, charismatic, got the gift of gab, strength, and so on. And there's a great supporting cast, both male and female, with a whole spectrum of characters for both sexes. Take note, GTA ;-)

** A few articles / resources of interest if you are interested in this sort of thing:
Exploration of female tropes
A look at the evolving depiction of lead men;
A review of GTA V by a female reviewer and the video response created by her colleague to a lot of male fury to her review;
'What it's like to be a woman making video games'.