Video Games, Emotion, and XCOM

I like video games. If you don't know that we probably haven't spent much time together. I really, really like video games. I've written a little about video games in the past but after an experience I had last night I felt the need to jump back into writing about my pastime passion.

At the moment I do my gaming exclusively on my gaming PC (my most prized possession) and for the most part I buy and play my games through Steam. I play video games for a lot of reasons. I love the challenge of pitting myself against other players or clever AI. It feels good to overcome challenges and have an area of my life where I not only excel, but I am completely in control. I also love the thrill of swords and guns, battles and explosions and the overall epic feeling of being immersed in a video game world. But my favorite things that games can offer me is that ever illusive gift of story and emotion. Not just "dudebro, that was so epic! High five!" type emotion but the full range of human emotions experienced through the unique lens of interactive media.

This past week XCOM: Enemy Within came out and I have just been loving it. XCOM: EW is a fairly substantial expansion for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, one of my favorite games of all time. XCOM is a strategy game in which the player is the "commander" of the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (or XCOM, get it?) and not only commands a squad of soldiers in battles against alien invaders but also builds a pretty cool base of operations while researching alien technology and upgrading the troops from basic soldiers in psychic super soldiers.

The basic premise of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is as follows:

I love it. I just think it's fantastic. Seriously, watch the trailer and try not to get excited. See? You can't do it. It's just too exciting. There's aliens and explosions and...ALIENEXPLOSIONS! What more do you need? Well, XCOM actually offers a lot more than just cool explosions. The story is solid. Not life changing, but enjoyable. The strategy is challenging, fun, and rewarding. But what really makes this game stand out is the way it gets you emotionally invested.

In XCOM your soldiers all have names. You only have so many of them and as you watch them grow and lead them in a variety of different missions you really begin to get attached. But then the unthinkable happens. Somebody dies.

XCOM has this concept they refer to as "permadeath." Permadeath is the idea that when one of your soldiers dies they are gone for good. Just like in real life. It doesn't matter how much you've leveled them up or invested in upgrades. Once they die all of that is lost. This really changes the way XCOM is play. This is not a game you can play recklessly. Otherwise people will die.

And that's where the emotions come in. XCOM is a game that makes me feel epic, yes, challenged too. But it also makes me feel sad. It makes me feel desperate and scared. It makes me feel responsible. XCOM makes me feel. It's an emotional experience. That's special.

What prompted me to write this post is the massacre that happened last night and emotions it stirred up in me. I started my current play-through on Tuesday of this week and I had been doing a pretty good job. I'd had a few scary moments, close calls where one wrong move could have killed one of my soldiers. But I always managed to pull it off without losing anyone. But then a call came in, a new mission. My people were called upon to deal with "a developing incident in Newfoundland, up the coast from St. John's. A fishing village has gone dark: reports from intel sources suggest alien involvement." Three out of my four primary squad members were unavailable. They were receiving gene modifications at the time. I figured I would be okay though. I could use my "secondaries," the back ups and people who filled in whenever thee was an injury. I didn't think this mission would be a big deal. I was wrong.

I went in with four soldiers. Then this happened:

Well that sucks.

Chrysallids, those purple bug like things, are arguably the most dangerous enemies in the entire game. They eviscerate your soldiers, killing them in a single move and implanting an egg within their corpse. This egg "zombifies" the corpse for a few turns before a brand new Chryssalid bursts out of the corpse. It's terrifying. At first I just saw three Chryssalids and through the careful use of a rocket launcher and coordinated shots from the rest of my squad I managed to take them all down before they could hurt anyone. But then as I climbed onto a beached whaling ship more and more Chryssalids kept charging at my troops. I bunched up the squad at the prow of the ship hoping that I could keep them alive if they hunkered down and took on the enemies one by one. My squad seemed to be doing okay for a few turns until they had to reload. Then the enemies were coming faster than they could reload and I knew if I didn't do something they would all die. The objective, a transponder for an airstrike, lay at the stern and I knew that if I could get my squad across the the infested ship they had a chance. I had the whole squad run a short distance and than turn and fire. Then one of them was cut down. I was upset but I knew I had to keep going. There was still hope for my other three soldiers. They ran, they fired. Then two more were cut down.

