About halfway through the second chapter of Alan Wake, I decided I'd had enough. I got the game because I thought it would be a psychological thriller, for reals, at least as real as, say, Hard Rain. What I got is an annoying rail shooter.
I like a good rail shooter, don't get me wrong. But what Alan Wake has in common with an increasingly high number of shooters is lack of an enemy radar. Some people might say that an enemy radar is unrealistic or takes away from immersion. You know what else takes away from immersion? Lack of stereoscopic hearing and peripheral vision. In the real world, you in fact have a number of cues from the environment when someone is coming up behind you with an ax. As a result, I think games that both don't have a radar and base their gameplay around enemies pouncing you from all directions as faulty game design. At no point with a video game should the game be designed around weaknesses in the interface (in this case, the fact the game is 2D and will be heard without stereoscopic sound), and a game that has enemies appear behind you while at the same time depriving you any meaningful cues that you're about to get hit with an ax is using the interface against you. It's a cheap way to make a game more difficult and I don't like it. I like my interfaces to work with me, not against me.
The game also had spawning enemies without having spawning resources. While it wasn't particularly a problem when I stopped, it would, I'm sure, eventually become a problem. It should be basic game design -- if your enemies spawn, so should bullets.
But the real reason I quit the game, which will be the bulk of this post, is because the plot elements of the game stank to high heaven. There are going to be considerable spoilers from this point out.
The first really big problem is that Alan Wake is an idiot. He's totally that guy who, in horror movies, you say, "Don't go out alone" and who always goes out alone. Except he's your character and because the game includes no choices whatsoever, you have to do the stupid things that you know are stupid. And when you bill your game as being "psychological horror", you've got an obligation to the audience not to be stupid. When psychological horror works, it works in part because we can see ourselves having made those same decisions, that we can imagine a reasonable person making such decisions.
The hero has a dream and that dream seems to be real, including darkness zombies that appear out of nowhere and a light that is suspiciously like many people's interpretation of the Christian god. When his wife, who is completely helpless, of course, with the additional enforced helplessness of having a crippling phobia of the dark (ugh), vanishes, he tries to find her . . . though when he speaks to the police he learns the place where his wife vanished does not exist.
See, that would bring me up full stop and I think pretty much every reasonable person out there -- when your internal narrative has places that don't physically, objectively exist. When your wife vanishes from the place that doesn't exist, an intelligent, sane person would start to consider things in a very particular way. Either your worldview is totally wrong and the universe is fulled with supernatural events or you'd have to consider the very real possibility that you're deeply insane. In the first place, if you become convinced of your sanity and the existence of supernatural events, then you should reasonably and logically proceed from that understanding. Your wife is in the hands of supernatural beings, or perhaps is an illusion or supernatural manifestation of some kind.
Or you say you're insane and realize that you can't help your wife. You're crazy. "Doing something" would be a crazy something and you shouldn't do it, you should institutionalize yourself immediately.
Of course, there is supernatural stuff in the world . . . at which point is stops being "psychological horror" and becomes "supernatural horror". And only slightly "horror", really, because, y'know, it's really an action game, so it's more like dark modern fantasy. The character never seems to make this jump, though, that he's now in a world of magic -- that the world has, in fact, always been magic and he has simply been ignorant to this fundamental truth. So, y'know, maybe the worst idea to follow would be to dance to the strings of your supernatural puppeteer who has kidnapped your wife.
This also makes sense from a purely criminology point of view. Kidnappers want something. As far as I got, Alan never bothered to ask what the kidnapper was or what the kidnapper wanted. In short, he was an idiot. His wife is being held prisoner by supernatural creatures and he doesn't ask a single bloody question of himself or anyone else in the game. (I am given to understand that he eventually does ask questions, when an Explainer makes herself clearly known. More bad writing. If you need an Explainer to explain your plot, you need to do a rewrite.)
He was an idiot who didn't even get properly equipped. The idiot, for instance, knows that darkness damages his foes and enough light holds them entirely at bay. So, he never once stops and gets an industrial strength flashlight, relying on the flashlight from the glove box of his car. While, of course, it would be unlikely for a small town to have a 5000 dollar battery operated searchlight on the shelves, since they're next to a state park, they would have a camp store where one could get . . . elaborate lightage, including lamps that are really, really bright in a radius and very large, intense flashlights. Not to mention he could also get a gun a little more macho than a .32 revolver at the local gun shop.
Additionally, he might want to bring his friend along. Another set of hands, another big ass flashlight and another gun. Or, y'know, the fuckin' cops who might believe you a little more when you can demonstrate the existence of the supernatural. They absolutely do have ten thousand dollar portable searchlights and paramilitary weaponry. I mean, come on, the kidnapper says to you not to talk to the cops you ignore them. Yeah, maybe if there is a supernatural force involved, that force might magically know. But even then . . . so? Maybe doing the bidding of monsters is a bad idea, y'know? He never considers that following the advice of a monster is a bad idea.
This might come off as being a little big "boy gaming". Y'know, that "real people" would not actually do that. I guess that depends on the real people. I consider myself a real person and, amongst my friends, I'm actually the pacifist of the bunch. I have several friends who have several of these things just hanging around their house and a number of them wouldn't even imagine visiting a state park without a couple of guns and they'd definitely arrive with a lot of light sources. Indeed, I'd arrive with more light sources than these guys.
But the disturbing thing is . . . this is simply never discussed. The "psychological horror" element seems to be the character is an idiot who does what monsters tell him, even though he knows they're monsters. You can't even say that the fear and terror of his wife being in their hands drives him to irrational decisions -- he is very calm. Indeed, far, far calmer than I find plausible from this wimpy writer guy who has not, who admits he'd never shot a gun before, and yet seems comfortable and capable of gunning down multiple attackers in a world turned topsy-turvy because of all the, y'know, monsters and magic. The character just makes no kind of sense.
He's also a jerk. He's a writer who hasn't written anything in two years, even though he's otherwise a national best seller. When they go off to the woods together, his wife gives him a manual typewriter to encourage him to write. (As a writer, I was definitely, "WTF?" A manual typewriter? Really? Not, y'know, a Macbook Air? It was another one of those poorly scripted moments that took me out of the story. I understand it was an homage to Kubrick and Stephen King and The Shining, but the book was written in a time where many writers still did write with typewriters. Y'know. Decades ago.) He freaks out, bites off her head completely out of proportion to her "offense" -- which was a well-meaning attempt to be helpful. I believe it was meant to demonstrate that Alan Wake was sensitive about not being able to write. But it came off like he kicks puppies in the nutsack. He verbally and physically bullied his wife and stormed out into the dark, knowing her crippling phobia would prevent her from following him.
When his friend, after a week incommunicado, comes down to check up on Alan and his wife, that guy gets treated with the same sensitivity -- which is to say, none. Alan is a jerk. So, not only is he an idiot he also has no human emotions. By this time, the psychological horror angle is in absolute tatters. Yet, that's why I got the game. If I had known it was really just another horror shooter, I wouldn't have bothered. I find horror shooters insipid. It's evil . . . that you can shoot! Seriously, you're going to go with that for your plot? Shootable evil? I understand that video games are a bad format to discuss teleological questions, but it's not like there's someone making them do it. Really, it's okay to make the enemy something that could plausibly be beaten with a gun. Or, y'know, in your game of psychological horror make it about, I dunno, psychological horror. Start with putting a character with accessible human emotions into the game, even just one would have been nice.
The plot is also juvenile. I think it's an indictment of video games that their reviewers are so debased as to give a plot that starts off with saving the helpless woman a passing grade. That is, in and of itself, a terribly, horribly hackneyed plot. Great. Another helpless girl to save. Whatever. Unsurprisingly, the plot under that plot is the incredibly predictable "the world needs to be saved" plot. Which is the plot of something like eighty percent of video games. So the game slides from the clichéd to utterly, remorselessly predictable. Of course, video game reviewers and most video game players have painfully debased ideas on what constitutes a "good story". Almost none of them realize that an infinite procession of games about saving the game world from ultimate evil simply cannot be called "creative".
The plot was also a pastiche of things much better than in. In particular, many of the salient features of the plot seem lifted fairly wholesale from John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (but also The Shining, The Dark Half and old school World of Darkness that I could see in my limited play of the game). Reading the plot summary strengthened this idea quite dramatically. It's always a bad idea to remind someone of a good movie in your bad game.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Predictions on GSP vs. Koscheck and Sean McCorkle is a trollin' dork
The fight is tomorrow. I'm sure that by Monday I'll have some after fight report. But the only fight I'm really invested in, on the whole card, is GSP vs. Koscheck. Well, actually, I'm also pretty interested in Struve vs. McCorkle. But first GSP and Kos.
