Laser Orgy

Listen: Jonathan @Zittrain's ROFLCon III Keynote Memegasm

Carly Carioli — Sat, 05 May 2012 12:30:00 GMT

As we mentioned in this week's paper, this year's ROFLCon isn't just an advice animal petting zoo. It's also attracting some of the world's smartest thinkers about internet culture. At the top of the pile is JONATHAN ZITTRAIN, founder and leader of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, author of The Future of the Internet And How To Stop It, who is not only extraordinarily smart but also exceptionally funny. This talk won't be as LOLztacular without the slides -- but we suspect you'll be able to follow along fine . . . at least until the YouTube goes up. Discussed: the internet and the things it makes, why nerds are like 3 Wolf Moon, 4Chan, Disaster Girl, a really interesting idea for using something like robots.txt for opting out of becoming a meme, Oink, "tide goes in, tide goes out," CS Lewis, how to act when in the presence of all of the key actors from Star Trek The Next Generation. For a companion live-blog and a smattering of slides, see the MIT Civic Media Blog.

LISTEN: Jonathan Zittrain ROFLCon III Keynote Speech [Download]

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Review: Indie Game: The Movie

Wei-Huan Chen — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Edmund McMillen was always the kid who liked to sit alone and draw instead of playing with others. He drew monsters so disturbing his third-grade teacher told his parents the pictures were "a cry for help." But he channeled his imagination rather than trying to stifle it, and began making Flash games as he grew older -- simple browser-based adventures featuring gigantic, battling genitalia or aliens with existential crises.

> INTERVIEW: Edmund McMillen, on creativity & the controversy behind Cunt <

Now, speaking in front of camera, McMillen is fussing over his newest creation, Super Meat Boy, a skinless video game protagonist who splatters like raw steak across gorges and buzz saws in order to save his girlfriend, Bandage Girl. Super Meat Boy has been slated for release on the Xbox Live Arcade, with the potential to disturb thousands of third-grade teachers around the world. Yet he is broke, depressed, and under pressure to finish the game in one month. If the game fails, he will have spent the past two years confined in his Aqua Teen-postered room for nothing.

Little did he know Super Meat Boy would sell more than 1 million units and become one of the greatest indie game success stories of all time. But, that moment of artistic vulnerability, right before the teary redemption on launch day, is precisely where Indie Game: The Movie draws its inspiration.

McMillen represents a new breed of struggling independent artist. He is the subject of Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky's new indie documentary, along with the creators of Fez, a platformer essentially inspired by Cubism, and Braid, a time-warping love story. The first-time filmmaking duo screened this touching, observant film at the Brattle Theater last week, and then spoke to the audience about chronicling, in part, the rise of the indie game auteur.

Indie game developers have coexisted with their big-money counterparts for a few years now, but never before has someone -- much less a team of film documentarians -- so closely examined what it takes to be an independent designer or programmer. Games like Braid, and the recently released Journey, are calmer, more reflective alternatives to big-budget online competitive games. It's refreshing to see these hard-working artists given the recognition they deserve.

"I'm not going to work at EA," McMillen says. "That sounds like hell to me. We made [our game] as a reflection as ourselves. If you want to play Modern Warfare or Halo, then great. Personally, I think Modern Warfare and Halo are shit." (quote slightly paraphrased)

Independent video game makers found their entryway into the market with the rise of digital distribution; just as indie filmmakers use the IFC and Netflix to reach audiences, indie game makers have put their titles onto Xbox Live Arcade, the Playstation Network, WiiWare, and Steam as those platforms have become available. The rise of smartphones allowed the indie scene to expand into the iOS and Android gaming markets. One or two-man operations like the ones depicted in the film suddenly had the chance to compete with big-budget games funded by Apple and Microsoft. Even Finnish game developer Rovio was an indie operation before Angry Birds became a marketing powerhouse.

It's obvious why McMillen does what he does: No censorship, no corporate interest, no toiling under someone else's artistic vision. What's not obvious, though, is the intensity and energy required to make a video game with only the help of another person. McMillen says he's suffered at least three emotional breakdowns over the course of making Super Meat Boy. Paralyzed by stress and fear, his only solution was to sit alone in the bathtub with cold water running.

Another great profile in the film is of Phil Fish, the creator of Fez, who is something of a celebrity in the video game circle for delaying his game for years. Fish announced his Mario-meets-Picasso platformer in 2007, and it hit XBLA two weeks ago to high acclaim. He's serious, self-obsessed, and brimming with nerdy idiosyncrasies. After talking about his parents' divorce, his father's battle with cancer and his own recent break-up, Fish concludes that finishing Fez is the most important thing in his life: "This is my identity. If this fails, I'm going to kill myself." -- some audience members chuckle at his deadpan delivery. Then, after a pause, they realize he's kind of serious -- "That's my incentive for finishing my goal."

The other brilliant aspect of Indie Game: The Movie is Pajot and Swirsky's treatment of the inevitable, dreaded debate of "Are video games art?" Rather than supplying the answer ("Yes"), they imply it by following the emotional journey that these indie developers endure through the game making process. Aren't these artists' struggles the same as that of a musician, filmmaker or author unwilling to compromise their personal visions? Like any documentary about an artist, "It's a movie about making stuff," says Swirsky, and all the emotion, choice and creativity that comes with that process.

Gaming is still very much about big names. But who knows? As more independent studios -- many of them here in Boston -- make their way into the mainstream market, video games may have their indie revolution yet. That is, if it's not already happening right now.

Having come a long way from its beginnings as a $15,000 Kickstarter project to its hot run at Sundance, Indie Game: The Movie now ushers in the Independent Film Festival of Boston with style. Boston Post Mortem, a collective of local indie game makers, collaborated with Pajot and Swirsky in putting on the two sold-out screenings at the Brattle. While watching a movie about their story, these developers -- the most discerning viewers of all -- responded with laughs and cheers. In going through the headaches, social alienation, artistic roadblocks and programming snafus involved in the making of an indie game, the local developers said after the show that they had felt camaraderie with the film's subjects. Watching the film, it seems, they all saw a little bit of McMillen in themselves.

Indie Game: The Movie will have limited screenings in Los Angeles and New York on May 18. A DVD, along with a bonus edition, will be released "shortly after." For more information, visit indiegamethemovie.com.

INTERVIEW: Edmund McMillen on creativity, the controversy behind Cunt, and more

Maddy Myers — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:00:00 GMT

^{INDIE GAME: THE MOVIE | Edmund McMillen}

Edmund McMillen is just about to get famous - if he isn't already. He's one of the few independent game developers profiled in Indie Game: The Movie (check out our review here), which just had its Boston premiere at the Brattle on April 21. He's best known for his 2010 game Super Meat Boy and celebrated for his unique and unforgettable visual style. His most recent game, The Binding of Isaac, adapts the Biblical story of the same name; in McMillen's version, Isaac's mother receives a message from God telling her to kill her son. The naked and crying Isaac escapes into his basement, where he fares no better, for the basement is a maze of monster-filled dungeons.

But Isaac is hardly McMillen's most disturbing game. In 2008, he made a game called Cunt, in which you play as a penis that attacks a vagina. To be specific, you attack both the vagina and the crab-like STD that infects it by shooting out explosive bursts of sperm.

In spite of all the attention McMillen's gotten lately, few have asked about this unusual game from his pre-Meat Boy days. So, here it is: the story of Cunt from conception to completion, the game's place in McMillen's canon, and its unexpected similarity to McMillen's most recent game, The Binding of Isaac.

Does Indie Game: The Movie refer to Cunt?

They showed one picture of it.

Do you think they were afraid to show more?

No, I just ... maybe they think it might give people the wrong idea. So they probably didn't focus on it. They never asked or talked about it. I didn't know if it was going to be featured, but I think that when they were summing up stuff that I had done, they showed clips from probably seven different games. I think it was when I was talking about pushing the envelope, they put that in.

Which is the classic McMillen pushing the envelope example, right?

Yeah, I guess. It's the easiest way to show that I tend to - I mean, it's harder to convey why some of my other work could be considered controversial or risky or boundary-pushing by just showing a clip from it. That's one of the only ones I've done that is quite obvious.

