Why SWTOR isn't dead (to me)June 9, 2012 by

Star Wars The Old Republic is dead.

At least that's what the millions of MMORPG faithful are saying. Even the critics who've seen this all happen before are crooning to the tune of the MMO's death knell.

With The Old Republic bleeding subscribers at an alarming rate, it's difficult to argue otherwise. However, for the sake of this post I'll damn well do my best.

You see, I believe there is a much deeper problem that exists. One that threatens all new IPs that are attempting to break into the subscription based market. It's an issue that exists among the player base, and one which I doubt I will ever truly understand. That is, the need to grind to the end game as quickly and effectively as possible.

Let's face it, the majority of people who play MMOs, play for one reason. They want to grind through the content until they hit the level cap and then grind as much new loot as they can from the end game raids, dungeons and PVP matches.

SWTOR may play similar to it's competitors, but it tells a better developed story.

The grind, of course, is an important part of any MMO. However, it increasingly seems to be the only thing that matters any more. No one cares about the quests they are doing so long as they get the next tier of armor they've been hunting.

The Old Republic certainly sticks to this model, with undeniably less success than it's rivals. Yet, unlike the predecessors from which it took ample inspiration, The Old Republic tried to do something new, something insanely ambitious. It tried to tell a story worth experiencing, and, at least in this player's mind, it succeeded.

I have been playing The Old Republic since January of this year. In that time I have played at my leisure, leveling one character and one character only. My Mercenary is now level 44. Yes you read that correctly. Over the course of more than five months my only character has, as of yet, to even reach the level cap.

Why is that? It's because I'm taking my time to enjoy the damn game. I don't care about grinding to level 50 or going after the best loot. So long as I'm proficiently leveled to continue my class story and side quests, I'm happy to enjoy where Bioware's writing decides to take me.

Voss has some of SWTOR coolest story content. Enjoy the game for what it is.

Having put more than 120+ hours into my Mercenary, I'm happy to play until his story arc is finished, and here comes the truly remarkable part. When I've finished the class story, I have no intention of grinding the end game. Instead, I intend to create another of the eight available classes so I can experience a whole new story.

By the time I've played through every class, I expect to have sunk more than 1000 hours into The Old Republic, long before I reach the end game. By then, I would assume Bioware will have created something to keep people occupied at the end game. If not, then my time with the game will come to an end, and I will leave well satisfied.

Now I know there will undoubtedly be many out there who will just say that I don't understand MMOs. I don't deny that I'm in the minority of the player base. The end game is where MMOs really begin, as most would say. I say differently. Screw the end game. Why not just take the time to enjoy the story that took you there?

Submit Blog
Video games as art: An interview with the Master Games StudioMay 8, 2012 by

In the eyes of many, video games represent little more than interactive entertainment. They are rarely viewed as more than technological advances in play. After all, where is the artistry to be found in a simulation of violence, puzzles or platforming?

The University of Utah made the news back in March thanks to the development of a new controller that provided a unique form of feedback—thumb movement.

With so much effort at the University of Utah's Master Games Studio being put into forward thinking ideas about what video games are and how we interact with them, they have an interesting perspective on the artistry behind video game development.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with four of the minds behind the University of Utah's Master Games Studio to talk about what art is, how it’s evolving, and where video games fit into it all.


The definition of art has been written and re-written as new media becomes available. As you would define it today, what is art?

Craig Caldwell: That’s a tough one, because [pause]

Sometimes art is defined as a very individualistic point of view, and we look at it more as “how does the audience interact with it.”

I’m not quite there yet.

There are elements that are used—all the art elements, very artistic—but there are specific games that fall into that genre. Parts of the color and the shape and the texture all use those elements, but sometimes it just becomes too personalized when you focus on art. So, we tend to focus more on games, the audience, how people build those games. So I think that we’re still in transition in that area.

Robert Kessler: [waves his hand] Don’t ask me. I mean honestly, I’m an engineer. I’m a problem solving kind of guy.

Caldwell: [laughs]

That is an interesting aspect of it though. Many people criticize the idea of games as art because it is a very technical medium as opposed to something like painting or poetry.