"Holy crap!" I said aloud, slamming my fist against my desk. "What wrong?" my wife said from where she was sitting on the couch.

"I, uh. Dang it, Jenny. I just lost three of my soldiers. I screwed up. They're dead."

"Okay Chris, well, I'm sorry to hear that."

Back in my game I had Lt. Miu 'Scotch' Matsumoto hit the transponder and take off running. That was when the screenshot above was taken. An army of Chryssalids were biting at her heels the entire way, but champ that she is Lt. Matsumoto made it to the extraction point and survived. She was the lone survivor of what I had expected to be a routine recon mission.

That's what makes XCOM special. I feel emotion because of this. Almost 24 hours later I'm still thinking about it, agonizing over what I could have done differently. Movies and books can make you feel emotion, but nothing else gives quite the same level of immersive and personal emotion that video games can. And that's what makes video games special. Video games that make you feel are video games done right.

Got a Bad Case of the Feelings

I've always despised the stereotype that men aren't supposed to feel emotions. I'm a man and I feel all sorts of emotions! You know, like, anger, frustration, hatred, um, punchiness. Well, maybe I'm bad at expressing myself emotionally with any variety. I'm not sure if that's a man thing or me thing but either way it sucks.

This is the general theme of this post

Lately I've had an attack of the feels. Bit by the emotion bug or something. I've got all these feelings that I wish I could make go away just by shooting things in video games. But no matter how much I binge that doesn't seem to help.

Probably the biggest thing I'm dealing with is a ton of insecurity. I mean, I feel insecure about pretty much everything. My job, my writing, my friendships, my faith. I'm convinced I'm the worst at all of it. I'm afraid I'm extraneous and not doing a good enough job at work. I'm afraid my writing is terrible. I'm afraid I'm a terrible friend who no one likes. I'm afraid I'm a terrible Christian.

The hardest adjustment for me has been doing a job I legitimately care about. Working in customer service or being a cashier I was ultimately going to work just so I could pay rent. It didn't matter if I didn't do a good job just as long as I got that paycheck. It was okay to just be "good enough." But now I care. I want to be better than just "good enough."

I'm afraid I suck at my job. I'm afraid someone else could do it much better. I'm afraid I'm not making a difference. If I'm not making a difference aren't I just a waste?

I'm also afraid of being judged. About everything. My writing sucks. Time and again I hear that reinforced. I mean, I can see it myself. Right now you are reading this and thinking, "this sucks."

I'm afraid you think I'm just being whiny. I'm afraid you think all these insecurities are true and I'm just in denial. I'm afraid you're one of the many people I interact with through work now also thinking I'm not that great in this position. I'm afraid you think I'm weak for feeling this way.

I'm afraid I'm a loser.

I'm afraid.

The fact that you are still reading at this point is both impressive and surprising

I'm also terribly lonely. "But Chris," you say, "aren't you happily married?" Why yes, I am. But anyone who said marriage eliminates loneliness was an awful liar. I honestly don't know what I'm looking for here. I mean, I have friends. Pretty much all of them are several states away, but they do still exist. There's just some level of connection missing from my life. I go to work, I go to church, I go home to my wife, I videochat with my friends. But I never hang out with friends in person. I have no buddies, I guess. No one to just waste time with.

I mean, Kurt Vonnegut always helps me out with explaining things. I'm going to massively cut down this quote from him, but click through for the full thing:

"What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them...It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to...But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.  When a couple has an argument...What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”"

 I'm a very introverted person but I still miss the community of friends I used to have. Right now I have no one to tell dumb jokes to or share my life with besides my wife. And honestly, that's just not enough people. I'm lonely and I don't know what to do about it.

So, there's my whiny feelings for you. I am, of course, afraid that this post will make you hate me or some other annoying negative conclusion, but I think it's good for me to write again. I haven't really been writing about my life and I think that's not good for me. I want to make a few changes in my life. I want to be more transparent, less inhibited, more honest, more real, more me. I want to throw caution to the winds. This should be easy for me, but I’m so scared of consequences.