I've seen most of the pro fights by both fighters. They've also fought before and it was an interesting match to watch a second time. GSP, on two cards, lost the first round -- it was a reasonably close first round with Koscheck seeming to have a very slight upper hand in standing striking and Koscheck ended the round taking down GSP, but the middle of the round was GSP. On my scorecard, I gave the round to GSP but I can see how someone else would give it to Koscheck. The next two rounds were all GSP, the second round almost frighteningly so. The fight, as a whole, was dominated by GSP.
The first with Koscheck in their first fight was the last time GSP lost a round. I'm sure the UFC commentators will go on at considerable length about how Koscheck has grown as a fighter and that's certainly true. They will probably focus less on how much GSP has grown during the same time, which is at least as much and quite possibly even more, it's just that we have trouble wrapping our heads around how good GSP has improved because he's always been so good.
Subsequently, both fighters have fought about the same number of fights. GSP, in his fights since Koscheck is 6-0. Koscheck, since losing to GSP, is 6-2. GSP has been generally fighting better fighters because, well, he's the champ, including dominating Thaigo Alves in Alves' title shot . . . a fighter who dominated Koscheck in their fight, almost knocking him out pretty much every round. Then Koscheck was knocked out by Paulo Thiago. Paulo Thiago hasn't gotten a title shot and might never. He's on the line of deserving one -- which is to say, quite possibly not a worthwhile opponent for GSP. And he clobbered Koscheck.
Four of Koscheck's last six victories have been stoppages, whereas GSP has only managed to stop three of his six. The difference is, again, in the quality of the fighters. Koscheck stopped Yoshiyuki Yoshida, Dustin Hazelett and Frank Trigg by KO or TKO. Yoshida and Hazelett will never be confused for championship material and Frank Trigg was in his late thirties when he fought Koscheck. Koscheck submitted Anthony Johnson who, again, will not be terribly confused with a top contender. Meanwhile, in his last six fights, GSP stopped UFC Hall of Famer Matt Hughes (generally thought to be the greatest UFC welterweight of all time with the possible exception of GSP) with an armbar, former welterweight champion Matt Serra with brutal knees to the body and BJ Penn, former lightweight and welterweight champion, with a corner submission because, y'know, they had to get Penn to the hospital after the savage ground and pound GSP gave to him. GSP has been stopping Hall of Famers and former champions, Koscheck guys who are too old to be in title contention and, well, no-bodies.
So, "who's going to win" isn't a particularly hard analysis. GSP has fought better guys and dominated them. Koscheck has lost to, granted, world-class Thiago Alves and the not-quite-world-class Paulo Thiago, and the general quality of his fights have been less than GSP. Not to mention that GSP has beaten Koscheck before. So we shouldn't be talking about if GSP is going to win but how GSP is going to win, because Koscheck's chances appear to be slim. For him to win would require a lucky punch or an unexpected injury on GSP's part. But, realistically, we should be talking about how GSP is going to win.
The safe money is that GSP will win like he won last time -- by dominating Koscheck on the ground. Even Koscheck has said that GSP will "probably take me down". Then, of course, he said he has some "tricks", but the truth is that Koscheck isn't a tricky fighter. He wins in two ways -- taking the guy to the mat and dominating them with his superior wrestling skills (an option he doesn't realistically have with GSP) or using his left to set up a right overhand hook haymaker while throwing caution to the wind. But . . . tricks? No. Every fight Koscheck has won he has won either by wrestling dominance (often, as most recently with Semtex Daley, with the old lay and pray technique or using his wrestling to achieve a good ground and pound or get a rear naked choke) or throwing a couple of bombs and hope the other guy walks into them. He's not a complex fighter nor a particularly intelligent one.
GSP is . . . a complex fighter. After Penn's corner threw in the towel, GSP talked about his strategy was to get Penn to the ground and . . . I dunno, do some crazy wrestling pressure points thing to force blood up into Penn's shoulders to stifle the effectiveness of his punches. It was crazy that this was part of his plan, but it makes sense considering Penn's knockout power. And every time he fights, he's got a plan. So in his first fight with Koscheck, the first thing GSP did was a takedown to "take him out of his comfort zone", because GSP had noticed that Koscheck had never fought from the bottom. It worked. Koscheck, afterward, was pretty surprised that GSP went after his wrestling and attributes the loss to the fact that he had been so focused on stand-up fighting and the presumption of his superior wrestling that he didn't imagine GSP might attack him in that way. Which is why I can't just say the Penn "plan" is bullshit -- GSP does things other people don't even imagine doing. He's the kind of fighter that makes you realize what a kung fu master is, that there's this thing he does that transcends the physical into some crazy realm of combat psychology and physiology that's just universes above "throwing a good overhand right hook". So, I wouldn't actually bet that Koscheck has too many tricks but I would bet GSP has some pretty good ones.
Taken together, I think that GSP will notice something I noticed when watching Koscheck's fights. The thing I noticed is . . . Koscheck has never seriously been kneed by anyone. I heard rumors on the Internet -- ha, I know! -- that GSP has been practicing a lot of muay Thai. And on Countdown to UFC 124, they spent a lot of time focusing on GSP's muay Thai coach.
GSP already has good knees. He's stopped fights by kneeing downed opponents in the body, including the tough Matt Serra. He has thrown standing knees, too, but he isn't an artist with them like an Anderson Silva or Wanderlei Silva (no relation; Silva is the Brazilian "Smith", apparently, and it's coincidence they both like knees) -- but GSP's got all the traits. He's got great balance, he's got great grappling, and he's great at transitioning from striking to grappling. His legs are already like pneumatic pistons. So, I'm hoping for the plum clinch and down goes Koscheck's head and up comes GSP's knee in a highlight reel facial obliteration that leaves Koscheck soaked in blood and asking where he is in the ambulance.
If not that, I hope GSP just ground and pounds the guy, like he did to Jon Fitch and that is the safe bet -- Fitch is a better MMA wrestler than Koscheck and it stands to reason if GSP did it to Fitch he can do it to Koscheck. I want it drawn out and painful. I want Koscheck to understand the totality of his domination. I want him to realize that he will always be the inferior fighter. Failing that, a good Cro-kick that puts Koscheck's head in orbit would be nice.
And then I want to forget about Josh Koscheck. He'll have gotten his shot, which I admit he deserves, and afterward he can go back to being a respectable but not particularly noteworthy fighter in the autumn years of his career. I even hope he has the brains to stop before he becomes a circus sideshow act like Ken Shamrock and Chuck Liddell (and where Tito Ortiz is on the cusp of being).
Okay, now about Stephan Struve and Sean McCorkle. I don't particularly know either fighter very well, though I've seen both of them fight. They're pretty good. I'm not sure either of them is in top contender status, yet, but they both could be in the not too distant future . . . and, quite frankly, the UFC's heavyweight ranks are pretty thin right now and they need to find guys to fight Frank Mir, Brock Lesnar, Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez. You can't really have a league with those four guys fighting each other, even assuming that Lesnar wants to fight (which I have heard is in question), so it's more like three and a half guys, and Mir and Lesnar have already fought twice and Lesnar and Velasquez once. So, sure, the UFC needs to get their heavyweights up to speed and Struve and McCorkle are prospects for contender status (tho' neither of them will, I think, make it). But they're not marquee fighters right now and neither one of them has caught my particular attention so while I'm interested in the fight, it's a little abstract, as in the sense that I hope it's a good, tough fight.
But, apparently, McCorkle is a trolling asshole trash talking master of disturbing proportions. In particular, he's the first MMA fighter to really take the trash talking to social networking sites. On TV and in front of people, well, you've at least kinna sorta gotta behave. You start spewing obscenities, they'll just focus the camera away from you. Not to mention, that kind of verbal assault is cause in some states for the other guy to kick your ass and claim fighting words.
As anyone who has spent any time on the Internet knows, none of that is true there. McCorkle is the first MMA fighter who is also a reasonably diligent and skillful Internet troll. Yikes. I figure most of the people reading this have an idea what's coming next, where I'm going to quote McCorkle talking about Struve. Such as:
The only thing Stefan Struve has ever finished in his whole life is "another guy off".
