Loose Canons

Get it? Because I called our new characters loose cannons! lol

"Play it again, Sam." "Elementary, my dear Watson." "Luke, I am your father." Like famous movie misquotes, how often do we remember things that aren't really true?

I've been eating up analysis of The Force Awakens ever since watching it in the theaters. Right now, I am in middle of Screen Rant Underground's TFA-dedicated show [SPOILERS]. Screen Junkies has a few shows about it, especially the review with the now infamous Max Landis [more SPOILERS]. I listened to a fun episode of Cat Context last week—no wait, almost two weeks ago—where they discussed the movie [of course there are SPOILERS] without Liore. [yet another EDIT: I was seriously remiss in not including Dana Buckler's excellent two parter: The Phantom Mistakes and The Force Awakens Review.]

One thing that has come up several times—and I even went so far as to comment on it on the Cat Context episode page—is the question of canonicity regarding concepts and plot points in the Legends (formerly known as the Extended Universe).

[EDIT: For those confused what I am talking about, "Canon" (originally a religious term) refers to works (books, movies, etc.) that are considered official sources of information about a story or fictional universe. The current term used by Star Wars fans and Disney officials for works outside of SW canon is "Legends" (formerly the Extended Universe, EU for short).]

So many of the theories floating around on the Internet—about Rey's parentage, Finn's background, what will happen next—depend on a body of knowledge that is no longer canon:

As of April 25, 2014, the only previously published materials that are considered canon are the six Star Wars films and the Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series and film, while the Expanded Universe is no longer considered canon and was re-termed as the "Legends" brand. Most Star Wars material released after April 25, 2014—with some exceptions—is composed in collaboration with the Lucasfilm Story Group, making it part of the "new canon."
~~Wookiepedia, "Canon"

That's not to say that concepts or characters from the EU might not make their way into the films or other new canon works.

@Hoopserwan It's all non-canon, but it all exists as a resource that could be used down the line.

~~ Jennifer Heddle (@jenheddle) April 25, 2014

However, that doesn't mean a character drawn from a Legendary work necessarily makes the work itself canon. Arolaide is really excited that Revan is mentioned in the TFA Visual Dictionary. And I agree that it is cool. But that does not mean that any book or game that includes the character of Revan (KOTOR, SWTOR) is canon, too. After all, it's a safe bet that Luke Skywalker (or Anakin/Vader) features in the vast majority of EU books. But that doesn't make any of them canon.

Even when people acknowledge that the EU is now legend, they end up making assumptions about what they "know" versus what is actually canon information. So is it significant that Rey has a British accent, while Finn has an American one? After all, John Boyega and Daisy Ridley grew up mere miles from each other (though in wildly different circumstances). So that has to mean something, like she's Obi-wan's grandkid because he had an accent, or she's Luke's and Mara Jade's kid because Mara was Imperial and all Imperials have British accents.

Leaving aside the fact that the character Mara Jade is no longer canon—a fact highlighted by the Cat Context folks—nothing in the original movies states that invariably Imperials have British accents. (This is a plot point in SWTOR, but not supported by the films, which take place some 4000 years later.) All the stormtroopers in the OT and several Naval officers (notably, the admiral Force-choked by Vader in the war council scene of A New Hope) are Americans. Meanwhile, rebels like Mon Mothma and Obi-wan Kenobi (OK, he was never actually part of the Rebellion) have distinct accents.

Of course, we can chalk up at least some of these discrepancies to casting expediencies. But what about when actors use an accent that we know is not their native one? Surely that's significant, no? According to Mr. Boyega himself, his American accent was a decision made on set, rather than something planned out by the writers. So it was not meant to convey information to the audience. Now, is it possible a future canon writer (like Rian Johnson) may make something of Finn's accent? It's possible. But we have no reason to hang a theory on it; or Rey's accent, either.

Another question for debate was whether Finn is Force sensitive, based on his ability to wield a lightsaber.  There is no basis for that in the current canon. However, as pointed out by Arolaide, the kyber crystals critical to a functioning lightsaber must be attuned to the Force before they can be used. And guess who is capable of that? As a side note, the use of synthetic red crystals by Sith Lords is a "Legend." Canon kyber crystals are colorless, and any color they pick up is a reflection of the user (it's still a bit hazy when the color becomes fixed). So the crystals given to Jedi players in SWTOR may be pre-attuned, colored, and fully in line with canon. Or they may be the legendary colored crystals seen elsewhere. Sith players acquire lightsabers rather than constructing their own.