Did you intend for it to be offensive?

I intended it to actually be a career suicide piece. I was in a weird space. 2008 was when my Grandma passed away, and I started to just try to make a future for myself and try to figure out exactly how to do that. Because I had been making basically freeware games - well, except for Gish - for almost five years prior, and I hadn't really made any kind of substantial money. I was living in a really crappy apartment with my wife.

I can't really complain much, because I had a really great time when we were poor, but I needed to do something in order to be financially stable, and in order to do that, I needed to be able to get attention. I needed to do whatever I needed to do, to do that. So I kind of put myself out there. Strangely, it's something that I'm going back and forth with, now, because I'm trying to remove myself from it, in a lot of ways. Not the game, but the attention.

So, in 2008, when I ended up making it, it was the most productive year of my life. I made six really well-known games. I got the attention of Microsoft and Nintendo by doing so, and then, that enabled me to secure the deal for Super Meat Boy, which happened two years later.

Cunt was one of the games that appeared in the middle. I was conflicted about what I was doing. I felt like in a way I was trying to sell out, which is what I was doing at its core. What I was trying to do was sell out in the best way possible, the most comfortable way possible for me.

Did Cunt make money?

It actually did, but that wasn't the point. My confliction was, I didn't like that I was doing that. It was after I made Aether. Right after I made Aether, I made Cunt. Which are completely opposite games. I think, in a way, it was ... it was my way to ... I don't know.

I was fighting with myself over what I was doing, and I kind of wanted to prove that I could do whatever I wanted, still, because there was a part of me that was like, if you keep doing this and you get a deal, you're not going to be able to do what you want to do because you're not going to have the freedom to do it. So, might as well do it now.

And part of me wanted to do something really dangerous and risky for my career. Just to see what would happen. It was just an experiment. Everything I do, I'm not 100% certain exactly what it is when I'm doing it, which is why I love doing it. That's the adventure, because I don't know where we're going to end up.

With Cunt, it was a game I made in nine days. Very, very short. I just wanted to do something that I thought would ruffle some tail-feathers, in a way, but also be pretty entertaining for me to watch, response-wise.

Anybody who knows the work that I did before I made games wouldn't be surprised in the slightest by that game, because I've done much worse.

Oh? What's an example of something worse you've done?

In high school, I was an independent comic artist, and I produced a bunch of these independent ‘zines called This is a Cry for Help. It was a series of purposefully offensive content, which had a lot to do with ... well, there's a dick called Little Chubby who's a recurring character in it. And, things to do with dead babies, that was a big thing.

Well, dead baby jokes are a different kind of shock humor than sexual violence.

If you saw the Little Chubby comics - well, it was a dick being repeatedly mutilated. He was repeatedly killed.

Oh, okay. I think the discomfort with Cunt is because it's about a dick attacking a vagina. But even if that role had been reversed - if it had been a vagina attacking a dick - I think it's still disturbing. I think you probably got at that in your comics, too. It's genital mutilation, it's sex-as-violence. It's pretty negative all around, yeah?

When I made [Cunt], I never thought anybody was going to be upset about that aspect. Mostly because a lot of people that played it, that were women, didn't say anything. And it's not something that's going through my mind because, at its core, when I was making that game, it was based around the mini-bosses in Gradius, which has a mothership that - well, it's a fucking vagina.

There are a lot of games with phallic imagery -

It's like, the most literal in that game. There's a barrier, like a hymen barrier, which you must break down in order to hit the other side with your phallic ship that shoots out white stuff.

When I first saw the response [to Cunt], I understood why. It kind of goes with what I'm going through now. I get frustrated that people don't know who I am, and what I'm about, and where I'm coming from, that they would think that I would do something that would be intentionally misogynist.

If I was a misogynist - if I was really a misogynist - I would revel in it. I totally would. I'm that kind of person. I have things about me that are ... off. And I push those through my work. And if one of those things that was off was that I had this unrelenting hate for women, then you would find a recurring theme in everything that I've done and I would totally talk about it. I would say, "My Mom abused me," or whatever else.

People can find that vein - people will go through and find that vein, or whatever else. But I'm not. I'm not at all! When I say that [I'm not a misogynist], people say, you can't say that. But, I'm not that kind of person. I'm the kind of person who would talk about it, if I was. But, it doesn't really matter.

I mean, I was taken aback at first. I don't want to upset people. Or, I don't want to upset them in that way, if that makes sense. That wasn't my intention. My intention was never to hurt somebody.

It reminded me a lot of the first comic that I ever did, the first This is a Cry for Help. The recurring theme in the comic was me killing myself, repeatedly. And, on the cover of almost each of the comics, there was a cover of me dead in some way. And on the cover of the first comic, it was me with my head blown off, leaning against the wall. And a friend of my family who lost their son to suicide got the comic and was totally destroyed by it, just seeing the cover of it. And I was so hurt. Because I didn't - I felt helpless. I would never in a million years want to hurt this person, in any way.

And I would never want to hurt somebody who was fighting the good fight for women. It was never my intention. But when you make any kind of art, you're going to upset somebody. I have learned that, over the years. And I can't try to self-censor or stop what I'm doing because I'm worried that someone might get hurt. And in a lot of ways, when I do, I feel like maybe I'm doing something that has more meaning or substance. Maybe it needed to happen.

I felt the same way about The Binding of Isaac, when I was making it. In a lot of ways, The Binding of Isaac is the most similar game to Cunt.

Well, you made it with Florian Himsl, who also helped you with Cunt. I'm not sure what his involvement was ... ?

He programs.

He wasn't involved creatively? That's just a coincidence?

Yeah. Well - Tommy [Refenes, co-creator of Super Meat Boy] is "anything goes" as well, but some of the people that I've worked with in the past are not exactly "anything goes." And Florian is definitely "anything goes."

You mean, it's possible that you would have had this idea and somebody else might not have programmed it.

Oh, sure. When I was starting this game, the guy I was working with at the time, who did Gish, was totally against it. He was so against it that he told me if I ever entered it in the IGF [the Independent Games Festival], that he would never enter anything into the IGF again. He hated it. He completely hated it.

But, The Binding of Isaac, the mindframe, the mindset that I was in when I did Cunt and The Binding of Isaac was very similar. I was questioning my motives. After Super Meat Boy, the success and everything else like that ... I wanted to do something risky. I wanted to do something that could commit career suicide, again. Something that I might not be able to make any money off of. Something that might have a very, very small following. Maybe a cult following. Something that could possibly make people think about stuff that would make them upset.

And, when going through Isaac, there were many times when I was going in completely uncensored. I wasn't going to stop myself. There were many times when I thought, I can't do this. This is pushing it too far, I'm going to upset the wrong people, this is just going to get me in trouble, this is going to do this, this and this. Whenever I would push into those areas, that was when I would regain the confidence that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to get into the danger zone again. It's exciting, because you feel like you're actually doing something that maybe hasn't been done this way, if that makes sense. It's uncharted territory.

So you do want to create art that upsets people - but, the right people and in the right way. Do you want to go into that?

This is the reason why I get in trouble!

I think you mean you want people to feel uncomfortable -

But to think about why they feel uncomfortable. That's important. And it's important for me. Because I feel uncomfortable, too! I feel the same feelings. And then I want to explore the reasons why.

With Isaac, it's much deeper and more personal than Cunt. Cunt was just a little tiny thing. It was more just about, why do genitals upset people? And why are they so fun to draw? It was very angsty. It was definitely me channeling my 18-year-old self, back when I was just out of high school.

The joke is just, "ha ha, genitals."

Right. But moreso: why ha-ha genitals? Why?

The ongoing theme of my work is stuff that's so gross it's cute. And, of course, Cunt wasn't cute, in any sense. But it was pretty. I mean, I thought it was one of the prettiest games I had ever made. Well, not from a thematic standpoint.

Well, the line art is very clean. It's got a striking visual style. I think that's part of why it's so memorable.

