E♭. That’s the last note Aereogramme played for me.
The vibrato tone was sung from an empty stage, a lone guitar wailing a feedback lament from its stand, hurriedly bottled into my phone’s microphone.
Farewell gigs are the strangest of things and this, the Scottish band’s final London appearance last night, their penultimate live outing ever, was no exception. There was no support act – as if support of that kind were needed here – at Kilburn’s pretty and warm Luminaire club. As a result, amongst the art deco lampshades and twinkling, yellowy lights, the three hundred capacity crowd were all here to celebrate and mourn but one act.
For the first half of the performance we stood mostly silent, lost in the thoughts and memories tied to each song and pulled from nine-years of experiences. I felt sadness and warmth, like two coloured dyes dropped into the same water, swirling in union, unmixed but intermingled.
Halfway through the evening the rhythm of the audience’s respectful quiet attentiveness during each song and eager applause afterwards was interrupted by a kindly heckler calling: ‘Don’t leave me!’ from the rear bar. At this, the spell of melancholy was broken, giving way to celebration and interaction.
After lead singer Craig returned to the stage for the encores he took a moment to address the heartbreak. “Look,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for nine years and I’m tired of sleeping in bass drum cases and seeing shit bands sell shit-loads of records. It’s time to bow out and pass the mantle on to somebody here.
“And while the problem for us was that you here were the only ones who ever bought our records, don’t think that you can’t be successful.
“Gosh, sell millions of records. But do something new and interesting. Make something amazing from this diabolical music industry we have.
“And whatever you do, don’t do what Snow Patrol do.”
One of the questions for our generation is what does success look like. To the modern man it was all about the blockbuster hit. Success was measured in units sold, airtime taken, revenue raked. Today, as Chris Anderson puts it in The Long Tail, we are entering the era of the niche.
Blockbusters still raise the highest earnings for the multinationals but they rarely attract the ,critical adulation or dedication of a smaller but more committed, respectful and cultured fanbase. Aereogramme enjoyed all of these things but, despite The Guardian’s recent suggestion that the band would be soon filling stadiums, they won less of the more orthodox accolades of mainstream success. I know which kind of success I judge to be of more value.
Nevertheless, as the band go on to new and different things I wish them every kind of success, save perhaps for that which would see them beating me in our regular tussles over Xbox live.
A few months ago I was scrabbling around for more details of Seth Gordon’s forthcoming documentary, The King of Kong, to no avail.
The film follows under-achieving science teacher Steve Wiebe as he tries to take the world high score for the arcade game Donkey Kong from reigning champion, the irrepressible and inimitable alpha-geek, Billy Mitchell.
If you’ve not seen the trailer watch it now below because it’s magical, nerd Rocky-esque drama and I cannot wait to see the finished article. Bafflingly, a scripted movie adaptation of the unscripted movie documentary is in the early stages of production which, as far as I know, is a first for the medium.
While on holiday I picked up a copy of The Earthsea Quartet, a collected volume of the four books in Ursula Le Guin’s classic fantasy saga.
In part this was because a couple of weeks ago Studio Ghibli’s animated adaptation of the series (entitled Tales from Earthsea) was released into British cinemas but also I’ve been meaning to read anything of Le Guin’s work for ages and haven’t got around to it.
I’ve not quite finished the whole series yet but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to where I’m up to. Her prose is unfussy, precise and beautiful for it. Each sentence is tightly constructed and exact but she still plays with language and ideas in captivating ways.
Zooming out from these bright micro-constructions, the narrative is considered and compelling and while the journey that protagonist Ged is on is just as meandering as that of Frodo et al, I’m enjoying it a lot more than Tolkien’s work.
I’ve not seen Studio Ghibli’s version yet but, despite earning a staggering amount at the box office upon Japanese release this time last year, I know it’s had mixed critical reception over there. Indeed, Le Guin herself has been quite public in her lukewarm appraisal of the adaptation. You can read her reaction to first watching the film, which was directed by legendary Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki’s son, Goro, here.
