Making sense of the Momo Monster: Too much timber in China’s Tinder

My first contact with Tinder’s swiping mechanics was with the queer choose-your-own-adventure and resource management game, Reigns. It makes use of the left and right swiping mechanics popularised for players to make decisions, answer questions and do combat in the game. Neat little game for S$4 on mobile and PC.

Anyway, I knew the existence of Tinder prior to 2016 but never tried my hands at it, mostly because there was no need to. Certain changes that took place over the course of the year, however, created an opportunity for me to mess around with dating apps again. So, while unwillingly stranded in China handling meaningless bureaucratic paperwork, I downloaded both Tinder and Momo to try my hands on them.

I only write for this blog when a topic is inspiring enough for me to do so; and in the case of Tinder and Momo, it is the world of difference between their approach in engaging socialisation that warrants it a spot on this blog. Here I am not simply talking about a difference in function and mechanics – i.e. how and why these apps are used – but a deeper schism on a philosophical and existential level. Tinder is easy to access and use, strike a match and light a fire; while Momo probably has enough timber to burn an entire town down and to call Momo ‘China’s Tinder’ is kind of a misnomer.

I’ll explain the metaphor in a bit but I think it will become clear once we look at the big picture. China gets a bad rep these days for imitating and replicating both hardware and software products to facilitate the growth of infant industries and local businesses. This is done via allowing legal violation of copyrights and trademark laws (heh) and imposing protectionism measures via censorship laws, under the guise of preventing ‘western’ ideas from disrupting China’s ‘harmonious society’. But the best of the best cultivated under strong protectionism policies are more than mere tweaks and translated versions of their overseas counterparts. Through cannibalisation of ideas from multiple competitors, the local products grow into very different monsters that are arguably better and more suitable for the local context. When I used Wechat 5 years ago, it was really nothing more than a Line clone (which is still banned in China now probably because it is the only instant messenger that poses any threat to Wechat). But, now with bank transfer and wireless payment functions that can be used for almost any form of online payment, as well as at convenience stores, on cabs, ubers and buses, Wechat is now the pioneer of the new wallet-less generation that Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, UOB virtual bank card etc. are heading towards. Baidu, China’s answer to Google, has their own maps and news sections like google, and it also does food delivery. And while in China, I’d recommend Ctrip more than Agoda or Expedia simply because there are more selections of hotels, and it also tells you the short time rental rates for rooms, which is somewhat related to our topic today. ;)

And then there is Momo. This Frankenstein monster of an app fuses inspiration from Tinder, Line, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, and whatever livestreaming app that is popular now. Mo in Chinese alludes to unfamiliarity, but for me there is neither unfamiliarity towards the app’s functions (because I’ve seen everything it can do elsewhere just on different platforms), nor does it want you to remember you are interacting with strangers. To begin the dissection of Momo we must first disucss the streamlined and low barriers-to-entry approach to socialisation used by Tinder.

Upon launching the app for the first time, Tinder requests connection to one’s Facebook account to verify the authenticity of one’s profile and extract certain key information like name, age, photographs, interests so that the other swipers (yes swiping) can decide whether they like you or not. It is a very simple process to set-up, and it gets you into the matchmaking process almost immediately. The swiping process is too, idiot-proof that needs no explanation, despite the app’s insistence to do so once. The philosophy behind this, is that this is an app created for people who are either not excellent at socialising, or simply have no time to socialise, in real life. The barriers-of-entry are set as low as possible for ease of use, and ease of convincing the busy or shy individual to try it out. And once there is a match, you start talking. Quite the no nonsense app to me if you ask me. Momo on the other hand has no Facebook to connect to (because this is China), and this firstly opens up opportunities for scams and prostitution due to lack of verification (this also happens on Tinder, but unlike Momo I do not have to report someone every day, literally every day). The app therefore also demands a whole list of information that I took an hour to fill in; it isn’t necessary but the app rewards you with rank points for doing so. If I were a shy person trying to socialise this is neither user-friendly nor as self-contained and comforting to use like Tinder. Even if we compare this to apps used primarily for people to hook up, like Grindr (secondary experience, I don’t use it), it does not depart from the central philosophy that people need the setting up process to be as simple and quick as possible, so that there is lesser chance for one to shy away from using the app. Tinder gets you into the swiping action within the first minute, Momo does not. In fact, I had to spend time looking for the swiping feature, tucked away at a random corner in the infinitely more cluttered interface, and filled with thousands upon thousands of dead accounts that the app does not filter, unlike Tinder. Finally, I realised this is because neither the users nor the admins care about the swiping function. The swipe is not the main point of the app at all. And that is where it gets weird.

A friend told me that Momo functioned pretty much like Grindr back in the days except it was mainly for heterosexuals. I assumed the name alluded to ‘hooking up with strangers’, but it actually makes you do more things than just chatting with and up strangers around you.

The app is subdivided into five different tabs, titled ‘Nearby’, ‘Livestream’, ‘Messages’, ‘Contacts’ and ‘Personal’. Messages and contacts are quite self-explanatory so I won’t be going into details, just note that the messages tab is where you get most of your scammers because everyone on the app can message you, and the contacts tab records every action taken by everyone you follow, every group you are in (we will get to groups in a bit), and everyone around you.

The first tab is an amalgamation of Wechat’s nearby and moments functions, together with features from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all mashed into one.  One can adjust the privacy level of whom to display the information to, but so far, I’ve not seen many people do that because it defeats the purpose of using this platform in the first place. One can view the moments that are being shared on the app from all around China, as well as look at the profile, photos and actions of the people in your area. Imagine Facebook and Instagram but everything you post constantly get pushed to people all around the nation and especially to people near you. So much for conservative Eastern culture that fears of being corrupted by Western open-mindedness. That’s not all, the picture of a pretty girl can also just be an advertisement for petty traders, people selling phones, or a driver; so there’s a bit of Carousell thrown in for good measure. Hidden at the bottom right hand corner is a small button named ‘diandian’ (clicking) that functions like the Tinder swipe feature, which I assume nobody really uses since everyone’s profile is readily available for you to click on, view, send gifts, like, follow and message to anyway.

The second tab gives you livestreams. Here you can listen to good looking boys and girls playing DJs, doing talk shows, eating food, singing and dancing on screen (no I am not kidding, I have photos), but mostly just chatting with the audiences that come to their streams. In these streams, viewers can donate items to the streamers, virtual roses, cars, tiaras (which is probably the best one because it actually appears on the head of the streamers and it can be extremely adorable), so something like what some livestream apps are doing for viewers to ‘cheer’ on the streamers. My suspicion is that some of these popular streamers are hired by Momo to encourage purchase of virtual currencies that are used to then purchase these virtual cheer items, so it works somewhat like Twitch where the company pays the streamers to host shows on the site, through revenue generated through cheering, advertisements, and subscription. Streamers also have a separate rank called the Streamer Rank, which is placed on a nationwide chart and I assume climbing to a higher rank nets you more bonus; or perhaps I am wrong and people are just doing for the fame and attention, I will get to this point at the end.

It is quite insane what these people would do for these rubbish-talking and off-tune singing streamers when you do the numbers. I walked into a stream the other day where this cute girl was just chatting up an old guy via in-stream facetime and he gave her 10 virtual sports cars which would have costed 1000RMB (about S$210) while all she did was just smile and pretended to be interested in the conversation. And the gifts didn’t stop there; every time she asked, more rolls in. Momo understands that there are some really rich people in China who have no time to spend their money, and are willing to blow thousands of dollars on a girl who is willing to entertain them. And it is not like they are asking for anything more than attention and sense of importance to the streamers in return, at least not in public at least. Furthermore, buying virtual currency increases your ‘wealth’ stats, which in turn increases your Momo rank and a person viewing your profile will know you are rich when you are of a high Momo rank with your Wealth stats being the highest. A streamer I follow constantly gets thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts from her hardcore fans just showing her face for a minute every day; and among these fans there are those who have donated so much she adds them into a special group to make them feel important. As far as I know, the person she calls her ‘group manager’ sends at least 10 tiaras her way every time he enters the stream, and immediately after the gifts he leaves as though that few hundred dollars was nothing. Who knew the ‘spend a few hundred dollars to make a cute girl smile for a second per day’ was a viable money making market? We may actually need to export this idea from China this time.

The Personal tab has games to play, think Line and Facebook apps that allows certain level of socialisation and interactivity. This is also where you can purchase Momo coins, that reminds the user very much of free-to-play games, where purchase of greater amounts of the currency allows for higher discounts. If Tinder is like a subscription based RPG where a nominal fee unlocks all the features, and further payment is only required to get otherwise unimportant items that will not improve your appeal in anyway. Momo on the other, constantly remind you that your appeal and attractiveness is very much tied to how much money you are spending in the app. Not only can you show off your wealth to other viewers through showering big streamers with gifts, displaying one’s high Momo rank with high wealth stats, it can also be used as a measure to grab the attention of a guy or girl that you like via waving wads of cash in their face.