Kessler: Yeah but, I think if you look into things like painting and poetry, they all have very technical elements to it. It’s just that the person on the outside doesn’t think about that. I mean they have a very set process that they go through. They have all kinds of elements that you would consider as an engineer, solving problems. It’s just a different way of looking at the same problem.

Roger Altizer: I think that there are no real core definitions of art, because what’s considered art [pauses]

There are really two ways to look at art. One way is political. There’s this thing we call art and it’s highly valued and put in museums, protected and colleges are built around it. That’s largely a political definition; it’s a community definition. The community says, “This thing counts as art.” And that varies from country to country, so you end up with ideas of eastern art and western art.

However, I think in a general sense you can think of art as humanity’s efforts to express that which is inside. Taking ideas that are inside and making them public. I like that definition because I think you contrast that against design, which is taking things that are outside and organizing them in a way that makes sense inside. So if you want to take something like fine art, like a painter, they have some sort of thing that they want to express and get out to the world. While a graphic designer is trying to take an idea that’s out in the world and make sense of it for a larger public.

So based on that definition, would you consider video games art as they exist today?

Altizer: I think that there is both art and design. Just like you have some paintings that are clearly intended to be art and some paintings that are clearly intended to sell Fords. You also have video games that are clearly being put out there as works of art. People are making an effort to say “I have a cultural critique or an idea I want to express as art” and the video game is that.

I think there are some game designers out there who are pretty blunt in the fact that they are just trying to make something they want to design that’s entertaining. So that brings up two points. Is it the intentions of the artists that matters, or is it about the appreciation of the community?

That’s why I like those two kinds of debates. A lot of gamers would say, “All games are art, there’s just some good art and some bad art.” And then some designers, or game makers would say “It depends on if I intend it to be art or not.” So I guess it really all depends on who you’re asking. On either definition, Roger Ebert is wrong; games are art for sure.

Ebert is one of the people who have openly critiqued the idea of games as an art form. His whole argument is based on the fact that games have “rules, points, an objective, and an outcome,” and so by their very definition he stated that such things disqualify them from ever being considered art.

Altizer: You know, I think he’s got a couple of problems, one of them just being that he doesn’t play games. Games have this sense of [pauses]

Sure there’s a sense of finality for some games; there is an end point, but there are plenty of games that never end. Take Sim City for example. There are modern games like Facebook games that never end—like Farmville. But going all the way back to Sim City. Sim City is a game that never ends. It ends when you’re bored of playing it. It has no concrete goals. Later iterations of Sim City did. Save the townspeople, defend against a hurricane, things like that, but the very first version of Sim City had no concrete goals. It was just a play-box. It had rules, and the player made up their own goals as they went. And so in that sense Sim City is a great example of just interactive art. It’s visually pleasing, it’s got interesting things to look at, to listen to, to touch, but you bring to it what you want. Sim City was designed around this idea of emergent gameplay, and the user brings forward the rules they want.

Sim City Classic was all about the freedom to build whatever type of city you wanted.

Say for example, I’m going to make a city where all of the factories are on one side of the map and all the houses are on the other, because I want a beautiful town where all of the houses aren’t near the factory. The game isn’t requiring me to do that, I’m choosing to do that. I’m making my own way of interacting with it. And so I think in that sense art can kind of inspire creativity, and so can games. In the way that art can bring forward dreams, speak to you and inspire you [with] the things that are already inside of you and make you do interesting things with that information, so can games.

Kessler: One of the things that’s important about games is it’s about the experience. It’s also the case that the experience is important when you’re viewing art. It’s the feelings that you’re getting out of whatever kind of art it is that you’re looking at. Of course you can get that experience in a lot of other forms. You can go see a movie. That’s an experience, what  you’re getting out of what you’re being shown. And some of them [art forms] are interactive and some of them aren’t. There’s interactive art too. There’s not just video games.

Caldwell: That brings up a really good question. Because when somebody says art—when somebody asks me if movies are art--my definition today would be no. Because art sometimes, for me, tends to get put on a pedestal. I want an experience I can relate to, and sometimes there are movies that would not be classified as art, but I have a wonderful experience with them. So sometimes art is removed and I tend to lean away from that experience.

