The Slowest Month for Sports

Now that the Super Bowl is over, we are left with a fairly dismal month in the world of sports. There is something a little empty feeling about not having football every weekend--college or professional. The NHL and the NBA are just far enough from their playoffs that teams are not quite being eliminated or saved on a nightly basis. The excruciatingly long time of the MLB preseason is slowly beginning. Even college basketball is in a bit of a lull, before the excitement of March.

Of course, all this changes very quickly. In one month’s time, we have hockey and basketball teams fighting for that last playoff spot. The NCAA basketball tournament is a blinding display of constantly exciting games. The Masters and WrestleMania are approaching. Baseball teams are beginning to take shape and resemble what they will be on Opening Day. Basically, we have an exciting month and half of sports, but first we have to wade through the drudgeries of February.

So, now would be a good time to look ahead to the future season(s) of your teams, an opportunity which I will take now. Apologies to most people, but this will be a Detroit-centric discussion. You’ll have to indulge me. They are in rough order based on their upcoming championship opportunities. Let’s get started!

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Dayton Flyers men’s basketball This team is good. Having been in and out of the top-25 rankings (19th at the highest, heretofore), they are finally starting to play well with a bit more national attention. They are winning games they are supposed to win, and in most cases, by an notable margin. Their losses have not been pretty, but at least they’ve been few. Barring a major collapse, they should garner at least an 8-seed in the tournament. I’m just hoping to eventually get out of the black hole of the Atlantic 10. After top-tier teams abandoned the conference, Dayton’s wins have been much less impressive. I, for one, would like to go through a few games in the tournament without being called the “Cinderella team.”

WrestleMania To make the month of February even worse, we had to say goodbye to Daniel Bryan, a wrestler that you could not help but like. There was not a dry eye in Seattle on the night he announced his retirement. Otherwise, it’s the best time of the year to be a fan of professional wrestling. I like the look of the matchups for Fastlane coming up later this month, but I am dreading the possibility of Dean Ambrose turning heel.

The Masters All eyes will, of course, be on the young sensation, Jordan Spieth. Number one in the world and defending his crisp Green Jacket from last year’s Masters, I can’t wait to see what he does this year. At 22 and with two majors already, he also has the tantalizing chance to pursue Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 championships. I feel like he could add one or two more in 2016. The player I’ve been most impressed with early this season has been Brandt Snedeker. With one win and three top-3 placings so far, he’s been consistently showing up at or near the top of the field. Unfortunately, I have concerns about Rory McIlroy. He’s only missing the Masters to complete the set of majors, but he dealt with an injury and a slow 2015 following wins in the 2014 British Open and PGA Championship.

Detroit Red Wings The Red Wings have been in the NHL playoffs every year since 1991. I worry about this streak every single year, to some degree. After some trepidation, I’m more and more confident this team will make the playoffs this year. Dylan Larkin has a viable shot at winning Rookie-of-the-Year, and Petr Mrazek has a terrific record of 21 wins in 37 games with a Goals Against Average under 2. Despite the extremely tight Eastern Conference standings, even a .500 record should be enough to secure a spot in the playoffs.

Detroit Pistons As confident as I am about the Red Wings, I’m cooling on the Pistons. Losing the best offensive player on the team in Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has been a huge blow, as the team has dropped 4 of the 5 games he’s missed. There are solid players to cover the holes he has left, but they’re falling just a bit short of late. Andre Drummond is clinging to the most rebounds in the league, but even he has slipped a bit. A bright spot? It’s not going to take much more than 45 wins to get a spot in the East, which is quite doable. Another bright spot? KC-P is expected to be back this month.

Detroit Tigers This is probably the team I am most excited about this year (read: every year). The baseball offseason is always the longest, isn’t it? And spring practices and training is so torturously long leading up to the regular season. In any case, I went from being lukewarm on the team this year to all in after the trade securing Justin Upton. He improved an average to below-average outfield and added yet another dangerous bat to the lineup. The sometimes dismal bullpen shed some dead weight, and added a closer who might not murder fans out of stress each and every night (although I’ve thought that every year for a decade now). I recognize that my optimism is a result of fandom, but I think the Tigers have a legitimate shot of contending for the Central, and possibly the American League.

