Hello everyone!
This month has been dominated by one thing in particular – marking. When the semester is over, what tends to happen is at least one assessment from each module arrives at the same time. Instead of looking at relaxing downtime after the stressful last weeks of assessment submission we get to look at the unrelaxing uptime of having to mark hundreds of units of assessment within a tight timeframe. And then do all the paperwork that delivers that marking safely to the assessment committees. For my part, I had four modules that I was leading and that totalled about 400 individual pieces of coursework that needed marked, commented and returned to students. It essentially turns whole days into a kind of assembly line task work. I wish I could just give people the same kind of marks as they use in progressive schools. Just stamp down a dolphin and have done with it.
Anyway.
As you might imagine, since this dominated my time during the month it hasn’t left a lot of time for reflection on the depth year. That said, I do have some things I’d like to talk about – not having anything to say would be a poor reason to not say anything. I didn’t become a lecturer to not talk endlessly about stuff I don’t understand.
One theme then of this month has been endings. Game of Thrones, which I spoke about in the Patreon newsletter, is one example of that. Watching my way through the end of 30 Rock was another. Game endings another still, and I’ll talk about that in a bit. One ending that stung a little though was I was kicked out of the Amazon Vine program after ten years.
For those that don’t know, Amazon Vine is an invite-only program where select reviewers are sent free stuff for review (tax payable in the US). No requirements or obligations are put on reviewers other than to review fairly or accurately – supposedly. I cannot complain about my time with Vine – I have had a truly ridiculous number of things from the program. Everything from board games and books to expensive camcorders and electric scooters. I’ve been much less active on Vine of late because of the depth year, but I couldn’t get any indication at all from the people behind the mysterious emails as to why I had been cut from it. I have gone longer doing less than I have of late. I’ve had larger stacks of unwritten reviews in the past. The only thing really that seems to have changed is that a larger proportion of my reviews recently have been negative. I asked directly if It was being removed for that reason and was told they wouldn’t say and wouldn’t engage further in discussion. So let’s say ‘yes’. If I wasn’t already painfully aware how unreliable Amazon reviews were, I certainly would be very suspicious now.
I have a largely abandoned email account where I regularly receive offers of cash for five-star reviews. I have, of course, never accepted any of these offers. There are plenty that do. Whenever anyone denies the possibility of cash exchanging hands for reviews in any endeavour, board games included, either people have no idea what’s going on or reason to try and pretend they don’t. I know the issue of ethics and game reviewing has been roiling on Twitter for a while and everyone is tired of it. Sorry, but you should expect another post from me on the topic this month. I’d like to formalise all the various things I’ve said into an explicit code of conduct that I’m going to prominently link on the site, and to go along with that I’ll provide an comprehensive bibliography for my sources. There are plenty of them out there.
I promise, after this, I’ll shut up about it for a good long time.
One of the things I was hoping to do with this Depth Year was make a dent in my various entertainment todo lists. In that spirit I worked my way through Super Mario Odysey and got to the end. Completed it. Beat Bowser and (amusingly) didn’t get the girl. Done, can put it down. Move on to the next thing.
But there’s a weird element of games now in that finishing the game is kind of considered the preamble to the real game which is chasing achievements, collectibles and the secret final endings that are attached to the same. Having sent Bowser packing, Cappy my magic hat (it’s a weird game) tells me ‘Oh boy glad that’s done but we’ve still got lots of adventures left!’.
Sorry buddy, but no we don’t.
I know many of these games are aimed at children who genuinely do have more time than they know what to do with, but I honestly find this kind of expectation to be very off-putting. I don’t aim for 100%s in games. I don’t do all the optional challenges. I want to experience a reasonable sense of catharsis and move on. So many games, even single-player experiences, seem to want to become your lifestyle. Occasionally I am tempted by a particularly well designed game (like Celeste) but it seems like a bad choice to go for ‘Idly puttering around’ over ‘Experiencing something new and different’. There are definitely games I’ve played and then longed for DLC but I just cannot get on board with this idea of expected completionism . I spent more time in Grand Theft Auto Vice City driving around with the radio on than I did trying to 100% the game. I just don’t care in the end whether my recreation time has a ‘fully completed’ checkmark beside its entries, y’know?
Part of it though feels vaguely insulting – that to bail out at the end of a game is a sign of weakness. That the content in the game is structured in such a way that I never got to see all of it unless I jump through arbitrary hoops. I’m told the epilogue of Celeste has some of the best level design in the whole game but in order to unlock it you need to achieve a larger number of optional challenges than I’m prepared to do. It’s an inaccessibility – not just of expectation of time but also expectation of willingness. Why do games have such a difficult time saying goodbye to their players?
I’m not opposed to ‘post ending’ content, but rather the framing of it. I play games to the end so they are psychologically ‘finished’, and having a talking hat tell me I’m not finished just feels manipulative. Sorry Cappy, I’m just not that into you. I passably enjoyed our time together but you want a greater commitment than I can offer you. Even in a depth year, time needs to be very effectively rationed and not spent on trivial accomplishment that has become a chore rather than challenge.
Speaking of triviality, I mentioned in our roundup newsletter than our Top Ten Board Game Apps post did incredibly well in terms of traffic, and that’s true. Even before it hit Reddit it was massively outpacing our average hits, even taking into account the fact it was split over four separate pages. I have conflicted feelings about this.
