Moviebob's Game Overthinker & Beyond: The Video Game Writing of Bob Chipman

By Bob Chipman

Bob Chipman gained notoriety as a film critic, but he first arrived as a voice in the world of video games: as creator of THE GAME OVERTHINKER! Now, he brings together a special collection from his years writing about games; including full transcripts of select classic OVERTHINKER episodes. From games in pop-culture to negative portrayals of gaming in media, censorship, the "dickwolf" incident and even the GamerGate debacle; this volume covers one of the games industry's most tumultuous generations - by a gamer, for gamers.

While perhaps best known as the creator and star of classic Web Video series like Escape to The Movies, The Big Picture and The Game OverThinker; Bob Chipman has also published numerous volumes of written reviews, commentaries, thinkpieces and features covering the worlds of film, television, video games and the broader breadth of popular culture. Now, through The MovieBob Anthology, a selection of his best work is yours to own - selected and organized by theme by Bob Chipman himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Chipman
• Release date: Mar 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781495195075

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Moviebob's Game Overthinker & Beyond: The Video Game Writing of Bob Chipman

GAME OVERTHINKER

& BEYOND

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe my success, which includes the opportunity to write these pieces in the first place and the ability to share them with you again, to many fine people who’ve enabled my career to this point: Stuttering Craig Skistimas of ScrewAttack and Fullscreen, who was among the first to discover my work, Russ Pitts, who first reached out to me about reviewing movies professionally, and Susan Arendt, who was the original editor of a great deal of the work included here. I offer them all my sincere thanks for their help, encouragement and (most of all) their friendship.

This book is dedicated to my parents, Patricia & Peter Chipman.

The original pieces contained in this volume are culled from a variety of sources. The majority originated on The Escapist (www.escapistmagazine.com) and the MovieBob Blog (moviebob.blogspot.com)

Copyright © 2016 by Bob Chipman

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4951-9507-5

Revere, Massachusetts

www.moviebob.blogspot.com

INDEX OF TOPICS

A MATTER OF CHARACTER

On bad modernized character designs.

SUPER MARIO AND THE SACRED FEMININE

Reconsidering the cultural assumptions about Princess Peach

A KIRBY CONFESSION

Gaming blind-spots and how to overcome them

THE END OF THE WORLD AS Wii KNOW IT

In defense of casual gamers

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NINTENDO FANS

Understanding classic-gaming’s most devout fanbase

NOT A REVIEW OF GTA IV

Watching a phenomenon from the outside

CAN IT HAPPEN TO US?

The 90s comic book crash and how it’s repeating in gaming

SONIC IN CRISIS PARTS I & II

How to save a fallen franchise

MISSISSIPPI PWNING – PART I

Gaming and race

MISSISSIPPI PWNING – PART II

Gaming and race, continued

REALITY SUCKS

Getting past modern gaming’s realism obsession

WHO WILL BE REMEMBERED?

On memory and which classics will really stand the test of time

COMPLEX ISSUES

When you love a game but can’t stand the people who made it

5 GREAT MOVIES ABOUT VIDEO GAMES

Exactly what it says in the title

GAME CHANGER

On Scott Pilgrim’s place in film and gaming history

DON’T FILM THESE GAMES!

Video game movies we really don’t need

PLEASE, FILM THESE GAMES!

Video game movies we really do need

QUIT IT: GAMING EDITION

On the gaming clichés we could really do without

VIDEO GAMES VS THE MOVIES

Two industries with more in common than you’d think

ADVICE FROM A FANBOY: MORTAL KOMBAT

How not to ruin another Mortal Kombat movie

RE-TAKE THE CABIN

How Cabin in The Woods explains the Mass Effect ending controversy

IT NEVER ENDS

Dragon’s Crown and the neverending sexy costume controversy

SEEDS OF THE DRAGON

The movies that inspired Far Cry: Blood Dragon

XBOX: DONE

On the fan revolt against the original anti-consumer XBox One plans

A WINNER IS YOU

Consumers won the day against Microsoft – now what?