I would be surprised if I lost my job over anything I would write, but I could certainly lose the respect of several people. I'm afraid that by being a more transparent person people would think less of me. If I drop this image of a really quite put together person and admit that I am so very weak I think most people would look down on that. Humility is good, of course, but not if it means admitting imperfection or fear or, heaven forbid, doubt and hopelessness.

If you look back at my older, much older, blog posts you will see that I was incredibly whiny and annoying. But I was also almost indecently honest. Between my pride, my desire that people will think well of me, and my fear, my worry that people will think poorly of me, I feel paralyzed into only blogging about the good things in my life. I feel like only sharing triumphs and never mentioning defeats. I only feel safe mentioning praise reports, never prayer requests (to put it in Christianese.)

When I was a teenager with nothing to lose honesty was so easy.

But now that I do have so much to lose I find that for fear of losing it I never want to show any honesty at all.

I saw that comic and, man, I can't tell you how often I've thought of that. It's very Fight Club, I guess. "Its only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything."

The fact that I now have something to lose means that I've lost the freedom that comes from having nothing to lose.

One Year in Portland & My Adventures in Retail

Yesterday marks one year since Jenny and I moved to the beautiful city of Portland, Maine. Overall it has been a really good year. We moved here for Jenny's job at the Salvation Army's Divisional Headquarters and over the past year have really come to view Portland as home.

Though I am now quite happily living the dream in my job as a Youth Director at the Salvation Army I haven't always had it this good. We moved here for Jenny's job but I came into this city unemployed and desperate. My current job is the fifth I have worked this year. I bounced from temp, to seasonal, to sales, and finally retail before leaving for my current job. My retail job was probably the one I enjoyed the most, though each was it's own special kind of adventure. Today I'm in the mood to write about the adventure of working on retail.

I worked at CVS in downtown Portland. CVS is a great company to work for and I was blessed with a fun manager and a laid back team. The only real difficulty the job presented was in the customers. Maybe it was our location, or maybe every CVS is like this, but for some reason our store seemed to attract a very certain type of customer. It's a difficult type of person to describe without describing how they act. You know the kind of person who takes something off the shelf and then tries to return it because they "lost the receipt." It's the type of people who looks at the tabloid covers as if it's news. One week a tabloid ran a cover story claiming all sorts of new and bizarre sexual revelations about Bill Clinton. "Oh Billy," one customer remarked, "what have you gotten yourself into now?"

My biggest customer pet peeve (aside from the gentleman whose t-shirt literally had porn printed on it) were the ladies who view a bra as an extension, or even replacement, of their purse or wallet. I could easily identify these women through the iPhone peeking through the top of their shirt. A woman would come to the counter, plop down a couple sodas and reach down the front of her shirt and begin the inevitable search. You would think a bra would only allow storage for a few items, maybe a phone in one cup and a small wallet in the other, but these women seemed to store everything  from chapstick to coin purses in there. The worst part of this search would be the way that, inevitably, the longer the search took the further down the woman would have to pull the front of her shirt. Also frustrating is the fact that as a cashier there's not a whole lot of options while waiting for customers to find their money. You either look at the customers, look down at the counter, or you try to find some spot on the ceiling that might hold your interest. But part of good customer service is maintaining eye contact and staring off into space can be considered very rude. It's a very awkward situation to be stuck in.

The worst time was a particularly warm summer day when a large woman with a peach fuzzed upper lip dropped a couple of beers on the counter in front of me. "Umm, could I see your ID?" I asked, praying that her phone was the only thing stored under her shirt. My hopes were dashed as she plunged up to her forearm into her chest searching for ID. About thirty seconds of uncomfortable fumbling later she produced a state ID that did in fact confirm she was old enough to drink. I handed the ID back to her and once again her hand leaped into the abyss. Another long wait and she produced an EBT card. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, you can't use food stamps for alcohol purchases." I informed her. "Oh, right" she said and hesitated for a moment before using her other arm to search. Apparently one side was devoted to cards and the other to cash because a moment later she produced a damp $20 bill. She handed it to me. "This bill is wet," I thought. "She pulled this bill out of her boobs and it is wet and in my hand and I feel unbelievably uncomfortable right now." She looked in my eyes with a smug defiance as if daring me to show any discomfort on my face. I jabbed a finger at my register and waited the endless half second for it to open and the shoved the bill in as if it might bite me. I gave the woman her change, which was dry just the way I like it.