Detroit Lions As usual, I have no idea what to expect from this team next year. It’s too early to tell with the combine and the draft right around the corner. I will say that so far this offseason has not been altogether positive, seemingly losing more players than we’ve gained, most notably future HOFer Calvin Johnson. The already-lacking offense will take a hit, but the Lions will likely be drafting a defender with their 16th pick. At this point, we have to wait and see how the draft shakes out for any further speculation.

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Again, if you’re not a fan of any of these teams, I can’t believe you made it this far. Instead, I encourage you to reflect on your own teams and sports, and try to get through this dull month in good spirits. Cheers!

On David Bowie

Losing David Bowie was tough. Just a cursory browse of the Internet in the days following the king of glam rock’s passing revealed this. So many rumors of his death and false obituaries over the past decade had made this seem like an impossibility. There was an outpouring of people expressing how difficult it is to lose him or how lucky we were to live through his creative output. Even now, weeks after his death, I can turn to a music website and see a new retrospective about his career. And you know what, regardless of how many I’ve already seen, I’ll probably read it. He truly was an incredible artist.

Because of all the existing eulogies, there’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said. Like most people, I spent the last few weeks consuming Bowie albums. The diversity from album to album is just astounding. Two albums from the same decade may not even sound like they were from the same person. Luckily for future generations of listeners, each iteration of Bowie has been influential on a different generation of artists, from grunge to electronic to punk and so on. What other artists have this same distinction? Sounding wholly different over their life, while still maintaining the quality of his music? That’s the bewildering part about David Bowie: his reinventions rarely sounded like missteps.

Take, for example, his 1971 album, Hunky Dory. This was an album, that could very nearly be considered folk rock, in a way that probably shaped part of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, especially after he called Dylan by name in one of the songs on the album. At the same time, it heralded some powerful anthem rock songs. In fact, few of his albums could be considered more diverse than this one. The very next year, he puts out Ziggy Stardust. As a space rock epic dripping with glam rock theatricality, it could not be more different from his previous album. This is one example of many where Bowie was simply light-years ahead of his time. Are we sure he was human?

The song, “Under Pressure,” is particularly special. When, in the history of music, have two more eccentric AND popular musicians performed together? The question is rhetorical; the answer is never. Queen’s Freddie Mercury--possibly the single most exciting performer ever--working with David Bowie is a musical team we will likely never see matched. Two icons in their showmanship as well as their sexuality, performing near the height of their careers. I can honestly not think of another combination of artists that would have been so impactful together¹. It is tragic that they never performed the song live together.

Bowie continued to surprise right up to his death. With his new album, Blackstar, he again sounded like a different person. I freely admit that the album as a whole will take some getting used to for me; I didn’t immediately take to it as others have. As with his earlier albums, it takes several listens to get accustomed to the sound he demonstrates. But there are certainly some individual tracks which stand out and highlight Bowie’s prowess as a songwriter.

It is interesting to mourn the loss of a person you have never met². Not wrong, of course, just a little absurd. Such is the personal nature of music that some musicians really do command that sense that you actually know the person. In this way, the death of musicians--especially those with long and full careers--can feel particularly shocking. Michael Jackson stunned the world a few years ago; more recently, Lou Reed had a similar effect on a lot of people, myself included³. It is only fitting that David Bowie, who had the capability to be shocking in his life, could shock people with his death. Take care, Starman.

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1 I’m not speaking hyperbolically here; the closest I can come is Jay-Z and Kanye working together, and even that doesn’t have the same level of importance.↩
2 Bowie’s death was also days before losing Alan Rickman. It’s been a hard month.↩
3 Lemmy died a month ago, and I just read that Glenn Frey passed away this week. Motörhead and Eagles fans can certainly relate.↩

As Solid as Ever

There is a pantheon of franchises in the world of video games that can only be considered iconic. In a world of popular culture where we are seemingly obsessed with series¹, consumers are always looking forward to the next entry in the set. With video games, players are always eager to try the new Mario or Zelda or Final Fantasy or Halo. The consistency for these games have endeared them in video game history.