DICKWOLF’D

How Penny Arcade made a mess for themselves, and why it matters

GRAND THEFT OBJECTIVITY

In defense of unpopular opinions among game critics

MOVIEBOB PRESENTS: E3 THE MOVIE

A humorous take on the big show

A LONG POST ABOUT #GAMERGATE

A ground-eye, first-person view of modern gaming’s ugliest moment

THE UNDERAPPRECIATION OF CAPTAIN N

Looking back at on an infamous 90s game cartoon

THE 10 WORST PORTRAYALS OF GAMERS ON TELEVISION

When TV made us look bad

THE TOP 10 BEST PORTRAYALS OF GAMERS ON TELEVISION

When TV made us look not so bad

THE BIG LIE

Game culture is selling a false dichotomy you don’t have to buy

INTRODUCTION

The writing in this volume represents some of the earliest attempts I ever made at putting my work in front of the public.

Elsewhere in The Anthology, I’ve described the unique position I found myself in during my longest (so far) period of regular employment as a writer in being a film critic for an outlet that focused predominantly on video games (The Escapist.) But the fact is, I’ve been a gamer at least as long (if not longer) than I’ve been knowledgeable/invested enough in film to write about it. I literally can’t remember when I first encountered video games, they were always there in the ether of my life, but I remember exactly where I was when I first saw Super Mario Bros running on an NES and knew my life wasn’t going to be the same from that point on.

I’d been a fan of things before and became one of other things after, but gaming was the first thing that I loved that I really decided to dig in deep on in terms of understanding it. I wanted to know the canon of the games I was playing, the names of the people who’d created them, how they worked, where they came from, etc. Eventually (starting in my early teens) I was inclined to apply that same level of commitment to film, which led me to my true calling, but gaming is always going to be a vital part of my life… or, at least, I hope it will.

So when it came time to first put myself out there in the world of web video, it felt pretty natural to make my first real production a show about games: The Game OverThinker, and of everything I’ve done it’s probably the one closest to my heart – there was very little compromise, I largely answered only to myself, and it was the first time that someone (Craig Skistimas and the guys at ScrewAttack, specifically) found something of mine and told me it was worth something and they wanted to be a part of it. That success led me to put movie content up on the same platforms, which in turn led to me getting hired as a film critic, which led to… pretty much the whole rest of this Anthology.

So when it came time to collect my video game writing (to date, at least) there was no question: It had to be Game OverThinker branded and there had to be episode transcripts in it. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to include all of them – largely because, being spoken-word videos with narrative and performative aspects that make them unsuitable for transcription in a book of otherwise traditional essays; but also because the topics and tenor of many episodes have become dated or unusable in other ways. I’m considering ways to make more of that backlog available, but for now I sincerely hope that fans will enjoy this best of sampling.

OverThinker transcripts in this volume include the first episode ever, A Matter of Character, plus popular episodes like The Big Lie, The Psychology of Nintendo Fans, Sonic in Crisis, The Underappreciation of Captain N and more; and each one includes (as do the other essays) a new introduction placing them in the context of their time, my mindset and whether or not said mindset has changed since.

But that’s not all! A selection of my game-related writing from The Escapist, my personal blog and other sources are included as well; charting a course through almost a decade of games that saw some of the most tumultuous change the industry had ever experienced… which is another way of saying lots of articles about the Wii phenomenon, the casuall/hardcore war and, yes, select pieces that dealt with the GamerGate debacle as it unfolded.

Also included: 5 Great Movies About Video Games, Re-Take The Cabin (which is about Mass Effect AND Cabin in The Woods – how about that?) and The 10 Best (And Worst) Portrayals of Gamers on Television; along with coverage of Dragon’s Crown, Far Cry: Blood Dragon, Race in Gaming and the Penny Arcade dickwolves controversy. Want more? You also get some just-for-fun comedy-writing in MovieBob Presents: E3 The Movie and the near-disaster that was the initial rollout of the XBox One.

Every effort has been made to get these pieces properly organized, cleaned up and made as readable as possible both for old fans re-experiencing their favorites and new readers who somehow stumble on this while leafing through the chronically-understocked Gaming shelf at their local chain book store. However, you may notice some stray issues popping up here and there. For one thing, since these reviews have been organized by title rather than date, you may notice abrupt shifts in quality and style; given that these reviews were written on a (largely) weekly basis amid an evolving career and posted to multiple platforms – which often meant a change to style-guide, a change in editorial staff or both. In the interest of preserving what were often design-oriented choices in writing, I elected to not impose a singular stylization over the entire book; which means these pieces appear largely as they originally did online, though there has been some minimal editing to remove or reword references that were originally designed to work in-tandem with HTML hyperlinks.