In addition, the personal interface tab also allows you to search for groups nearby. Momo again displays its understanding that most of its users are female-seeking males by displaying the number and percentage of females in every group before you choose to join in. There are more functions that allows one to join local chat groups, and participate in other activities such as hanging out, going to karaokes, going for a meal etc. I have yet to explore all the functions simply because there are too many things to do, and frankly speaking, this is quite scary. What Momo requests from the average user clearly requires more courage than just swiping faces on an app that does not even coerce you into talking even if you get a match.

I hope 2000 words into this piece you can somewhat grasp the philosophical difference between the two apps that I described earlier. Observing Tinder and Momo is like watching the artistic vision of the two main characters in Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York play out. While Tinder focuses on simplicity to be shy-proof and idiot-proof, Momo is a platform for already confident and egoistic persons to further their egos by collecting fans and admirers of their beauty or wealth. Earlier I said the streamers may just be doing the streams for themselves, and somehow in our world that is an entirely plausible thing. We are a generation that grew up being obsessed in customising avatars on instant messengers and social media, to buying virtual cosmetic items for online game characters, to show off to our friends and publicly display our individuality and uniqueness. Those things are real to us because it is part of a language that can be understood by others of the same generation. Momo is for the prideful and extroverted, one who is not afraid to display their privacy in the most public. One who will sing and dance in front of strangers in hope that they will reciprocate with gifts and praises, because the attention is what they yearn in joining this app in the first place. One who will click on random profiles to chat up people in their area, who will actively seek out local groups and parties to join, like how they will be doing in real life if they had the time and opportunity. Momo is the modern ballroom, tea party, and even like a quieter club or bar for people to hit up girls and sometimes do so by showering them items that can be bought from said bar or club. The introvert will shy away from Momo which requires them to speak to groups of strangers, to initiate conversation with someone who do not even know you, and livestreams are definitely an impossibility to them. Retreating to Tinder, there is at least that certainty that the person that you are chatting with already saw your face and are at least interested in you – and of course if you match with me I’ll initiate the conversation so don’t worry. Tinder is an innovation for the shy and less sociable, while Momo is simply a change in location for the already socially capable. Conclusions? I think it is great both exists, although I find Tinder way more useful for meeting people. Momo is still pretty scary despite being me decently sociable and having performance experience. I may try to start a singing stream on it simply because the ones that are on there are so damn terrible. But seriously, if you think I’m sexist for saying that I’ll probably get 0 views because I’m not a pretty girl, you need to get the app downloaded.

I have no idea how to end this monstrously longer article. Swipe right if you see me on Tinder I suppose.

Sun and Moon: The Pokemon games we didn't know we wanted

There is a lot of talk about thinking outside the box, creative teaching, creative expression, injection of new elements into old way of doing things and revolutionary changes in today’s rapidly evolving socio-economy. However, most of these people do not know what they are talking about, and wish that nothing ever changes until the day they die. This interpassive behaviour is a result of the system of thought these people were raised, educated, and trained in; and as someone who had been looking for jobs the past 10 months, I’ve heard this bullshit from potential employers too many times to realise the pattern. There is much to be said about this generation of human beings that demand creativity and uniqueness from the new, yet possess no special skills and talent to survive outside their comfort zone, and are secretly manipulating things with the power of their seniority (obtained not through being more capable but simply because they were born decades earlier when the socio-economy demanded so little from the everyman even dogs could make it to space) to ensure nothing ever changes; but that topic will have to wait till another day.

Because this article is about Pokemon Sun and Moon, the main titles of the 7^th generation of the Pokemon franchise video games, which is closely related to the rant above. Pokemon SM embodies that creativity that I think a lot of fans have been waiting for; it doesn’t do it perfectly, but we are beginning to see cracks in the old formula that lacks a lot of narrative sense. Why do gyms exist? Where do the champion and elite four come from? Why do certain Pokemon look and act certain ways, and why do they have certain abilities or moves? While ORAS represented the end of a tired generation of the stagnated formula exposed through the nonsensical plot and worldbuilding, Pokemon SM elevates the narrative and worldbuilding aspects of Pokemon games to a higher level by doing away with gyms and introducing island trials to fit into the Alolan world. The hastily mashed together Elite Four as a result of narrative reasons creates probably the most memorable end game boss fight in a Pokemon game hands down.

I love Pokemon XY. It is probably still the best Classic Pokemon title (a term that I’ll use to describe the old titles from RBGY to ORAS hereinafter) alongside FRLG, which despite having no nostalgic effect on me (because I didn’t play Red and Blue). FRLG remains one of the best remakes because the team strived to make a better and updated experience instead of simply trying to invoke nostalgia.

This is important here because SM was clearing riding on the success of Pokemon GO and the reignited interest in Pokemon, especially those of the first generation, in previous fans. GO also serves as a bridge between new players and the mainstream Pokemon games using their familiarity with the Pokemons currently present in GO. This is done through the inclusion of Alolan forms of Pokemon exclusively from the first generation, old Generation 1 Pokemons ranging from the gen-rat critter Rattata, to familiar faces like Meowth and Raichu, to some Pokemon that did not require makeovers because they already look amazing like Grimer and Muk. Even though other than the Pokemons of Hoenn, those from Johto, Sinnoh, Unova and Kalos will probably look different if they were living in Alola, the ignorance of this fact reflects the intentional use of familiarisation and nostalgia stirred via Pokemon GO to bring in and bring back players. But the way SM does it is truly creative, and while XY perfected the Classic Pokemon formula, SM brought it outside of its comfort zone and possible created a new order that future Pokemon games can follow, at least for a few more games.  

Now that way XY did it was ok. Allowing one to catch Pokemons from different regions in Kalos was exciting because it is good to see familiar faces and be surprised about what one can find in the grass occasionally. This is also by no means a new method of easing casual players into the games in case they for whatever strange reason only recognise Pokemons up till a certain generation as ‘real’ (this is mostly the fault of Gen 5), but SM brings this to another level. I like having only new Gen Pokemons on my team when going through the main story, that’s just my thing, because why play with a Slowpoke or Wingull just because the latter has a new ability (although we need to touch on this later because I love the change but that’s on a competitive and design level) when I can have a Wishiwashi or a Toxapex (which, by the way, has the coolest new ability in the game) to fill up that water slot? But now the Gen 1 Alolan forms are no longer just ‘something I’ve used before in a past game and therefore their existence has no other purpose other than filling up the dex and the only time I’ll touch them is for competitive’. Alolan Marowak was on my team because it is a Fire/Ghost that rocks Lightning Rod for Electric protection and Bonemerang, which is arguably the best Earth type move in the game. Alolan Muk is now part Dark which negates its Psychic weakness entirely while giving it no new weaknesses. And they look different. That is important. It feels like you are travelling with a new Pokemon and the new flavour text about Diglett and its hair just punctuates the point that it is a different Pokemon.

And this is the point I want to focus on, because prior to XY, Platinum was my favourite Pokemon game. SM is currently miles ahead in the lead, but hopefully not for long, because DPP remake is coming up and the signal SM sends is very positive for a possible amazing DPP remake. I predict that there will be Sinnoh forms for old Pokemons. Of all the Alolan form Pokemons in SM, Grimer and Muk are my favourite because their form changes made sense – it is explained that Alola did not have pollutants for Grimer and Muk to feed on so they fed on garbage, and therefore their looks changed and their habits changed. Why they are now Dark type can be better explained but there is sufficient effort there to make the change believable as compared to steel type Dugtrio with glorious hair which looks more like a rejected Kalos Pokemon.

With the success of the new forms, I hope the team moves even more aggressively towards that direction because it is firstly, an excellent step forward in worldbuilding and narrative through grounding the existence of each individual Pokemon in practical reality. Many of the flavour texts in this generation’s Pokedex reveal that Pokemons like Crabrawler are eaten by humans, and many other Pokemons eat each other in the wild. The Alolan Sandshrew lives up in Mount Lanakila learns how to resist the cold. The weakling Pokemon Wishiwashi learns how to fight in a school instead of alone. This is more believable than Wingull suddenly knowing how to summon rain, or Rattata having whiskers for some reason. This brings me to my next point; I like how they are trying to make each individual Pokemon more useful and unique, even if they are not up to competitive standards. In this cast roster of over 800 Pokemons, many old Pokemons have become simply lower-tier clones of new ones, and there are is absolutely no reason for competitive players to take any notice to them. In the best-case scenario, a change is made for a Pokemon to stand out, and at the same time their change also makes narrative sense. Muk has a new ability that is useful in double battles, its new typing bestows upon it Dark-type STAB and Psychic immunity, and I have already said that its change is rather decent from a worldbuilding standpoint. Marowak, a physical Fire/Ghost type pokemon with exclusive access to the Thick Club and Bonemerang, is not just ‘another ground type’ anymore; and the whole island-fire-dancer feel to its new design makes excellent use of its old design to make catching and owning a Marowak exciting again. Pelipper with Drizzle is now being considered in competitive, and despite the ability change being its only change I still welcome it because that means we get to see new faces at tournaments, but I do hope the Pokemon team doesn’t go down this lazy road of just changing one thing, but combine individualistic Pokemon character building, skillset, and ability customisation to try and make at least one form of each of these 800-odd critters stand out. It is hard, but all they really have open up to fan recommendations. A friend just told me how wonderful it would be to have a Pokemon game set in the prehistoric era, and immediately I thought about how Ancient forms of Omastar, Kabutops, Archeops, etc. can help to revamp these lesser used Pokemon both on main game teams and competitive teams and give them more personality, and more love. Personally? Bug/Dragon Mega Flygon, please.