Or: Stefan Struve was once arrested for impersonating a cocksucker.
Or: Stefan Struve pees sitting down.
So, yeah, really respectful. Needless to say, I'm on Struve's side and, to be fair, he's slightly favored to win, so it won't be a shock if he does.
I've seen most of the pro fights by both fighters. They've also fought before and it was an interesting match to watch a second time. GSP, on two cards, lost the first round -- it was a reasonably close first round with Koscheck seeming to have a very slight upper hand in standing striking and Koscheck ended the round taking down GSP, but the middle of the round was GSP. On my scorecard, I gave the round to GSP but I can see how someone else would give it to Koscheck. The next two rounds were all GSP, the second round almost frighteningly so. The fight, as a whole, was dominated by GSP.
The first with Koscheck in their first fight was the last time GSP lost a round. I'm sure the UFC commentators will go on at considerable length about how Koscheck has grown as a fighter and that's certainly true. They will probably focus less on how much GSP has grown during the same time, which is at least as much and quite possibly even more, it's just that we have trouble wrapping our heads around how good GSP has improved because he's always been so good.
Subsequently, both fighters have fought about the same number of fights. GSP, in his fights since Koscheck is 6-0. Koscheck, since losing to GSP, is 6-2. GSP has been generally fighting better fighters because, well, he's the champ, including dominating Thaigo Alves in Alves' title shot . . . a fighter who dominated Koscheck in their fight, almost knocking him out pretty much every round. Then Koscheck was knocked out by Paulo Thiago. Paulo Thiago hasn't gotten a title shot and might never. He's on the line of deserving one -- which is to say, quite possibly not a worthwhile opponent for GSP. And he clobbered Koscheck.
Four of Koscheck's last six victories have been stoppages, whereas GSP has only managed to stop three of his six. The difference is, again, in the quality of the fighters. Koscheck stopped Yoshiyuki Yoshida, Dustin Hazelett and Frank Trigg by KO or TKO. Yoshida and Hazelett will never be confused for championship material and Frank Trigg was in his late thirties when he fought Koscheck. Koscheck submitted Anthony Johnson who, again, will not be terribly confused with a top contender. Meanwhile, in his last six fights, GSP stopped UFC Hall of Famer Matt Hughes (generally thought to be the greatest UFC welterweight of all time with the possible exception of GSP) with an armbar, former welterweight champion Matt Serra with brutal knees to the body and BJ Penn, former lightweight and welterweight champion, with a corner submission because, y'know, they had to get Penn to the hospital after the savage ground and pound GSP gave to him. GSP has been stopping Hall of Famers and former champions, Koscheck guys who are too old to be in title contention and, well, no-bodies.
So, "who's going to win" isn't a particularly hard analysis. GSP has fought better guys and dominated them. Koscheck has lost to, granted, world-class Thiago Alves and the not-quite-world-class Paulo Thiago, and the general quality of his fights have been less than GSP. Not to mention that GSP has beaten Koscheck before. So we shouldn't be talking about if GSP is going to win but how GSP is going to win, because Koscheck's chances appear to be slim. For him to win would require a lucky punch or an unexpected injury on GSP's part. But, realistically, we should be talking about how GSP is going to win.
The safe money is that GSP will win like he won last time -- by dominating Koscheck on the ground. Even Koscheck has said that GSP will "probably take me down". Then, of course, he said he has some "tricks", but the truth is that Koscheck isn't a tricky fighter. He wins in two ways -- taking the guy to the mat and dominating them with his superior wrestling skills (an option he doesn't realistically have with GSP) or using his left to set up a right overhand hook haymaker while throwing caution to the wind. But . . . tricks? No. Every fight Koscheck has won he has won either by wrestling dominance (often, as most recently with Semtex Daley, with the old lay and pray technique or using his wrestling to achieve a good ground and pound or get a rear naked choke) or throwing a couple of bombs and hope the other guy walks into them. He's not a complex fighter nor a particularly intelligent one.
GSP is . . . a complex fighter. After Penn's corner threw in the towel, GSP talked about his strategy was to get Penn to the ground and . . . I dunno, do some crazy wrestling pressure points thing to force blood up into Penn's shoulders to stifle the effectiveness of his punches. It was crazy that this was part of his plan, but it makes sense considering Penn's knockout power. And every time he fights, he's got a plan. So in his first fight with Koscheck, the first thing GSP did was a takedown to "take him out of his comfort zone", because GSP had noticed that Koscheck had never fought from the bottom. It worked. Koscheck, afterward, was pretty surprised that GSP went after his wrestling and attributes the loss to the fact that he had been so focused on stand-up fighting and the presumption of his superior wrestling that he didn't imagine GSP might attack him in that way. Which is why I can't just say the Penn "plan" is bullshit -- GSP does things other people don't even imagine doing. He's the kind of fighter that makes you realize what a kung fu master is, that there's this thing he does that transcends the physical into some crazy realm of combat psychology and physiology that's just universes above "throwing a good overhand right hook". So, I wouldn't actually bet that Koscheck has too many tricks but I would bet GSP has some pretty good ones.
Taken together, I think that GSP will notice something I noticed when watching Koscheck's fights. The thing I noticed is . . . Koscheck has never seriously been kneed by anyone. I heard rumors on the Internet -- ha, I know! -- that GSP has been practicing a lot of muay Thai. And on Countdown to UFC 124, they spent a lot of time focusing on GSP's muay Thai coach.
GSP already has good knees. He's stopped fights by kneeing downed opponents in the body, including the tough Matt Serra. He has thrown standing knees, too, but he isn't an artist with them like an Anderson Silva or Wanderlei Silva (no relation; Silva is the Brazilian "Smith", apparently, and it's coincidence they both like knees) -- but GSP's got all the traits. He's got great balance, he's got great grappling, and he's great at transitioning from striking to grappling. His legs are already like pneumatic pistons. So, I'm hoping for the plum clinch and down goes Koscheck's head and up comes GSP's knee in a highlight reel facial obliteration that leaves Koscheck soaked in blood and asking where he is in the ambulance.
If not that, I hope GSP just ground and pounds the guy, like he did to Jon Fitch and that is the safe bet -- Fitch is a better MMA wrestler than Koscheck and it stands to reason if GSP did it to Fitch he can do it to Koscheck. I want it drawn out and painful. I want Koscheck to understand the totality of his domination. I want him to realize that he will always be the inferior fighter. Failing that, a good Cro-kick that puts Koscheck's head in orbit would be nice.
And then I want to forget about Josh Koscheck. He'll have gotten his shot, which I admit he deserves, and afterward he can go back to being a respectable but not particularly noteworthy fighter in the autumn years of his career. I even hope he has the brains to stop before he becomes a circus sideshow act like Ken Shamrock and Chuck Liddell (and where Tito Ortiz is on the cusp of being).
Okay, now about Stephan Struve and Sean McCorkle. I don't particularly know either fighter very well, though I've seen both of them fight. They're pretty good. I'm not sure either of them is in top contender status, yet, but they both could be in the not too distant future . . . and, quite frankly, the UFC's heavyweight ranks are pretty thin right now and they need to find guys to fight Frank Mir, Brock Lesnar, Junior dos Santos and Cain Velasquez. You can't really have a league with those four guys fighting each other, even assuming that Lesnar wants to fight (which I have heard is in question), so it's more like three and a half guys, and Mir and Lesnar have already fought twice and Lesnar and Velasquez once. So, sure, the UFC needs to get their heavyweights up to speed and Struve and McCorkle are prospects for contender status (tho' neither of them will, I think, make it). But they're not marquee fighters right now and neither one of them has caught my particular attention so while I'm interested in the fight, it's a little abstract, as in the sense that I hope it's a good, tough fight.
But, apparently, McCorkle is a trolling asshole trash talking master of disturbing proportions. In particular, he's the first MMA fighter to really take the trash talking to social networking sites. On TV and in front of people, well, you've at least kinna sorta gotta behave. You start spewing obscenities, they'll just focus the camera away from you. Not to mention, that kind of verbal assault is cause in some states for the other guy to kick your ass and claim fighting words.
As anyone who has spent any time on the Internet knows, none of that is true there. McCorkle is the first MMA fighter who is also a reasonably diligent and skillful Internet troll. Yikes. I figure most of the people reading this have an idea what's coming next, where I'm going to quote McCorkle talking about Struve. Such as:
The only thing Stefan Struve has ever finished in his whole life is "another guy off".