Ethical Marriage: A Year Without Bacon

"Tastes ethical!"

This was my wife's reaction a moment ago as she took a sip of some fair trade hot cocoa that I tracked down at our grocery store. Marriage is weird. Like super, super weird. If you're married you probably already know that. If you're not married it's probably pretty obvious from where you stand. I'm kind of dense, so I'm still very confused by a lot of the strangeness that is marriage. I've written about this type of thing before.

To me the most weird (I need to use that word less) part of marriage is how different two people are and yet how completely their lives and decisions become intertwined. For example, I suddenly can't just go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest of everything because that food isn't just for me and that money isn't just mine. Not only do I have to take my own preferences and thoughts into account with each decision, but also those of another person. And that is why I have not bought bacon for a year.

Let me repeat that for overly dramatic effect. I, Chris Clark, a manly man with hair on my face and chest, have not bought bacon, as in bacon bacon, for 1 whole year, 365 sad days. A year without one of my favorite artery cloggers. A year without the internet's favorite food.

Don't panic. It's okay. I have some bacon now and will be cooking it on Monday. What a relief! But why has it been so long since I had meat candy at my disposal for easy consumption? Simple.
 

So, my wife is what most people refer to as a "good person." I knew this when I married her. Heck, her kindness and passion for social justice were some of the things that I found so attractive. It's not that I'm a bad person, or that I don't also have a passion for social justice, it's mostly just that I really like food and really hate doing hard things.

Jenny and I have been completely switching to fair trade and ethically sourced foods. This is something that, in theory, I am very much in favor of. In college my good friend Gordon and I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to get our school to boycott Coca-Cola due to their many unethical practices, and to this day I avoid Coca-Cola products. But Jenny is taking things a little bit farther than just skipping a few unethical corporations. We're slowly eliminating everything unethical from our pantry and refrigerator.

This has meant largely cutting meat out of our diet, at least when Jenny cooks, as well as switching to fair trade coffee and chocolate. When it comes to fair trade that means I have much more limited options and that I can no longer buy brownie mix for brownies or chocolate chips with which to make cookies. I'm just thanking God that I finally found fair trade hot cocoa or else my life would have a sad lack of chocolate.

But today something beautiful happened. Portland has of the oldest farmers' markets in the nation and, in my opinion, one of the best. It's really great. You can get almost anything and it's all local and mostly organic and ethical and all that good stuff. So my wife, being the great person she is, loves shopping at the farmers market and we now buy our meat exclusively from our local farmers. It's more expensive, but it's nice to know we're not supporting factory farming. Jenny read Eating Animals this past year and has become completely committed to getting our animal products ethically. We mostly only use meat in my lasagna, which is just so good that we can't give it up. So aside from that one dish we've mostly been living a meatless life. Until now.

Today I tagged along to the farmers market. I normally stay at home and play video games (I buy all my games digitally via services such as Steam to avoid the slave labor production of physical discs and boxes. That's my halfhearted attempt to jump on the ethical bandwagon anyway.) But today I went along to pick up a bunch of veggies as well as a pound each of pork and beef. And then I saw it. As my wife bought a large bag of vegetables I wandered over to a cooler with a sign saying "Smokey Bacon." It was so beautiful. Local. Ethically sourced. Bacon. It's everything Jenny loves and everything I love all in one tasty, meaty package.

Now that package is sitting in our fridge waiting for me to eat it. Marital differences can be hard to reconcile, but when opportunities arise where there can be both compromise and bacon it's just too good to pass up.

Change '1962' to 'Hannaford' and '2011' to 'Farmers' Market' and you see why I sometimes struggle with getting ethically sourced food.

Reboot: Starting Fresh

I think it's time for a re-introduction.

Hi there. Nice to meet you. No really, the pleasure is all mine. My name is Chris and, as I'm sure you've guessed, this is my blog. My blog that, for numerous reasons, I have mostly abandoned. Until now. Rather than writing a post which is half apology and half whining about why I couldn't be bothered to keep blogging (which is an embarrassing number of the last 5 years of posts) I figured I should just start fresh. Let's put the last 7 or so years and 593 posts in the past and actually get back to writing.