The other formula breaking element in Pokemon SM is the trials. I am completely in love with the Ghost trial, and everyone who has talked to me about the Fire trial told me how much they enjoyed it too. I don’t think they can do much for Sinnoh remake, but I for one won’t mind if they changed the gym systems slightly just to make it more fun. Talking about that, I will be disappointed if they don’t invite me to be on the BW remake writing team, because I have an idea of how to make it better – long story short, the old team just screwed up all that excellent build up the finale by throwing N out of the window and putting in a regular bad guy instead. Which again, is relevant because the writing in SM is pretty excellent for a game that cannot be too dark in case kids get scared. Something the big bad in this game said in the end really resonated with me, and Team Skull is really quite the charming ‘evil’ group once you get past the cringe. The music is excellent. The Pokemon designs are excellent. The trial captains are bursting with personality. There’s really nothing much to say there because those things have been generally good in past Pokemon games (except Gen 5) and there is no surprise there, although I have to say the music is the kind of good that hits you right in the face and sticks in your head. This is without a doubt my favourite Pokemon game. It does everything it is supposed to do well beyond expectations, or to pure perfection, such as the music. Unlike Owlboy that I reviewed earlier this year that was a great game without a core, this game orbits around a strong philosophy of wanting to make each Pokemon unique, and not simply ‘something you play in replacement of another at a lower tier because Smogon said so’. I hope this is the new bar. You can’t just make a ‘good’ Pokemon from now on. It cannot just be as good as XY, or as good as this, we will be expecting more because frankly speaking, SM opened too many doors for amazing possibilities in the future and it will be disappointing if they decided to close them up again. Pokemon Sun and Moon is the only game this year to threaten my current Game of The Year, which I have reviewed on this site before, but I won’t give it my GOTY simply because the Sinnoh remake may just be a step back and whatever SM has done here will be wasted. On its own, it is an excellent game with a lot of polish, except for minor issues I have with SOS battles and the beginning being extremely draggy, which puts it around an 8/10. But as a game in a franchise that will be coming out with more new games that can be equally if not more amazing because of the possibilities this one hints at?

10/10.

Hard truths about job search that are not swee to say

On 30th August 2016, I was on the Careers@Gov portal searching for new job postings. Of the 1000 most recent postings that I scanned through, roughly about 800 of them required experience which I did not have, another 100+ of the remaining were for IT, engineering and finance which I could not apply for, and taking away the MINDEF jobs that I can never seem to get clearance for, I had about 4 options left. Of the 4 options, 1 of them was MFA, whom I was still waiting for a reply from then, so that left me with 3. 3 out of 1000 advertised jobs that I could apply for, without me even choosing. A luckier local born fresh grad with a non-IT, engineering or financial degree would have about 10-15 options, but 15/1000 is still not an incredible number. 

So when the statement that Minister Lim Swee Say made about fresh grads being picky in their job search came out this morning, I was first perplexed, then angered, not because what say is not true, but is simply uncontexualised in current realities and therefore nothing but cliche government rhetoric. The economy is bad, but it is not always the economy that is at fault. Some individuals are picky but given enough time in unofficial unemployment (because the government refuses to recognise the significance of 6 months of joblessness) people will start settling for lesser options, and I have been actively searching since December 2015. What public discourse and public memory seems to have selectively forgotten, is that it is this exact government that has called for building of more universities and increasing undergraduate intake in the past decade, and is now refusing to talk about it because the plan has backfired. What public discourse tells you is that the economy is bad, and these problems are your own fault. Amidst the hype about higher education when I was choosing between JC and Poly 10 years ago (8 years for the lucky ladies), there was no way I would not choose to study in a JC and aim for a degree with my 9 points at the GCE 'O' Levels. 

There are two main criticisms of fresh graduates that I would like to address this post. Firstly, the issue of experience. Indeed there are students who have never done a single internship in their entire university life, because they really thought university is about committing yourself to school work and research, and enjoying the social life of university before you move into the workforce as how universities are always being advertised. Those people exist but are few and far between. Perhaps NUS could have worked harder to ease internship searching process for students like how SMU does it, but again with more effort and less naivety that wall can also be surmounted. I don't think it is entirely fair to blame an university freshmen for being naive, but it is most definitely a more valid criticism than 'why you don't have job experience before graduating'. Because some of us don't have the time. The mid-term month-long break is way too short to be involved in any significant job or internship, and for me that is usually spent on respite, reading, revising, writing, preparing for upcoming classes and conducting research for the upcoming semester. Some people may argue otherwise and claim their one month internship means something, and that's okay because some of us are literally grasping at straws when preparing our CVs and explaining to potential employers why we are worthy of the job as compared to the hundreds of others applying for the same position. The summer break is 3 month long. But sometimes it is not 3 months for the boys, because I've had reservist call-ups smacked right in the middle of that break, and organisations telling me that I should not bother applying for their internship because they cannot afford me leaving half way during the program. And I don't blame them. MOE's summer internship training was suppose to start on 30th June in 2014, and my reservist also started on the same day - the rejection is reasonable. And on top of that, there are things that we would also like to do other than work during the summer, some of friends went on volunteery trips, others went for summer school, and I had performances to train for. These are things that are perhaps valued less than internships in potential employers' eyes, but I do not think they can be in any way considered insignificant or thought of as things we do for leisure. 

Next, I want to talk about a criticism that is most frequently mentioned by supporters of Minister Lim's statement, the 'just take any job to tide through this period' argument. There are two main problems with this proposal. Firstly it assumes that any job will take us. I've applied jobs that requires no experience, minimum of O/A Levels and basic command of English, with pays as low as $2000 a month for jobs that require one to work 6 days a week. As of now none of these jobs have replied. Considering the employment climate it is likely that they are simply not hiring, or they are afraid that I'd leave for greener pastures once I have the opportunity, which I most certainly will. The point is having a degree is a disadvantage when looking for part-time, lower-skilled jobs. And again, it assumes that such jobs are readily available. Even ad hoc jobs are hard to get, I've been sending out a stream of applications for tuition and translation jobs in the past month, and have only gotten one through a friend's recommendation. Why is this the case? Because there is a surplus of graduates out there who are looking at the same options causing the temporary jobs market to be as saturated as the permanent/contractual ones. Secondly, and the most important point here, is that to not pick at all is irresponsible, unintelligent and possibly self-destructive. Any temporary position we take up now cannot be meaningless because by the time we are done with our half-year assignments, there will be new graduates flooding the job market again. An unemployed fresh grad is an asset of depreciating value if he does not continue to do anything relevant to his career progression. If I get a job in service now and have no intention whatsoever in pursuing a career in service, then the work I do to 'tide through' is completely useless. The whole point of selecting is not for the sake of blind pursuit of passion, it is a practical way to build one's portfolio in order to compete with the fresh grads that emerge 8 months later. I do not think my future employees at risk consulting firms will like to hear about my dishwashing or telemarketing experience, and if anything using that time to prepare oneself for important interviews is much more important - that's what I spent the last 6 months doing. The reason I am looking for tuition and translation jobs is because those are the things that I want to add to my portfolio and display as my advantages during future job interviews. The reason why I've applied for internships at this moment is also for the same reasons. Only people who have never planned for the future will say something as irresponsible as 'you should not be picky'. We don't choose because we can, we choose because we have to. Those who use their experiences from the distant past to backup the 'tiding through' argument have failed to realise the infeasibility of their solutions in current contexts and realities, and the government is happy to have them support their equally brittle rhetoric. More graduates are entering the job market every half a year because of government policies implemented years ago, and we as the victims of that shortsightedness are trying our best to mitigate that damage by being intelligent, sensible and responsible in our own career building process. 

It is a Sunday and I should be writing cover letters instead. Some of you probably don't know what that process encompasses, and that is the very problem with all your arguments. 

Nathan Hartono, singing competitions and the nature of music businesses in a capitalistic world

Nothing really surprises me anymore these days. Woke up to news of Nathan Hartono winning second place at the Sing! China singing competition broadcasted on Zhejiang television recently, which was known previously at The Voice of China, and also hundreds of comments and likes on posts that denounce the competition for robbing Hartono of his victory simply because he is not from China.