I much prefer the approach taken by the folks in charge of Star Trek. Paramount established over 30 years ago that the only canon is what you see onscreen. Anything you might read about Captain Kirk or Lieutenant Worf may be contradicted at any time by a new episode or movie. Of course, Star Trek has many, many more hours of screen footage than Star Wars. Even then, there are elements of characterization, plot, technology etc., that are contradicted by later shows. Even within current Disney Star Wars canon there are contradictions, some of them very aggravating.

So this rant got a little nitpicky. All I am saying is that we may need to unlearn what we have learned, and go with the flow of the actual canon, rather than try to force the stuff of Legends into our pet theories.

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Serial Mono-game-y

This post started out as something else, then I realized it pretty effectively answered Jaedia's Talkback Challenge.

While I did play video games growing up, they were not common in my house. Nor did I get involved in D&D or other roleplaying games, even though I was mildly interested in the idea. However, I did (and still do) have a vivid imagination, fueled by a love of reading and (at least as a kid) plenty of opportunity to play outside with friends in a LARPy sort of way (though not with nearly so many rules) (or costuming). These traits and experiences sowed the seeds of my future gamer-ness.

Syp posted last week about having a bit of envy toward MMOers who can devote themselves to a single game. This was me for the longest time after subscribing to World of Warcraft, and mostly before I started this blog. To this day, WoW has been the MMORPG I've played the most for the longest, to the almost complete exclusion of any other game at the time. There are a few factors that led to this. It was the first MMO I'd ever played, starting in 2006. The fact that it is a monthly subscription meant that the thought of playing anything else made me feel I would be wasting money, and time. Lastly, because this period closely followed my divorce and I was not prepared to be out in the dating arena, I spent the vast majority of my leisure time retreating into the vibrant realm of Azeroth.

As you may guess, the factors that led me to branch out into other MMOs were a direct counterpoint to the reasons I played WoW so heavily in the first place. The year 2009 marked my re-entry into a serious romantic relationship, the first since my divorce. I was spending less time playing WoW, even though my girlfriend of the time humored me and dabbled a bit in the game herself. Then, my account got hacked in January of 2010; just after I had begun blogging, as a matter of fact. Granted that I got just about all my stuff back later, the hack still made me realize just how ephemeral progress in an MMO can be. I was much less attached to WoW after that, more willing to try something else. Along came Star Trek Online less than a month later, themed on one of my favorite IPs growing up. The chance to be a Starship Captain was too tempting to resist in my state of disillusionment with Blizzard. My exposure to the larger gaming community through my blog led to yet another purchase, LOTRO, in late March, also marking the first time I labeled myself a gamer.

Unlike that girlfriend who simply humored me and my hobby, Scooter actively and enthusiastically participates in MMOs with me. Her gamer resume is also far deeper, including a regular D&D group in her youth. We are one of many gamer couples and families.

While I have tried to play more than one game at a time, one has always come to dominate my play, either through being subscription-based (back to my value-for-money mentality) or simply being the new shiny. That has played out repeatedly in the years since WoW. I have returned occasionally to games, played them for a while, then moved on to another. SWTOR is simply my latest return and "main squeeze." Despite my initial reluctance, I am enjoying it. I just got my first stronghold, more on that tomorrow.

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Sports and Games

While I was busy exchanging germs with a couple hundred people in an aluminum can on Saturday, a competition aired on ESPN2. While not unusual that a sports network would broadcast a contest for entertainment, this happened to be an "eSports" tournament, which got all sorts of people in a froth. 

Sport (according to Dictionary.com):

1. an athletic activity requiring skill or physical prowess and often of a competitive nature, as racing, baseball, tennis, golf, bowling, wrestling, boxing, hunting, fishing, etc.
2. a particular form of this, especially in the out of doors.
3. diversion; recreation; pleasant pastime.

Most people fixate on the athletic component of the above definition in order to label a given activity as sport. I confess that I myself do so. On the other hand, I feel that primarily artistic competitions that happen to include an athletic component (e.g., dance, figure skating) should not be included. Neither would I consider competitions not involving athleticism (e.g., chess, videogames) to be sports. However, according to the third definition, I am wrong to think so. "Sport," much like "Obscenity," seems to be difficult to pin down, but we know when we see it.