Or: Stefan Struve was once arrested for impersonating a cocksucker.
Or: Stefan Struve pees sitting down.
So, yeah, really respectful. Needless to say, I'm on Struve's side and, to be fair, he's slightly favored to win, so it won't be a shock if he does.
Kirby's Epic Yarn vs. Alan Wake -- FIGHT!
I just finished playing Kirby's Epic Yarn, which is a weapons grade adorable side scrolling platformer, and started playing Alan Wakem which is supposed to be a game of psychological horror but the first bit has play like a Resident Evil-style shooter. The transition is pretty brutal.
Kirby games are beginner's and children's games. They're good games, even great games, but they're not designed to be hard. As a result, they're often very fun in a low pressure way. Indeed, they're reminders that you don't really need a lot of complexity to make a game fun. And Nintendo is, as always, the master of platformers. The game is short on complexity and difficulty, but long on creativity.
Alan Wake, at least the shooter parts, remind me of some of the cliches I dislike most about shooter games and why, increasingly, I avoid a game that's primarily a shooter. Especially horror shooters. The game has limited ammunition, making it possible your only recourse is to dodge wildly and hope your foes don't hack you down. It has enemies that spawn in the most inconvenient places, meaning the designers confuse "annoying" with "exciting". And then there's the flashlight. A modern flashlight can be expected to run a dozen hours or so. This one eeks out a minute, tops. This is one gaming cliche that needs to be stamped out of existence. I've played in games where the character's suit is nuclear powered by the flashlight lasts a few seconds. I understand the reason why they do it, but it has reached the point of an overused cliche and a crutch. When I'm playing a video game and I'm given a gimmicky flashlight, all I'm thinking about is how flashlights aren't even vaguely like that and how it'd be a nice change of pace to get one that works.
I've also just gotten to the point where I'm frustrated by "horror games" where the horror can be shot in the head. The game opens up with a quotation from Stephen King about how unanswered questions are the ones that stay with us the longest. Well, shooting doods with a gun doesn't really address that. Maybe the rest of the game does, I dunno, but I do know that I would really like to see a new kind of horror game, a stealth game and a platformer (both of them actually fairly obvious, if you think about it -- foes that you have to avoid either through athletics or sneakiness) or a role-playing game (also obvious, horror tabletop role-playing games being the third kind invented, after fantasy and sci-fi), anything that isn't just another shooter! In the end, almost all horror shooters are just an excuse to make a really hard shooter. (I've heard Alan Wake isn't particularly difficult, but that's certainly generally true about horror shooters.)
Part of the reason I'm already unsure about this game is because Kirby's Epic Yarn was so totally the antithesis of Alan Wake. Rather than boring us with dialog that is already forced and acting that is already stilted, with a plot that makes a person grind their teeth at the cliches -- looking for the lost girlfriend, really? though I'm also aware most video games audiences are inured to plots of that pedestrian mediocrity though there are hints of one of video games' greater stupidities, saving the world, might also be in the offing -- Kirby's Epic Yarn is light, fast and enjoyable with a minimalistic control scheme that gets a person into the game immediately while creating clever levels that you enjoy playing and a beautiful art direction. Did I mention the cute? The game is so cute that your primarily "enemies" are so adorable it's hard to hurt them. When disarmed, easily done, their sole "attack" consists of flumphing towards Kirby, which knocks him back a little. You have to be a kitten crushing chicken rapist to want to hurt the Waddle Dees, pictured left. Kirby's Epic Yarn reminds us it's actually pretty easy to make a really fun game. It doesn't need a lot of gimmicks or a complex control scheme, just some solid art and music direction and some clever game design. Alan Wake reminds me that state-of-the-art game design refers to polygons per second, not creativity.
Maybe I'm being harsh on a game that I've played for forty minutes. And maybe it's nostalgia that makes me crown Kirby's Epic Yarn with such laurels. But going from a game that was immediately engaging and intuitive to play into yet another complex control schemed horror shooter stripped my gears pretty hard.
Kirby games are beginner's and children's games. They're good games, even great games, but they're not designed to be hard. As a result, they're often very fun in a low pressure way. Indeed, they're reminders that you don't really need a lot of complexity to make a game fun. And Nintendo is, as always, the master of platformers. The game is short on complexity and difficulty, but long on creativity.
Alan Wake, at least the shooter parts, remind me of some of the cliches I dislike most about shooter games and why, increasingly, I avoid a game that's primarily a shooter. Especially horror shooters. The game has limited ammunition, making it possible your only recourse is to dodge wildly and hope your foes don't hack you down. It has enemies that spawn in the most inconvenient places, meaning the designers confuse "annoying" with "exciting". And then there's the flashlight. A modern flashlight can be expected to run a dozen hours or so. This one eeks out a minute, tops. This is one gaming cliche that needs to be stamped out of existence. I've played in games where the character's suit is nuclear powered by the flashlight lasts a few seconds. I understand the reason why they do it, but it has reached the point of an overused cliche and a crutch. When I'm playing a video game and I'm given a gimmicky flashlight, all I'm thinking about is how flashlights aren't even vaguely like that and how it'd be a nice change of pace to get one that works.
I've also just gotten to the point where I'm frustrated by "horror games" where the horror can be shot in the head. The game opens up with a quotation from Stephen King about how unanswered questions are the ones that stay with us the longest. Well, shooting doods with a gun doesn't really address that. Maybe the rest of the game does, I dunno, but I do know that I would really like to see a new kind of horror game, a stealth game and a platformer (both of them actually fairly obvious, if you think about it -- foes that you have to avoid either through athletics or sneakiness) or a role-playing game (also obvious, horror tabletop role-playing games being the third kind invented, after fantasy and sci-fi), anything that isn't just another shooter! In the end, almost all horror shooters are just an excuse to make a really hard shooter. (I've heard Alan Wake isn't particularly difficult, but that's certainly generally true about horror shooters.)
Part of the reason I'm already unsure about this game is because Kirby's Epic Yarn was so totally the antithesis of Alan Wake. Rather than boring us with dialog that is already forced and acting that is already stilted, with a plot that makes a person grind their teeth at the cliches -- looking for the lost girlfriend, really? though I'm also aware most video games audiences are inured to plots of that pedestrian mediocrity though there are hints of one of video games' greater stupidities, saving the world, might also be in the offing -- Kirby's Epic Yarn is light, fast and enjoyable with a minimalistic control scheme that gets a person into the game immediately while creating clever levels that you enjoy playing and a beautiful art direction. Did I mention the cute? The game is so cute that your primarily "enemies" are so adorable it's hard to hurt them. When disarmed, easily done, their sole "attack" consists of flumphing towards Kirby, which knocks him back a little. You have to be a kitten crushing chicken rapist to want to hurt the Waddle Dees, pictured left. Kirby's Epic Yarn reminds us it's actually pretty easy to make a really fun game. It doesn't need a lot of gimmicks or a complex control scheme, just some solid art and music direction and some clever game design. Alan Wake reminds me that state-of-the-art game design refers to polygons per second, not creativity.Maybe I'm being harsh on a game that I've played for forty minutes. And maybe it's nostalgia that makes me crown Kirby's Epic Yarn with such laurels. But going from a game that was immediately engaging and intuitive to play into yet another complex control schemed horror shooter stripped my gears pretty hard.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tito Ortiz is the person Josh Koscheck wants to be
I recently watched season 3 of The Ultimate Fighter with coaches Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock. Hitherto, I had thought Ortiz to be a giant asshole and, frankly, he sorta is a giant asshole, but he's a good coach and a surprisingly sensitive guy. In one of the early episodes, one of the fighters was crying and Ortiz was saying how it was OK to cry, that Ortiz cried himself, that everyone has feelings, that MMA is an emotional sport. Ortiz coached the fighters in TUF so well, not just contentiously in the sense of being there and working hard with them, but also in the sense of being there for them emotionally during what was a trying time for them, that it made me reevaluate him as a person.
Josh Koscheck was on season 12 of TUF as one of the coaches and it just reinforced the idea he was a shallow, thoughtless asshole. It was Adrienne who said that Josh Koscheck wants to be Tito Ortiz when he grows up.
It's true! Everything that Koscheck wants to be, Ortiz is already an intensification of that. So, during Countdown to UFC 124, Koscheck talked about how hard it was to grow up in Waynesburg, PA, because he was mixed race. Hey! Tito Ortiz is also mixed race, growing up in Huntington Beach, CA, where . . . his family was sometimes homeless and he was mixed up in gangs. So, kids picked on Josh for being mixed race but Ortiz was homeless and in in gangs. So, in the realms of hardluck backstories, Koscheck's is pretty lame compared to Ortiz.