Which definition of art applies to games in your opinion? The community's definition of acceptance, or the critics idea of detachment as you just mentioned? Who's to say that Ebert is wrong?

Altizer: Based on the community definition of art, here is why Roger Ebert is wrong.

The Smithsonian is opening up an exhibit on the arts in games and Sundance has games. So from the indie scene all the way up to the most formal museum in the country, they’re all exhibiting games now. So when the artists start saying games are art—they're art.

At what point then, do you believe games will be able to be appreciated by general public as a form of artistry?

Caldwell: I heard the greatest quote over the weekend. Donald Mustard over at Chair Entertainment said that “the real difference will be when the president of the United States grew up playing Mario Brothers, that’s when we know we’ve made that transition.”

Altizer: [laughs]

Video games are a very unique medium due to the fact that they are, by their very nature, interactive experiences. In what way does that change how they are viewed as an art form?

Altizer: Yes, technically games are more interactive, but I think [it's the same] if you look at toys and stories and paintings. People have taken those things and played with them for forever. When you grew up playing cowboys and Indians as a child, those were riffs off of stories that you had heard. You didn’t invent the cowboy; you didn’t invent the Indian, right? So you’d heard some sort of story involving those and then you played with them. So yes you play with games directly, but I would argue that in most all art media.

Roy Lichtenstein's take on the Mona Lisa is an example of art at play.

I mean look at all the riffing on the Mona Lisa for example. The painting’s been used [in unique ways] the most of any painting in the world. That’s play. People are playing with that piece of art that’s been around for hundreds of years. So we just allow that kind of direct interaction. And we own that, I think, in a deeper sense than other art forms do. We bring rules to imagination to allow for a deeper sense of play.

Caldwell: It’s a collaborative form. Generally, the author or the artist tends to create something and you have a passive viewer that may interact with it at a lower level. But here you’ve got the audience actually in partnership with the author, completing that experience. So that changes the nature of it, because of how participatory the audience is with that.

Game developers are often forced to fulfill certain criteria set forth by whatever publisher is paying to have the game made. In what ways do you feel that affects the development of video games as an art form?

Kessler: Do you consider what Michelangelo did in the top of the Sistine Chapel to be art? He certainly had constraints. He had a certain amount of surface area that he had to cover. He had a certain amount of time in which he had to do it.

Corrine Lewis: And he was directly funded by the Popes.

Altizer: [laughs] Yeah, the subject matter was dictated by the popes.

Kessler: So, those were the same kinds of constraints. Sure, ours are different, certainly budgetary. I mean, there are all kinds of restraints that were placed on that. So there can be some kinds of art where a person feels, “Oh, I’m going to go do a painting, or I’m going to go build this sculpture or whatever because I want to do it and just do whatever I’m going to do,” but there’s also those constraints.

Lewis: Yeah, you look at Van Gogh who had absolutely no one telling him what to paint, and as a matter of fact he would actually fly in the face of how everyone was painting at the time. But you put that up against David or Michelangelo’s other sculptures, are they no less art? I think good artists actually thrive under tight constraints.

Caldwell: Yes, there are often art assignments given with specific constraints because that gives you something to push and pull against and make you stronger. A lot of people say, “don’t give me open everything. I need something to work with.”

Altizer: I would also add that, while that is true of commercial games, there are plenty of games that aren’t commercial.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG is a game that will never find a publisher, but it's developer had no constraints and has certainly suffered and benefited greatly for his art.

Super Columbine Massacre RPG will never find a publisher, yet it still exists as a work of creativity.

There are also political games. There’s a border crossing video game that’s very offensive. It will never get a publisher, but it’s someone with a political message that wants to get it out there. So there are people on all parts of the spectrum, from your far left to your far right. They’re making experimental and independent games that clearly aren’t under the thumbs of Ubisoft or EA. Those types of games are still getting out there. They are never going to be in Gamestop, but we’re seeing more commercialization of independent games through services like Steam.