I love drawing anything with folds and creases and wrinkles. That's really fun to draw, for me. So, in a lot of ways, it's just surface-level stuff that started this off. And like I said, it was a nine-day game, so not a lot of thought was put into this. It was really just that I thought it would be fun to draw a lot of vaginas and dicks. [laughs]

I mostly think it's interesting that people forget about Cunt.

I do end up talking about it more and bringing it up more than people ask me about it. Most of the interviews that I do tend to be on sites that wouldn't post the word.

I always thought that it was only called Cunt. It wasn't until recently that I realized it was referred to as The C Word too.

I actually had to call it The C Word on Newgrounds because Cunt was already taken. [laughs] But a lot of people refer to it as The C Word, which is the proper way to refer to it in the printed form.

A lot of time when it's brought up in interviews, they will indirectly ask about it. They'll jokingly say, "oh, well, it's not like you've made a game about the female genitalia!" or something like that.

Also, there's the fact that it's not a good game. It's a horrible game!

There's not much to it. I mean, it's not a broken game. It works.

Yeah, but it's not good. It's not something where I would ever say, check out the design in that game! It was very, very quick on paper. Real quick. Really basic design. And very short, just for fun.

The only redeeming value that it ever had was the art and the content, which ended up being more a talking point than anything else. It faded away.

It used to have a Wikipedia for a good year or two. It was really in-depth. People discussing it, both sides - is it misogynistic, is it not? And a bunch of articles referencing it. And then someone deleted it, and it just faded away.

I do still talk about it, when people ask, "What are your most significant games?" I do think of that as one of my most significant games. I felt it was very important for me to make. It was very important for me to remember that I had the ability to make whatever I wanted to. It seems minimal, but it was very crucial. And it's something that I need to constantly do, to remind myself, that the boundaries aren't completely defined. That, in a lot of ways, it's my personal duty to push them a bit. I'm not going to ever play within the lines. It's just not... it's just not fun. And that was one of my first big ones.

It sounds like when you make things, you don't think about an intended audience.

I believe this strongly to be true: by doing that, I'm respecting the audience and respecting their intelligence. And respecting knowing that they want something new and they want something different, even if it might be slightly upsetting and might not be for everybody.

I would think that would be extremely difficult to do as a video game designer in particular, though. As opposed to a comics writer or movie maker, where you put art out there and people absorb it. With video games, you can't not think about the player. Do you imagine just yourself playing a game?

It's really specific. When I'm doing a game where the functional design and the way that someone plays and understands is very important, I think about the player.

With Super Meat Boy, I feel like you'd have to.

Of course I have to. That's one of the things I have to do, to grow.

In a lot of ways, this is one of the reasons why video games aren't that good. It's our inability to understand how other people think and how other people learn and understand. In a lot of ways, the past couple years of me getting better as a designer has been me watching other people play my games. Even watching Let's Plays and stuff like that.

It's very important for me to see how other people understand and learn, because I only know how to learn and understand one way. And I'm one of a billion people playing games. Everybody learns differently. So, yeah, I do think about other people when it comes to learning and understanding and how they experience things. But I don't when it comes to [questions like], who will play this? Will they care? What will they think? The importance is mostly on the functional design of the game, because I want people to experience what I am putting out there for them. It's important. I want them to be able to experience it in the way that I intended, and in order to do that, I have to understand how they see it and learn. Which is hard, but it's a fun challenge.

But also, you're asking somebody to identify with this thing that they're moving around on the screen.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I honestly hadn't really thought about it much before. I really do design from my own perspective, and I can't write. It sounds weird - because everything that I write is fiction - but I can't write fiction. I'm always pulling from something that I've experienced, in some way, or know something about personally, or am personally invested in. If I'm not, then I'm lying. If I'm lying, there's no honesty in what I'm doing. And if there's no honesty in what I'm doing, then no one's going to like it. There's going to be no art there.

In that way, it sucks, since I don't believe I could ever make a game with a female protagonist in a way that was honest. Maybe eventually, maybe when I get some perspective in life or become a better writer, but I'm not that good of a writer and I can't write fiction. So, I do have a hard time changing perspectives. I tend to put male roles in everything. I tend to write about young boys growing up, their imagination. There are a lot of recurring themes in my work, about how I grew up. I can't get away from those. I'm not good enough.

My niece played a lot of games, and still plays games. I gave her a DS with a ROM loader, so there's a shitload of games on there for her to play. And really early on, when she was only 3 years old, she learned how to navigate through the games and exit in and out on her own. She had a certain number of games that she always played, and they were only games with girls as the main role. And it's really disturbing in a way, and it sucks, because I wish there were more girls who made games. So they could have more honest games about girls, for girls to play. Because I hate to think that it's just always some dude writing a girl's story.

She's five, and she's not as into games anymore. Her brother is really into games. He's really into Meat Boy. There's this video of him playing Meat Boy. We pan over to my niece and we ask her, "Who's your favorite character in Meat Boy?" And she says, "Jill." And we say "Why?" And she says, "Because she's the only girl in the game." And, augh, that sucks.

I don't have that perspective. I don't know what it's like to be a girl. And I'll never know. And in that same respect, I don't know what it's like to be black, or transgendered, or gay. And I don't know how important it is for those roles to be there, for kids to identify with growing up, to see, "oh, there's a space for me in video games, because there's a character who's just like me." I'll never fully understand that, but I do understand more why people talk about it now, after having seen it first hand.

Sadly, I don't believe I'm where I need to be in order to represent anybody other than myself. Maybe in time, though.

I think the fact that you've even thought about that at all is a start. In Cunt, for example, there's nothing there for me to latch onto. If I were younger, I might've made a game about how mysterious penises were to me. I could make that game now.

I think people were really more upset about the violence, though. Once you have genitals plus violence, you'll see people taking a step back and saying "I want no part of this."

I wish I had put more thought into it, so I could understand it. I grew up Catholic, so that could always be a thing.

Even with Isaac - I was just talking to Jon about this - I can now take a step back from it, play it, and see certain elements of the game. I felt the need to add certain aspects, like the dancing around the idea of sexual abuse in the game.

There could, of course, be a deeper meaning to all of this, because I definitely grew up Catholic and I definitely have a focus on violence and mutilation as being holy.

And there's the repressed sexuality aspect to Catholicism, too.

You could definitely dig in there. I think that a lot of it falls back on the fact that I think mysterious things are interesting. The things that people don't talk about or show are magical and interesting. I like drawing those things. I like using those things and themes in my work. I can't help but think that's it.

There's definitely Catholic stuff in there, when it comes to the violence. That's the reason why most of my work is so violent. I never see Cunt as a vicious violence. It still seems playful to me, in the worst ways. But I grew up with a picture, in my room, of a man who had been beaten with blood streaming down his face. And I always thought it was a picture of my Dad, because my Dad kind of looked like him. And, being told, "this is our Lord and he's God" - the tortured man! Violence is holy!

I'm not Catholic now. I'm not religious. But I find the mythology very interesting. The fact that so many people are so accepting of something so incredibly violent, yet not accepting of others ... It's so strange.

I wish I had a definitive answer. But I don't have definitive answers for a lot of the stuff that I do. Because a lot of the stuff that I do, I just feel it and then I go with it and see where I end up, just like I said before. I know what it's not, but it's hard to convince people of that after the fact.

You had said in an interview that you were okay with it if people wanted to use Cunt as an example of a misogynist game, even though you knew that it wasn't. Does it bother you when people do that, though, because you don't feel that way about the game?

Of course it bothers me, because they're putting my name with it and making me say something. Once, somebody said that video game was the equivalent of rape. And, number one, that person obviously hasn't been raped, because that's a horrible thing to say!

But, I was younger then. I shouldn't have even treaded into that territory and tried to talk. I was going to lose. I had lost already. I was never going to convince anybody otherwise. The mindset was there, it was made up, whatever else. All I could do was lay out the pieces for anybody else who happened to be wandering in, and say, "these are the only things I was thinking about when I was doing this, and I know I can't convince you as to whether I'm a misogynist or not."