Both of them are wrestlers who went into MMA. To give Koscheck his due, he was a really great college wrestler with an amazing record. Once they got into MMA, their careers took similar paths except . . . Ortiz was a champion for three and a half undefeated years. Oh, sure, nowadays, after all kinds of back surgeries, Ortiz is a shadow of the fighter he once was, but not too long ago, Ortiz was the best. Maybe Koscheck will beat GSP -- lightning could strike, the bookies odds are hovering around 4 to 1 against Koscheck -- but it is vanishingly unlikely that Koscheck will ever have the kind of success at MMA that Ortiz has had. (Koscheck is 33. His title shot Saturday is likely to be the only title shot he ever gets, he's sort of hit his peak and this is it for him. If he loses, the UFC welterweight division is stacked with great fighters. He'll go to the end of a very long line, it'll be four or more years before he has the chance to fight for the belt, again, and the odds that a 37 year old guy can fight at that level are small . . . at least, without chemical assistance.)
It is also difficult to compare their MMA careers outside the metric of Ortiz's multi-year championship winning streak. Ortiz did his best fighting between 1997 and 2005, when MMA was still in its infancy in the US. There were no MMA coaches, nothing but some guys in their local gyms trying to figure things out. Ortiz figured out not just the basic elements of US MMA -- submission wrestling plus kickboxing -- but he was one of the first guys to put it all together. He didn't hit and then wrestle, he used strikes to open up takedowns, he used takedown attempts to open up strikes, he flowed from one to the other as one complete unit. Nowadays, Koscheck does that, too, lots of guys in MMA do that, but Ortiz helped to invent that style of fighting. Koscheck fights like Ortiz, a style that Ortiz . . . kinna invented. Koscheck will leave no lasting impressions on MMA. He's a good fighter but when he's gone, we will forget him.
They're also guys who revel in playing the heel. Except one of them is a goddamn master of it and it's not Koscheck. Koscheck's idea of playing the heel is to make fun of Georges St-Pierre's sometimes halting English. WTF? Really? You're going to make fun of the guy who speaks, like, three times as many languages as you, really, Josh? Tito Ortiz, on the other hand, after defeating Guy Mezger put on a T-shirt, right there in the ring, that said, "Gay Mezger is my bitch". On another occasion, his shirt said, "I just fucked you in the ass". Needless to say, people freaked the hell right out about that. They did things like cut away from Tito so they wouldn't show the shirts, they talked endlessly about the deep and bitter rivalries created by Ortiz -- particularly with Ken Shamrock and the whole Lion's Den (Shamrock's MMA training camp). I don't know that Koscheck has managed to create even one real rivalry. I think he's tried with GSP, but he selected the wrong target, then, on so many different levels and it has failed utterly. Everyone knows, win or lose, GSP will get over Koscheck. He won't be frothing at the mouth and screaming obscenities, something Ortiz could get people to do with regularity.
There are also little things, too. Like Ortiz has mastered the look that people give when they want to fight. If you've ever been in a punk club, you'll see people with this certain . . . look. It is an advertizement that he wants to fight. He used it to freak out Ken Shamrock all the time. He'd also do that twitch towards guys like he was going to do something . . . but he wouldn't. Koscheck has nothing like that. He tries to play it off like he's Mr. Cool but it comes off like Mr. Douchebag -- Koscheck has the exact same smirk as George W. Bush.
Even their fight winning signature moves . . . Koscheck just runs around and flexes and roars in a predictable way. Ortiz would turn to the losing corner and with loose hipped cocky pantomime, draw his six-shooters and gun 'em down. Then he'd mime digging a grave and pulling the other person into it. Ortiz projected a suave toughness and cockiness that was just universes ahead of anything Koscheck can do. The hell of it is, Ortiz would have the crowd on his side. It's been a while since Koscheck had that.
And then there's their women. It's not particularly surprising when an elite athlete has an arm candy girlfriend, but Ortiz has twins with Jenna Jameson. Now, I'm not what you'd call porn savvy but even I know who she is. Josh Koscheck's girlfriend was Holly Madison. You'll probably have to use Google on that one, but she looses the dignity war with a porn star, shall we say.
So, they're both mixed race guys with troubled backgrounds, except one of them is a lot more troubled and wins in the hardluck case. One of them is a giant of MMA who bestrode the earth like a colossus and is a big part of the sport's current popularity. One of them is has achieved a rare mastery of being the trash talking heel. One of them is dating the woman who brought pornography into the mainstream, the other dates someone who is even more socially irrelevant than that. I can only conclude that Ortiz is what Koscheck wants to be . . . and is failing to be.
Hell, they're even mixed race guys who dye their hair blond. Except Tito did it first.
(AND, here's the hell of it, Ortiz is also one of those "give back to the community" guys who has worked with at risk youth in Huntington Beach to keep them away from gangs. Ortiz has this whole other life that Koscheck can't begin to touch.)
Josh Koscheck was on season 12 of TUF as one of the coaches and it just reinforced the idea he was a shallow, thoughtless asshole. It was Adrienne who said that Josh Koscheck wants to be Tito Ortiz when he grows up.
It's true! Everything that Koscheck wants to be, Ortiz is already an intensification of that. So, during Countdown to UFC 124, Koscheck talked about how hard it was to grow up in Waynesburg, PA, because he was mixed race. Hey! Tito Ortiz is also mixed race, growing up in Huntington Beach, CA, where . . . his family was sometimes homeless and he was mixed up in gangs. So, kids picked on Josh for being mixed race but Ortiz was homeless and in in gangs. So, in the realms of hardluck backstories, Koscheck's is pretty lame compared to Ortiz.
Both of them are wrestlers who went into MMA. To give Koscheck his due, he was a really great college wrestler with an amazing record. Once they got into MMA, their careers took similar paths except . . . Ortiz was a champion for three and a half undefeated years. Oh, sure, nowadays, after all kinds of back surgeries, Ortiz is a shadow of the fighter he once was, but not too long ago, Ortiz was the best. Maybe Koscheck will beat GSP -- lightning could strike, the bookies odds are hovering around 4 to 1 against Koscheck -- but it is vanishingly unlikely that Koscheck will ever have the kind of success at MMA that Ortiz has had. (Koscheck is 33. His title shot Saturday is likely to be the only title shot he ever gets, he's sort of hit his peak and this is it for him. If he loses, the UFC welterweight division is stacked with great fighters. He'll go to the end of a very long line, it'll be four or more years before he has the chance to fight for the belt, again, and the odds that a 37 year old guy can fight at that level are small . . . at least, without chemical assistance.)
It is also difficult to compare their MMA careers outside the metric of Ortiz's multi-year championship winning streak. Ortiz did his best fighting between 1997 and 2005, when MMA was still in its infancy in the US. There were no MMA coaches, nothing but some guys in their local gyms trying to figure things out. Ortiz figured out not just the basic elements of US MMA -- submission wrestling plus kickboxing -- but he was one of the first guys to put it all together. He didn't hit and then wrestle, he used strikes to open up takedowns, he used takedown attempts to open up strikes, he flowed from one to the other as one complete unit. Nowadays, Koscheck does that, too, lots of guys in MMA do that, but Ortiz helped to invent that style of fighting. Koscheck fights like Ortiz, a style that Ortiz . . . kinna invented. Koscheck will leave no lasting impressions on MMA. He's a good fighter but when he's gone, we will forget him.
They're also guys who revel in playing the heel. Except one of them is a goddamn master of it and it's not Koscheck. Koscheck's idea of playing the heel is to make fun of Georges St-Pierre's sometimes halting English. WTF? Really? You're going to make fun of the guy who speaks, like, three times as many languages as you, really, Josh? Tito Ortiz, on the other hand, after defeating Guy Mezger put on a T-shirt, right there in the ring, that said, "Gay Mezger is my bitch". On another occasion, his shirt said, "I just fucked you in the ass". Needless to say, people freaked the hell right out about that. They did things like cut away from Tito so they wouldn't show the shirts, they talked endlessly about the deep and bitter rivalries created by Ortiz -- particularly with Ken Shamrock and the whole Lion's Den (Shamrock's MMA training camp). I don't know that Koscheck has managed to create even one real rivalry. I think he's tried with GSP, but he selected the wrong target, then, on so many different levels and it has failed utterly. Everyone knows, win or lose, GSP will get over Koscheck. He won't be frothing at the mouth and screaming obscenities, something Ortiz could get people to do with regularity.