There are a few things that we can go into here, which I'd briefly mention but are less important that the not-yet-discussed matters at hand. Firstly, the nature of 'nationality' discrimination. I do think netizens are not entirely wrong about the Chinese's thin ego that might have influenced them to pick a singer born in China. However, there's more. There is also the subjective nature of whom you think is the best. I don't think any singing competition has ever picked the best as their winner - and it doesn't matter because the best is subjective and winners in this particular competition usually end up worse-off than their runner-ups and other competitors anyway - so if anyone is worried that this may affect his career, it most likely will not. I thought he was good, but probably not my pick for winner either (I also won't have picked Jiang, the official winner, and that's the whole point of bringing subjectivity up).  Thirdly, it is incredibly ironic that Singaporeans are calling out a Chinese television channel for using underhand methods to defend their thin nationalistic ego... to defend a Singaporean singer and their own, equally weak, nationalistic ego. Combining that with the point of subjectivity, do we really prefer Hartono because he is better, or is it that he is 'one of us' like how Jiang is 'one of them'? What will happen if say, Jeryl Lee from Malaysia won the competition instead? What will the rhetoric then be? Cliche, but the idea that everyone has their own biases and it is good to check them from time to time is good.

Now that that is out of the way, it is time to scream at capitalism instead. I did not want to write about this issue previously, but I remembered something really important that the collect public memory of Singaporeans has forgotten. Singapore did the same thing too. In 2005. The Ang Junyang Project Superstar Controversy. As with all accusations of competitions being rigged, this one is also mostly made up of rumours with only a handful of evidence to work with. But consider this. Why else would an undergraduate leave University to join a singing competition that he may or may not get anything out of - after all, this is Singapore we are talking about, people don't just make reckless passionate pursuits like that. Moreover, there was no precedence in the local mandopop industry that promised certain fame if you join such a competition... unless you are already signed and promised a contract and album release, and even better, you are the assured champion of the competition. Ang signed to Universal Music Group shortly after the competition and released his album around the same time winner Kelvin Tan released his. I'd say that Tan's popularity throughout the competition was so strong that it simply could not have been ignored for fear of public backlash, and, well, having a visually-impaired person as a winner is good marketing.

Singing competitions are just big advertisement campaigns, not only for sponsors but especially for the singers themselves. Earlier I said some of the most successful singers from singing competitions are all 'losers' of the competitions, and I honestly think that they are just there for the exposure and hope that they will get picked up by a recording firm. Or, more likely than not, it is the other way around. Recording firms send their new artistes who are preparing to release their first albums to major singing competitions, have them exposed to audience, and hopefully boost record sales through name recognition. There are albums that come out so incredibly fast after a competition ends that it is not possible for arrangements not to have been made beforehand. If one dives into the Chinese forums on such matters, one will realise so many of these supposed everyman who claim to be small business owners, truck drivers and bar singers are actually professionally trained, big name recording firm-backed singers that are there to promote themselves for their upcoming album releases. This is not to denounce the real talent that these artistes possess, but it bothers me when people see singing competitions as purely innocent talent scouting programs that are not rigged in every way possible for the music industry to sell albums. Whenever a person of minority ethnicity joins such competitions in China, there is always so much focus on their ethnic language and 'culture' to serve as unique branding for those individual singers... who then release their albums shortly later with those exact branding on their labels. Singing competitions, like all reality TV shows, create personalities with certain characteristics and background to make these people feel unique, even though their singing styles are equally rigid and boring sometimes, so that people will remember them as 'that soulful singer of Tibetan ethnicity', or that 'pure rural voice from the mountains' or 'the free spirit of the Mongolian plains' - these are brands. Kelly Clarkson is a woman, that's a brand. Kelvin Tan is blind, that is a brand. And with the rise of SJWism things are just getting worse with Solo being gay and Wonder Woman revealed as queer and Iron Man now a black woman... these are all brands. I don't care if people don't care about big businesses exploiting neatly packeted discriminatory categories such as race, gender, sexual-preference etc. to sell their characters (yes, singing competition personas are nothing more than characters), but I wish people can at least notice it.

To round it up, there are people I know on Facebook who are triggered about Hartono being labelled as an overseas Chinese in the competition, and are using that one small detail to extrapolate into grand theories about Sino-Singapore relations that may hold some water but only as much as a shallow pond. Guess what? That's a brand. 

Racial Harmony Day – Because not being dicks to each other is a cause for celebration

Race is not a real thing. It most certainly exist, but not in the physical sense, and is an idea that we have willed into existence while continuing to strengthen racial divisions. And because of that, racial discrimination becomes a real thing, and that is just disgusting. I recently learnt from a doctor friend that the only way to get rid of a bad wart is to cut it off; for a wart as deadly as racial discrimination, we are applying nonsensical ointments such as racial laws and policing hate crime and wish that the wart goes away. That never works.

The term racial harmony needs to be deconstructed and dissected before any proper discussion of this topic can be held. To me, the term is simply ironic. Race is a construct invented for the sole purpose to divide and differentiate in order to assign different social roles and rights to other members of the human race (which is a real thing) based on bogus research studies that are, sadly, still being funded and conducted to this day. Harmony is the opposing force that is supposed to bring people (back) together, and for the most part it is a desirable state of being. Except if you enjoy the chaos brought about by people fighting over stupid ideas, such as racial uniqueness, otherwise we can mostly agree that harmony is a good thing. I like harmony. I do not necessarily care for peace, but I like it for the fact that people in this imaginary harmonious world are smarter and more logical than those in our world. So when we speak of racial harmony, I like to think of it as a world where people do not fight over racial issues. When you choose to employ a candidate over another, you do so because of their gender, class status, their merits or simply the way they look, and never because they are of a certain race. When a man tells you her wife is a dentist, you do not ask whether they are Chinese or Malay, but instead make comments like “so she is a nurse at the dentistry?” Because eliminating racial divide will be the end of all our problems, and therefore racial harmony is of utmost importance and needs to be made into a special day for celebration.

Jokes aside, I do think the intention of having such a day for celebration is good, at least partially, depending on how you view nations and nationalism. It is definitely not pure and sincere in any sense, but good. Despite being ironic how we can celebrate unity in diversity, the end goal is at least unity, a fairness in treatment to all despite being told that we are different. Like most scientific projects that end up being part of military weaponry, good intentions do not always yield merits nor intended results. Perhaps it is out of pure naivety of our socio-political scientists, perhaps it is simply required for the grand plot of the nation building story which has not been updated for 50 years, as we were painfully reminded last year. But again, the intention to try and create equal grounds for everyone is faultless unless you really despise the idea of nations. It has certainly not solved racial discrimination, but I cannot find myself to hate on a program that tells kids to not be assholes to other kids because their skin colour is different or they talk funny or something. On my end I will make sure my kids learn about the very basics of linguistic and accents develop from the language other kids speak at home, and not go down the easy path of telling them people speak differently because they are of another race. I will be quite disgusted if educated university friends, especially those who majored in that major where they do nothing but talk about social problems, if they decide to raise their children as lazily (intellectually) as our parents did. I still immediately assume all the ‘Malay’ people I know are Muslims because of my upbringing, and it annoys me to no end even though I am aware that it is a major misconception.                                                                                                                                                         

And after all that setting up we can finally talk about the Yishun Secondary School incident, where students were apparently told only those that are eligible for JC are going for the Racial Harmony Day celebrations. (The original Mothership.com post later updated that it is not in fact the celebration itself that is practising this discrimination but a half day off to prepare for the celebrations, but nonetheless, still differential treatment in relation to this Racial Harmony Day, thus this discussion still needs to be had.) If anyone has not read the web comic On A Plate on class privilege then I do recommend you read it and tell me whether this discrimination of students by results is a class issue, because I most certainly think it is. The rest of this post will be a very angry rant on the idiocy of flaming discrimination in public schools, so I will preface this by saying two things. First, I believe the intention of the school to be good. Selfish, but good. They want the students who are not doing as well and pulling up the school’s ranking to have half a day more of lessons, because that will most certainly help them get into JC. But I can at least where the school is coming from. Secondly, I do not believe the students’ demands are pure. They just do not want classes. But in this case their selfish reasoning is the one I will side on because our goals align despite having different starting points, like how I will stand with people who are against social welfare because they do not want to pay more taxes despite knowing that they are being assholes.