Technology for game development is increasing at a dramatic rate. Games such as L.A. Noire feature new facial video capture that allows games to portray, not just an actor’s voice, but their entire physical performance. In what ways do you see these new trends affecting video games as an art form?

Altizer: I think right now, we’re in the Renaissance of games. Just as in the Renaissance people were mastering perspective and materials, and things like that in painting, I think we’re doing that with technology. So just like in the Renaissance, there was a big push towards realism, we have a big push towards realism.

However, you’re starting to see the hints of push back against that. I think that in the very near future you’re going to see games that represent what the designers want to have, versus what they think the technology can do. L.A. Noire is a perfect example of a push towards realism—a technique that allows you to do realism, but then the step after that with that technology is pure imagination. What can we do that will give us something purely abstract? Just like painting today isn’t about realism while painting in the past was, games today are still about realism, but we’re quickly moving past that.

What are some examples of that more abstract form of design?

Lewis: Tiny Tower. It’s a complete throwback to 8-bit stuff. It’s a hugely popular game and it’s like the developers are just playing with the medium now. They’re finally, actually starting to do different things. It’s the exact opposite of realism. Because, you know, they look like 8-bit characters.

Tiny Tower, with its retro 8-bit style represents a step toward a more abstract view of gaming.

Altizer: But I think that’s just throwback.

Lewis: Yeah but it’s like they’re not trying to get more real. It’s a nostalgia for the original, the way games were when they couldn’t be real, when they couldn’t even attempt to look real.

What about the future of realism? What examples are there of it failing, or beginning to be replaced by more nuanced forms of abstract art?

Kessler: That thing we saw up at Sundance. The news thing. With that head mounted display.

Nonny de la Peña's head mounted display is an attempt to develop virtual realism for reporting.

Altizer: Oh yeah, for sure.

Kessler: I mean, that was a case where they were trying to do something that was real but they couldn’t and it distracted from it.

Altizer: Yeah, I think it was a failure because of that. Well I don’t think it was a failure, but I think it failed to…

Kessler: [interrupts] It wasn’t really a game though.

Lewis: Well that’s kind of why we have the term “uncanny valley,” right? I mean, because we haven’t gotten there we’re still kind of creeped out by that you know?

Where then, do you see the future of video games going? Both as an art form and as an interactive medium? Is abstract art really the future?

Caldwell: The future for games is the interactive part. We may still call ourselves interactive entertainment in 10 years, but the way the game element—what they call gamification—ends up showing up in different things, is going to continue. The web right now is a very quantifiable medium. There’s lots of information, a quantity of information, but it’s going to turn into a much more quality experience in the next 10 or 20 years. There won’t be that clear demarcation going on that we’re going through with television and computers. They’re all merging, and in five years you won’t buy them separately.

Altizer: You know who does it best with the abstract games? The Japanese.

They’ve been doing it for forever with games like Patapon and Katamari Damacy. If you look at the things that Q-Games is doing. It's a western developer but it’s based in Kyoto, so they have the freedom to do really abstract works. All of Q-Games work—Pixel Junk Eden, Pixel Junk Shooter— it's all very abstract. It’s designed to communicate something, but when you look at their spaceship, it doesn’t look like a spaceship. I think Pixel Junk Eden is a perfect example. It’s nothing but plants and light, and the plants don’t even look like plants, but it’s a beautiful thing.

The beauty of Pixel Junk Eden's art is an example of the game industry's more abstract experimentation.

The question about video games and art stems from the debate about video games and art. To be honest, I think that debate’s over.

There are some people today who will ask, “What is the value of art?” It’s important to have those questions still, but that debate is over. We have colleges of fine arts, museums everywhere, and people want to grow up to be something called an artist. Games did six times as much business in Utah as film last year. So this is a massive industry. So from a commercial aspect, and now from a cultural aspect, it’s become so ubiquitous that the only people who are still asking this are people like Roger Ebert who are at the tail end of their careers, and simply aren’t aware of what’s happening in contemporary media.

Thank you for your time.

Altizer: No problem.