I sincerely hope you enjoy this collection of game writing. It represents an exciting time in my life, as I took my first real steps into covering games and entertainment professionally and became the man I am today. I hope you get as much value out of reading these pieces as I did writing them. Most of all, I hope that you find at least one film in here that you either hadn’t heard of or hadn’t taken time to see yet that you are compelled to watch and enjoy. If I’ve helped to facilitate that, I’m still doing my job.

Thank you for reading,

Bob Chipman.

A MATTER OF CHARACTER

(Originally written February 2008)

Well, here it (mostly) is: The text version of the first episode of The Game OverThinker. At the time, I had no idea if anyone was going to care about what really did boil down to me ranting about boring character design over a slideshow of semi-related images. Fact is, for a long time no one DID care, until the folks at ScrewAttack chose to highlight it and the rest was history. There’s a very 90s rock DJ put-on anger feel to a lot of the verbiage (I’m using that’s gay in mockery of people who’d speak like that, but still…) which bothers me to read today, but I stand by a lot of my points here.

I thought about starting this off with some sort of introduction but, honestly, you don't care. Many thanks if you were pretending to care anyway, but we both know you don't. You're first question is NOT who is this guy but rather what sets this guy apart from every other fucking game-culture video-rant guy on the web, and rightly so. So we'll cut to the chase: Me llamo Bob, Y sense de fashion es NADA. Moving on…

So, like a lot of gamers I'm currently in the midst of having my world by rocked by Suda 51's No More Heroes, the first fully-awesome 3rd party title for the Nintendo Wii and as far as I'm concerned both an early contender for the top-games-of-08 list and a welcome fellow to Portal and Bioshock in the pantheon of wonderful new-blood ideas for this console generation.

And YES you heard me you half-cocked message-board fuckheads, the Wii IS part of this console generation even though it's not giving you a base-tan with Bloom Lighting and forcing you to go plasma in order to derive the proper enjoyment from otherwise rote rental-worthy rehashes, alright?? It's out at the same time as the 360 and PS3, it's competing in the same fucking marketplace, cut, print, end of story. Yes, Sony and Microsoft's respective HD-ready Next-gen behemoths are getting assfucked all over the sales charts by an underpowered retro oddity that isn’t at all ashamed to admit it's a toy at the end of the day. Mario is still the gold-standard, Miyamoto is still God, Brawl will be the greatest thing to happen to gaming since the invention of jiggle-physics, so can we please stop it with this tired shit about Game Cubes and duct-tape and get the FUCK over it!?

Ahem. Anyway, No More Heroes. It was right about the time that I found myself using my ghetto lightsaber to fight my way through the army of evil baseball henchmen only to find myself in the middle of a ballpark ready to do battle against a ballad-crooning cowboy detective named Doctor Peace that two profound things happened: First, I fell head-over-heels the fuck IN LOVE with this insanity-dripping masterpiece; and second I was struck by the sad realization that this kind of brilliant fucked-up-ness used to be the RULE in games as opposed to the exception. Which brings me to my thesis for today: What the FUCK happened?

For the sake of brevity, I'll try to keep this mainly in the realm of game characters this time around because otherwise this is going to get old real fast. So, to revise, What the FUCK happened to turn video game characters from one time paragons of demented genius into some of the most derivative figures in all of fiction interactive or otherwise?

Like... check out Castlevania. NES. Early-80s. It's a Dracula story, and there's Dracula. Okay, pretty standard so far. But hold on… in THIS version, he's an all-powerful supervillian of nearly godlike powers. The fucking GRIM REAPER - Death itself - takes orders from HIM. His castle is a Dark Ages Death Star apparently the size of a small country unto itself and along with a standing army of mummies, zombies, gill-men, Frankenstein's Monster and whatever else the Universal Horrors had to offer he's apparently conscripted half the Olympian Beastiary to the cause as well. And who's gonna fight `em all? Van Helsing? General Spielsdorf? NO. Simon Belmont, a Frazetta-style beefcake barbarian with a loincloth and a magic whip. A WHIP. He's going to fight vampires with a fucking WHIP. How nuts is this? Hunter Thompson didn't see shit like this.

Once upon-a-time, even games set at least halfway in a real world went nutzoid as a general rule. In Final Fight a street gang elects to prove their bad-assery by kidnapping the Mayor's daughter. Fortunately for her, Hizzoner Mayor Dad is a gigantic former pro-wrestler who rather than calling in the police on this one elects to strip to his slacks and beat the shit out of the punks himself. Along for the ride comes the daughter's boyfriend and his best friend… who helpfully happens to be a NINJA. This all takes place in the same universe and continuity as Street Fighter, where mixed martial-arts tournaments routinely allow the participating of lightning-powered South American ape-men.