But, like I said, if this allows you to think more about it, and be proactive about it and write about misogyny in video games, then that's totally cool. Because it's motivating somebody to do something that I believe is right. It sucks that I'm the basis for it, because I am an advocate for women. I'm always for the underdog, because I've always been the underdog. I'm always rooting for the odd one out. And that's the only part that bothered me.

Also, this has happened before. I have a blog, and if you search for my blog, it's called "Edmund's blog for gay nerds." Some people are confused by that. I've gotten emails saying, "You shouldn't say that, because you're being mean, you're bullying gays." They assume it's me saying, like, you're gay.

To mean "stupid" instead of "homosexual."

And, quite literally, I did that so people would think I was gay. To keep out the riff-raff. I would prefer it if people thought I was gay. I would prefer it if people thought I was any kind of minority. I would love that. Then maybe more people would think, "Hey, this guy is like me!"

This has happened, too. This is the best part. There's a huge gay community out there who loves me and thinks I'm gay. And I hate to tell them I'm not. I do these interviews for gay websites, and they're like, "So you're not gay. You're married." And I'm like, "Yeah." And they're like, "We thought you were gay." And I'm like, "I might as well be!" You know? Think of me that way. That's fine! I'd prefer it.

As a way of proving that you're a progressive, that you're a liberal ... ?

I guess. I grew up in Santa Cruz. I mean, Santa Cruz. I couldn't not be liberal and progressive here. I never in my life, other than when my Dad said it, thought that being gay was anything negative at all. My Mom had gay friends. I never saw it as anything weird, growing up, until my Dad told me that it goes against God's word. Even in a Catholic family, you'd think there would be some sort of negativity towards gays, but my Grandma and my Mom were always really cool. I have a gay cousin. It was just never a thing. Sorry, I'm going off on a tangent.

Heh, a little. Any other progressive people you've pissed off that you want to stand up to?

No, not really.

I heard that you pissed off PETA with Super Meat Boy?

I don't know if it bothered them - I don't understand it, exactly.

Okay. I don't like PETA. Obviously. See, I'm liberal, but I'm not illogical. I'm very anti-organized religion. I view them as an organized religion. But that's beside the point.

Me and Tommy talked about how awesome it would be if PETA ever protested us, because we have the name "meat" in our title. Anybody who's seen [Indie Game: The Movie] knows that Meat Boy is not actually made of meat. But, right before the first week of our PC launch, PETA did a protest game. I don't know if you've ever seen the McDonald's protest games. They did random protest games and it really doesn't help anything. I don't know what they're doing. But they invest lots of money in these little flash games that just kind of mock and poke fun at McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Even Mario, because I guess it was abuse towards animals because you jump on Goombas and stuff like that.

They did a parody of Super Meat Boy which was called Super Tofu Boy, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever, one of the best things that could ever happen. I woke up, went on Twitter, and saw that, and I said, oh my god. Our dreams have come true. This place is protesting our game. That's amazing!

So we played along with it and bantered back and forth. It was a campaign for them. They had a Twitter about it - a Tofu Boy Twitter. Tofu Boy website, Tofu Boy game. I heard that they invested over $100,000 in the whole campaign, which is three times more than our budget for Super Meat Boy.

So, we talked about that, we joked back and forth. I think they joked at us first, saying "Meat Boy is malnourished." It was weird, because they were doing a sexual edge to it. They said, "Band-Aid Girl is going to leave Meat Boy because he's bad in bed, because vegetarians are better in bed." [laughs] It was really weird! Really enjoyable, though. We were like, what the fuck is going on?

So, they were heckling us a little bit via Twitter, trying to push it. Then, we said, "How many PETA members does it take to change a light bulb? None, PETA can't change anything." And then that got on a bunch of news sites. And it kept going, and we thought, wow! We have the ability to do this. Nobody else could ever respond, but since we're independent, we actually can. We don't have to worry about tarnishing our image or ruffling feathers if fans of ours are supporters of PETA.

We put Tofu Boy in the game, that next day. We took their parody character of our character, and put him in the game as an unlockable thing. If you type in "petafile" on the character select screen, it unlocks Tofu Boy. And he can't beat the level, because he's so malnourished.

That was very fun. It was a fun, exciting time. We got a lot of press, of course, for it. But we got to actually respond in a way that was creative and used video games. It was cool both ways - they used video games a protest, and we used video games as a response protest. It was just cool. I liked that. It was a cool, once-in-a-lifetime situation.

It's great that they were good-natured about it.

It was never vicious on either side. But PETA is against animal testing, and Tommy is diabetic. If there weren't animal testing, he would be dead. So would his Mom. Also, my Grandma - I've known a lot of diabetics.

Understood. Well, hey, thanks for talking with me for forty-five minutes.

No problem! Actually, this is going to sound strange, but you don't need to link me to the article, because I've cut the internet off of me, if that makes sense.

I saw that on your Formspring. You are not interacting with the internet, now?

It's my internal war with exactly what I want. What I want is I want to make games. And reading people's responses to my games, as well as getting followers on Twitter and Facebook and everywhere else, is counterintuitive to what I want. All it ends up doing is feeding my ego in a wrong way.

So this is part of your philosophy about wanting to separate the author from the audience.

I guess, in a way. Yeah. I don't have the vocabulary, completely, to speak of it yet, because I'm in transition. Right now, I'm transitioning out of this.

You're trying something.

I'm trying something here, which feels really good. So I'm just going with the fact that it feels really good. Yesterday I deleted over a thousand-something people from my Facebook, and I've cut myself off from Twitter completely, and I've removed all Google alerts, and I'm no longer reading responses or direct messages from anybody or anything other than emails and a few Formspring questions. It makes me feel much, much, much better.

I don't need to hear it. I'm so fucking sick of hearing about myself. And it's only going to get worse. The movie's going to be coming out, and it's only going to get worse. It's best that I do this now.

Fair enough. Good luck with your fame!

Heh, yeah, my perceived fame. I'll be ducking and dodging for a while.

[video] Amateur hour at PAX East 2012: From Rock Band to Dance Central

Wei-Huan Chen — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 23:09:00 GMT

Who says you need to be a professional dancer or musician to feel like a star, or even better, perform in front of hundreds of people? The power of illusion may be the greatest invention yet for the gaming industry. At PAX East, the Xbox Kinect stations gave thousands of attendees a taste of virtual reality, including this power duo rocking out to Yolanda Be Cool and DCUP's "We No Speak Americano" on Dance Central 2. Don't hurt yourselves, guys!

Maybe it wasn't the cleanest shufflin' I've seen on stage, but the demo was a good example of how Dance Central 2 can be a pure-fun party game. Developer Harmonix Music Systems is a mid-size company based in Cambridge, and they've always been able to make addictive rhythm games via smart music licensing deals and effective presentation.

And it says a lot about Kinect's success that both the Nintendo Wii and the Playstation Move, its direct competitors in the motion sensing gaming industry, were absent at PAX East's show floor. So, who knows, maybe the whole Wiimote wagging craze is over?

Below, PAX attendees "perform" on Harmonix's Rock Band.

[video] League of Legends Cosplay Contest at Pax East 2012

Wei-Huan Chen — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:50:00 GMT

If you think spending hours playing a computer game is nerdy, try going to a convention like PAX East 2012. And if you think that's nerdy, try showing up dressed as one of the video game characters you play. I couldn't think of a better way to spend the weekend. A variety of virtual warriors came to life and competed for the top prize in the League of Legends booth's cosplay contest, including Caitlin, Ezreal, Jax, Malzahar and Singed. My favorite: "Brolaf" with Natty Ice helmet and axes. Bromacia!

Unlike exhibits for upcoming games or projects making first appearances, the League of Legends booth took advantage of its existing user base with community-oriented events. 5v5 competitions, a 32-person tournament and, of course, the cosplay fashion show were some of the most popular events at PAX East. Here, the emcees from Riot Games stream a live competition from at Las Vegas, complete with commentary and cheers from the crowd. When did PC games become a spectator sport?