What is the point of sending children to public schools? For me it is to place them in a harmonious fantasy where you are supposedly judged base on your merits and nothing else, so that when time comes for them to rule the world, they will run their world like how their public school society was like. But alas, the ‘real’ world that everyone speaks badly but does nothing to change it will not be moved by such idealistic wishes. There are two ways to go about it. The first way is the easy way; you let kids know that their teachers are discriminating them based on arbitrary favourism, and are focused to help the good ones get better, all while hiding behind the rhetoric of “I cannot help you if you do not want to help yourselves”. You teach them the rules of that ‘real’ world we so proudly uphold, where being of a certain gender, sexuality, skin colour, language group and/or religion determines whether you serve coffee or receive coffee in a meeting room. The second way is the harder way. You raise the future generation into one that can change our twisted world. You do everything you teach them in the first method, and you make the children think about what they can do for a better future. You force these children who have lived through that fantasy create solutions to turn that fantasy into reality. The worst thing that can happen now is that Yishun Secondary School backs down and lets everybody get the day off for Racial Harmony Day. It certainly solves the problem at hand, but similar to the first method, you simply expose the children to the fault lines of discrimination but do not request a solution out of them. I believe a majority of children at that age would want a day off. What about making them abandon that selfish thought for the sake of equality? I think, give them a chance to vote on it. Give them three options, continue with the current plan, make it a day off for everyone, or let everyone go back to normal curriculum. Inform the children about your concern for the students who are not doing as well in class that you need them to carry on with classes on this day. If there is any hope left for the future, I think the third option will win. And if it does not, I guess we just need to try again when my kids and their generation grows up.

I believe that there was a question I was trying to answer with this post, on the importance of dedicating an entire day to celebrate Racial Harmony Day in public schools. The solution that I have provided above is what I think we can do for now, because you are not going to resolve all the issues with the system in a single day, through a single event. But we can take a step towards that better future. And if the upcoming generation cannot balance the need of their establishment (the school, in this case) for the non-JC eligible students to not have the off and continue with their normal curriculum (I am not saying I agree with the method, but neither do I know how to run schools), and yet ensure that equality is maintained by not discriminating anyone with any arbitrary markers, then they need the idea of harmony beaten into them with as pompous a celebration as possible. So yes, if Yishun Secondary School decides to let everyone off in preparation for Racial Harmony Day together after this backlash, then they need the celebration so very much to hopefully turn them into better adults who will not be dicks to each other.  

I will like to hear someone from that generation provide me a rebuttal with a better solution to this crisis – tell me my ideas are outdated and the future requires solutions that I am unable to think of – that will make me really happy. 

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and False Advertisement

Three games in recent memory come to mind whenever I think of the question, "What exactly represents the worst in video games these days?" The first is Valiant Hearts, a mediocre game loved by fans and critics alike because they are surprised that Ubisoft decided to put out a non-shooty shooty killy killy game and people want them to make more of it instead of their usual stuff. Perhaps the high praises that Valiant Hearts received resulted in Ubisoft giving more support to initiatives like Grow Home and Grow Up, but judged on its own Valiant Hearts is an utter piece of garbage which I have torn apart in an earlier post. The second is No Man's Sky, a game recommended to me on Steam because it is popular. Let's break it down. An ambitious game which people know very little about, that has been recently delayed and is launching at $60 full price, is the top selling Steam game that is at the top of my queue. The damn thing is not even out yet and people are pre-ordering a digital copy of a game that they know shit about. I would love to delve more deeply into criticism but I cannot, because there is no game to criticise nor play, but go ahead pre-order the damn digital copy because they will most certainly run out of those. 

The third game, regrettably, is Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate - or as I like to call it, Monster Grinder. There are many problems I have with the mechanics of the game, but I want to focus on the parts of the game that makes it qualify for this 'worst of video gaming' award, and that is false advertising, and how people are putting up with this bullshit year after year. 4 main points I want to go through here. One, the Field Of View. While the previous installment benefited from being on the Wii-U, a home console which means your FOV is the size of your TV, this version puts you on the tiny 3DS which makes everything so hard to spot. I guess it is time to upgrade to the XL. This would not have been such a big problem if the camera controls were a bit better, and you will say, well get the New 3DS then, it has a second thumbstick to control the camera. And thirdly, there is framerate dips and input lag because my system is the oldest of oldest of 3DSs, so I guess getting a New 3DS would make sense... until you realise none of this is actually stated on the box. MH4U is a shameless game that was designed for the New 3DS like Hyrule Warrior Legends, and is clearly not optimised for the normal 3DS, but refuses to state that limitation on the box itself because it fears not being able to sell more copies to people who own normal 3DSs. Nintendo's whole retarded move of calling the New 3DS literally the New Nintendo 3DS, similar to the failure of a name that is the Wii-U, does not exactly inspire people to upgrade their handhelds, nor encourage third party developers to push games on the new console. I will not blame Capcom (and Koei Tecmo in the case of HWL) entirely for Nintendo's failings, and it is just saddening that the optimal marketing strategy amidst failure of the console's marketing is obscuring crucial information that affects gameplay and enjoyment in order to sell games like MH4U and HWL. With Sun and Moon coming out this November, I'm hoping they don't pull the same nonsense here because even thought I will be eventually getting my upgrade to the new 3ds, I hope that friends can continue to play games together on their old systems too.

And this brings us to my fourth point about false advertisement, the focus on multiplayer. Jumping onto the MH4U bandwagon now is bad, because most friends who like the franchise are just waiting for generations to be out and have stopped playing this version for a long time. Monsters are extremely grindy on single player mode, and everyone in the world is telling me the multiplayer is more fun, I would like to point out that this game again, was not advertised as a multiplayer only game. Just admit it, if you need people to play with to make the base game even bearable, then clearly the single player campaigned is not properly scaled and balanced and it should be stated that the single player mode is simply a tag on. And the reason why this is important is that this means in order to get a party of 4 to play, we need 4 New 3DS XLs and 4 copies of this game, that's about $1600 for 4 people to enjoy this game. I recently spent $40 buying 4 copies of Papers, Please for 4 of my friends and made them really happy; so not thanks I will rather buy 160 copies of Papers, Please and make 160 people really happy instead. For what it does, the value proposition just is not enough to justify this game as enjoyable because it costs so god damn much.

Strangely enough, I am enjoying the game but mostly because I am really bored and have nothing else to play. But I am disappointed, perhaps by the hype surrounding it, but more so by the willingness of gaming carrotheads to be chopped by AAA developers, spending more money and blaming their own systems for being not good enough when in actual fact they have been screwed by obfuscation of information, marketing schemes and poor optimisation and design of games. I will probably criticise the game design one day, but as free and bored I am writing is still much of chore.

Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, MH4U, more like Me Has 4 Unstated problems that border on false advertisement and you should totally read reviews before buying this game that plays like crap on anything but a New 3DS XL. 

80 Days and the 'New' way to read

For a student of the humanities, I really dislike reading. Most of my friends from other faculties will disagree, because I do read a lot, but firstly I don't read enough for what I do, and secondly I don't necessarily enjoy the process. There are three ways that this issue is usually circumvented. First, I will try and read the damn thing, and if the writing is intriguing enough I will read on. If that fails, I will find a video or an audiobook of sorts that reads and summarises the material I wish to read about. Or lastly, I will wait for the book or essay to be presented in a more interesting format, such as the abovementioned video or audiobook. Poorly written books are, in my opinion, the lowest denominator of the written artform. Books that are unable to draw in its readers through its language are unworthy of read, and for that I'd even argue I like my books to be bias and heavily emplotted than treating me like an idiot by being overly expository. Mangas, for instance, is a higher artform than books, using visual images, intentional framing and placement of those frames for visual story telling, that often prioritises dynamic dialogues and character interaction over narrative and commentary. Visual novels and RPGs on the other hand, allows the player to be part of the narrative by giving player's choices to affect the outcomes and endings in the story. Both games and manga creates a stronger bond between the reader and read, providing immersion that I would say even the greatest of written novels are unable to achieve simply because it is so easy to enter this world via the visual representation and in RPGs, actually being part of that world.

80 Days, a choose-your-own adventure game created by Inkle, and writtten by Meg Jayanth and Jon Ingold, is a step forward for the interactive fiction genre for people not so enthusiastic about books like me. As I am writing I am on my third playthrough of the game, and it surprises me because the game is almost entirely text driven and I generally don't like reading as stated above. It may be because of the topic - Journey to the Centre of the Earth remains one of the books I remember fondly from my childhood to this day, and 80 Days is adapted from another of Jules Verne's famous novel - but I think there are things that 80 Days does more that allows for my attention to be held for so long.

