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.