On the PAX East 2012 show floor: BattleBlock Theater, The Secret World, Loadout and Smite

Wei-Huan Chen — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:05:00 GMT

PAX East has come and gone. With panels, PC and Console freeplay stations, tabletop tournaments and over 100 show floor exhibits all happening simultaneously, the biggest challenge of my one day at PAX (Sunday) was figuring out what darned thing to do. I chose to stick to the main exhibition hall and get as many game demos under my belt as possible. Here's my personal top 5 list of worthy upcoming games:

BattleBlock Theater (Xbox Live)

After walking past so many mindless action games, it was a relief to come across this adorable little puzzle game by indie developer The Behemoth. Like their other games, Castle Crashers and Alien Homonid, this Xbox Live game is a co-op sidescroller. What makes Battle Block Theater unique is that it's cute on the outside, but deviously masochistic on the inside. The various "acts" and "scenes" in the game have traps and enemies that'll stump even the smartest of adventurers.

The Secret World (PC):

Finally, an MMO that doesn't take place in a medieval fantasy of elves, wizards and knights. Instead, this game puts players in the shoes of modern day civilians staving of zombies and other apocalyptic freaks with hammers and assault rifles and whatever you can find. It's stylish and very funny (for example, a priest prophecies the divine power of Google).

Loadout (PC):

Its tagline "Customize. Create. Kill!" may sound generic in this age of DIY-style shooter games, but it's a fair way to sum up this game's charm. Want a silencer on that thunder-shooting gatling gun? You got it. Let's put a sniper scope on that baby? No problem. At the demo, I participated in a heated 5v5 capture-the-point match after creating a gun that heals my teammates with a green ray from far away. Somehow, this death-ray-looking beam reassembles lost limbs when cast on a teammate under fire. It adds a fun strategic element to a fast-paced FPS.

Smite (PC):

With League of Legends' recent surge in popularity and Valve's Dota 2 set to hit shelves later this year, I was blown away by how well Smite took that action-strategy formula and put it in third-person view. That may not sound like a big change, but it is. Not seeing the whole map put me in an entirely new mindset as I killed waves of enemies and dueled with other players. As one of the developers put it, "Not being able to see behind your back adds a whole sense of paranoia to the game. It makes ganking a huge part of the strategy."

[video] Jonathan Coulton at PAX East 2012

Maddy Myers — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 19:39:00 GMT

Above, watch the illustrious JoCo play his best-known song, "Code Monkey". It's an anthem for the nerd proletariats stuck in dead-end IT jobs with managers who lack web savviness. Especially those of us who are too shy to talk to people we have crushes on. Also known as, almost everyone who attends PAX East.

The next video features the song "Mr. Fancy Pants." Like most of Coulton's music, the song blends endearing bizarrity with just a hint of sadness. His use of a Zendrum only adds to the confusion and awesomeness.

If you haven't bought the man's new album, Artificial Heart, there is probably something wrong with you. Something that only an artificial heart can fix. Go get it.

[video] Paul & Storm at PAX East 2012

Maddy Myers — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 19:16:00 GMT

Aw, were Paul and Storm bitter about having to play right before that great bastion of nerd-rock, Jonathan Coulton? Probably not, because they got quite the crowd on their own, rendering this tongue-in-cheek song about openings acts a bit out of place. The Main Stage was at capacity for the Saturday night concert on the PAX East mainstage, so there were 4,000 nerds rocking out to Paul and Storm, happy to throw pieces of their Portal 2 cosplays at the pair, if not pairs of panties. (Watch the video; you'll see. No, really, you just have to see it.)

Their second song, "Thanksgiving," provoked less object-throwing and more agreeable cheering from the audience, for reasons that will also become obvious when you hear the lyrics.

Almost the entire rest of Paul and Storm's set was spent on a "TED talk" about humor, complete with power-point presentation. I've never seen these two perform live before, but I wasn't expecting a hilarious diversion into stand-up comedy (it was allegedly a talk to-be-hopefully-considered by TED, but ... nah, it was stand-up). It sounded from their introduction that it was a talk they prepared specifically for the PAX audience, which is too bad, because non-PAX folks might also enjoy the pair's bizarre break-down of an internet meme they co-created. The two mostly discussed the idea of "crossing the line" in comedy, which could have ended up going in all sorts of bad directions (this is, after all, a con hosted by the men who invented Dickwolves). And yet, the talk managed to be hilarious, clever, and unexpectedly inoffensive. So, props to Paul & Storm for managing that. Here's hoping someone else captured the entire talk online ... I'm sure it'll be on the TED website any day now.

[video] Kris Keyser at PAX East 2012

Maddy Myers — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:19:00 GMT

Kris Keyser rocks PAX East's Boston 8 Bit showcase with his cover of Guile's Theme from Street Fighter II (it goes with everything, after all). He apparently has never played this cover live before, but had to at this showcase, "because it's PAX." Aw, thanks, Kris.

[video] Metroid Metal + Minibosses at PAX East 2012

Maddy Myers — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 15:09:00 GMT

PAX East's Friday night concerts featured Supercommuter, Minibosses, Metroid Metal and the Protomen, in that order. I went to see the middle two bands.

The show floor with video game demos closes at 6 PM, and even the jamspace closes around 7 PM, so there's not much to do at PAX during the night-time besides get drunk with your gaming group at City Bar or rock the fuck out to nerdcore rock music. (Or, a little of column A and a little of column B.) So, the concerts are ... densely populated. But this very short nerd did her best to get some decent video footage for you all, in spite of being in a packed house of way-taller folks.

For Minibosses, I FlipCam'd the screen so you could see the band, but I couldn't do the same thing with Metroid Metal, because they put footage of Samus shooting up enemies on the video screens. This was expertly spliced live by video wizard Foxdragon, who would synch up gameplay footage with the music's progressions (e.g., Samus blowing up Mother Brain during the climax of an epic guitar solo).

The use of Metroid video game footage to supplement the band's metal covers of Metroid songs made the experience night impossible to capture on a mere FlipCam screen, but at least you'll be able to hear how awesome the band sounded. You'll definitely want to see Metroid Metal live someday before you die. (This is, of course, coming from a person with the Twitter handle @samusclone, so it should come as no surprise that this was my favorite act of the night.)

[LIVE UPDATES] PAX East 2012

webteam — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 11:47:00 GMT

This weekend, what is perhaps the nation's most rabidly anticipated gamercon invades the South Boston waterfront -- once again, PAX East returns for another three-day stretch of overstim goodness, as thousands of vidjagame fans pack the BCEC to demo new titles in the jam-packed expo hall, blister their thumbs in all-night LAN parties, watch industry luminaries drop science on everything from gamer gender politics to the Future of Dungeons & Dragons, and maybe see Gabe and Tycho draw random dongs on a giant screen.

Didn't get a ticket? Feel free to live vicariously through the tweets, blog posts, and videos of our correspondents, who will be braving the BCEC's astoundingly sucky WiFi to bring you live coverage all weekend long. Behold!

&amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;amp;amp;altcast_code=99dc0f1dc4" &amp;amp;amp;gt;PAX East Live Coverage&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;

READ MORE: Complete coverage of PAX East

[video] Danimal Cannon at PAX East 2012

Maddy Myers — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:31:00 GMT

Nothing like the sound of chiptunes in the morning. PAX East 2012's jam space kicked the concerts off early this year, with chiptune artists performing from 11 AM to 2 PM.

As Danimal Cannon bragged in his chiptune panel later in the day (5:30 PM at the Wyvern), he "plays a mean guitar" - and chips a mean tune, as well (that's what the kids say, right?). At his panel with fellow 8-bit artist Br1ght Pr1mate, he mocked journalists for calling chiptunes "Mario at a rave", so I'll resist the temptation. Watch the video above if you want to see his music put Mario to shame.

EDIT: Here's a second song from his set, because one wasn't enough.