Belghast thinks that we need to drop the "e" from eSports, as if they would be more legitimate without the wannabe prefix. I personally consider it a mistake to define every competition as a sport. We already have the ridiculous sounding Dancesport. What's next? Singsport? Why not? Singing involves plenty of physical exertion, more than the button-mashing of videogames that Belghast alludes to. How about Triviasport? The folks on Jeopardy mash buttons, too; and it's often reaction time/button mashing speed that determines the winner.

Game (also from Dictionary. com):

1. an amusement or pastime
2. a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules, usually for their own amusement or for that of spectators.
3. a single occasion of such an activity, or a definite portion of one

Just as not all sports involve games (by the third definition thereof), not all games need to be called sports. My point is not to mock these various competitive organizations aspiring to be "Sports," but to point out that sports is not necessarily a  desirable thing to be associated with. Too many gamers (and other fringe interests) are concerned about credibility with the "mainstream." As the Godmother of Faff obliquely points out, the sports world is not exactly filled with proper role models. Nor are they likely to accept us "basement dwellers" into their cool kids' club in any case.

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Axes to Grind

This rumination might ramble a little more than others.

Why'd You Have to Be So Mean?

Belghast is wondering when it became so "hip to be mean." Games are supposed to bring people joy, or at the very least some form of relaxation. Granted that there are many ways to relax—some folks like to lay on a beach, while others only yards away enjoy riding the waves. Some people spend their game time fishing, while others enjoy pitting their skills against each other in various forms of mock combat. But at some point, it became de rigueur to criticize—to judge—the pastimes of others. We accuse people of cheating when their playstyle or resources are different than ours. From our armchairs, we criticize the decisions of creators, athletes, and performers we can't possibly hope to emulate.

There’s a huge number of gamers out there who don't comment on websites, who don't know the ins and outs of the industry, who don’t care about who’s who. They don't know or care how exactly or technically games work. They're just interested in the experience of playing them. And I think that there is a hundredfold more of those people than the thousands who get paid to talk about games and write about games and the tens of thousands who leave shitty, nasty comments on game blogs and elsewhere.
~~An anonymous game developer on Don't Die

Politics Don't Only Happen in the Capitol

I can sympathize with game developers. I work in an industry, on a project, that always seems to be getting bad press. Some of it is perhaps deserved—we do a lot of internal critiquing ourselves—but much of it is not. The criticism is more about unrealistic expectations than any actual failing of the project. It's compared unfavorably to products that don't possess half the features, by people with their own axes to grind. Perhaps it suffers a bit from feature creep. Ultimately, it represents years of effort by people who just want to make the best product they can with the resources they've been given.

So many of us, and now I'm talking more narrowly about gamers, and particularly the gaming commentariat, come from a history of being bullied. And yet how quick are we to become the bullies ourselves? How often have we declared that someone not playing the way we do are doing it wrong? I have found myself on that bandwagon all too often. We become so defensive about our own interests that we wind up tearing down the interests of others. When we like a game, it becomes the delicious chocolate dish that everyone should love. But if we don't like it, we can't imagine why anyone would. And, therefore, those that do must be mentally defective in some way.

Look Beyond the Monkeysphere

We forget that these people are actually people. They have hopes and dreams, and hurts and difficulties, just like we do. We forget the long hours they devote to their endeavors, only to have someone come along and criticize, whether it's developers working on a game, or players playing it. We forget that those "evil" corporations are mostly just a bunch of people trying to make a living for themselves and their families. We forget that those other players may not have as much time as we do, or maybe not as much money. Or maybe they have some disability that simply makes it harder to play the game. Or, possibly, they just don't prioritize their lives and their game time the way we do.

I guess what it boils down to is that I think we should have a little less pride in our own supposed abilities or accomplishments and a little more empathy for one another.

Show a Little Appreciation

Someone I consider a good friend started something a few years ago he called Developer Appreciation Week. He wanted to shed a more positive light on the industry. I don't think anything like that has been organized this year, so you know what? I am declaring this coming week to be DEVELOPER APPRECIATION WEEK. If you're a blogger reading this, I encourage you to spend at least one post between tomorrow, 28 March, and next Saturday, 4 April, expressing your appreciation for those hard working people that make your life a little more enjoyable creating the games you play. And spread the word about DAW, because you reach people that I do not. If you do such a post, please send me the link either in the comments below or on Twitter. I will do an index post next week.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

My MMO History: Updated

Every so often, I update my MMO History page in light of recent activity.