Craig Caldwell is a USTAR professor working with the Digital Media Cluster at the University of Utah. Caldwell has a Ph.D. in Philosophy as well as a Master of Fine Arts. He is a 3D technology specialist with experience at Walt Disney Feature Animation and Electronic Arts Tiburon Studio. He has made presentations at conferences such as SIGGRAPH, View Conference and Mundos Digitales. He is currently the Director of the Arts Track at the University of Utah's Master Games Studio, with a focus on story development.

Robert Kessler is the Executive Director of Entertainment Arts & Engineering Department at the University of Utah. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, and his publication, "Strengthening the Case for Pair Programming," was selected from among 1200 entries for admission among IEEE's top 30 papers in the last 25 years. He holds numerous teaching awards, and has experience in interactive entertainment, computer science technology, and film.

Roger Altizer is the Director of Game Design and Production at the University of Utah's Master Games Studio. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Utah, and has worked in a variety of positions in the video game industry. From testing on the original Xbox, to pursuing video game journalism for New York Times owned About.com, Altizer has seen his fair share of the industry. He is currently working with a grant project exploring the use of video games and virtual worlds on pain management.

Corrinne Lewis is a professor in the University of Utah's Entertainment Arts & Engineering Department. She teaches Intro to Video Games Studies, and works directly with a number of students and faculty at The Master Games Studio.

Submit Blog
Dastardly Haberdasher's 10 Best Star Wars NovelsMay 4, 2012 by

May the 4th be with you!



"Read something more worthwhile," they say.



Stories about kickass bounty hunter adventures. What's not to love?


9.) The Dark Nest Trilogy by Troy Denning






7.) Outbound Flight by Timothy Zahn

A doomed mission from the start.


6.) The Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson

The Jedi Order reborn.





4.) The Hand of Thrawn Duology by Timothy Zahn



3.) The Republic/Imperial Commando series by Karen Traviss

Dive deep into the psyche of a slave army.


2.) "The Truce at Bakura" by Kathy Tyers

Rebel and Imperial alike must join forces against a common threat.


1.)  The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn



Submit Blog
Who is the Dastardly Haberdasher?May 3, 2012 by

Well I'm glad you asked.

My real name is Javan Rivera, though I honestly don't care what people decide to call me. Assuming you all aren't total jerks and come up with some unabashedly cruel jape of a name, it's all cool.

I've been an avid reader of IGN for a number of years now, and recently decided to take the plunge and really dig deep into the IGN community. I figure, if I'm visiting this site a dozen times a day anyway, why the hell shouldn't I get to know some people who share my interests?

You'd have to have the intellectual qualities of a brick to not recognize that one of my biggest hobbies is gaming. (I am taking the time to write an introductory blog post on a game-centric website after all). BEYOND gaming, I enjoy reading, writing on a variety of subjects, watching awesome movies and television shows, kicking ass at hacky sack, prop building, and generally getting myself into trouble during my free time.

Having grown up in a less than conventional household, I moved around quite a bit when I was a child. The son of two missionaries, I've been from one end of the U.S. to the other, traveled more miles by land than most will in their entire lives, and made more acquaintances than I could possibly remember.

Despite being a child of the 90's my first console was the Nintendo Entertainment System. I have many fond memories of playing Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros., Contra, World Class Track Meet (Let's hear it for the Power Pad!), and more.

I eventually upgraded to the SNES where I spent countless hours playing and replaying games such as the Super Star Wars series, Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario Kart, and so on and so forth.

As I doubt you all are just dying to read my entire gaming history, suffice to say I owned a Dreamcast, Gamecube, and PS2, as I slowly caught up to the modern era of gaming.

My current gen consoles include, a PS3, a Wii, a less-than-stellar PC, and most recently, a Vita.

That about sums up all there is to know about me. And of course, if you all are just dying to know more about me, there's always the comments section below.

If you're interested in listening to me blather about games and my writing projects, or just want to shoot the shit, you can follow me on Twitter @Javan_Rivera. I promise, I only tweet about nonsensical crap once every 48 hours.

Hope to get to know you all soon,

The Dastardly Haberdasher.

Submit Blog