It’s a rare and interesting thing to have such open access to a writer’s thoughts on a cinematic interpretation of their own work (Alan Moore notwithstanding). In particular this extract likely sums up what must be a common complaint for writers who have watched on helpless as movie scriptwriters condense and contract for a film audience not just their original story but also those original ideas underpinning the story:
The moral sense of the books becomes confused in the film. For example: Arren’s murder of his father in the film is unmotivated, arbitrary: the explanation of it as committed by a dark shadow or alter-ego comes late, and is not convincing. Why is the boy split in two? We have no clue. The idea is taken from A Wizard of Earthsea, but in that book we know how Ged came to have a shadow following him, and we know why, and in the end, we know who that shadow is. The darkness within us can’t be done away with by swinging a magic sword.
But in the film, evil has been comfortably externalized in a villain, the wizard Kumo/Cob, who can simply be killed, thus solving all problems.
In modern fantasy (literary or governmental), killing people is the usual solution to the so-called war between good and evil. My books are not conceived in terms of such a war, and offer no simple answers to simplistic questions.
I also read through the final installment in the Harry Potter series while I was away, an interesting magical counterpoint to the other-worldly and heavier wizardry of Le Guin’s work.
Judging from the angry reaction to the (very gentle) criticism of Rowling’s loose use of adverbs posted here a few weeks ago, Chewing Pixels should tread carefully in drawing comparisons between the two books.
Nevertheless, both works do beg comparison: each is written to appeal to both a teenage and adult audience, each is set deep within a rich and detailed mythology populated by dragons and spells and robes and staffs and seventeen-year-old protagonists.
I finished Harry Potter quickly – it’s a book that’s easy to wolf down but, like fast food it didn’t leave me feeling nourished in any way. It must be hard to write a conclusion to a series that is already so deep in filming. So much of the action in the second half of the book felt like it was written, even subconsciously, with the inevitable film sequences in mind and I found that off-putting.
One of the strengths of the Potter universe is the robust mythology. You get the feeling that Rowling knew almost every nook and cranny and plotted the skeleton of her narrative right from the start (as well she should). But zooming in from that macro view and I find the nuts and bolts of her writing formulaic and clichéd. In contrast, Le Guin’s work will frequently have me pausing after an elegant (but tightly functional) sentence, savouring its unexpected construction and interesting form. For me it’s the simplest test of good prose – I must pause, gasp or marvel at the way an author perfectly communicated a familiar idea or image in a new and different way.
It’s a trait common to all good creative output I think. Someone asked me the other week what it was that I thought was so musically interesting about Scandinavian pop girl Robyn (her album Robyn is a must listen) and I tried to express it as that which goes above and beyond being able to sing/ play in tune and rhythm.
It’s her understanding and sensitivity to expression and tone and feel and how to play and mess with these things to make a performance interesting that marks Robyn as the most interesting girl in pop at the minute.
In the same way a good writer breaks or twists the rules of good writing in clever ways for effect. If attempted by someone who didn’t understand the rules of good writing in the first place it might seem sloppy but in in the right hands it elevates the work from being just good and solid to being exciting and individual. I find this throughout Le Guin’s writing and nowhere in Rowling’s.
As to which work will make the better film, we’ll have to wait a few more years to find out…
Back in black – well, quite tanned, at least, from some hott Cornish sun. While I was away this DS piece went up which marks the last of the Most Wanted series for Eurogamer. It’s also worth popping over to see Rob’s review of Blue Dragon on the site (he gave the game a 5/10) and read the comments thread. I wrote the Edge review of BD in this month’s issue and this happened. Bite tongue, deep breath and walk away etc.
While on holiday I finished Bioshock in glorious 4:3). It has a pretty disappointing ending and isn’t quite as marvelous as everybody seems to be saying, but it does do loads of things very well and I really enjoyed the game mostly (particularly the art style and setting).
It’s hard to think back to a time when the all-consuming success of Nintendo’s DS was in any doubt. But, as with so many new and different things, videogame consumers at first struggled to put their faith in what appeared to be an unfocused hotchpotch of whimsical design ideas.