After a long hiatus, I have returned to Rift with my lovely bride, Scooter. We played regularly from the beta tests in January of 2011 through October of the same year. I cannot say enough great things about this game, or the developer, Trion Worlds. It's not perfect, but the polish and responsiveness of the game and company are things other devs should aspire to. For reasons not really clear even to me or Scooter, when our Mains hit 50 (max level at the time), the wind went out of our sails, and we really had no desire to continue playing the game. We got involved again in summer of 2013, with House Stalwart, but discovered that something about the game caused us both eye strain. Now we're back in, have started new characters, and are enjoying our time in Telara.

We dipped our toes into ArcheAge for a few weeks this autumn(2014). It's a beautiful game with an interesting class/skill system, and I'm told the open-world PvP isn't as bad as some have made it out to be. However, due to technical difficulties, we decided to drop the game before getting too far.

Through the summer, we were playing WildStar. Scooter and I have two duos of Exiles, plus I have a few solo toons. It's a fun game with an engaging storyline and a delightful art style reminiscent of World of Warcraft, but some ways an even darker tone. Despite the colorful cartoony look, this is not a game for young children.

Judging from the sheer number of posts tagged with The Secret World, it is my favorite game to play. It's the smartest story and skill/ability system on the market, in my humble opinion, though the additions of the Augment and Aegis systems make and already complicated system almost unwieldy. The issues from 2013, "The Last Train to Cairo" and "A Dream to Kill," feature the most enthralling storylines I have followed in an MMO. I currently have a toon in Egypt's Scorched Desert, and two in Transylvania's Carpathian Fangs, having completed the main story through "The Venetian Agenda." I have not gotten into Tokyo, the new zone that opened up with the release of Issue 9: "The Black Signal."

Scooter and I spent a bit of time in the Landmark alpha this past spring, but the exigencies of the plot rental during early beta—plus technical difficulties with my computer—led to a sharp drop-off in our participation. I'd like to go back and see what has changed in the past few months, but WildStar occupies my thoughts and plans most of the time these days.

Between Christmas and New Years Eve, 2013, we decided to try something a little different, after looking into a couple F2p titles, we started playing EverQuest II. Our first two characters were OK, but we chose poorly on our starting area and tired quickly of the polar tundra around New Halas. Picking up again with a Ratonga Conjurer (me) and a Half-Elf Warden (Scooter) we restarted in Greater Feydark, but are stalled in the second zone of the continent, Butcherblock Mountains.

Guild Wars 2 is a ton of fun (the most important thing in a game), easy to jump into and play for a few minutes or a few hours. The game has a good skill/progression system, great graphics, plenty of lore, and just a touch of whimsy—without going overboard. I have a human Engineer at the max level of 80, and several other characters at lower levels. I haven't actually played in a few months, though.

I played Star Trek Online from just after its release in February of 2010 until May of 2011. I dipped in a toe again in June of 2012, checking out the Duty Officer system and other developments to the game. With the recent Legacy of Romulus expansion, I started up a new Romulan Captain and got my Main up to max level. Amongst all my MMO characters, I am still most attached to my STO crews in many ways.

I had a lot of fun with Star Wars: The Old Republic, from mid-December of 2011 into August of 2012 after pushing to achieve 50 (max level) and finish up the story on my Imperial Agent. I was initially very excited about the story-centric gameplay. The game has a lot going for it; but in the end, the way BioWare and EA have managed the game and community has left a bad taste in my mouth.

I played World of Warcraft from June of 2006, when a friend got me hooked, until October of 2011. I have two level-80+ characters, plus many more lower-level ones. I tried the Pandaren starting area in the Mists of Pandaria expansion (in October, 2012), but got a "been there, done that" feeling from the experience.

Neverwinter is a fun third person shooter/D&D hybrid, and I love my half-Orc Great Weapon Fighter. I didn't get very far, but it was a nice diversion.

I have tried Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Defiance, and The Elder Scrolls Online, but found them not to my taste.

Please see also my character pages. Links above.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this page through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.