There are also little things, too. Like Ortiz has mastered the look that people give when they want to fight. If you've ever been in a punk club, you'll see people with this certain . . . look. It is an advertizement that he wants to fight. He used it to freak out Ken Shamrock all the time. He'd also do that twitch towards guys like he was going to do something . . . but he wouldn't. Koscheck has nothing like that. He tries to play it off like he's Mr. Cool but it comes off like Mr. Douchebag -- Koscheck has the exact same smirk as George W. Bush.
Even their fight winning signature moves . . . Koscheck just runs around and flexes and roars in a predictable way. Ortiz would turn to the losing corner and with loose hipped cocky pantomime, draw his six-shooters and gun 'em down. Then he'd mime digging a grave and pulling the other person into it. Ortiz projected a suave toughness and cockiness that was just universes ahead of anything Koscheck can do. The hell of it is, Ortiz would have the crowd on his side. It's been a while since Koscheck had that.
And then there's their women. It's not particularly surprising when an elite athlete has an arm candy girlfriend, but Ortiz has twins with Jenna Jameson. Now, I'm not what you'd call porn savvy but even I know who she is. Josh Koscheck's girlfriend was Holly Madison. You'll probably have to use Google on that one, but she looses the dignity war with a porn star, shall we say.
So, they're both mixed race guys with troubled backgrounds, except one of them is a lot more troubled and wins in the hardluck case. One of them is a giant of MMA who bestrode the earth like a colossus and is a big part of the sport's current popularity. One of them is has achieved a rare mastery of being the trash talking heel. One of them is dating the woman who brought pornography into the mainstream, the other dates someone who is even more socially irrelevant than that. I can only conclude that Ortiz is what Koscheck wants to be . . . and is failing to be.
Hell, they're even mixed race guys who dye their hair blond. Except Tito did it first.
(AND, here's the hell of it, Ortiz is also one of those "give back to the community" guys who has worked with at risk youth in Huntington Beach to keep them away from gangs. Ortiz has this whole other life that Koscheck can't begin to touch.)
Nam Phan vs. Leonard Garcia and what to do about lousy MMA judges
Nam Phan beat Leonard Garcia, easily and obviously, to everyone but the judges. It's not precisely a secret that the Nevada State Athletics Comission doesn't take MMA seriously. The judges stink. The lousy call on the Phan-Garcia fight highlights that fact. Joe Rogan has openly criticized the judges and asked for a letter writing campaign.
Yeah, Joe, good plan. Email letter writing campaigns are so known for their massive effectiveness. The NSAC will dump the letters into the trash, especially considering a large number of them will be profanity-laced incoherent rants. Just read the comments section of any MMA board. These people, as a rule, are not going to write nuanced, subtle letters about the inadequacies of the NSAC judging of MMA, pointing out the randomness, lack of visible criteria for selection judges and lack of transparency and accountability in the judging process. They're gonna be, "Fuck you for robbing Phan!" Many won't even be that coherent. It won't take many incomprehensible, bitter, ugly rants to invalidate the whole process.
I read somewhere, suggested sarcastically, that perhaps the fighters should picket the NSAC. That's actually a pretty damn good idea. Las Vegas is very bad-press-phobic and a bunch of MMA fighters do business in LV and I'm sure that the sports books can't be happy with the number of irrational judging decisions in MMA (which discourages people to bet on bouts) . . . so getting Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture down at the NSAC demanding action might actually work, because they'd bring press and the press would be bad for the gaming industry.
Rogan, and others, are swift to point out that the UFC has nothing to do with the NSAC. Which is kinna sorta true but is an evasive answer. Sure, the UFC doesn't control the NSAC, but to say a multi-billion dollar organization is politically powerless is idiotic. Not to mention, like I mentioned before, casinos can't be real happy with all the bad calls in MMA. Sure, some fights are going to be hard to judge, but when the judges can't even call the easy ones, it keeps people away from the sports books. So you could probably get some casino clout behind it, too.
And, of course, there is absolutely nothing that keeps the UFC in Las Vegas. Sure, there'd be some expense to move to, say, California (where the MMA judges are generally better and the criteria more transparent) or another state that has better judges. But even if the UFC didn't want to pack and and go down to San Diego or LA or Miami or wherever, there is also no compelling reason to do events in Las Vegas. Sure, it's convenient because guys like Dana White just have to roll out of bed and go down to a casino venue or whatever, but it's not inevitable and the extra expense of doing more shows on the road will be made up, in the long run, by greater visibility.
So, no, the UFC is not at the mercy of the NSAC. The UFC has been there for ten years. You'd think, by now, they might take this industry seriously. If they don't . . . why stay?
My guess at what will happen? Basically nothing. The UFC uses Nevada judges for events all over the world where there are no local judges. That's not particularly a damning indictment of the NSAC by the UFC. And the UFC president, Dana White, likes to tell fighters "not to leave it in the hands of the judges". In his evil genius mind, the unpredictability of the judges might motivate fighters to end fights before the final bell. You don't leave it in the hands of the judges because they SUCK, which is probably as good a motivating tool as fight night bonuses. Certainly the NSAC isn't going to bow to the pressure of some guys sending in emails because Joe Rogan asked them to do so.
The winning strategy to get this to change is the fighters. If you could get high profile fighters to make it an issue, to bring bad press and bring up corruption and/or incompetence regarding the NSAC, something they could do on their own and since a bunch of them live in Las Vegas already it wouldn't even be particularly hard for them to do, they could probably force the NSAC to make the necessary changes. Las Vegas hates that kind of negative publicity. It reminds people that Las Vegas isn't a "safe" town, that not only are casinos stacking the odds against gamblers they're not even content with the bad odds and are willing to do anything to keep people's money. Which is true, but casinos hate it when people get reminded of it, and in this issue it's actually in their best interest to improve the quality of judging (tampering with judges is a crude technique that modern casinos don't need). But that probably won't happen because fighters are kind of trained to be, in the public eye, nothing but meat. It is almost impossible to find out anything about fighters other than fighting, no matter how many interviews they have done, or specials or reports. They're defined as "fighters" and, publicly, they're discouraged from being anything else.
Yeah, Joe, good plan. Email letter writing campaigns are so known for their massive effectiveness. The NSAC will dump the letters into the trash, especially considering a large number of them will be profanity-laced incoherent rants. Just read the comments section of any MMA board. These people, as a rule, are not going to write nuanced, subtle letters about the inadequacies of the NSAC judging of MMA, pointing out the randomness, lack of visible criteria for selection judges and lack of transparency and accountability in the judging process. They're gonna be, "Fuck you for robbing Phan!" Many won't even be that coherent. It won't take many incomprehensible, bitter, ugly rants to invalidate the whole process.
I read somewhere, suggested sarcastically, that perhaps the fighters should picket the NSAC. That's actually a pretty damn good idea. Las Vegas is very bad-press-phobic and a bunch of MMA fighters do business in LV and I'm sure that the sports books can't be happy with the number of irrational judging decisions in MMA (which discourages people to bet on bouts) . . . so getting Chuck Liddell and Randy Couture down at the NSAC demanding action might actually work, because they'd bring press and the press would be bad for the gaming industry.
Rogan, and others, are swift to point out that the UFC has nothing to do with the NSAC. Which is kinna sorta true but is an evasive answer. Sure, the UFC doesn't control the NSAC, but to say a multi-billion dollar organization is politically powerless is idiotic. Not to mention, like I mentioned before, casinos can't be real happy with all the bad calls in MMA. Sure, some fights are going to be hard to judge, but when the judges can't even call the easy ones, it keeps people away from the sports books. So you could probably get some casino clout behind it, too.
And, of course, there is absolutely nothing that keeps the UFC in Las Vegas. Sure, there'd be some expense to move to, say, California (where the MMA judges are generally better and the criteria more transparent) or another state that has better judges. But even if the UFC didn't want to pack and and go down to San Diego or LA or Miami or wherever, there is also no compelling reason to do events in Las Vegas. Sure, it's convenient because guys like Dana White just have to roll out of bed and go down to a casino venue or whatever, but it's not inevitable and the extra expense of doing more shows on the road will be made up, in the long run, by greater visibility.