In any type of popular media, franchises are significant, and they deserve to be. There is a reason a series becomes popular and remains relevant. Part of what make game franchises important is that they are somewhat genre-defining. They initially popularize the genre, and then tweak and improve it with each iteration. The two-dimensional, side-scrolling platformer does not exist as it is today without the first Super Mario Bros. StarCraft shaped the way we know real-time strategies. Together, Metroid and Castlevania literally named a certain style of games, “metroidvania.” Basically any genre of video game can be traced to one or two franchises that are still pervasive today. Such games may not have invented the genre, but they propelled them into popularity enough that they can continue making games in the series today. This is what Metal Gear Solid did for the stealth game.

To tell the truth, before this fall, I had never really played through any stealth game properly, much less a Metal Gear game. I couldn’t play Thief, and I barely made it out of the training level of Splinter Cell. I even had issues with some parts of Dishonored, a stealth-lite game. I just couldn’t get the hang of it. I’m not patient enough to plan out events and bide my time in a video game, and when something goes wrong, I don’t like to painstakingly retrace my steps to get back to the same point. Needless to say, I thought I was in for more of the same when I bought the complete collection of Metal Gear Solid games.

Why did I make such a purchase if I was fairly certain that I would not enjoy myself? The long answer is that the newest entry to the series (The Phantom Pain²) had just come out and was receiving rave reviews for being more accessible than previous games as well as just being incredibly bizarre. There was also the possibility of this being the final game in the series. This, coupled with the long time between releases in the series, meant that the zeitgeist for Metal Gear games was palpable. I wanted to experience the fascinating series that people seem to either love or hate, and I wanted to start at the beginning. The short answer is I’m just not smart with money.

In any case, I purchased the collection knowing full well that I might just hate it. I figured I would turn it on, not be able to make it out of the first zone and never try it again. Then a few years later, I would try one of the later games to see if that was any better. And that’s okay, I still had to see what the game was like. I wanted to see what all the buzz was about and be able to tell myself that at least I tried it, and I had at least a passing, academic understanding of it. I could never have guessed how wrong I would be.

I downloaded 1998’s Metal Gear Solid and sat down to play, essentially going in blind. I knew some characters’ names, but that was really about it. Immediately, the opening cutscenes began to draw me in. It’s difficult to explain, but the opening sequence seems both ludicrous and believable at the same time. It’s done with a level of self-seriousness that is really hard not to like. It’s hard to be so stupid and so deep at the same time. This is not supposed to sound like criticism; the opening sequence (and any of the ensuing cutscenes) is highly amusing. The game’s not dumb, just extremely ridiculous.

I expected to have some issues with the controls. The game is old, so the movements are a bit unrefined. It was definitely jarring at first to use the directional pad for movement³ and to press Circle to start⁴. But it did not take me long at all to grow accustomed to the obscure movements. It got to the point that when I used a thumbstick to play another game, it felt strange.

To some extent, I also expected to be stymied by the game’s puzzles. With older games, there is commonly a less-is-more approach to instruction as to what to do or where to go. And I have the unfortunate tendency to get easily frustrated when I cannot figure out the next step. For whatever reason, though, I had no issues. The game provides references to call that provide numerous helpful hints. In this way, it is impossible to be stuck for too long in one area. Longer fights against major enemies also provided enough of a challenge without being impossible.

Finally, I fully accepted the gimmicks of the game that I could only characterize as ‘zany,’ even if I was already somewhat aware of them. The best examples of these comes in one longer sequence against a certain character (I’ll speak delicately, even though you must know the tricks by now). Without giving too much away, in the scene, a character reads the player’s thoughts, the TV screen goes black, and the controller moves of its own accord. I was all in.

It’s weird to speak so highly about a game that was released so long ago. I have come to learn what many other players already knew:  Metal Gear Solid is a sublime game. Beyond appreciating the significance as one of the most popular games on the original Playstation, I legitimately enjoyed every minute I spent with it. There are only a handful of times I can recall feeling better about a game throughout the entirety of it. I can’t wait to move on with the rest of the series.⁵

