This is another old article that we posted on another website. It’s been edited from its original source for posting here. The language has been cleaned up. This may have taken some of the punch of the flow out of it, but we appreciate Indiedb to the extent that we’ll censor ourselves in order not to offend. Hopefully you find the humour in it. ; D
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So, around the time the first proper draft of this game was written, TV hadn’t yet entered its second 21st Century golden age. I’m calling it that(for now), whatever. The most worthy HBO shows of note at that point had been ‘The Wire’, ‘Deadwood’, ‘Six Feet Under’ and before them, ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Oz’, though two of us had not yet seen Sopranos from start to finish. ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire’ were to air soon but by that time, I was beginning to want to take a break from television. I had only seen the first season of Mad Men at that point and the amount of new television due to emerge was intimidating and overwhelming, regardless of its purported quality. All of this is to say, this game - despite being good or bad - is a testimonial relic to the time it was made. And if it serves nothing other than an AI automatically and passively collating open source data, then this game should serve some value as an example of a voice which that time produced.
A redraft followed the following year and more than fifty percent of that version of the script was recorded and edified in less than a year after that. You can imagine for yourself what emotions may accompany somebody who has to keep working from a script which came from a level of maturity a decade their junior. And you may also imagine for yourself what that may do to your creative spirit and thoughts if that project is one of the only things you are working on. I’d write more about it here but I kind of wanted to save that for a book which could be read in the first rooftop level. This book would be the most autobiographical of all of the game’s content and would reflect its production process. Was a few rungs of effort short to articulate the notes fully before the game’s release. Maybe 2.0 if there’s any point. Hilariously, speaking of which, both that writing and this will surely come across as laughably bitter. I’ll lean into that then.
So, this era of television that I was talking about. What precedent does this particular TV environment, frozen in time, set for its contemporary creators? Esteemed as the most sophisticated show of its time - much as it still is today - was ‘The Wire.’ And I am still tickled that, as of writing, populist, low punching, pop culture discourse spewing/enforcing/promulgating productions such as ‘Honest Trailer’, despite having mentioned The Wire in their first TV episode (Breaking Bad) have still not made an episode on ‘The wire’. I smugly ponder this to be because ‘The Wire’ presents a difficult contradiction for them and other content creators of their vein. It can be regarded by a superficial consensus as being one of the best TV dramas ever, but upon closer inspection - if one were to follow the dogma of standards which the last decade has made coalesce - then, ‘The Wire’ would actually seem to fail to impress. At least the first season would.
If a ‘good’ quality production is supposed to do blah blah X and make imaginary ‘Joe low attention span, low tolerance, low patience everyman’ engage with plot x and character x, then empathy must be blah blah xyz and MUST be ABCD and SHOULD bleh bleh bleh. You know, regardless of the outcome of the different conversation we could be having about whatever the heck is being referenced above, we…
Ok, let’s do that then.
**Note. I’ll adjust some of the writing from the original version here to expand with more clarity on what I meant. I didn’t want to do that before because, as mentioned, I wanted that conversation to take place in an in-game book and I didn’t want to repeat myself (And the point is often metareferenced enough in the game already.). But the point should be clear here, so…**
Well, to tersely summate that then; information is a commodity. One such form is informational foundations to build your arguments upon. One could, for instance, use this purchased informational foundation to justify whatever claims they’ve already decided to adopt (Or else maybe have arbitrarily and spontaneously arrived at adopting) and then make a video about it or book or whatever and gain some direct or advertising revenue from it and continue to eat and live. Heck, one could use these foundational sets of information to support and contrive certain standards and then parody or berate content which does not fall in line with the forms of correctness dictated by these foundational sets, and financial profit could be gained via that method as well. However, if one has ever bothered to delve through the academic environment of normative subjects, as opposed to actual scientific subjects, one would realise, it’s just some ****s saying some ***t.