The first aspect has to be the 'choose your own adventure' element present within the game, something derived from text-based MUD games in the earlier days and heavily inspired by pen and paper board games like D&D. And because of these choices, players will be exploring new towns and unlocking different story pieces each time they play - if they choose to do so, that is (I did) - and through that allow for multiple read through of the same adventure with very different stories. By taking on the form of a game, 80 days took the best of both world's of books and visual novels and created an unique experience that is neither dull and linear like books would be, nor so focused on character interaction that in is on telling the story and being an adventure piece. As much as I enjoyed the Zero Escape series written by the genius that is Kotaro Uchikoshi, it relied heavily on the characters and mystery to drive its plot, and the tightness in the world building and narrative kept it constantly interesting and enjoyable. 80 Days differs from Zero Escape by having very few memorable characters, (with Passepartout and Fogg being the only ones with any personality) hence sacrificing the chance to use well written dialogues to drive the narrative and plot, and relied solely on exposition - and it did that amazingly. 80 Days also differs from games in general by removing that more 'game-y' part of visual novels and focuses solely on text, instead of environmental story telling elements present in Bioshock and the upcoming We Happy Few, again, falls back on its strong writing to keep the reader enthralled.

Making this post any longer will be an ironic thing to do. Let me just say this, I am not quite sure whether 80 Days is a game, I definitely cannot say it is a good game, but it is an amazing read. I paid $15 for a book, and I read it 3 times. I had my friend read it while I watched and managed to see some new stories from that run too. It is a fantastic book and I do hope more of my future reads can exist in this very format.  

Most likely creating a new blog and importing all my game reviews there, then shutting this one down completely

Had my first argument on the internet for almost a year. Quite boring considering how little internet debaters changed during my break - they are still throwing around the same type of standard arguments, they still refuse to read before replying, and their rhetoric always involved paraphrasing the same nonsensical things they said in a previous post. If there is one takeaway from that experience, it's that you are not going to convince anyone on the internet. If I truly love people who cannot think for themselves and want to save them, I need another platform, I need to command authority and I need to work within the rules and system of this world to make sure people take what I say seriously. And I think that moment is about to come.

And because of that change, I probably shouldn't have an opinion that can be scrutinised by the public eye anymore. I'm still going to do game reviews (like I have been for the past months) and I'd probably express my views in more extreme ways through writing satire posts. So that's the plan for the near future, launching those 2 new blogs under new names and staying out of traditional political commentary until I can do so again. I hope this is not jynxing that wonderful opportunity.

Invisible Inc. and Difficulty Settings in TRPGs

I am not a game designer, so everything in this post will be from a consumer and gamer's standpoint. 

2016 has been a great year so far, from Darkest Dungeon to Stardew Valley to Don't Starve Shipwrecked to The Banner Saga 2, game developers in 2016 has given me hundreds of hours of great experience of fun on games of different genres and playstyles, and made me excited to try out those that I don't usually enjoy, such as Doom 4 (I don't care I am calling it that). Compared to last year, I say we have an equal number of good games, and equal number of quality games so far, but nothing has quite came close to my favourite game of 2015 and 3rd favourite game of all time, Invisible Inc., by Klei Entertainment. 

As with other games that I deeply love, there are too many things to praise about Invisible Inc., albeit in this case more should be said because this game is still not receiving the amount of attention that it should have, so I am just going to touch on one aspect of game design today, namely difficulty settings. Many games these day allow for multiple levels of difficulty settings, and that is wonderful, because it shows that developers understand that difficulty is highly subjective and they want to cater to as wide an audience as possible, and allow hardcores, enthusiasts and completionists to enjoy multiple playthroughs and challenge themselves in games that they wish to experience again in an not-too repetitive setting. It usually comes in 3 stages, easy, normal and unplayable, and I am glad most games are self-aware enough to name the final level 'Insane', 'Lunatic', 'Nightmarish' so on and so for, to tell the player that they may not have a good time doing so.

The biggest issue with difficulty settings, I feel, as I have discovered recently by fiddling around with the different levels in Chroma Squad and The Banner Saga 2, is the issue of scaling. Both games, in my opinion, scales poorly when moved to the higher setting: In the case of Chroma Squad, your characters get knocked out way too easily because the game was designed with the idea of tight and swift battles in mind - both your opponent and your characters have very little HP, and even in the base difficulty characters can get knocked out easily by having 2-3 enemies ganging up on one character - and this works best when they can actually take 2-3 hits because it grants the player a sense of control over the battle. In The Banner Saga, similar things can happen because some characters aren't supposed to take hits, and the increased number of enemies and damage output from the opponent's side is devastating because characters can be downed in 1-2 hits with no way to revive them mid-battle. Chroma Squad has one healer out of 5 characters heals once every 3-5 turns, and Banner Saga has no healers that can give back strength, which is not only your HP but also your attack meter; again, there is no catch up mechanic available to allow for strategic maneuvering through a bad situation, say, being swarmed earlier on, taking a critical hit that downs a character, or missing a crucial hit that resulted in you taking unnecessary damage. In the highest difficulty setting, opponent AI characters are also smarter and will actively go after weaker characters, which would have been amazing in normal difficulty where you have more control over the game, but becomes merely a frustrating hassle in the harder settings where your turns become simply run and shoot an arrow, then run and shoot an arrow.  

As a veteran tactics and strategy RPG player and enthusiast, I think TRPGs and SRPGs become meaningless when that control is removed from the player. There are 3 main issues that are damning to the situation that I feel Invisible Inc. addresses and other games do not. Firstly, continuing from the previous paragraph, is how the strategy is lost when enemies are simply too strong, and you are simply running and gunning the opponent instead of thinking of ways to overcome the situation. Admittedly that can be fun in real time games, like Dark Souls, because being able to parry and dodge is part of the gameplay, and you feel your that your skills (in this case reflexes and quick thinking) are still being tested despite your enemy overpowering you. This is not the case on a grid-based, turn-based TRPG or SRPG because you are just moving your piece as far away as possible and using a range attack, or heal so that you can take an extra hit - this is fine the first or second time around, but it will quickly get old when you are doing it every. single. goddamn. time. The whole point of tactics is the test of one's ability to react to what the board presents to you, and play your best game depending on what the situation is, not repeating the same moves over and over again. 

And this leads to my second point: TRPGs are not puzzle games. In TBS2, I entered a challenge where I had to use an archer to kill an enemy while their HP was low, this was ok in Normal difficulty when AIs were dumber and dealt less damage, but in Hard mode the Archer dies on the opponent's first turn unless I A. Use the Archer to run and hit, which turns into the problem I mentioned earlier, or B. Move another unit to a specific position on the gridmap which does not block the AI from reaching the Archer, but somehow distracts them to attack this other unit instead. This is absolutely unacceptable. This happened before in Fire Emblem Awakening's Lunatic mode too, where units have to move to specific locations to distract other units despite making no tactical sense for the enemy at all, and essentially turns the game into a puzzle game - where upon every loss, you discover a perfect move to be taken to be memorised and repeated ad nauseam until you complete the map. Again, strategy should be reactionary and not formulaic, and if anyone wants to play a puzzle RPG they can go to Professor Layton or whatnot, I am not interested. 

Lastly, is a bad game design practice adopted from a similarly poor way to ramp up difficulty in real time games - hard=more enemies. In a real time shooter this turns that game into a boring horde clearing wave-based shoot out, like I heard what Destiny became at one point. In a war-based TRPG like Advance Wars where you can produce troops and have to make use of map layouts to win battles, this can be actually thematically sound and tactically interesting because you make use of choke points, sacrifice smaller units to set up traps for the enemies and it gives one great pleasure when one overcomes the huge wave on enemies despite having so much lesser troops to move than the enemy. In Fire Emblem the enemy just stands there and wait until you approach them, so they serve nothing more than time wasters. In Banner Saga more enemies mean that the already tiny gridmap is choked full of units and archers become useless because of the sheer difficulty of finding a spot to execute a range attack from, and physically weaker units like mages and thieves just get brutally slaughtered by smart AIs that can and will go after easier targets before taking on your tankier units. 

I wish to point out, however, despite all their flaws Fire Emblem, Chroma Squad and The Banner Saga series are still excellent games in this genre, and I will buy and play their sequels and DLCs without second doubts because the games are so amazing in their normal settings. My argument here is just that there is another game in the same genre that is leagues above these already excellent games.  