A Walk Down Fear Street: A Phoenix writer fanboys out all over R.L. Stine [Q&A]

Alexandra Cavallo — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:24:00 GMT

R.L. Stine: "I started off killing teenagers"

If you were a child in the 90s, it's a pretty safe bet you were reading R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series and, later, Fear Street. I personally consumed those paperbacks like they were crack cocaine, toting a teetering pile of ‘em home with me from school on the days the Scholastic book order (oh man, remember those?) was delivered. So it's safe to say I was pretty stoked to talk to the man responsible for the likes of Night of the Living Dummy and One Evil Summer in advance of his speaking engagement at this year's Vericon at Harvard. Stine filled me in on killing teenagers for a living, the unlikely but incredible success of Goosebumps, writing for Eureka's Castle, the changing face of YA lit (good news: he says the kids are still reading!) and more.

So where am I talking to you from?

I'm in New York City in my apartment, where I seldom leave. I'm chained here to my desk

What are you working on right now?

I'm working on a Goosebumps for this year called Son of Slappy.

Is this the first new Goosebumps book in a while?

No, no I've been doing a new set of Goosebumps for about the past three years. The new series is called Goosebumps: Horrorland.

Is it similar to the original?

Oh it's the same. I did nine of them that had a continuing story in the back so that was a little different. But I'm doing a whole new set, I think I've done about 25 new ones. And I'm doing 6 a year.

How long does it take you to write one book?

Well its kind of deceptive because I spend a lot of time planning them before I write them. So I do a complete chapter by chapter outline of every book first and do all the thinking before I actually sit down and write. And so I'll do maybe a 10 to 15 page outline of each book, and then when I've done all the thinking and I know everything that's going to happen in the book it takes about two weeks to write one.

Wow, that's not very long at all

(Laughs) No, it's pretty sad. But they're short! You know, they're 120 manuscript pages so if I write ten a day, which I normally do, it takes twelve days. But then there's a lot of time revising and reworking stuff.

Where do you get ideas for the stories?

That I don't know. That's an impossible question. It's impossible! I have a trick though. What I do is, I think of a title first, and then I work from the title. I think that's backwards for most authors, right? Most get an idea for a book and then work on it and later they think of the title? I always think of the title first.

Well, with Goosebumps, the titles are so descriptive that you could do that

It sort of leads me to the story. I was walking my dog in Riverside Park one day and these words just popped into my head: say Cheese and Die.

Oh yeah, I remember that one very well

Yeah, where'd that come from? I don't know. But there it was and I thought, well, what if there's this evil camera and what if some boys discover it, and that led me to the story. In this new Goosebumps series I had another great title I loved: "Little Shop of Hamsters". It's good right? And then I had to think, well what could possibly be scary about hamsters? And then I had to think of a story, but I loved the title so much that I had to do it.

Mutant hamsters?

Oh, no, they're not. There's just a lot of them. A lot of hamsters might get scary. So anyway, this is sort of a big year for Goosebumps, it's the 20th anniversary year. I've been doing them for 20 years.

Does it feel like you've been doing them for that long?

(Laughs) Uh, yeah! Well, yes, I don't know, it's like I'm on to the next generation and the next. It's so funny, I'm on Twitter and there are no kids on Twitter, it's all people your age, 20-somethings. It's really wonderful for me because those are my original readers back from the 90s and it's a great way to keep in touch with that original generation.

Do you find that the books are as successful now as they were when I was reading them?

No....no. Because back then it was like this amazing thing. It was this amazing phenomenon. No one had ever seen anything like it. There'd been some big children's series before but Goosebumps just took off all over the world. And I got very spoiled, we were selling at one point 4 million books a month. The only thing that's outsold Goosebumps is Harry Potter. So I'm #2.

Oh, wow.

Oh, I know. And I'd been writing for 20 years and nobody noticed and then all of a sudden I had this huge hit and it was just popular everywhere. It was really incredible, we sold over 250 million of them. In the 90s. Now, it does fine. It does ok. We've got a lot of fans and it does very well, but no, it's nothing like that.

So what made you decide to start writing scary novels?

I did a book called Blind Date for Scholastic, a YA novel, and it was an immediate number one best seller. And I'd never had one before, and I thought well what's going on here? So I wrote another horror one called Twisted, and it was another number one best seller and I thought wait a minute, I‘ve struck a chord here. I found something kids like! And I've been scary ever since.

You weren't scary before?

No, I was funny, I was always funny. I never really wanted to be scary. I was Jovial Bob Stine, and I wrote about one hundred joke books for kids. 101 monster jokes, 101 school cafeteria jokes, I did all those. And a whole bunch of humor books for kids. And I did, in the 70s and 80s, I did a humor magazine for kids called Bananas. It was like Mad magazine except it was all in color and I wrote almost all of it. We had great cartoonists and it was just fun. And that's all I really ever wanted to do, was be funny. And so I was Jovial Bob and I did all this funny stuff but it never did as well, you know? And then we discovered kids liked to be scared. And that was that.

Do you watch a lot of horror movies?

Yeah, I do, but I'm always looking for clever horror movies. I'm always looking for ones that are kind of witty. It's hard to find them.

What's your favorite?

Oh, I don't know. Well, I guess The Shining. That's a great horror film. And there's a great film with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie back in the 70s set in Venice called Don't Look Now. Which is terrifying. It's about Venice, mainly, which can be really scary, and trying to find a lost child. A terrifying film. I also like things like Arachnophobia.

Yes! That movie terrified me as a kid

Right? With all the spiders? I love that film. Yeah, I don't like the slasher stuff, it's just not clever at all.

Which series did you write first, Goosebumps or Fear Street?

Fear Street. I started off killing teenagers.

I have to say, I'm 27 years old and I still have, I think, the majority of my collection at home in my childhood bedroom

Oh, you do? And they're all turning yellow with age, right?

All the pages are wrinkled from reading them in the bathroom...

That's funny. Yeah that was a lot of fun, I did about 100 of those. I think.

Yeah, loved those

Well, we killed people! I killed off teenagers. Every month I was killing off teenagers! It was fun. In Goosebumps, nobody every died. Goosebumps is not YA, it's basically ages 7 to 11. And then I lose them at 12. Fear Street was pretty much ages 10 to 14, I think.

And 27 year olds, I guess.

(Laughs) Yes.

So, this is your first year at Vericon?

Yeah, I didn't know anything about it. Someone wrote to me, someone from the thing, and asked if Id like to come down, and it sounded like fun.

It looks like you're the only "horror" writer speaking

Yeah, it's mostly fantasy people and anime people, right?

Yup. Do you consider yourself to be a horror writer?

Yeah, I guess so.

Who's your favorite horror writer?

Well, Stephen King. I think he's a hell of a story teller.

He is. I think I like his collections of short stories the most

There's one novella, Hearts in Atlantis - have you read it? - it's brilliant, a brilliant story.

I think a lot of people who haven't read his books don't actually give him the credit he deserves, as a writer.

Yeah, it's funny to say it because he's so huge, but I think he's underrated. When you think of some of the incredible-and just really scary-books he's done. I think Misery is the best book ever written about writers and editors. Right? The poor guy is trapped by his editor, chained to the bed.

Would you ever consider bringing the Fear Street books back?

We think about it. On Twitter all the people are always saying I love Fear Street why aren't you doing Fear Street? But it's hard now, the YA market is very different. Booksellers and publishers don't really want monthly series anymore. And they pretty much don't want paperback for YA, they want hardcovers. And publishing has changed quite a bit. But I'm thinking about it.

Why don't they want paperbacks anymore?

Because the bookstore doesn't make as much money on them. You know the mass-market, the little tiny airport paperbacks that everyone used to read? The little ones? That's dying out. Try to go into a Barnes & Noble and find a mass-market paperback. They're hidden because they don't make any money on them. But a hardcover children's book for 17 bucks, that's a lot more money for everybody. I think it's a shame, I've always been a paperback guy.

Yeah, and who wants to carry around a hardcover?

Also, kids can go into a bookstore and buy four or five paperbacks and they can afford them. If they go into the store and the book they want is 17 bucks, that's the only one they're going to buy. They're not going to buy three or four others.

Do you think kids are still buying books?

Oh, definitely. Everyone talks about how "oh kids don't read, kids are too distracted" but when I started in children's books it was a tiny business. And now it's billions of dollars, children's books are a huge business. In many cases they run the publishing companies. They make all the money for the publishers. So somebody is reading them! You look at, you know, the Hunger Games and kids are reading those things.