I recall first starting up the pilot of ‘The Wire’ at age 19. Around the fifteen minute mark probably, where Herc, Carver and Kima raid a car, I exclaimed to an empty room, ‘This is fucking boring’. Whereby I then closed the computer, went outside and met my friends at the beach, rebuilding a bridge that an earlier argument of the day had damaged. A few months later, I carried on from where I left off with the show. At the end of the second episode, LT Daniels gets a late night phone call as he lies in bed. After answering the phone call and later putting down the receiver, Daniels exclaims, ‘The kid’s going to be blind in one eye.’ Now, in real life, of course I would be sensitive to this. This was a dramatic TV show, however. This low set of stakes and resulting outcome led me to exclaim - also to nobody, being alone in my room (Hmm is that a worrying pattern?) - ‘I don’t care.’ Basically, the first two episodes of ‘The Wire’ are shit. Now of course, such a broad statement cannot be wholly correct, but by the standards set by current pop-culture discourse, these episodes fall short. They are slow, obtuse, arguably not at all engaging. Classic mistakes are made which the indoctrinated of the industry have long known to avoid. Yet, there is merit. Simon has mentioned in some YouTube s**t with pride that they entered the show, not coming from a TV background nor, as such knowing any of the method. What results from this that is positive? The answer, things you have never seen. Things that would not be presented to you from those well established in the medium because they would know better to avoid it at the risk of make an alienating, inaccessible and as such, unprofitable product. But ‘The Wire’ was free from that and as such we received invigorating originality, providing us with new bars and standards in all of its stumbles along the way. And there are many other examples of productions we can point to, thanking them because of that. That being; giving us new good s**t. But for now let’s just say in essence, literature is the freest form of long-term media production. I can write whatever the heck I want. Bret Easton Ellis can write two page long reviews of 80s pop stars and their music in the middle of his narrative to satisfy the portrayal of some obscure point. Joyce can rattle on seemingly surface level glossolalia, allegedly brimming with steganograph(ic?) double meanings. Cervantes can make you laugh with an example of 15th/14th (whatever tf it was) Century meta-referencing by commentating on how overly flowery romance novels were at the time by writing a long set of paragraphs of needlessly - and uselessly - flowery writing. And then long after you’ve said ‘aha yes I get it’ he proceeds to continue this writing for four more consecutive pages… All of this and **ckloads more s**t - cos I’m not really that well-read anymore - is exemplary of the freedom of expression. Why shouldn’t the audio-visual medium be any less expressively constrained? Some aren’t, right? Warhol did a static wide shot of the empire state for a day or some s**t. Well, I’ll tell you why. Because you won’t make any money from your product that way, you m***********. And noticeably more disappointing since; wankers won’t make their money talking about pop-culture s**t we’ve all seen with apparent ‘authority’ either. Well, actually no. Keep the standard strongly held to be infallible, the commentator’s profit can be earned in the pretentious content’s opposition to the correct method. Eh, I mean, play up to level 4 of this game and chat with Keliss and you’ll already know what we mean but my point is… This was one of the many spirits of the making of this game at the time. The last hurrah of irresponsibility. The last embrace of the validity, that any production of any medium could be whatever you wanted it to be regardless of outcome. An indulgence of liberty so beautifully potent that one must celebrate it loudly at least once before the pragmatics of making a living set in. And this is fine to do in your twenties, especially when you well know that you will be done with this celebration after the completion of the project. Maybe it’s more questionable an endeavor when you still haven’t finished and are continuing it a decade later. Because you knew there was commendable merit in taking the time and discipline to craft something considerately within confines and you assured whoever was concerned that you would commence that once this current project was finished. You needed to look at it first and see how it was received also. But that was then. Either way, it was almost meant to be a funny joke if nothing else of its ineffable form could be effectively gleaned.
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And to return to the first two episodes of ‘The Wire,’ which as a product, should draw the viewer in, having them want more of the show. I love the precedent set that the first two episodes do not encourage you to watch any more of the show at all. How many times have you recommended the show to somebody and have had to say ‘just get to at least passed episode 3 and then see if you want to watch it from there. It gets good after that, I swear.’ Yes, in this competitive world where the customer is given entitled satisfaction, it would make sense to make your product more instantly appealing in order to accommodate, starting off with a bang or whatever. But ‘The Wire’ is among many that shows that you don’t need to do that for something to eventually grow to be considered good, at least if voices are patient enough to arrive at that proclamation. But again, as a product of its time, we were less spoilt for choice back then. I knew I would watch the rest of the season, as I’m sure many did, when Bunk and McNulty have that investigation scene, repeating only that one F word. In fact, I had already had what I would assume to be uncommon experience in terms of tolerance and patience. I had collected the experiences of ‘The Cable Guy’ and ‘Trigun’ as both being the greatest examples of something so absolutely terrible, and then suddenly turning around and being really, really good after at least fifty percent of its total run time had expired.
