Mile
Zero

It's hard to hear news of Nintendo creating a tiny, $60 NES package and not think of Frank Cifaldi's provocative GDC talk on emulation. Cifaldi, who works on game remastering and preservation (most recently on a Mega Man collection), covers a wide span of really interesting industry backstory, but his presentation is mostly infamous for the following quote:

The virtual console is nothing but emulations of Nintendo games. And in fact, if you were to download Super Mario Brothers on the Wii Virtual Console...

[shows a screenshot of two identical hex filedumps]

So on the left there is a ROM that I downloaded from a ROM site of Super Mario Brothers. It's the same file that's been there since... it's got a timestamp on it of 1996. On the right is Nintendo's Virtual Console version of Super Mario Brothers. I want you to pay particular attention to the hex values that I've highlighted here.

[the highlighted sections are identical]

That is what's called an iNES header. An iNES header is a header format developed by amateur software emulators in the 90's. What's that doing in a Nintendo product? I would posit that Nintendo downloaded Super Mario Brothers from the internet and sold it back to you.

As Cifaldi notes, while the industry has had a strong official anti-emulation stance for years, they've also turned emulation into a regular revenue stream for Nintendo in particular. In fact, Nintendo has used scaremongering about emulation to monopolize the market for any games that were published on its old consoles. In this case, the miniature NES coming to market in November is almost certainly running an emulator inside its little plastic casing. It's not so much that they're opposed to emulation, so much as they're opposed to emulation that they can't milk for cash.

To fully understand how demented this has become, consider the case of Yoshi's Island, which is one of the greatest platformers of the 16-bit era. I am terrible at platformers but I love this game so much that I've bought it at least three times: once in the Gameboy Advance port, once on the Virtual Console, and once as an actual SNES cartridge back when Belle and I lived in Arlington. Nintendo made money at least on two of those copies, at least. But now that we've sold our Wii, if I want to play Yoshi's Island again, even though I have owned three legitimate copies of the game I would still have to give Nintendo more money. Or I could grab a ROM and an emulator, which seems infinitely more likely.

By contrast, I recently bought a copy of Doom, because I'd never played through the second two episodes. It ran me about $5 on Steam, and consists of the original WAD files, the game executable, and a preconfigured version of DOSBox that hosts it. I immediately went and installed Chocolate Doom to run the game fullscreen with better sound support. If I want to play Doom on my phone, or on my Chromebook, or whatever, I won't have to buy it again. I'll just copy the WAD. And since I got it from Steam, I'll basically have a copy on any future computers, too.

(Episode 1 is definitely the best of the three, incidentally.)

Emulation is also at the core of the Internet Archive's groundbreaking work to preserve digital history. They've preserved thousands of games and pieces of software via browser ports of MAME, MESS, and DOSBox. That means I can load up a copy of Broderbund Print Shop and relive summer at my grandmother's house, if I want. But I can also pull up the Canon Cat, a legendary and extremely rare experiment from one of the original Macintosh UI designers, and see what a radically different kind of computing might look like. There's literally no other way I would ever get to experience that, other than emulating it.

The funny thing about demonizing emulation is that we're increasingly entering an era of digital entertainment that may be unpreservable with or without it. Modern games are updated over the network, plugged into remote servers, and (on mobile and new consoles) distributed through secured, mostly-inaccessible package managers on operating systems with no tradition of backward compatibility. It may be impossible, 20 years from now, to play a contemporary iOS or Android game, similar to the way that Blizzard themselves can't recreate a decade-old version of World of Warcraft.

By locking software up the way that Nintendo (and other game/device companies) have done, as a single-platform binary and not as a reusable data file, we're effectively removing them from history. Maybe in a lot of cases, that's fine — in his presentation, Cifaldi refers offhand to working on a mobile Sharknado tie-in that's no longer available, which is not exactly a loss for the ages. But at least some of it has to be worth preserving, in the same way even bad films can have lessons for directors and historians. The Canon Cat was not a great computer, but I can still learn from it.

I'm all for keeping Nintendo profitable. I like the idea that they're producing their own multi-cart NES reproduction, instead of leaving it to third-party pirates, if only because I expect their version will be slicker and better-engineered for the long haul. But the time has come to stop letting them simultaneously re-sell the same ROM to us in different formats, while insisting that emulation is solely the concern of pirates and thieves.

The fourth Humble Bundle for Android is wrapping up today: if you like games and charity, it's a ridiculously good deal, even if you don't own an Android device--everything works on Windows, Mac, and Linux as well. Although it turns the Nexus 4 into a toasty little space heater, it would be worth it just to get Waking Mars, the loopy botany platformer I've been playing for a couple of days now.