Do you think that eReaders have also changed publishing quite a bit?

Well, no one knows what they're doing now, is what's happened. No one knows what's happened, how popular they will be, what's going to happen to actual books. Everyone is just in a quandary, nobody really knows. It's a really transitional time.

I prefer having a book in my hands

Right, I'm a real book person, too. But for traveling, the Kindle is a great thing. If you go on a long trip and you can put eight or ten books on this skinny little thing. It's very convenient. I don't use it at home but I do use it for traveling.

So, Shadyside, the town in Fear Street, I'm sure you get asked about it all the time.

(Laughs) Yeah.....

Is that based on a real place?

No. Well I just made up the name! I thought, well, that's a good creepy name for a town. And then I started hearing from people in Shadyside, Pennsylvania and Shadyside, Ohio and it turned out they were real places and I didn't even know! I never even looked it up.

I was going to compare it Stephen King's Derry or Castle Rock, which seem like real places...

All those Maine locations seem real, right?

I think I always thought Derry was a real place, until pretty recently.

But, no I just made it up. People said there'd never been a monthly horror series for teenagers. There'd been individual titles, people like Lois Duncan had written individual titles. And Christopher Pike. But we wanted to do a series, and we couldn't figure out, how do you do it? Because if it's the same kids every month it would be ludicrous. To have all these horrifying things happen to the same kids month after month after month. It would be ridiculous. And then we thought, oh, well what if it's the place? What if the place is scary? And then I thought well what if it's a normal place but just one street is scary? And that's how we came up with Fear Street.

So, in the end, what did you enjoy writing more? Fear Street or Goosebumps?

Well, I enjoyed them both. Well, the middle grade readers, I love these kids. The 7 to 12 year olds. Because they're enthusiastic. It might be the last time in their lives that they're ever enthusiastic. Because you get into 8th grade and you have to be cool. And then it's over, that's it. And so these 7 to 12 year olds, if they like you they write to you, and they want to have a lunch box, they want to wear the shirts. I hear from them on my website all the time. They send me messages, it's just great. I'm really very close in touch with my readers, that age group. So I love writing for them.

It's good to hear that kids are still in love with reading, what with all the gadgets and technology they have now, that we didn't have growing up.

It's not true though. [That kids no longer read]. There just wouldn't be so many hundreds of children's books every year if they weren't reading.

Has anyone ever written any fan fiction for either series?

Not that I know of. But I'd like to see it, if someone did. Well, kids write stories all the time. They always send them, and they're much more scary than my stuff. Always really grotesque and gruesome. The stuff I would never do.

On that note, I was going to mention that, in the Fear Street books, I remember there you were always describing teenage couples "kissing passionately" but there was never any overt sexuality. Was it tough walking that line?

No, that was my decision. Because Christopher Pike was writing similar teen books, and he went much further.

I know, I remember there was this one book of his, Monster, that I read as a kid and in it there was a scene with two kids having sex and there was somehow blood involved.... it was really graphic, and I remember being totally scandalized.

One of his books, I don't remember which one, but they feed somebody heroin and cocaine until they die. That kind of thing. He was already writing these books when I got started. My first book was called Blind Date. And then The Babysitter and all those. And I thought what can I do that's different? I don't want to copy him. So I decided to be younger, and have humor in it, and not go as far. And keep it cleaner. That way it would be approved by school book clubs and parents wouldn't object and I'd be different from him. So that was a conscious decision. Not to go as a far.

So, I didn't realize that you were you were a producer of Nickelodeon's Eureka's Castle?

Yes, and a head writer.

I loved that show.

Did you? Oh, that's good to hear.

I feel like they don't make kids shows like that anymore.

Yeah, well they try. But they mostly do animated stuff now. Yes, so I wrote all the puppet segments for Eureka. We did four years of that show, I think we did one hundred episodes.

I feel like now kids shows, and basically everything geared towards kids, are so over-the-top and in your face. Overstimulation.

Mmm hmm. It's true.

Have you had to change your writing style at all for the new Goosebumps?

Nope. No, not at all. The whole point always in Goosebumps, has been to make it really easy to read, short sentences, short chapters, put a cliff hanger at the end of every chapter that forces them to go on to the next chapter so they read a whole book without realizing it. It's just totally reader motivation. Getting kids to read. And I get criticized a lot, they say "oh, you don't have any characterization, you know" and that's all deliberate. I want the kid to identify with the main character. And I want them to be able to get through it fast. I love it when kids say, you know, "I read your book in four hours!" That's a great thing because they read other stuff then.

So you don't think kids today are more jaded, or harder to write for, because they're just exposed to so much more?

I don't know. My stuff is basically the same. You know, the technology changes, but when you're writing horror, I mean, fears don't change. It's all the same. I could have written this stuff when I was kid. You're still afraid of the dark, and afraid there's something in you closet, or something under your bed that's going to grab you when you step off. The fears never change.

Now you just have to incorporate iPhones.

Yeah, but I have to be really careful about that because it'll be different in six months. They'll all be using something else in six months and then you're totally dated. It's kind of a problem how much technology to put in.

So what do you plan to talk about during your panel at Vericon?

I don't know. I just found out about the panel yesterday. The panel is about settings. How authors use settings, the tools each writer uses to make his world or mythology. What kind of responses they try to invoke in the reader with their settings.

And, for you, that is....

Well I'd have to think about it.

Seems like a good topic for you, since, as you said, the entire Fear Street series was based upon a setting...

Yes, that's right. And also, I mean the Goosebumps books, they're all in someone's back yard. I grew up in Ohio, and they're all pretty much in someone's backyard in Columbus, Ohio. I always think it's much scarier to have something really creepy going on in your kitchen then in some castle in the middle of Europe or something.

Right. Finding fear in the mundane.

Yes, so I'll probably talk about that. And then I'm going to give a talk where I'll probably just talk about myself for a half hour or something. It's not scheduled yet. I only have one subject really. And then there's a book signing, and then I don't know, a reading or something.

What are you going read?

Well, these are college kids right? I might read something a little older.

On that note, have you ever considered writing for adults?

Oh, on that note! Thank you, on that note, I have a hardcover horror novel for adults coming out October 16. For Simon and Schuster, a 400 page novel called Red Rain. Horrifying. It's about a woman, a travel writer, who gets caught in a dreadful hurricane on an island off the coast of the Carolinas, and everything is devastated, and she finds these two blonde twin boys who've lost their family. And she's wanted a bigger family, so she adopts them and brings them back to her family in Sag Harbor, Long Island. We have a house out in Sag Harbor, so that's why I set it there. And so she brings these two beautiful boys, very sweet boys, back to her family and she doesn't know that they are psycho killers. The reader knows it, but she doesn't. And they have supernatural powers, that are horrible, and they're just horrible killers.

Yes! I've always loved movies and books about evil children

Did you see Orphan?

I did, yes.

That was really good. She turns out to be 35 years old!

Yup. I think the tagline for that movie was "You'll Never Guess Esther's Secret" or something. And you never would, that's the one thing you'd never have guessed.

Yeah, so I thought that was really good.

I also always really liked that movie Village of the Damned, with Kirstie Alley..

Oh, you're so funny. Red Rain was actually inspired by Village of the Damned, Island of the Damned, and Children of the Damned. Those three movies, they're the inspiration for my book.

Those were the kids I was picturing when you were describing them.

Yeah, that's right. That's exactly where the book idea came from.

That's exciting, your first adult novel..

Well, it's not my first. I did one ten years ago called Superstitious. But not too many people noticed. But now so many of my readers are in their 20s and 30s I thought it might be the right time to write a book for them.

R.L. Stine speaks at Vericon at Harvard University March 16-18. Visit vericon.org for more information.

What Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" says about video games

Maddy Myers — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:35:00 GMT

Damn straight, video games should get casually referred to in popular love songs. How long have we had songs about going to the movies? I'm sure that topic used to seem like a strange and modern activity to write a song about, but now it's normal. And it's about time that gaming - one of my favorite romantic pastimes - should get taken completely seriously in a love song.