The first iteration of the machine was ill-served by its chunky, plasticity Fisher-Price build quality and with its strange dual screen set-up and on-board microphone it looked as though Nintendo had spent its money in all the wrong places. Less generous commentators claimed the company was consolidating its position as out-of-touch toymakers offering little more than a gimmicky toy. Had a mistake been made in ignoring consumers’ perceived desire for faster, sleeker, more technically impressive handheld specifications (those the rival the PSP so eloquently embodied)?
For a while, with few games arriving for the system, and with many of those that did tacking the hardware’s new functionality onto established mechanics in pointless or uncreative ways, it appeared as though the detractors were correct: the DS was another Nintendo handheld curio, a Virtual Boy for the 21st century.
But then came Brain Training, Animal Crossing: Wild World, Nintendogs, New Super Mario Brothers, Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time, Elite Beat Agents, Slitherlink and Phoenix Wright, and a hundred other innovative, inventive, exciting and soulful games that transformed the system from interesting novelty to absolute necessity.
Since those early days, the machine’s steady, assured dominance – bolstered by the Lite hardware redesign – over the three global territories has been unstoppable, culminating in last week’s announcement from Chart Track that the DS has overtaken the PC and PS2 as having the highest current market value of all videogame systems in the UK for the first time.
The system has revitalised an ailing Japanese videogame market (indeed, nine of the ten games in this list originated in Japan), a country that’s accounted for 18 million of the DS’ total 47.27 million hardware sales worldwide. Last October Nintendo announced a 20.5 per cent rise in net profit forecast – attributed almost entirely to the handheld. It’s a success story of heart-warming proportions and one that’s in no small part thanks to an astonishing line-up of software that appeals to a broad demographic.
In a sense, then, the system has little to prove from here on out but glancing ahead over the next year’s release schedule – and there’s an impressive number of enticing title that seem to be further broadening the machine’s remit. Here are just some of them. Enjoy.
The École Émile Cohl in Paris is one of the most prestigious animation schools in Europe. Its students spend two years sketching, drawing and observing before, in the final year, moving on to work with computer-based animation packages. As a result much of its graduates’ output enjoys an illustrative style that is becoming increasingly rare in modern animation.
Recently a few of 2007’s final year students have posted up their final animation projects onto Youtube and the work is mostly amazing. Here are two of my favourites.
I love the premise behind Florian Thouret’s Le Moulin but it’s the execution that really elevates it.
The humourous Un Gros Billet enjoys a perfect soundtrack to compliment its witty, effortlessly confident tale of a lost note’s adventure.
This one is also worth watching simply because the scene with the birds at the end is excruciatingly pretty.
You can read a bit about the school’s founder, Émile Cohl, here
*Gasp* Definitely time for a holiday. Apologies for the strap-line pun. Bramwell insisted. I suggested it should be ‘Something for the Weak End’ to kick of the comments thread but then, it doesn’t really work and it isn’t really true…
Of all Nintendo’s various achievements, surely its most consistent is in simultaneously pissing off and delighting its faithful European customers.
For twenty-five years the company has wowed us with innovative technology and wonderfully robust and inventive games, filling reservoirs of consumer goodwill in a way few other multinationals manage. In tension with this, interminable localisation delays, sloppy, bordered conversions and,- most heart-breakingly – an ever-slim line-up of releases has made it clear that Europe is literally the least of the Japanese company’s global concerns.
Never has the conflict been so obvious as it is with Wii in 2007. On the one hand the decision to bypass the HD race and instead invest in new ways to allow people to interact with their televisions is cause for celebration. But the months of waiting for titles like Paper Mario or Trauma Centre to make it from America to the UK is simply unacceptable at a time when simultaneous worldwide releases are commonplace on other systems.
Most Wanted lists like those featured in this series bring out the worst in a readership (as 300-odd furious comments in our previous two articles demonstrate with car-crash appeal). For many gamers who own just one of the three main players, defending their chosen machine is not just about fighting for its honour but also about justifying their own wisdom as a consumer.