So, no, the UFC is not at the mercy of the NSAC. The UFC has been there for ten years. You'd think, by now, they might take this industry seriously. If they don't . . . why stay?
My guess at what will happen? Basically nothing. The UFC uses Nevada judges for events all over the world where there are no local judges. That's not particularly a damning indictment of the NSAC by the UFC. And the UFC president, Dana White, likes to tell fighters "not to leave it in the hands of the judges". In his evil genius mind, the unpredictability of the judges might motivate fighters to end fights before the final bell. You don't leave it in the hands of the judges because they SUCK, which is probably as good a motivating tool as fight night bonuses. Certainly the NSAC isn't going to bow to the pressure of some guys sending in emails because Joe Rogan asked them to do so.
The winning strategy to get this to change is the fighters. If you could get high profile fighters to make it an issue, to bring bad press and bring up corruption and/or incompetence regarding the NSAC, something they could do on their own and since a bunch of them live in Las Vegas already it wouldn't even be particularly hard for them to do, they could probably force the NSAC to make the necessary changes. Las Vegas hates that kind of negative publicity. It reminds people that Las Vegas isn't a "safe" town, that not only are casinos stacking the odds against gamblers they're not even content with the bad odds and are willing to do anything to keep people's money. Which is true, but casinos hate it when people get reminded of it, and in this issue it's actually in their best interest to improve the quality of judging (tampering with judges is a crude technique that modern casinos don't need). But that probably won't happen because fighters are kind of trained to be, in the public eye, nothing but meat. It is almost impossible to find out anything about fighters other than fighting, no matter how many interviews they have done, or specials or reports. They're defined as "fighters" and, publicly, they're discouraged from being anything else.
Friday, December 3, 2010
"Effective" Aggression in Jackson v. Machida and MMA
After UFC 123, there was some controversy over the outcome of the Jackson v. Machida fight -- it was a difficult split decision. Oh, sure, the fight was close enough that no one was going to be happy about it no matter who won, something I blame mostly on Machida's style. He stays way on the outside and waits for the other guy to make a mistake that he can capitalize on. Which is a very legitimate and intelligent fighting style, and if you're looking for real self-defense it's about as good as you can get, but boring in the cage. Regardless of my feelings on Machida's style's legitimacy in MMA, when Machida is in a close fight there's going to be a lot of controversy because he spends most of the fight avoiding the other guy in the cage . . . which means judges are left scrambling for the lesser used criteria for judging fights.
One of them is effective aggression. What does that mean? Uh . . . well, I wish I could give a simple answer to that question.
Effective aggression and cage control are the two "lesser" criteria for scoring fights. The biggest two are effective striking -- which is easy to define, being clean, powerful blows that hurt the target -- and effective takedowns and grappling, which are also reasonably easy to score (though weighing the two against each other is also a source of constant MMA controversy).
Cage control is also pretty easy to see. Mainly, if one fight occupies the center of the cage, the "key", he is thought to have ring control because that fighter doesn't have their back to the cage, so they can't get cut off and put up against the cage. Jackson had ring control for the first two rounds, that's plain to see.
However, the effective aggression thing is harder to get a handle on. Aggression is easy to see. Who's going forward. Who's pressing the action of the fight. But sometimes, going forward is a pretty terrible idea, especially against defensive fighters. This is where Machida's style bolloxes the works. Machida is probably the most defensive successful MMA fighter in the history of the sport. Even the worst Brazilian jiu jitsu fighters will at least want to make contact with their opponent, even to the point of leaping onto them. Even compared to other defensive fighters, like Anderson Silva, Machida is avoidant. However, Machida is really good at take advantage of a fighter when that fighter tries to press the action.
To me, this is a species of rules lawyering on Machida's point. He knows that most MMA fighters are aggressive. The promotions and fans like aggressive fighters, as a rule. You look at the fight night bonuses that are given -- best fight, best submission, best knockout. All of them favor aggressive fighters, encourage fights to be aggressive. We do want to see blood. So he knows he can basically sit back and let his opponents come to him and whiz around the ring until they make a mistake and he can clobber them. But if Machida fought someone with his exact same style, it's hard to imagine there being any contact. Both guys would only throw blows from the outside and skitter away when the other person attacked.
If Jackson hadn't gone forward, there would not have been a fight, even though he got clobbered pretty hard because of it. So, a lot of people are asking themselves, "Did Jackson use effective aggression?"
I think in a perfect world, the answer would be, "No, he did not." Walking into a guy's punches and kicks is hard to define as "effective". But, on the other hand, there is a rule about timidity. Timidity is a foul. In a perfect world, I think Machida would have lost two points for timidity -- however, in the hundreds of UFC fights I've watched, no fighter has ever been fouled for timidity. (On the same card, I think Macquiel Falcao should have also been fouled for timidity in the third round. Knowing he'd won the first two rounds, he just danced around and refused to engage his opponent. The crowd was booing him. Was he fouled for timidity? No.) This is something they did in Pride FC all the time. If the fighters weren't aggressive enough, the ref could yellow card them . . . which took away 10% of their purse. They could keep doing this. Pride fighters fought.
In a perfect world, this is how things would have went down:
* Round one: 10 Machida, 9 Jackson, Machida fouled for timidity -- 9 Machida, 9 Jackson.
* Round two: 10 Jackson, 9 Machida, Machida fouled for timidity -- 10 Jackson, 8 Machida.
* Round three: 10 Machida, 9 Jackson.
In round 2, I might have fouled Machida multiple times for timidity, but just the one foul in two rounds is illustrative of my point. At the end, Jackson would have 28 points and Machida 27.
But the referees in the UFC never foul for timidity. No matter how much a guy dances around the ring, avoiding his opponent, even if it means there is almost no contact, I've never seen a UFC judge foul for timidity . . . despite it being in the rules and despite other promotions using the technique successfully.
So, what I think happened on the judges scorecards is an attempt to do what they can to balance out the fight within the construct of the rules. I think that they knew that if Jackson hadn't gone forward, there just would not have been a fight, even though he ate it several times because he went forward. Jackson's aggression turned it into a watchable, if not deeply exciting, fight.
So, in the context of the rules . . . I think that "effective aggression" can only be cleanly scored if the referees enforce timidity rules. I think the lack of enforcement of timidity justifies judges sorta playing around with the concept of aggression and cage control (which are related -- Jackson definitely controlled the cage because of his aggression, which is usually the case) in order to penalize fighters for the fouls that refs aren't giving them.
One of them is effective aggression. What does that mean? Uh . . . well, I wish I could give a simple answer to that question.
Effective aggression and cage control are the two "lesser" criteria for scoring fights. The biggest two are effective striking -- which is easy to define, being clean, powerful blows that hurt the target -- and effective takedowns and grappling, which are also reasonably easy to score (though weighing the two against each other is also a source of constant MMA controversy).
Cage control is also pretty easy to see. Mainly, if one fight occupies the center of the cage, the "key", he is thought to have ring control because that fighter doesn't have their back to the cage, so they can't get cut off and put up against the cage. Jackson had ring control for the first two rounds, that's plain to see.
However, the effective aggression thing is harder to get a handle on. Aggression is easy to see. Who's going forward. Who's pressing the action of the fight. But sometimes, going forward is a pretty terrible idea, especially against defensive fighters. This is where Machida's style bolloxes the works. Machida is probably the most defensive successful MMA fighter in the history of the sport. Even the worst Brazilian jiu jitsu fighters will at least want to make contact with their opponent, even to the point of leaping onto them. Even compared to other defensive fighters, like Anderson Silva, Machida is avoidant. However, Machida is really good at take advantage of a fighter when that fighter tries to press the action.
To me, this is a species of rules lawyering on Machida's point. He knows that most MMA fighters are aggressive. The promotions and fans like aggressive fighters, as a rule. You look at the fight night bonuses that are given -- best fight, best submission, best knockout. All of them favor aggressive fighters, encourage fights to be aggressive. We do want to see blood. So he knows he can basically sit back and let his opponents come to him and whiz around the ring until they make a mistake and he can clobber them. But if Machida fought someone with his exact same style, it's hard to imagine there being any contact. Both guys would only throw blows from the outside and skitter away when the other person attacked.
If Jackson hadn't gone forward, there would not have been a fight, even though he got clobbered pretty hard because of it. So, a lot of people are asking themselves, "Did Jackson use effective aggression?"