If nothing else, I like that the Humble Bundle proves that it's still feasible to sell software the old-fashioned way: by putting up a website and taking orders yourself. Digital retailers like Steam or the various mobile platform stores are all well and good (the Bundle comes with Steam keys, which I usually use to actually download the games), but a lot of my favorite gaming memories come from this kind of ad-hoc distribution. I don't want to see it die, and I think it would be bad for independent developers if it did.

In the last few months, people like Valve's Gabe Newell and Mojang's Markus Persson have raised concerns about where Windows is going. Since the PC has been the site of a lot of really interesting experimentation and independent development over the last few years, Microsoft's plan to shut down distribution of Metro-style applications on Windows 8, except through a centralized store that they own, is troubling. At the same time, a lot of people have criticized that perspective, saying that these worries are overblown and alarmist.

There may be some truth to that. But I think the fact that the Humble Bundle is, across the three or four mobile platforms in popular use, only available on Android should tell us something. Why is that? Probably because Google's OS is the only one where developers can handle their own distribution and updates, without having to get approval from the platform owner or fork over a 30% surcharge. That fact should make critics of Newell and Persson think twice. Can the Humble Bundle (one of the most successful and interesting experiments since the shareware catalogs I had in the 80s) and similar sales survive once traditional computing moves to a closed distribution model? It looks to me like the answer is no.

When I started thinking about blogging again, after an unintentional break, I realized that I'd been doing this, almost continuously, for more than seven years now. That's a long time. Although it was tempting to let it lie fallow, I figured it would be a shame after such a long run--and besides, I do like writing here, especially now that most of the readers (such as they were) are gone.

When I turned Mile Zero into a blog, way back in the day, one of the main things that I wrote about was gaming--specifically, gaming culture. That wasn't all I wrote about, but it was something I was interested in, and there was a whole community of great gaming blogs I could join. Gaming culture had plenty to write about, because it was (and is) a problematic place dominated by emotional children and shameless hacks pretending to be journalists. If I took on those issues, even in a tiny way, I hoped it could help--and it was a good distraction from an office job I wasn't thrilled about and a freelance career that probably wasn't headed anywhere either.

A few years later I got a job at CQ as a "Multimedia Web Producer." Nobody at CQ knew what that was supposed to mean, so gradually I turned myself into the newsroom's go-to person for interactive journalism. I loved my job, and the time and energy I put into it (not to mention the strict editorial policy of non-partisanship) meant I cut back on blogging. I also threw myself into dancing, which I think took me by surprise as much as anyone else, particularly once I joined Urban Artistry. And I went on a bit of an information diet, angry with the low quality/high volume approach of most gaming and tech sites. When I got a chance to write here, usually once a week, the spread of subjects had become more random than ever.

So here we are, seven years (and almost two months dark) later. Sure, this was never really a gaming blog. But I did write about gaming, particularly the sexism, racism, and classism I saw there, and I hoped it could get better. Has it?

Well, kind of better. I mean, it's still awful, isn't it? Sometimes it just seems like the exploitation gets more subtle over time. Tomb Raider pops back up, for example, but now Lara Croft's proportions are less exaggerated--and she's being threatened with sexual assault so players can feel protective toward her. One step forward, two steps off a cliff marked "Seriously, guys, what on earth were you thinking?"

At the other end of the malevolence spectrum, I just finished Driver: San Francisco. Loved it: it's funny, well-balanced, filled with homage to classic car movies and TV (including constant callbacks to its obvious inspiration, Life on Mars). But even though it's a game where the main character is never playable outside a car, even though it's set in a world where the solution to every crime involves vehicular damage, even though the physical make-up of the hero is literally of absolutely no consequence whatsoever... you're still playing as John "Incredibly Generic White Dude With An Incredibly Generic White Dude's Name" Tanner. You could not possibly challenge fewer conventions than Driver:SF, which these days is not so much actively frustrating as it is wearying.

That said, I think there's hope. When I look at something like Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes Vs. Women project on Kickstarter, which went from zero to troll-ridden to ridiculously over-funded in a matter of hours, it kind of blows me away. Seven years ago, would Sarkeesian's videos have gotten that much support? Would it have gotten sympathetic attention from the corporate blogs? Would it have been picked up across a wide range of non-gaming media? I feel like no, it wouldn't have. And while tools like Kickstarter have made it a lot easier for small projects like this to get the funding they need, I suspect that changes in the culture have also made a big difference.