And now we finally come to the first part of this post's title, Invisible Inc. and why the game's difficult settings blows my fucking mind. To begin Invisible Inc. has 4 basic difficulty settings, Beginner, Experienced, Expert and Expert Plus, or as I like to call them Fun, Challenging, Exhilarating and Insane. Unlike most TRPGs Invisible Inc. recommends you to start off at their lowest difficulty. The first mode serves as an introduction to most of the game's mechanics, gives you a good number of turn rewinds to help you to learn how to strategise, and the game at this level still provides a good degree of challenge especially when you are not being careful. Invisible Inc.'s easy mode serves not only as a good tutorial but at the same time provides just enough fun and challenge for players who are learning the ropes to still enjoy it. I don't understand why game developers bother making easy modes that are so simple it takes away all the fun and challenge that nobody plays them. If a player is unable to engage the game at its normal difficulty, they probably are picking up the wrong game and should try something else instead, because in good TRPGs/SRPGs that properly scale their difficulty like Invisible Inc. strategy and tactics will evolve and you are forced to think deeper as you progress through the difficulty levels. I think what really works here is Invisible Inc.'s premise and gameplay as a stealth TRPG - hitpoints do not matter since everyone gets taken down or killed in one hit (which always hit, unlike every other game out there), and more enemies just mean that players have to be more careful in planning their moves because they only have so many rewinds if they screw up. In Beginner it is possible to exploit the rewinds to find out more about an unopened room or unexplored area, but with Experienced and Expert dropping rewinds to 3 and 1 respectively, (and an achievement for players to play with 0 rewinds on Expert to further disincentivise rewind exploitation and encourage careful play) players are forced to think more and take their time in making their moves, something which many TRPGs and SRPGs have forgotten about when designing their game. Invisible Inc. remembers that the grids and turn-based elements it is built on, and makes full use of the perks and limitations provided by these two basic elements. On one of my Expert playthroughs, I lost the game because I decided to open a door for no good reason, and this action attracted the attention of a guard whom I could not take down came along and murdered my entire team. Unlike puzzles which forces you to take specific steps, Invisible Inc. stays on the tactical side of the line that separates puzzle games and TRPGs by simply requesting you to not make obvious tactical errors and be careful of your every move.

On top of the 4 difficulties, different aspects of the game are also customisable to allow for even more advanced play, or cater to different type of playthrough like the previously mentioned no rewind run; this again, is a display of understanding and respect for catered experience to different players by giving options to its target audience, and not just pandling to a wider audience, sacrificing artistic vision for the sake of marketing to non-tactics lovers and new players. Other mechanics in the game, such as pulling off risky revivals with hard-to-obtain medical resources, that players need to decide to carry along with them or not because of limited inventory space, and having the option to leave an injured agent behind to rescue them later, or being able to lure large groups of enemies into a trap, or take control of robot enemies to deal with human ones... the list goes on for the tools Invisible Inc. gives the player to deal with tough decisions. It forces you to plan out carefully on the grid because movement is limited and you need maximum awareness of the terrain, and take as long as you need because that's what the turn-based element is for.

In fact, after spending 100 hours on the game, I would say its asking price of $25.50 (with the amazing DLC) is worth it even if you just replay Beginner mode over and over again, because the game's dynamism and challenge is not lost even on its most simple difficulty, and yet it is enjoyable by anyone who is willing to sit down and accept the game's challenge to your mind. If all else fails, rewind. The game is still not everybody - it can get very stressful very early on, I personally took 5 tries to get the hang of Beginner mode - and that is not fun to some people. But upon scaling that steep learning curve, what you will find is a game that is all about thinking and deep strategising that keeps you asking for more. Now try Experienced, Expert, Expert Plus, Endless and Endless Plus, or create your own challenges. As much as I would love to sell this game more, it is not the point of this post and I am going to end the discussion here. But if you are reading this and have not tried it, I do highly recommend it, it is a good introduction to the genre but at the same time also one of the finest of the genre and one of the toughest in the genre. Perhaps I will feel the same way about XCOM 2 when I eventually play it, but for now Invisible Inc. sits comfortably as my favourite game in my favourite genre. 

The Emplotment of Darkest Dungeon - Life, too, is a game of chance

There are few games that have kept me so enthralled like Darkest Dungeon. I will play the game late into the night, and wake up the next morning wanting to do nothing but play Darkest Dungeon. Chroma Squad, Link between worlds are probably the only games that I can remember having the effect on me thus far. I have owned the game for 5 days and sunk 65 hours into it, and I have literally done no work over the past few days, except grinding and figuring out the deep lore and battle mechanics of this wonderful little thing. My obsession caused this great foulness.

I am writing this because I feel many reviewers of this game are missing the point about what kind of game Darkest Dungeon is. Launch up the game and the first line you see before the title screen reads "Darkest Dungeon is about making the most of a bad situation", and that's what the game is in a nutshell. The game hates you, the RNG is all fucked and the stats, hit rates and damage rolls you see on screen are probably all lies. But that is ok, because that is what Darkest Dungeon is supposed to be. You receive a letter from the Ancestor telling you to clear his hell-infested manor and collect the treasures and heirlooms that remain behind after he was killed by the villagers - and outside the game world, Red Hook Studios is the Ancestor, inviting you to "go to hell" (this is literally the thumbnail of the trailer). You know clearly what you are heading into, and yet in the face of hell you complain it is difficult and unfair? That is really quite strange considering you accepted the invitation from the bloodstained Red Hook and "now, like him, you are a part of this place".

The naming of the game is appropriate too. Some dungeons are dark, others are darker, and in the darkest of dungeons, weakness cannot be tolerated. And this is not only about the weakness of the players' skills - because things will go wrong no matter how well you plan your moves - it is also about the weakness of the heart. Stress is a meter on the heroes that do nothing until you reach a breaking point. What will you do when everything in the game starts going wrong? Will you also become like the characters hitting the 100 stress mark, and start hating on the game for being unfair? Or accept that you are battling the darkest of hellspawns and the evilest of abominations, and it is going to be unfair. Stay FOCUSED, be COURAGEOUS and become POWERFUL, then push on till the tasks' end. This is a game that trains the heart to be brave; and for me, also to accept loss and humiliation and understanding that nothing in the game nor in life will go as well as planned.

Coming out of the Darkest Dungeon, I think it has made me a better person. Strangely enough, I have not rage-quit the game simply because a favourite character dies, or a random crit change chains into a series of unfortunate events. "How quickly the tide turns", exclaims the snarky narrator when a terrible blow lands, and life is like that too isn't it? Life, too, is a game of chance. And my life had been pretty awesome up till this year. Graduating from university this year, I was intending to continue to grad school before everything started falling apart. My father was diagnosed with a disease incurable in the sanitarium and was forced to retire way earlier than he intended to, and suddenly I could not afford going to grad school and not take home any substantial income for the next few years. Job hunting has been excruciatingly hard in this bad economy and things do not seem to be getting any better. I cancelled a total of 4 plans for graduation trips, and while everyone is spending money on celebrations and travels, I spent $25 on this very special game that reminded me that to be alive is a terrible fate in itself. Danger lurks at every corner and things will always go wrong. And when disaster strikes, we try to make the best out of it. I got a game to escape the stress from the outside world, but in turn the game itself stressed me out so much more that made me more determined to make things right in my real life. The task ahead is terrible, and weakness of the heart cannot be tolerated. Rather than sulking and blaming fate to be unfair and cursing the gods who have inflicted this suffering unto my life, I'm going to fight those demons and come out on top. The first step to that victorious end, ironically, is probably to stop playing Darkest Dungeon.

There are more things I want to praise the game about, especially how the cast of heroes seem to be a bunch of social outcasts or demon hunters who are here because it makes sense for them to be here. Thematically, the designers have made such a coherent game inspired by Lovecraftian mythology, and the dark gritty world feels perfectly insane and terrifying. But perhaps that can be left for another day when I have time to analyse why each hero is there in the first place. The backstories you hear from the Ancestor's memories are surprising intriguing and very fitting to the setting. The lore of this game is nothing short of amazing, and I hope I will have time to write about it soon.

Subverting Expectations - Papers, Please, the missing 'Happy Ending' and growing up in Singapore

This post will contain spoilers, obviously.

Papers, Please was on sale recently on Steam, so I decided to fork out $20 and buy it for a few friends. The two people who have tried the game liked it enough to spend about 10 hours each getting all the endings and achievements, and I'm really glad that people can relate to why this is my favourite game ever. 

There is probably an infinitely long list of things I want to praise about the game design and narrative, so I've decided that I will break it down and try to go through it part by part. After recently playing Undertale and being a fan of how that game loves overthrowing the player's pre-conceived notions about rpgs, I want to talk a bit about how Papers also did that but in different ways. 

We all want that good ending in some way or another in gaming. Having grey-area-ed, and downright terrible endings, is definitely nothing new in games. But I honestly cannot think of any game that had given me the experience quite like Papers did. The first ending I got was Ending 20, what I like to call the "Arstotzkan Dog" ending. Growing up in the Nanny State of Singapore, I guess that would have made the most sense. In fact, I think I would have gotten the "Too Honest" ending first if I could figure out how to pass the EZIC documents to the Inspector earlier on (yea it's pretty simple, I was just being dumb). It made sense considering the upbringing, anything wrong pops up hand it over to the Police and let the State handle it. Defiance of the law is generally not a good idea, and not intuitive at all. Together with the added consequences of credits penalty and a sickly, starving family, that seem about the right thing to do. When ending 20 played, I felt proud... for a moment. Until I realise the Inspector and his family was probably just stuck to this brutally mundane job forever, and forced to make decisions that betray the heart day in day out. Ending 20 is not that happy ending I wanted. Next.