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1 Of the top ten grossing films of 2015, seven are parts of a multi-film franchise and one is a remake.↩
2 Interestingly, this pushes Star Wars: Episode One further down the list of things that begin with “The Phantom…” behind The Phantom Tollbooth and every form of the The Phantom of the Opera.↩
3 You may have known, the original Playstation controller did not have thumbsticks.↩
4 You may have known, traditionally Japanese games use Circle instead of the Cross or “X” that we’re used to.↩
5 Upon finishing the first game, I immediately played through the short prologue to the newest game, 2014’s Ground Zeroes. I liked it, and I noticed some of the elements derivative of the first game, but it did not capture me in the same way the original did. Not enough to discourage me from the whole series, though.↩

What to Expect When You're Expecting

In the last year, I heard a story on NPR that made the argument that people tend to enjoy a story more when they already know the ending (the example used was “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, in which the ending is a complete reversal from the first part of the story). This baffled me completely. In an age where finding out the ending to a new movie or book is as easy as reading the Wikipedia summary, is it possible that people now find endings meaningless? I mean, you can hardly read an online review without seeing an obnoxious “SPOILERS!!!1!!” tag. But on the Internet, people are infuriated when they accidentally read about a twist. So the sides must be split.

The basis for the argument is that when we know what is coming, it makes the journey to get there more special. Sort of like when a suspenseful moment rises in a horror movie, there is no surprise, but the excitement is still heightened. Sort of. I find it hard to believe that knowing (<spoiler> “Vader is Luke’s father” </spoiler>) in 1980 would have made Empire more enjoyable. It’s called ruining the plot for a reason. But, hey, I guess times change.

I got to thinking about this claim and realized that it is not an easy thing to prove. You cannot experience the same movie twice, once knowing the ending and once not knowing, so you would have no way of comparing the two experiences. Two people--one who has not seen the film, another who has--cannot compare their experiences; one person might simply like the movie better. It is a qualitative judgement call, anyway. There really is no good way to compare how enjoyable some piece of entertainment is based solely on knowing or not knowing the ending. But still, the question bothered me. For me, the best way to go about looking at this is to simply ruin the ending to a movie, short story, or video game. Then, hopefully, I would have some better understanding of this absurd claim.

Needless to say: warning, spoilers ahead.

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I found the perfect movie to test this hypothesis, and you are going to laugh at it. I realized that I was the last person on Earth in 2015 who had not seen The Sixth Sense. I know what you’re thinking: that movie came out 15 years ago, and everyone saw it. A few people might even swear they saw it with me, but I have no recollection of it. It was the movie that established M. Night Shymalan as the king of suspenseful twists, a title he promptly lost in the years to come. It was one of the most talked-about movies of the time. I just never got around to it. I’ve been busy.

Of course, it is impossible to get to this point, even having not seen the movie to know the iconic line, “I see dead people.” So, I surmised what this meant in the context of what I knew about the film, and then read through a plot summary of the whole film. Generally, I had the main points correct. All I needed to see now was the execution.

With the details fresh in mind, I watched through the movie and truly enjoyed myself. I picked up on subtle hints about Bruce Willis’s character, because I was acutely looking for them. The discreet hints were a little more obvious, but I appreciated them in the way you feel upon rewatching a movie. And still, the intense moments were no less intense because I knew what would happen. I was watching a movie for the second time without having seen it the first time.

In the end, I obviously can’t say whether or not I would have liked the movie better if I was going in blind. On the contrary, the first time I watched Memento, I went in without knowing a thing about it, and had to watch it again immediately after finishing it. So, maybe there are really no ways to ruin a well-made, suspenseful film. All I can say is that fifteen years later, The Sixth Sense still holds up as a fine movie. I would give it a belated positive review, but you’ve already seen it, probably more than once.

In Defense of Achievements

In the last generation of consoles, video game players saw the rise of in-game achievements. At the time of their introduction (around 2005 or ‘06), they became popular, almost unbelievably so. So popular that users would go through nefarious hoops to accomplish these tasks just so that they were displayed on a profile. In recent years, appreciation for trophies or achievements has become more or less divided. Some people still obsess over maxing out their score; others could not care less.

So what are achievements, and why do they matter (or not)? Ostensibly, they are minor awards given to the player for accomplishing certain feats in video games. Microsoft debuted the concept with the releases for its console, the Xbox 360. PC games, including many on the Steam and Blizzard platforms, added them soon after, with Sony following suit in 2009 with trophies on the Playstation 3. While trophies did not have points associated with them, they did introduce a Platinum-level for getting 100% of the trophies in the game. It is a good way for developers to observe exactly how many players buying the game actually complete goals. Only Nintendo consoles do not have an established achievement-like system¹. For the vast majority, these awards have absolutely no effect on the game itself; they are merely for a player to display on his or her profile.

