Tag Archives: StarCraft II

The Avengers and New Footage Fatigue

Posted on April 10, 2012 by | 4 comments

Mild spoilers, if you’re not constantly watching for comic book movie news [like I do].
                                                                                                                                                                      

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to see The Avengers this summer. The thing is, I may as well be watching it for the second time.

Joss Whedon’s biggest directorial experience to date will hit in a little under three weeks with a running time of 155 minutes. After all of the trailers, previews, and TV spots I’ve seen I think that only leaves me about half an hour of footage to experience in the theatre for the first time.

Seriously, though, today I found out that Maria Hill and Nick Fury will have an argument of some sort. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be about, but I know that it will happen because of an interview Cobie Smulders [playing Hill] did with David Letterman. I also know that Captain America will tell the Gamma-Powered Goliath to smash something. At some point in the film I know that Black Widow will soundly thrash a general and his cronies, because a 43-second clip was released by Marvel.

I don’t mind that Marvel has been advertising this film with everything from Dr. Pepper to Wyndham Hotels. Pixar’s Cars made something like $462 million in the box office, which isn’t bad. What’s even better, though, is the $5 billion they made in merchandise. Movie tie-ins that include toys and such are not at all what worry me. What worries me is knowing too much about the movie before I see it on the big screen.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was what the summer of 2010 held for me, and while waiting for in the ’09-10 academic year I spent a great deal of my free time trying to find out more about the game. In the process I became privy to information on seven or eight missions. That’s about a third of the game. Not only that, but I also perused a site that had posted unit models, robbing myself of experiencing them in the game first-hand.

We live in a world where information is at our fingertips, and leaks and spoilers of any kind can be found within seconds. At this point in time I have no idea what the image on the right is of, only that they are part of Loki’s army and the primary antagonists in The Avengers. I don’t want to know what they are until I see the movie, and it’s getting harder and harder to when I daily visit sites such as ComicBookMovie.com, ComicsAlliance, and io9 [the latter even has a daily feature called Early Morning Spoilers].

From this point on I refuse to watch another TV spot for The Avengers. There’s only so many seconds of new footage they can cram in there before I’ve seen more of the movie than I wanted to. I’m going to see if I can hold out until May 4, and I hope that when I finally see it in theatres I’ll be able to enjoy every second of those 155 minutes like I’m watching them for the first time.

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Posted in advertisement, advertising, comics, film, media, television, video games

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Guilt in The Congo and the Koprulu Sector

Posted on August 11, 2011 by | 2 comments

Fairly spoilery.
                                                                                                                                                                      

No matter the medium, there have always been dominant themes in literature. Whether it be the theme of adulthood in About a Boy or the exploration of childhood in Calvin and Hobbes, writers have long voiced their opinions in their work, stating their viewpoints on universal experience. This can clearly be seen in the real time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and the novel The Poisonwood Bible. Though [literally] worlds apart in format and subject matter,  the two are bound together beneath the overarching theme of guilt.

Wings of Liberty‘s Jim Raynor is a man haunted by the ghosts of his past. The sector’s current tyrant, Emperor Mengsk, rules with an iron fist and sits proudly upon his throne due to the former-marshal’s aid in the first war. This despot betrayed Raynor’s love, Sarah Kerrigan, by ordering her to place a device on the capital planet which would lure in the voracious Zerg like moths to a flame, and then abandoning her to them. The Zerg would later transform Kerrigan into a creature known far and wide as the Queen of Blades, a malicious killing machine who would later terrorize the sector and kill Raynor’s closest Protoss ally and friend.

Four years later Raynor is taking steps to topple the government he helped establish. His band of rebels is working to right the wrong that is the Terran Dominion, but even in spite of this the loss of Kerrigan and his guilt over her abandonment remain. These feelings are exacerbated when his old friend Tychus Findlay walks back into his life. Years earlier Tychus took the blame for both of them and was incarcerated for nine years. His reappearance in Raynor’s life brings back countless memories of the good ol’ days, and Raynor is forced to constantly defend his friend against the suspicions and accusations of his crew.

As victories accumulate an opportunity arises, a chance to reclaim the Queen of Blades and restore Sarah Kerrigan to her former self arises. However, the source of the offer is Mengsk’s son, bringing him dangerously close to the man he wants dead. The gripping conclusion of the first chapter of the StarCraft II trilogy involves Raynor having to choose between two regrets, two immense sources of guilt, and his decision holds the fate of their world in its hands.

The Poisonwood Bible is the story of the Prices, a Baptist family who moves from Georgia to the unfamiliar wilds of the Congo. Narrated by the five women of the family, the tale is seen and told through the eyes of Orleanna, wife of preacher Nathan Price, and their daughters, Rachel, the eldest, Leah and Adah, the diametric twins, and Ruth May, the youngest. Originally planning on only staying for a year, their missionary tenure in the village of Kilanga is set awry by political upsets, many of which are caused by their own government.

The Prices do not adjust well to life in Africa, and the strain of life in an unfamiliar land is evident in their interactions with one another. While guilt is not present in their lives from the get-go, things take a sharp downhill turn once Nathan Price begins to force Christianity upon the villagers in a manner which borders on antagonistic. Their lives are placed in danger when political unrest begins to encroach on the borders of their existence in Kilanga and natural disasters such as a drought and the resulting famine cause many of them to wish they had never travelled to the Congo in the first place. Guilt’s immense weight finally falls, however, at the death of one of the Price daughters. None of the narrators are exempt from this event, and all are bowed beneath its burden as they move on with their lives, never quite leaving the past behind them.