One thing I think Meeple Like Us does well is meaning. Sure, we have our quirky reviews and editorials but there is a very large portion of the site that carries with it a weight of serious value. Our accessibility teardowns are comprehensive, unique, and I think valuable to many of the people that come to the site. Insofar as I can assign a value to our own output, I think these are meritorious documents. They take a lot of time, consideration, and expertise to put together. I write and publish a lot of academic papers, and review more still. I know what I’m talking about what I describe these as ‘academic grade’ analyses. With more formal referencing and a transplant into a LaTEX template I think each would make a strong candidate for a publishable paper were there a venue that would accept such a reliable stream of content on the same topic.
It stings a little then that a Top Ten article which didn’t require any of that almost instantly became the third most successful post on the site. Number one and two? Our top tens for 2018 and 2017 respectively.
Now, I don’t want to claim that board games should be Serious Business. After all, they’re supposed to be fun and a Top Ten is more fun and relevant to most of our readers. They’re also unabashedly positive. Our teardowns pretty much guarantee that we are undoubtedly the most critical game reviewers out there – even games we love come in for hefty negative coverage when we address their accessibility. A game not being on a top ten list isn’t the same thing as it getting a boot in its teardowns. As such they’re less contentious, and the arguments that spring up about them tend to be more light-hearted. The make the stakes low and the conversation easy. I get that. I like a top ten myself, especially one I can get pleasantly worked up about.
But man, I work hard on the teardowns and it’s disheartening to know that if I turned the site over to trivial observations on gaming it would end up giving the the site a rocket boostin popularity. It’s not going to change anything – this site has a focus on an important topic – but it does mean I’m going to bend a little and embrace more triviality in our output. If someone new stumbles accidentally into our core mission content from a top ten, it’s worth it. I just wish it didn’t have to be so, but you can’t fight City Hall. City Hall being human nature. Maybe though it’s a good thing? Our reviews tend to be quite whimsical (I think) but even there they tend to focus more on analysis and dissection than jokes. I mean, there are jokes there (honestly) but if you sieved it out they’d be a much smaller feature than serious consideration of game systems. Perhaps a little triviality here and there is needed to help the medicine go down? Let me know what you think.
As you know, I like to maintain a list here of the things that caught my attention during the month to see what survives a length period of cautious detachment. This month there are quite a few.
I absolutely love the book World War Z. It’s the best apocalypse book I have ever read, and I was disappointed by the movie adaptation that turned a powerful sociological tale of systematic failure into a personality driven zombie flick of indeterminable merit. Well, a game has been released which is basically a souped up version of the excellent Left 4 Dead and it’s based on that movie. I’m quite keen to give it a go.
Observation, from No Code, is their newest game since the haunting ‘Stranger Things’ esque Stories Untold. I loved Stories Untold – creepy and weird and narratively inventive, and I’m sure I will also enjoy Observation. This is one I expect to remain in the forefront of my enthusiasm.
I saw a trailer for a show called The Terror. It focuses on an ill-fated British trip to the arctic to find the Northern passage, and how it went horribly, disastrously wrong. It looks fantastic, but let’s see if I care at all come the new year. Similarly Red Sparrow looked fascinating – a story of Russian sexpionage. Reviews aren’t particularly good but I’m still interested to check it out. I suspect Jennifer Lawrence is enough to make this worth watching given how she elevated the Hunger Games from ‘basically okay Battle Royale clone’ to ‘some of my favourite movies ever’.
Some of you undoubtedly know that I absolutely loved the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by Cixin Liu. It’s made up of the Three Body Problem, The Dark Forest and Death’s End and these are some of the best hard sci-fi books I’ve ever read. Not perfect, quite problematic in places, but full of a wonderful inventiveness that gives a reason to look past their flaws. Well… Cixin Liu also wrote a novella called ‘The Wandering Earth’ in 2000. I haven’t read it, because Depth Year. Netflix have made a movie out of it though and I am fascinated to see how they manage to bring Liu’s vision to the screen.
Also, Avengers Endgame but Mrs Meeple is so far behind in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we probably won’t be in a position to watch it until 2020 anyway. The modern trend for movie franchises like this to come with homework is one that I won’t weep to see disappear.
In terms of my existing list of things I want to check out…
I’m still interested in Bonding but less so now that the effect of the titillating advertising has worn off. I’d still like to check out Baba is You and the Return of the Obra Dinn but I’d honestly forgotten about both until I checked back at last month’s post. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has dropped entirely off my wishlist – I think I got the gist from the followup Eurogamer video that they made and you know what? I’m good.
Good Omens is one that stings at the moment – I’m sure you all know how much I adore the work of Terry Pratchett. People are talking about it all over my social media feeds and we wants it, precioussss. It will keep though. I always have the book if I want to get this desire out of my system.
Captain Marvel and Into the Spiderverse remain high on my wishlist. Derry Girls has slipped off entirely and honestly I don’t really care about Bird Box at all any more. Sex Education will stay on the wishlist. As I said before, having Gillian Anderson as a sex ed teacher is basically what would happen if someone reached into my teenage brain and wrote a TV series based on what they found within.
As usual, the Patreon newsletter has more details on what I did, read and watched so check that out too! In the meantime, thank you so much again for your support and I hope you’re enjoying these glimpses into my occasionally troublesome psyche!