So, back to that re-introduction. To the right you will notice the question "Who is Chris?" paired with my relatively snarky answer. If you ever forget who I am I would refer you there. In the meantime read this.

Kurt Vonnegut, my writing hero, says that in writing always "Start as close to the end as possible." So I will start as close to the end of this story as I conceivably can. Today. If I could start by telling you about tomorrow, or the real end of my story, the end end, I surely would. But I don't know the end so I can't tell it.

Today is August 21st, 2013. The sky over Portland is utterly clear. From my office window I face South towards Mt. Washington, which lies somewhere in the area where the blue turns into a vague off-white on the horizon. On my desk next to me lie four stacks of Sunday School material and a clipboard with a boardgames inventory on it. I'm a Youth Director as of just over a month ago. It is no exaggeration when I say this is my dream job. Youth Director is a vague job title to most people, even Christians, but it simply means I'm a youth pastor without any aspirations to becoming a fullfledged pastor.

It's easy to understand why I love my job when you break it down into it's core parts.

It's like we like each other or something equally gross

Things I love:
God, my faith, and The Salvation Army
Working with other people who love the above
Working and hanging out with children and youth
Playing games
Storytelling and teaching
Efficiency and organization

Things that are a part of "work":
See above list

Suffice it to say that I am very happy at this point in my life.

Work isn't the only part of my life. I'd be remiss if I were to leave out my wife. In introducing myself I must also mention her since she's sure to be mentioned in my writing a fair amount. My wife's name is Jenny and we were married June 9th, 2012, shortly after graduating together from Houghton College. She's a pretty cool person. She sells stuff on Etsy. I spend most of my time with her and our cat, Sneaky.

So, I mentioned we graduated from Houghton together. We also met there. I guess I should be pretty grateful to Houghton for that. Jenny majored in Intercultural Studies while I doubled in Writing and Psychology. I majored in writing intentionally. Psychology happened by accident when I realized just how few academic credits it took to complete a Writing major.

That brings me to the next point of introduction. I am a self-proclaimed writer. I don't know what people define as being a "writer" these days. Anybody can sit down and pound out some narcissistic blog post (just look at me!) but I think the term implies you're actually good at it. Or make money that way. Or something. So I guess to be fair I'm an "aspiring writer." Due to the low volume and quality of writing I actually produce I often think I'm more of a transpiring writer.

"Wow, you're awfully down on your writing!" you say, "But look at this blog post! This is the best thing I've ever read in my entire life!" Well, it's nice of you to say that. I'm sure it's true. At this point my view of college is that it gave me a wife and a wrecked sense of self-esteem regarding my writing and not much else. I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing at the moment, but I'll get there.

Anyway, I've saved a final piece of introduction for last because it's the least interesting bit. I love video games. I love them so much it hurts sometimes. Hurts my wallet mostly. This morning I woke up and saw that Origin had put Mass Effect 3 on sale. I've been waiting months hoping it would go on sale. So excited. To return to my point, I love video games. I play them a lot. If you also like video games we should play them together. I particularly want someone to play Planetside 2 with. Get in touch with me.

I think it's about time to wrap up this post. Just to jump off that last paragraph, here's a non-sequitur: let's be friends. I've been lamenting the fact that I have very few friends in the Portland area who I really spend time with. If you want to play video games: get in touch. If you want to go get bubble tea: get in touch. If you want to hang out: you get it.

Thanks for reading.

Edit: I'm also mostly inactive on Twitter! Check it out @KuriJaVaba

Just a quick statement on guns, video games, and correlation fallacies.

Sometimes I make a Facebook status I'm so proud of that I just have to save it. So, my dear reader, enjoy this little gem of research.

 

Video game spending per capita/year in USA=$40+
Guns per 100 residents in USA=88.8
Gun related murders in USA per 100,000=3.6

Video game spending per capita/year in South Korea=$100+
Guns per 100 residents in South Korea=1.1
Gun related murders in South Korea per 100,000=0.04

If we're concerned about gun violence we either need way less guns...or way more video games! Your choice America!

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/17/ten-country-comparison-suggests-theres-little-or-no-link-between-video-games-and-gun-murders/