The second wave of guilt is felt only by some, and it directly involves the once-hopeful nation of the Congo. America’s desire for cheap diamonds and cobalt leads to a scheme that will put the leader they want in charge of the country, a plan which will overthrow the newly-elected Patrice Lumumba, voice of the Congolese. Western guilt lies leaden on the shoulders of most (but not all) of the Price women, the actions of the Belgians in the colonial era and the actions of their own American countrymen in the post-colonial. Lives and hopes lost at the hands of their Western brethren force them to reconsider who they are as people, and to try their best to come to some sort of reconciliation.

Jim Raynor and Orleanna Price both have lines which, while appearing simple on the surface, speak volumes about who they are and what they’ve done with their lives. Facing his final decision Raynor says, “We are who we choose to be,” a line almost stupidly simple at first glance. In it, however, these seven words manage to encompass his decision to turn away from a life of crime to become a marshal, and then a rebel freedom fighter, a path Tychus looks upon scornfully. These words contain within them his choice to set aside revenge for closure, to save lives instead of sit back, and, finally, his decision to choose between what appears just and what could be redemption.

Orleanna, in the first few pages of the book, tells the reader, “One has only a life of one’s own.” This straightforward statement means more and more as the narrative progresses, yet from the beginning it reveals that she does not really feel needed or loved, and thus has only herself as company. As the novel goes on Orleanna makes her own pivotal decision, one that directly affects her remaining daughters and their lives to come. Opting to set aside her weak-willed self and to put on strength and intensity, she becomes a woman motivated by the eventual safety of what family she has left.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and The Poisonwood Bible both feature protagonists who are riddled with guilt and yet seek freedom from it, who are forced to face it and move on, and who make their largest decisions in the midst of disaster, panic, and betrayal. Both have lived lives full of regrets, yet firmly choose to make one less mistake, for the sake of others and not for themselves.

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. New York: Harper Flamingo, 1998. Print.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. V 1.0.1.16195. 31 July 2010. Blizzard Entertainment. 31 July 2010.

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“Rape”

Posted on June 30, 2011 by | 13 comments

Three days ago a very close friend of mine and I were watching the StarCraft II podcast The State of the Game, an episode of which was specifically discussing foul language and the professional gaming scene.1 I turned to him and casually asked him what his stance on the subject was, a question which began a debate that lasted the better part of an hour.

This post is very difficult for me to write. I face the challenge of having to fairly represent our respective opinions, and I worry I will portray our separate viewpoints with a bias of some sort. In spite of this, I will try to press on and do my best.

Our discussion was, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, on the usage of the word “rape,” specifically in the context of the gaming community. To those perhaps unfamiliar with the terminology, the second entry on Urban Dictionary reads: “To utterly defeat another person in any form of competitive activies [sic].”2  An example of it being used would be someone saying to his friends, in the aftermath of a victorious Halo match, “We just raped those guys.”

My standpoint being that the word shouldn’t be used in this manner, my first point was one that INcontroL3 (Geoff Robinson) made, that its usage is harmful to e-sports in that it lowers the community in the eyes of others. My friend’s response [hereafter referred to as T] was that the context needs to be taken into account; if the word is being used in a setting where everyone fully understands the meaning behind the word [i.e. a StarCraft II stream] then there shouldn’t be any problem.

Outside of that specific context, T pointed out that language is an ever-changing thing, a sentiment I couldn’t, and can’t, disagree with. We give words both meaning and connotation, therefore it is fully within our power to change the words if we’d like. He went so far as to say that the word “rape” has already changed, fully appropriated by the gaming community. My argument was that although this may be the case, this change certainly didn’t need to occur. I wanted to address this trend in popular culture, the inclination to forever push our boundaries [moral and otherwise], but that would have been off topic and is for another time.

Similar to that point, however, I stressed that the word was chosen for a reason. A counterpoint to what he said about “rape” losing its meaning, I brought up the fact that it has such strength about it. It’s a loaded word, and was chosen for its level of offensiveness. Just because you’re no longer stating that you are going to sexually attack another person doesn’t erase the original sentiment behind the word choice.

Lastly, and what many of you may have been thinking while reading this, is that the word “rape” has such potential to offend. Those who have been or personally know rape victims may be very hurt by hearing the word thrown around so casually. A point against hypersensitivity was then made by T: we use much more violent terms such as “kill” and “murder” in regards to video games, so why is there never any outcry made concerning those who have had friends or family murdered?

Furthermore, there is a case to be made for discernment. T placed a lot of emphasis on the ability of the average person to know what the context behind the word is. If someone involved in a contest of any kind [be it video games or basketball] uses the word “rape” and directs it at their opponent then it is immediately assumed that they don’t mean the actual definition of the word. When I once again brought up those who were offended we were brought full circle to his point about the evolution of language.

T reminded me that language is in a state of continual development, and at the very least we are in a transitional period. I argued back that if this transition is going to offend and hurt others, then it would be better if it didn’t happen.  There is also the matter of those same people being hurt and offended even after the transition has fully taken place.

After all was said and done we agreed on a few points, yet it was apparent that on others we would remain divided. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary4, the Latin word “rapere” simply mean to “seize, carry off by force, abduct”;  it wasn’t until the 15th century that the more sexual aspects of the word began to be used. It may be that a few years down the line the word “rape” is thrown around as casually as “beat.” My stance, however, was never that words can change their meaning, but that sometimes they shouldn’t have to.


1. Source: http://blip.tv/sotg/starcraft-2-state-of-the-game-ep41-5229247 [starts again {was discussed earlier} at around 1:50:50]

2. Source: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rape

3. If you really want to know who this guy is: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/INcontroL

4. Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=rape&searchmode=none

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Posted in language, video games

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