Despite having no discernible value, for whatever reason, these became incredibly popular. When Xbox achievements unlock, an addictive “pop” sound accompanies them that elicits a near Pavlovian response in players. It is exciting to play through a game and have notifications as you complete an especially difficult task. Players would trade games to boost their scores or rent games with especially easy points. Gaming websites in the mid-2000s ran articles about the “10 easiest games to 1000 points!” ranking the quickest ways to get the then-maximum amount of awards. Then, players would seek to gain them with questionable motives. Tamer players wanting to “cheat” could play some games with their friends offline; the more hardcore cheaters actually unlocked achievements by unlawfully manipulating the data. For a short time, the achievements seemed more popular than the games themselves.

There is quite a wide range of tasks required to unlock the award, but most games will follow certain rules in achievement development. Story driven games will often have achievements for each mission or chapter completed. Also common are exploration goals, encouraging users to go out and find new locations. Sports games feature tiered achievements, like scoring so many points against the other team. Then there are online multiplayer tasks, as in bringing down 100 aliens with a certain weapon. Obviously, tasks vary by skill and are awarded as such. For example, most people will get the five points for completing a tutorial, but very few will get the fifty points for finishing a game without failing once.

Almost as quickly as they rose to popularity, they became passé. The many people illegally acquiring achievements were banned, but their actions still devalued the concept and people seemed to start realizing how they were actually quite worthless. There has never been a great way to look at your aggregate awards and compare them with friends, like a social network. Nearly every game that comes out today still has the same amount of achievements, but mostly gone are the hunters who work to gain every single award.

As I said, there is a fairly divided split in the favor of achievements. The pragmatic side sees achievements for what they truly are: meaningless and almost totally unrelated to the game’s experience. It is possible to play through the game and have a great time doing it without ever noticing a trophy unlock. Nintendo proves this quite well. Super Mario Galaxy is still a perfect game without an achievement for each unlocked planet². The other side views achievements as the most important part of the gameplay experience. Don’t start a game if you can’t finish raise your completion ratio³! Nothing matters as long as you have more points than your friends! It doesn’t matter if you don’t like a certain mission: you have to do it nineteen more times to get the award! Of course, I’m exaggerating, but the point is, you either like achievements or you don’t care about them.

That is why I feel like the worst an achievement can possibly be is just pointless enough to inspire apathy. Like many people, I was very big into gathering achievements in the mid-2000s. In fact, I used to be too much into them. I definitely participated in matches where players were working together just to accomplish the inane tasks required. Embarrassingly, I might have even chose to play one game over the other simply because of the achievements. I have gotten much more realistic about them since then, but I still maintain that they are great for games.

On the contrary, the best kinds of achievements inspire new ways to play a game. If you generally play a game in one style, an achievement might make you go out and try new combinations of weapons or skills. Exploration tasks might send you out to new locations you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Some other awards may get you to play the game again at a higher difficulty. So while I still get a sense of enjoyment from seeing the announcement that I’ve unlocked a goal, and I still strive to gather as many as I can, I treat them as a fun side effect to the larger overall enjoyment of the game.

Trophies and achievements may not be that important to every person who plays a game, but they are not going away. If nothing else, they provide new reasons to dig further into games. I’m sure I’m not the only player who still looks over the achievement list before I start playing. It gives the player a list of goals to do that is, by definition, achievable. Even if some of them seem impossible. Happy hunting!

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1 I should take this opportunity to highlight an amazing website called Retro Achievements. It allows users to play through emulated versions of their own classic games with user-created achievements. It gives a great new reason to replay through classic games. And it does include Nintendo games.^↩
2 Although isn’t it fun to dream up trophies for 100 Skulltulas in Ocarina of Time, every Pokemon in Red/Blue, or escaping Zebes in less than a minute in Super Metroid?^↩
3 Completion ratio is, of course, the percentage of achievements unlocked. Unabashedly, I still care a little bit about my ratio.^↩