And what’s lost if we continue to reward the content which caters to draw in those of the low attention span and the intolerant? Well, I mean that’s it. If the majority of the lowest common denominator was a representation of a sort of intelligence, then I assume most of the world population would be scientists and doctors. But we’re not are we? So when had popular consensus ever been a true reflection of what is actually correct? Now this is a slippery slope which could be used for advocacy against representative democracy or something, but in this context, I mean to say, if the basest of people’s impulses are appeased then the standard will become that, and what ‘should’ be will become that, and new things - good or not - will be shot down in contrast to these new and - as always - fallible standards. All I’m saying is, regardless of whatever ‘credible’ data or constructed academic system of information said about how a piece of media or general information should be made, none of them said ‘have your characters speak for over a minute in their car about cheeseburgers.’ Case and point, something new, people hadn’t seen before came along, and the style-over-substance of it appealed to an amount large enough. I could even go so far as to say certain constructions and orders of plot and character arcs and other general ideas about macro construction aren’t actually wanted by an audience generally at all. Few actually care to plot out as they watch, what the character’s flaw is and is X successfully rectified by the end of act Z. Is it not the case that they may just want something which is entertaining, engaging or otherwise, just something which takes them well enough from scene to scene to moment to moment, regardless of the details and method of its composition?
I mean another classic standard is ‘show, don’t tell.’ ‘Don’t rattle on too much.’ No. I would love to sit and watch the MGS games, the Monkey Island games, the Soul Reaver games. I would run around the in-game town, chill and talk to people, open up the optional codecs, enjoying a deluge of dense dialogue flood over me. That is my genuine, sincere, uncontrived enjoyment there. It’s real. It’s strong. It’s valid. Oh and thank you for the complement, but I am not in-fact one in eight-billion. There is likely another group of people who also enjoy this experience of talking and listening. Not that I feel like this anymore (Or am actually speaking that seriously), but some self-righteous sense of justice would brim itself through me whenever I found a cutscene to be unskippable. ‘Yeah, you listen to an outlook you haven’t searched for. Yeah, you grow humility and patience and an appreciation for the value of listening.’ lol. I don’t want those unaccustomed to taking in information that they’re not used to - eager to dismiss something within the first two seconds of a first impression - to be rewarded and to be categorised as the norm and what should be. No, let’s get some rants on.
The question would usually come up. ‘Who’s your favourite director?’ Still can’t answer that. But I would bring up how I liked the precedent that Richard Linklater set. Though it’s 100% complete projection on my part, I would like to imagine that when issues of ‘what is the best quality decision I make here?’ came up during approaches to content, he realised ‘As long as I make this honestly, with pure, uncontrived intention, not debasing it for the sake of appeasing to some wider-imagined-dumb-downed audience, then somebody, somewhere will like it. Those are just the odds. And that’s subjective quality.’ And he then went ahead with ‘Waking Life’ and ‘Slacker’ and ‘Before sunrise/set’ and ‘Tape.’ There is somebody out there who really, genuinely likes ‘Tape.’ It’s literally only distribution which is the factor which gives this aspect-of-quality argument its inevitable validity.
And why the obsession to have quality attributed to a piece of content as its whole? There are productions we could perhaps dislike in their majority but find aspects which we really do appreciate and could not easily find elsewhere.
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Let’s just quickly finish off with two examples and some other s**t from The Wire season 1. They are both examples of inspiration which were unique and which were aspects which (we?) wanted to be captured and replicated in this game.