I KNOW I'm not the only guy who misses this kind of go-for-broke creative free-for-all in the medium…

Here's a fresh-from-the-oven example of what I'm getting at. A few months back Capcom gave oldschool gamers the world over a Sizemore-ian level affliction of acute priapism by announcing that they'd be revisiting the world of  Bionic Commando, a one-off NES-era classic rightly remembered as motherfucking masterpiece and one of the best things they ever made - high praise considering this was CAPCOM at the apex of its Mega Man-era grandeur and only a few years from its Street Fighter-era grandeur.

The game featured bad-ass super-spy Radd Spencer fighting through elaborate, colorful levels battling the armies of a revived Adolf Hitler (no, really - fucking HITLER!!!) chiefly through the use of his awesome telescoping bionic arm. G.I. Joe meets James Bond meets Spider-Man meets Mega Man - PURE. CONCENTRATED. AWESOME. So you can understand our excitement at a return to form… and then we saw it.

Yes, fine. Swinging around on the arm looks fun - we've known that since Spider-Man 2. But where are we doing it? Wow, washed-out beige-brown ruins. Sweet. Because that look totally hasn't been done to death in every fucking serious game since Doom. We'll come back to that in just a bit, though…

Meanwhile, check out our new-and-improved hero. Whoaaa, bra! Totally rockin' the shweet stubble! Society wants you to decide between a beard and a clean shave but you're all like funk dat, yo! Word. Oooh! And hey, dreadlocks!! Well, that just seals the deal, right? nothing says I rule like dreadlocks on a white guy. Heh. Yeah Y'know what else they say? I have no regard for how much money my parents are pissing away on my tuition, and also I have no working knowledge of who this guy was but I own twelve shirts just like this one because thats what all the other non-conformists are doing and finally It's still 1998 where I live." To be fair, apparently he's supposed to be hardened criminal released on the contingency of hero-duty (where on Earth could they haven't gotten THAT concept?) so maybe he's simply  as-yet-unaware that Rage Against The Machine is both broken-up and not-terribly-missed.

And the FUCK is up with the big floppy Image Comics robo-arm? How the HELL did that get all the way through the design phase? Did someone let Rob Liefield out of the pen again? Even Peter Chung wouldn't senselessly fuck around with proportion like that.

Yes, the game itself will probably still be pretty decent - this is Capcom, after all. But as lead heroes go this guy is a character-design wash and a real missed opportunity to do something fun and DIFFERENT in the originality-strapped modern game market.

Let's face it: If you go grab a random copy of any big, massively-popular hit recent video game you've got a REALLY solid chance of encountering the following: It's going to be a fucking First Person Shooter so you're character will largely exist as a disembodied hand holding a gun, and the lead hero if and when you DO see him is going to be a scruffy unshaven white guy with a disaffected 'tude OR his cousin presumably scruffy unshaven white guy with a disaffected 'tude wearing space-armor. For some reason, somewhere along the line we went from video game heroism being a profession diverse enough to include plumbers, hedgehogs, robots, cavemen, ninjas and whatever the hell Kirby is supposed to be to a field monolithically staffed by guys who're all doing their best to pull off the look of Self-Employed Landscaping Contractors.

For fuck's sake… Gordon Freeman is supposed to be a research physicist and aside from the Velma Dinkley glasses even HE looks like he'd rather be fronting an STP Tribute Band. What the hell does it say about a genre where the most meticulous facial-grooming habits on display belong to an ITALIAN GUY FROM BROOKLYN!!??

The answer here is no secret: When Sony's Playstation broadened the gamer audience outside the traditional parameters of devoted nerd-dom it brought in new audiences that found gaming's traditional design schematics - culled as they were from the same lovely brew of comics, D&D, Star Trek, Dr. Who, Anime and what-have-you like the rest of Atari-generation nerd-dom - to be not entirely conducive to their personal vision of what was visually and tonally appealing… or, to use THEIR vernacular: Mushroom Kingdom? That's GAY! Wuzzat, triangles? GAY! He's a robot? Soooo GAY! Clearly, something had to be done to appease this obviously discerning new audience. And so bring on the deluge of pandering Scarface-worship, John Madden and of course the Self-Employed Landscaping Contractors.

Take a look at this: This is the cover to the NES title Bomberman.