More importantly, it's not just one culture anymore, if it ever was. Communities don't just grow by getting bigger, they also grow by having new circles intersect at their Venn diagram. You see this everywhere: look at the way that music fans start out as a small, particular group, and then as the artist gets bigger, different people begin to attach--sometimes for very different reasons, which may eventually drive the original fans away. The reasons why I love the Black Keys (their early, filthy-sounding recordings from Akron) are not the reasons that new fans probably love them, but we all end up at the same concerts together.

When I was studying intercultural communication in college, the term for these meshed sub-populations was "co-culture." I didn't care for the term then, but now it seems appropriate. Gaming is bigger than it was seven years ago, and it's no longer accurate--or seen as desirable--to say that the "real" gamers are the angry 14-year-olds with a chip on their shoulder about girls and minorities. This space can (and does) support more than that: from Troy Goodfellow's series on science and national characters in gaming, to The Border House providing a critical examination of character and plot, to rhetorically-stunning games like Auntie Pixelante's dys4ia. These are not all the same voices I was reading and responding to seven years ago, but they are stronger and louder and more influential. That's fantastic.

I'll probably never refocus here to the degree I did when I was writing a post or more a day, because being a single-issue blogger (or a single-issue anything) has never been interesting to me. But I'm thrilled other people are doing good work with it. As a gamer, the same way that other people might be movie buffs or music snobs, I want to see it grow and change so that I'll be exposed to new and interesting perspectives. I don't want to see it stagnate. While progress is slow, I think it's being made. Let's hope in another seven years, I can look back and say the same.

There are three consoles stacked behind our TV. They're the retro platforms: my SuperNES and Dreamcast, and Belle's PS2. I think they're hooked up, but I can't honestly remember, because I rarely turn them on or dig out any of the games that go with them. They just sit back there, collecting dust and gradually turning yellow in the sun, like little boxes of electric guilt. I'm almost starting to hate them.

Most people probably have a media backlog of some kind: books they haven't gotten around to reading, movies they haven't had time to watch, music they can't give the attention it might deserve. But I think gamers have it worst of all, for two reasons. First, the length of the average game, especially older games, is a huge obstacle to completion. Second, there's a lot of hassle involved for anything going back more than a generation.

Belle and I are trying to reduce our physical footprint, so having to keep older consoles around "just in case" grates, but emulation's a mixed bag even when it works. Worse, I have a really difficult time tossing old games that I haven't finished: how could I get rid of Virtual On, Chu Chu Rocket, or Yoshi's Island? Those are classics! I'm also prone to imagine unlikely scenarios during which I'll finish a game or two--my favorite is probably "oh, I'll play that when I get sick one day" as if I were in grade school, a plan that ignores the fact that I'm basically a workaholic. If I'm sick enough to stay home, I'm probably too ill to do anything but lay in bed and moan incoherently.

Having realized that I have a problem, one solution is simply to attack it strategically--if I can only decide what that strategy would be. Should I work backward, from newest to oldest? Or start from the SuperNES and go forward through each platform, gradually qualifying each one for storage? Clearly, the "play at random" approach is not narrowing my collection with any great success.

There is, however, another option, and ultimately it's probably for the better: to simply accept that the backlog is not a moral duty. I don't have to play everything. I think gaming culture is very bad about this: the fact that many gamers grew up with certain titles lends them a nostalgic credibility that they probably don't entirely deserve. And frankly, if the titles I'm considering were that compelling, I wouldn't have to force myself to go back and play them.

I'm hardly the only gamer I know caught between practicality and sentiment. The one plan that would unify both would be digital distribution on a neutral platform--the current XBox and Wii emulations fall far short of this, since they just lock my classic games to a slightly newer console. I'd love to see a kind of "recycling" program, where I could return old cartridges in exchange for discounts on legitimate ports or emulations on a service like Steam or Impulse. After all, even without the trade-in value, I sometimes buy Steam copies of games I already own just because I know they'll then be available to me, forever, without taking up any physical space.

Game publishers probably won't go for that plan. I can hardly blame them: the remake business, just as with the "high-def remaster" film business, is no doubt a profit machine for them. But I don't think it'll last forever. Just as I buy fewer movies these days, since I'd rather stream from Netflix or rent from Amazon Digital, the writing is probably on the wall for buying software in boxes. That won't eliminate the backlog--but it'll certainly clear up the space behind my TV set.

Our cat will be thrilled.

One of Belle's favorite hobbies is to take a personality test (such as the Meyers-Briggs) once every couple of months. She makes me take the same test, and then she reads our results aloud. The description for her type never explicitly says "finds personality test results comforting," but it probably should. I'm skeptical of the whole thing, frankly, but then someone with my personality type would be.