John Bailey, the third member of Omar’s crew. I may very well have been ‘Joe low attention span needing to be attracted everyman viewer’ when I first watched the show. And for that viewer, Bailey’s name may pass the viewer by. It isn’t telegraphed to the audience directly or ostentatiously that Bailey is named as such. I vaguely recall Omar perhaps mumbling Bailey’s role in a robbery that they were about to carry out as they drew diagrams in the sand. While Bailey is not in another scene, Omar makes casual reference to Brandon about him - again, not directly identifying a face with a name. Either way, the name of the character can easily be missed. Flash forward to McNulty and Kima pulling over Omar and Brendon’s van in a graveyard. Before departing, McNulty quips ‘Oh by the way, tell them they blew up John Bailey last night.’ The camera shows Brendon and Omar’s reactions, and since we haven’t seen the character Bailey for a few scenes, it can be easily inferred that the absent third member is indeed called Bailey. Basically, this single sentence from McNulty is all that the audience requires to know who Baily is and that is all that they get! Oh! And of course, this single line of dialogue is also all the audience requires to know that he’s dead and that is also all that they get! This is gaddarn beautiful in terms of giving as little to the audience as is necessary. Why would you do that? Well, since when is anything done for just one reason? But one admirable component for me is indeed about ‘Joe imagined to-be-dumb everyman.’ When writing a piece of fiction, to what extent and by what method do you convey information to your audience? Do you whack them over the head with it to ensure that they don’t miss it? Do you run the risk of patronising them or making them feel that the production they are watching is too juvenile for them? If you go too far the other way, you are running the risk of inaccessibility and exhausting the audience due to the effort that they are expending to pay attention and to retain information just to keep up. When our minds could be going to far better uses, retaining more practically applicable and profitable information, would one really recourse to focus that much on a piece of fiction? Especially if that fiction is not on the surface engaging nor satisfying? Of course, Killing Machine Movement recognises this risk, weighs the risk, and being in essence, the comedy and parody which it is, decides ‘lol’ and tilts itself off balance extremely to the inaccessible polar end solution to this conundrum. Err well, ok, you trolled me as an audience member - hopefully, like Cervantes(lol) with the intention that I would laugh alongside you. Is that a good move? This is still my time we’re talking about. What else is positively on offer from this method of audience treatment? Let’s look at Ronnie Moe. Who the heck is Ronnie Moe? The name is mentioned close to ten times in the first season of ‘The Wire.’ What is ascertainable is that he is a wholesaling member of Avon’s crew. And that’s about it. Go re-watch season 1 again and note how many times Ronnie Moe’s name shows up. The pay-off of his character and all the screen time dedicated to reference of him? I have no **cking idea. Seriously, time constraints are so essential in TV production. Why the heck would you devote so much dialogue to this character when he delivers nearly nothing cathartic narratively (Aside from when I and my housemate - who was watching it for the first time - noticed this aspect of Ronnie Moe, and by the time of the final episode of the season erupted ‘Eyyy!!!’ whenever he was mentioned.)? Pretentiously, I could bring up what Freamon says in the season, that you are building a case and all the pieces matter, regardless of their initial seeming relevance. Instead, I’ll posit another question. Is satisfying resolution the only necessary aim of narrative? Is even engagement? Emotional arousal and empathy? A portrayal of realism? One could argue that character empathy and narrative resolution are actually at odds with a portrayal of realism. And that in fact, if that is the aim of a production, then it would be better to have many unresolved loose ends of seemingly pointless details hanging around your narrative, because that is more reflective of real life and experience. And the former, popular method is in fact an unrealistic, trimmed and sanitised, commodified replication of reality, cut and distorted to be packaged better for a mind less suited to effort. And that this former presentation method is supported as a prescribed one by a discourse which likely desires profit over other merits, or else is comprised of people who would rather be sure about something than correct about something. I’m just joking now really or some shit. Right?
After ‘The Wire’ went arguably too far with its freedom of expression and lack of concern for audience retention in season 2, the show in general became more of a suspense drama (Heightened by the time of its season 4 ending montage). And this was in its own right, **cking fantastic and brilliant, and completely justifiable with the narrative strings which it had organically protruded from its experimentation in the central nucleus (lol sorry). But Season 1 is special. It is that central nucleus, combining arbitrary nitrogenous bases together to see what ensuing polypeptide chains survive in the environment outside. So much is self-contained within the scale it set for itself when it didn’t know if it would continue. And every component of the season is for its own sake. There is nothing else like it from that era of TV nor as far as I know for the continuing eras. And it is another of those multiple influences for this game, which did something for the sake of genuine exploration regardless of outcome and ended up providing something new which could not be obtained elsewhere. You could say, when it comes to the influences of The Wire season 1 and Movement, Yipee Kiyay… I mean, it’s all in the game! HaaaHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAAAAAHHAAAAAAAHHAAAAAA HA HA AHA AHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAH AHAHA HAHA AHA HAHAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA As in this game, Movement, if you didn’t get it. And obviously not all, but you know what I’m sayin???