Escape to Obristan was my second ending. It is the route that you will absolutely fall in love with Jorji, who hands you his forged passport despite you detaining him (at least I did), in order to repay your kindness from earlier. It is the one route that felt powerful, the player can confiscate passports illegally, in order to stealthily bring his family over to Obristan. You can run alone, but the game sends a man to tell you not to forget your family, and the way this shakes up the gameplay mechanics is really quite special. Jorji forces your first compulsory citation unto you (taking away any chance of a perfect run), and the game teaches you to break the rules that it had set for you; I love it when games do that. Speaking of family, this also feels like the most heartwarming of endings despite it being similarly gritty and painful to go through as there is that moment of fear that the rest of your family will get stopped by the Obristan customs, but all of you get through in the end. But what awaits across the borders is another communist slogan in the same vibe, "Obristan above all". We just escaped from one hell to another. Next.

The final 'big ending' is the EZIC takeover. Looking at how the rest of the endings went I had a feeling that this was going to be bad before it came. Perhaps it is clouded by my own perception that such a resistance led by fanatical violence upon innocent border guards will never work out, but I think the ending speaks for itself. You have helped to bring the resistance to victory. The ending slogan "Glory to New Arstotzka" seem to signify that the supposed change that was to come after the violent takeover was only at the superficial level. How will the next regime rule? There is a Chinese saying that translates roughly to how the effect of medicine will not change if you simply change the water used to boil the concoction without changing the prescription first; this seems to apply perfectly here as EZIC seem to have no new solutions to change the nation. You are still the poor border inspector like the end of Ending 20, and the nation is simply being ran by a new ruling class like in ending 18. Nex... But wait, there's nothing else left.

One side achievement one can attain, and by far the best one in my opinion, is for upgrading one's apartment. The upgrade does virtually nothing for your family except making rent and heat become more expensive as your house gets 'better' without ever showing you any visual representation of an upgrade. But we all want to climb that ladder to the top, a drive that I think is inherent to all humans, and we try whenever possible to make our lives a little less grim even if all we get are bragging rights and nothing substantial. We want to have reasons to convince ourselves life is getting better, perhaps to eliminate any desire to end it in a state of despair. So you keep upgrading the flat from grade-8, to grade-7, 6, 5... and the game stops you right there. "Grade 5 is the best for workers." Oh. I didn't know to be thankful for putting a stop on that fantasy that my in-game family can live in luxury one day, or should I be pissed off that this is different from this apparent 'meritocratic' nation that I live in? I sit down and question the state of meritocracy in Singapore from time to time, how skewed the system is towards people of higher classes, how terrible it is to be a late bloomer and how prejudiced people are by race, gender and place of birth for no apparent reason. In the end, regardless of what kind of meritocracy Singapore claims itself to be, I will be staying in a grade-5 apartment one day till death, and at least Arstotzka is kind enough to say that is because it is the best apartment I can get, while the Singapore government will wag its finger and tell me it is because I didn't perform well enough. And by that they mean my scores at the national examinations at 12 were not amazing enough (despite being in the top 10% of scorers) because the top schools don't need anyone else other than the 1%.

Before I delve any deeper into whine-zone I want to again thank Papers, Please for helping me rethink my life. Growing up as a pessimistic boy and plunging deeper and deeper into the depths of fatalism had helped make the connections I had when playing Papers. The happy ending does not seem to be there, at least not in this life, or not in this world. Perhaps I will need to find my answer in religion, or perhaps I am just looking at the wrong life goals. Or perhaps we will just fade into oblivion after we are dead, and even this sadness is a pointless emotion. 

Undertale - Something Special

Is Undertale the greatest game of all time? Hell no. Is it perfect? No. But I'll say the premise and setting it gives itself makes it almost faultless or immune to most criticism. Did I love it? Totally. Did I enjoy it more than Invisible Inc. (Fuck you Invisible Inc., btw)? Not at all. Invisible Inc. is a well polished, beautiful to look at, and immensely addictive and competent game that is right up my alley with its turn-based and grid-based combat. Undertale is some weird shit that made me cry, twice, while playing a video game - something I've never experienced before. If anything Undertale is different, it's that game you have never played before, it's the game you never have to play again after you are done with it, but it is also the game you may never forget. 

There is no way to discuss Undertale without spoilers. So there won't be a disclaimer but I'll state it because I want to. 

Like almost everyone, I went into the demo knowing nothing and wrecked shit up pretty badly. I killed Toriel, killed some other monsters, stole all the candies and did some other stupid shit. By the time I bought the real game I knew I wanted to try the Pacifist run, but at the same time, I told myself to just be myself. When the game started I noticed that Toriel actually tells you not to whack the Dummy, something I didn't realise in my first playthrough. I realised one of the frogs told you to use mercy even if names didn't turn yellow, and it turned out to be the key to sparing Toriel. I love Papers, Please, I love details, and once I notice them I'll follow them. And upon exiting the ruins it was not really about playing a Pacifist run anymore, it was about learning the weird ways you could end a battle non-violently because honestly the Fight mechanics is pretty lame. I knew about Undertale, but it didn't bore me to play the run to get a True ending, with all the little hints and the cooler mechanics in the Act option, it almost felt like that was Toby Fox's intention, and the proper way to play the game.

In the ruins I (me, the person playing, and not the playable character) bonded with a small monster called Migosp. Migosp only attacks you because his friends are there and he doesn't want to feel like a loser beside his friends. When all his friends are 'defeated', Migosp stops being aggressive. For the most part, I am Migosp, I try to do things to impress people all the time, and frankly speaking it is when people are not around and I don't have to pretend and entertain others, I'll feel really at ease. That's part of the reason why I write on this blog that no one reads and no one judges - Migosp is not a monster, in fact none of the monsters are monsters, they are just like us - and the only monster is, well, you, you who True Reset-ed the game and started a Genocide run. You, that Papyrus and Sans couldn't identify as a human. 

I fell for the whole build up to Papyrus' Blue Attack. And when it came, I couldn't stop laughing for whatever reason and quickly texted my friends who dropped the game to quickly pick it up again. The new mechanics introduced with Undyne, Mettaton and Muffet were all really fun, and may I just point out how smart Toby Fox is when he fucks with rpg standards yet again. In other games, some bosses have attack you can dodge and block, which makes no sense, if I'm a boss I'll polish my skills so hard to ensure I hit 100% of the time and kills shit. That's why Photoshop Flowey's attack hit so hard and are mostly undodgable, and you win because the other 6 humans interfere in the battle. For the rest of the game, NOBODY is trying to kill you unless you are on Genocide run (cue Undyne battle) and that is why their attacks are full of holes. Think about the Asgore fight, it wasn't hard at all. 

In the end, Papyrus remains my favourite Undertale character, but everyone who has played Genocide will quickly fall in love with Undyne too. Too many stories these days are driven by the sole fact that characters have IQ of 0; none of the mediums - movies, dramas, animes and games - are spared from this form of poor writing and narrative these days, and that is why I strongly believe that writing needs to begin with writing characters. This is where Toby Fox really got it right, from Flowey to Toriel to Sans, hell even Vegetoid, Aaron, Temmie and all the monsters I still can name despite them being so irrelevant to the main plot, all of these characters are unique with agenda. I'm currently watching this cartoon called Adventure Time and up till this point it is just being weird for weird's sake - if any character is even half as interesting as Snowdrake, Ice hat or The bird that carries you over an disproportionate distance, it would be a better show - but writers these days don't seem to understand having majestic plotlines and shocking twists is boring as hell without characters consistent to the world and plot to play out the story. I believe I've talked about this before in a previous post, needless to say, I think Undertale really nailed it with the character driven narrative here. 

At the end of the long journey on the Pacifist route, Sans congratulates you for enduring all the pain believing that this was the right path despite it being so tough. This was the first moment I broke, and I honestly don't know how to explain why. To some extent it felt like Sans was talking to me about my life, and the rest of it was how the bullet hell boss levels were really damn tricky and made you want to give up and just whack the shit out of the opponent. When the Asgore boss fight started and he broke the Mercy option, my heart broke. I didn't cry, but seeing him hold his head down to not face the player, and trying to force himself to kill the player is really painful to watch. The ending boss fight of the True Pacifist run was fun and at the same time such a satisfying end to the game, learning that Flowey kept you in because he just wanted you to keep playing. "Let me win", cries Asriel, and tears flowed down my face a second time, as I lifted my hand from the keyboard to take Asriel's hit. But the world refused to give up.

Too many good things have been written about Undertale, and this piece is probably an unnecessary and poorly written piece compared to all the amazing articles on the internet documenting this amazing feat. But Undertale was something special that clicked with me on an emotional level, and really shows how narrative in gaming is so, so reliant on mechanics, and how narrative in general needs to take into consideration of writing good characters. I'm officially adding Undertale onto my List of games that I'll force my friends to buy and refund them if they didn't like it, alongside Papers, Please. And to this date, no one has asked me for a refund for these 2 games. 

Just one last point, Spider Dance = tune of the year.