Gamers who have eschewed Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 for a Wii may well fight with similar (also pointless) vigour, but with so few games in the Wii’s catalogue, they certainly have a lot less ammunition. Newfound gaming grannies and mainstream press column inches don’t pack quite the same punch as a Halo 3 or Metal Gear Solid 4 in the playground debates.
You can see the full list with observations over at Eurogamer here.
Gamasutra post a pretty good article about the relationships that exist between a publishers’ PR and videogame journalists.
In truth its points would mostly apply to any sphere of consumer product (from movies to cars). Nevertheless, it’s pretty accurate in its portrayal of the actual things that happen when publishers try to influence coverage and scores – at least in my experience.
The piece is somewhat let down by a pointless and silly conclusion (see ‘Cutting out the Middle Man’) but nonetheless it’s an interesting read.
Also:
As part of the effort to personalize, Rockstar’s PR department tracked scores for reviewers on a person-by-person basis, often hoping to influence which writers were selected to review their games. “Rockstar was big on trying to get specific people to review specific games,” says Zuniga. “But it’s a fine line—you can’t just come out and ask, because it seems like you’re trying to take away editorial control.” They went so far as to track seemingly pointless personal details of some writers. “Hilariously, we even had a list of journalist preferences: Likes cake, married, went to school at Indiana U. Shit like that,” says Zuniga.
I’m not sure I’d use “hilariously” to describe that. “Terrifyingly”, perhaps.
A superb little game that you really should play. I wrote this a month or so ago so it’s fun to come to the words afresh kind of having forgotten what I said. Hope you enjoy reading it.
There’s something mildly unsettling about Anno 1701’s premise. Unlike, say, The Darkness or Manhunt or Silent Hill which promote and delight in their distastefulness, this Sim City-like DS game hides its dark under a well-lit bushel.
It’s difficult to put a finger on at first. As you disembark your galleon onto a sunny, yellow shore and set about levelling the land, building houses, churches, pubs, quarries and profits your conscience remains unpricked by the comfortable plod of capitalism.
But, when the first Red Indian chief enters your growing settlement and requests politely that you get the hell out of his country the mask slips. Although it never explicitly says so, this is a game about dark imperialist history in which you mastermind a defiant invasion by stealing land from the indigenous people groups who already call it home.
The game drives you through its excellent and seamless tutorials you develop vigour and purpose. These are lands to settle and histories to write, an feeling which presumably mirrors that of those historical European pioneers for whom survival and the establishment of community was of greater importance than appeasement or integration with the natives. The bright presentation, friendly pilgrim-esque character portraits and well-to-do dialogue promote an atmosphere so innocent and orderly that you barely notice the shaky ethical ground upon which you build.
Intentional or not, it’s brilliant, enlightening role-play as you steadily grow addicted to expanding your colony into other archipelago islands before building up a military to fend off rivals and subjugate those natives who oppose you. Subtly but forcefully you become a capitalist tyrant, hungry for more power and further dominion, obsessed with defending and promoting that which you’ve worked hard to create. Videogame metaphors for the birth of contemporary world superpowers don’t get much sharper than this.
“And while the problem for us was that you here were the only ones who ever bought our records, don’t think that you can’t be successful. 
A few months ago I was scrabbling around for more details of Seth Gordon’s forthcoming documentary, The King of Kong, to no avail. 
While on holiday I picked up a copy of 
It’s hard to think back to a time when the all-consuming success of Nintendo’s DS was in any doubt. But, as with so many new and different things, videogame consumers at first struggled to put their faith in what appeared to be an unfocused hotchpotch of whimsical design ideas.
Of all Nintendo’s various achievements, surely its most consistent is in simultaneously pissing off and delighting its faithful European customers. 
Gamasutra 
There’s something mildly unsettling about Anno 1701’s premise. Unlike, say, The Darkness or Manhunt or Silent Hill which promote and delight in their distastefulness, this Sim City-like DS game hides its dark under a well-lit bushel. 