I found myself thinking about profiles after having a conversation with a friend about the appeal of Diablo (or lack thereof). I understand the theory behind the Diablo formula--combining the random reward schedule of an MMO with a sense of punctuated but constant improvement--but games based on this structure (Torchlight, Borderlands) leave me almost entirely unmoved.

For better or worse, game design increasingly leverages psychological trickery to keep players interested. I think Jonathan Blow convincingly argues that this kind of manipulation is ethically suspect, and that it displays a lack of respect for the player as a human being But perhaps it's also an explanation for why Diablo doesn't click for me, but other people obsess over it: we've got different personality profiles.

I think the idea of a Meyers-Briggs profile for game design is kind of a funny idea. So as a thought exercise, here's a quick list I threw together of personality types, focused mainly on psychological exploits common in game design. I figure most people--and most games--have a mix of these, just in larger or smaller proportions. Some of them may even overlap a little.

• Completionist: Enjoys the feeling of finishing all items in a list of goals. Probably has sub-categories, depending on the type of task required (story-related, achievement-based, simple collection).
  Prototypical games: Pokemon, Crackdown, Donkey Kong Country
• Storyteller: Enjoys the creation of emergent stories, particularly in sandbox-type games. These can range from actual narratives, to the construction of Rube Goldberg-like scenarios within the rules and physics of the game world, or simply games that offer "great moments" during regular play.
  Prototypical games: The Sims, Minecraft, Deus Ex
• Audience: Enjoys playing through a linear story. Would, if all else were equal, be just as happy watching a really good movie.
  Prototypical games: JRPGs, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, adventure games
• Explorer: Enjoys finding new locations and entities inside the game world. Prefers expanse and novelty to either realism or deep-but-restricted scenarios.
  Prototypical games: Metroid, Castlevania, Fallout
• Grinder: Enjoys the process of slowly improving an avatar, either by levelling up or obtaining new equipment, or both. Becomes invested in the game as a long-term product of effort, creating an artifact that's a source of pride.
  Prototypical games: World of Warcraft, Diablo, Borderlands
• Mechanic: Enjoys figuring out, then mastering, the underlying gameplay system, even if that limits the overall scope of the game. Prefers rulesets that are predictable, and "levelling the player" over increasing an avatar's stats.
  Prototypical games: Street Fighter, Team Fortress 2, Legend of Zelda
• Munchkin: Like a mechanic, but with an emphasis on learning how to break/exploit the system. Ranges from people who read David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" and loved every word, to people who just like turning on cheat codes in GTA and seeing how far they can get in the tank.
  Prototypical games: sandbox games, broken games, broken sandbox games, Marvel Vs. Capcom
• Competitor: Enjoys being ranked against other players, either AI or human. Likes the interplay of competition and cooperation, and prefers "winning" to simply "finishing."
  Prototypical games: Halo, Geometry Wars, Defcon
• Partier: Enjoys playing with other players, particularly in single-couch co-op. More interested in an enjoyable play session than "winning" the game.
  Prototypical games: Rock Band, Mario Party, Wii Sports
• Thinker: Enjoys making comprehensive strategic decisions, often at a slower pace. Not necessarily a wargamer, but often is.
  Prototypical games: Advance Wars, Defense Grid, Age of Empires
• Buttonmasher: Enjoys reflex-based games that offer a lot of rapid stimulation. Not necessarily a shooter fan, but often is.
  Prototypical games: Ikaruga, Super Mario, Demon's Souls

There's probably a good way to simplify these, or sort them into a series of binaries or groups, if you wanted to make it more like a legitimate personality quiz. Still, looking over this list, I do feel like it's better at describing my own tastes than a simple list of genres. I think I rank high for Audience, Mechanic, and Buttonmasher, and low for Storyteller, Completionist, and Grinder--makes sense for someone who loves story-driven FPS and action-RPGs, but generally dislikes open-world games and dungeon crawlers.

Such a list certainly helps to describe how I approach any given title: concentrating more on getting through the narrative and learning the quirks of the system, less on grabbing all the achievements or experimenting with the environment. I almost wish reviewers ranked themselves on a system like this--it'd make it a lot easier to sort out whether my priorities sync with theirs.

In general, I agree with Blow: the move toward psychological manipulation as a part of game design is at best something to be approached with great caution. At worst, it's actually dangerous--leading to the kinds of con-artistry and unhealthy addiction in Farmville and (to a lesser extent) WoW. I don't think we can eliminate these techniques entirely, because they're part of what makes gaming unique and potentially powerful. But it would probably be a good idea to understand them better, and package them in a way that people can easily learn to be aware of them, similar to the ways that we teach kids about advertising appeals now. After all, as other sectors adopt "gamification," industry-standard psychological manipulation is only going to get more widespread.