I think in a perfect world, the answer would be, "No, he did not." Walking into a guy's punches and kicks is hard to define as "effective". But, on the other hand, there is a rule about timidity. Timidity is a foul. In a perfect world, I think Machida would have lost two points for timidity -- however, in the hundreds of UFC fights I've watched, no fighter has ever been fouled for timidity. (On the same card, I think Macquiel Falcao should have also been fouled for timidity in the third round. Knowing he'd won the first two rounds, he just danced around and refused to engage his opponent. The crowd was booing him. Was he fouled for timidity? No.) This is something they did in Pride FC all the time. If the fighters weren't aggressive enough, the ref could yellow card them . . . which took away 10% of their purse. They could keep doing this. Pride fighters fought.
In a perfect world, this is how things would have went down:
* Round one: 10 Machida, 9 Jackson, Machida fouled for timidity -- 9 Machida, 9 Jackson.
* Round two: 10 Jackson, 9 Machida, Machida fouled for timidity -- 10 Jackson, 8 Machida.
* Round three: 10 Machida, 9 Jackson.
In round 2, I might have fouled Machida multiple times for timidity, but just the one foul in two rounds is illustrative of my point. At the end, Jackson would have 28 points and Machida 27.
But the referees in the UFC never foul for timidity. No matter how much a guy dances around the ring, avoiding his opponent, even if it means there is almost no contact, I've never seen a UFC judge foul for timidity . . . despite it being in the rules and despite other promotions using the technique successfully.
So, what I think happened on the judges scorecards is an attempt to do what they can to balance out the fight within the construct of the rules. I think that they knew that if Jackson hadn't gone forward, there just would not have been a fight, even though he ate it several times because he went forward. Jackson's aggression turned it into a watchable, if not deeply exciting, fight.
So, in the context of the rules . . . I think that "effective aggression" can only be cleanly scored if the referees enforce timidity rules. I think the lack of enforcement of timidity justifies judges sorta playing around with the concept of aggression and cage control (which are related -- Jackson definitely controlled the cage because of his aggression, which is usually the case) in order to penalize fighters for the fouls that refs aren't giving them.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
World MMA Awards are made of stupid
Wednesday night were the MMA Awards and the sport is still very young. And it's . . . slightly disturbing seeing how some things play out. Like the MMA Awards. In particular, it really reminds me that a sport shouldn't develop in Las Vegas.
Have no doubt, Las Vegas is the American heart of MMA. If you see two MMA guys fighting and one of them is from Las Vegas and the other is from somewhere else, bet on the Las Vegas guy. When the UFC was about to go down, some casino guys -- Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta -- bought the UFC (an opportunity opened by now-UFC president Dana White). Vegas is a fight town and has lots of good venues for those kinds of fights. So the fighters tended to set up shop in Vegas, which brought more fighters to Vegas . . . so Vegas is an MMA town. In America, it's the MMA town.
But it's still Vegas and . . . fuckin' Vegas sucks. It sucks all the joy out of everything and replaces it a glitz covered demon-cock version of everything you love. And in the US, the UFC, an extremely Las Vegas organization, full of Las Vegas "values", can call the shots. It is easily the biggest, most influential, richest MMA promotion in the world. Even in other MMA countries, like Brazil and Japan, they've got nothing to match the UFC. And the World MMA Awards are a Las Vegas event.
Which brings us back to the MMA Awards. It makes sense to award people in this kind of competitive field. An awarding body makes sense. But Las Vegas sucks the joy out of it and replaces it with glittering demon spunk all over everything. Here are the awards and winners.
Some of them are necessary. Best fight, best submission, best KO, best breakthrough fighter, sure, all of this is legitimate and the awards would be meaningless without those kinds of categories.
But . . . there's a category for best "lifestyle clothing brand"? Really? What the FUCK? A category for . . . the fuckin' ring girls?! "Leading Man of the Year"? What does that even mean?
And that "Charles 'Mask' Lewis Fighter of the Year" . . . you might wonder who is Charles "Mask" Lewis. Some great promoter or fighter or legacy figure in MMA? No. He's the guy who started the "TapouT" line of clothing. That's it. He made a bunch of T-shirts. And then he died in a car wreck. So, for the title of best fighter of the year, a title very deservingly going to the incredible Jose Aldo, is named after a t-shirt shill. Not a great martial artist. Not a great coach. The dude who makes the t-shirts.
This is Las Vegas. Where awards of great fighters like Cris Cyborg and Jose Aldo go hand in hand with who-gives-a-shit awards like "Best Lifestyle Clothing Brand" and "Ring Girl of the Year". And because MMA is such a Las Vegas operation, they don't even see how this hurts the sport -- how people who are having trouble taking MMA seriously, thinking it a kind of spectacle or a fad, look at things like this and go, "See? You don't see football awards going to best cheerleader." You don't. Because no one fucking cares who has the best cheerleaders. No one cares what "lifestyle clothing" gets advertised. But Las Vegas guys don't think twice about turning what should be an event entirely to do with the fighters, coaches, corner guys, refs, the people who are utterly indispensable to the sport and instead the whore it up by putting pin-up models and sweatshop shills into the mix. They don't even see why that kind of pandering makes people grit their teeth or laugh about that silly little fad sport that'll soon go the way of the hula hoop.
MMA is definitely suffering some growing pains. Stuff like this is part of it, I suppose, though stuff like this makes me doubt if the kid is going to ever reach adulthood. Perhaps I'll start writing on what it'll take to bring actual dignity to MMA as a sport.
Have no doubt, Las Vegas is the American heart of MMA. If you see two MMA guys fighting and one of them is from Las Vegas and the other is from somewhere else, bet on the Las Vegas guy. When the UFC was about to go down, some casino guys -- Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta -- bought the UFC (an opportunity opened by now-UFC president Dana White). Vegas is a fight town and has lots of good venues for those kinds of fights. So the fighters tended to set up shop in Vegas, which brought more fighters to Vegas . . . so Vegas is an MMA town. In America, it's the MMA town.
But it's still Vegas and . . . fuckin' Vegas sucks. It sucks all the joy out of everything and replaces it a glitz covered demon-cock version of everything you love. And in the US, the UFC, an extremely Las Vegas organization, full of Las Vegas "values", can call the shots. It is easily the biggest, most influential, richest MMA promotion in the world. Even in other MMA countries, like Brazil and Japan, they've got nothing to match the UFC. And the World MMA Awards are a Las Vegas event.
Which brings us back to the MMA Awards. It makes sense to award people in this kind of competitive field. An awarding body makes sense. But Las Vegas sucks the joy out of it and replaces it with glittering demon spunk all over everything. Here are the awards and winners.
Some of them are necessary. Best fight, best submission, best KO, best breakthrough fighter, sure, all of this is legitimate and the awards would be meaningless without those kinds of categories.
But . . . there's a category for best "lifestyle clothing brand"? Really? What the FUCK? A category for . . . the fuckin' ring girls?! "Leading Man of the Year"? What does that even mean?
And that "Charles 'Mask' Lewis Fighter of the Year" . . . you might wonder who is Charles "Mask" Lewis. Some great promoter or fighter or legacy figure in MMA? No. He's the guy who started the "TapouT" line of clothing. That's it. He made a bunch of T-shirts. And then he died in a car wreck. So, for the title of best fighter of the year, a title very deservingly going to the incredible Jose Aldo, is named after a t-shirt shill. Not a great martial artist. Not a great coach. The dude who makes the t-shirts.
This is Las Vegas. Where awards of great fighters like Cris Cyborg and Jose Aldo go hand in hand with who-gives-a-shit awards like "Best Lifestyle Clothing Brand" and "Ring Girl of the Year". And because MMA is such a Las Vegas operation, they don't even see how this hurts the sport -- how people who are having trouble taking MMA seriously, thinking it a kind of spectacle or a fad, look at things like this and go, "See? You don't see football awards going to best cheerleader." You don't. Because no one fucking cares who has the best cheerleaders. No one cares what "lifestyle clothing" gets advertised. But Las Vegas guys don't think twice about turning what should be an event entirely to do with the fighters, coaches, corner guys, refs, the people who are utterly indispensable to the sport and instead the whore it up by putting pin-up models and sweatshop shills into the mix. They don't even see why that kind of pandering makes people grit their teeth or laugh about that silly little fad sport that'll soon go the way of the hula hoop.
MMA is definitely suffering some growing pains. Stuff like this is part of it, I suppose, though stuff like this makes me doubt if the kid is going to ever reach adulthood. Perhaps I'll start writing on what it'll take to bring actual dignity to MMA as a sport.
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