Of course, whenever anyone so much as brings up music by Lana Del Rey (née Elizabeth Grant), one must first backpedal by acknowledging her "fakeness" - her maybe-racist appropriation of a stage name that sounded "Spanish" to her, the boatloads of inherited money she used to fund her fame, her manufactured image as a bohemian artist, her inability to carry a tune live ... the list goes on.

The best interpretation of Del Rey's public image and work has to be Flavia Dzodan's "I sing Video Games for the fourteen year old girl I once was," over at Tiger Beatdown. Dzodan explains that one of Del Rey's worst qualities, according to her detractors, is her intentional embrace of vintage femininity. In our post-feminist age, being feminine just isn't "cool" anymore. We're all supposed to be "empowered" women now (read: masculine). Because masculinity is superior... oh, wait, Lana Del Rey is the one who's regressive? Gosh, I must've gotten turned around somewhere.

Despite all her lyrics about sundresses, perfume, and big kisses, "Video Games" is mostly about playing video games - a pastime that tends to be seen as either incredibly masculine (since competition is coded as masculine, in our society), or at the very least gender-neutral. Del Rey's lyrics even refer to other competitive games like darts and pool. And although Del Rey doesn't look like she could win a co-ed push-up contest, it doesn't take big biceps to hit a dartboard bull's-eye, set up a shot in pool, or to win at Soul Calibur. The reason these activities make for a great date night is because they level the playing field ... and give you the opportunity to find out how your date reacts to winning and losing.

Unfortunately, I can't find evidence that Del Rey plays video games in real life; her song was based on a relationship she had with a gamer. But her lyrics certainly make it sound like she's playing the games along with him: "this is my idea of fun, playing video games". Whether or not Del Rey has ever picked up a controller, this song is clearly about a woman who does. And she does it all in perfume and a sundress - imagine that!

This concept comes with its own baggage in the gaming community. It's said, all too often, that games women play aren't hardcore or masculine enough (Bejeweled and Farmville are, of course, not "real" games because women play them), that women who do play allegedly masculine games secretly hate them and only play such games to impress men, and that all "girl gamers" are just performing to get attention. It doesn't help that Lana Del Rey's image appears to epitomize the worst of this. After all, she talks the talk about loving video games in this song, but then follows that up with a chorus that repeats, "it's you, it's you, it's all for you / everything I do ... tell me all the things you want to do." It's all a performance. And Del Rey's current reputation for being a master of fakery sure doesn't help her case, here.

So perhaps as a woman gamer I should disown Del Rey and everything this song seems to imply. But I don't feel the need. Perhaps because I've successfully separated the artist from the song - not such a difficult feat, since the Del Rey singing in this song doesn't seem to exist in real life, anyway (there's a reason people were so disappointed with her live performance of this song on SNL; she's what's tactfully referred to as a "studio artist").

This song only exists in a hyper-fantasy world crafted by a recording studio, where with enough clever audio re-tooling and flash and mirrors, anyone can seem sensational ... and, guess where else that is the case? Video games. For a hefty chunk of change, you can feel like a hero, beloved, beautiful, and worshipped by all. Lana Del Rey sounds great, as long as we stay within the confines of her virtual reality soundscape, courtesy of a very talented (and, I hope, well-paid) audio production team.

Speaking of which, pay attention to this song's elaborate instrumentation. When non-gamers think of video game music, they think of chiptunes, but modern video game music is more often sweeping, orchestral and epic. The most well-known originator of this style would be Nobuo Uematsu, composer for most of the Final Fantasy games. Music student and gamer Holly Boismaison pointed out this song's similarity to Nobuo Uematsu's work on Twitter, and once she said that, I couldn't un-hear the resemblance. Not only is this song about games, it sounds like it belongs in one.

Holly Boismaison posits in her tweet that Del Rey has cornered the market for video game-inspired, Uematsu-esque pop songs. I certainly hope not - I'd love to see more songs like this from other pop artists willing to embrace and utilize the video game aesthetic to create music, beyond just your basic chiptunes and old-school synth effects (although I will say that Leeni's chiptune cover of Del Rey's song is damn impressive). Video game music has come a long way since the 80s, and gaming as a pastime has come a long way, too.

Not only does Del Rey's song suggest that even the most femme-presenting among us may well enjoy gaming (a notion that I dearly hope will soon become a commonplace assumption), her song also affirms the presence and influence of video games in society and relationships, without making them sound like some weird niche hobby for nerds.

Yet, it would be nice if Del Rey's talents existed in a more tangible reality than one crafted by audio technicians pressing buttons. As it is, she's no more real than Princess Zelda, Samus Aran or Commander Shepard - but we all pay for the privilege of being them, too. If you could afford to pay for the privilege of being Lana Del Rey, would you keep being Elizabeth Grant?

Re: Lollipop Chainsaw – An Open Letter to James Gunn

Maddy Myers — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:16:00 GMT

You know, James Gunn, for a man who writes for the horror genre, you sure don't seem to know much about your target demographic. Did you know that more women buy tickets to horror movies than men? So, when you say, "who doesn't want to have a beautiful, young, 18-year-old cheerleader with lots of up-skirt shots in the middle of zombie carnage?", I feel compelled to answer you. But, actually, I think you might be able to answer the question yourself! Think about it. Who doesn't want that?

I'll give you a hint: remember when I told you about people who like horror? Oh, right! Women! Including straight women. Oh, and remember gay men? Also, any number of other people who, for whatever reason, don't think that barely-legal crotches are super fun to look at? Those people like zombies, too. So weird, right? I'm sure it's hard to remember, as a straight man, that not everybody else is a straight man. Sometimes I forget that I'm not a straight man, too. All of the video games that I play seem to be telling me that I am one, so it can be really difficult to remember sometimes.

I do understand your concerns about making your game seem original. After all, zombie stories have saturated the market in the past few years, particularly in video games. It's hard to make oneself stand out from a pack that includes franchises like Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, and Dead Space. But luckily, James Gunn, you have really come up with something completely new and different here. I'm talking about your lead character Juliet, a young lady whom you call "unique."

"Unique" means one of a kind. We've never seen a tall, blonde, blue-eyed, barely-18-year-old, busty cheerleader before. We've certainly never seen a highly sexualized bastion of performative femininity appear in a video game before, with fighting moves accompanied by sparkly girl stuff. And we've never seen a blonde cheerleader who kicks supernatural butt before. Indeed, the entire concept of a school girl who wears a uniform of some kind that includes a short, pleated skirt, who fights supernatural baddies, who flashes some up-skirt during high kicks, all while being barely-of-legal age (or younger!) and having "an innocence about her" (read: don't worry, fellas, she's a virgin) ... has never been done.

I'm sorry for all that sarcasm, Mr. Gunn. You must be feeling so embarrassed! Not only did you completely forget to market to all of the zombie-obsessed people who aren't straight men, you also forgot about the trope of the panty-flashing, high-kicking, monster-fighting school girl.

It's okay, though. Don't worry! It's not too late for you to make your game subversive and original.

I know you already came up with all those animations of Juliet flashing her panties. And now you've launched a contest with IGN to find a woman to portray Juliet in promotional videos. So you already have a pretty firm idea of what Juliet will look like in this game. Here's the thing, though: I'm worried that despite all of your talk of Juliet being "interesting" and "unique," she might come across as ... not those things. Especially given that your stated first requirement for playing her would be a "stunningly beautiful" appearance, as opposed to, y'know, acting chops. Makes me wonder whether this character has much emotional heft to her at all.

Now, it's been a little while since Buffy came out, and I don't necessarily expect you to understand what I mean when I say that Juliet would be a lot more "interesting" and "unique" if she subverted our expectations of what a cheerleader can and can't do. So I'll lay out the specifics for you.

The game opens during cheerleading practice. Use this section of the game as the beginning of training us gamers how to play. You can show us how Juliet moves around and picks things up by having her perform cheer-leading steps, picking up batons and pom-poms and so on. Her fellow cheerleaders seem befuddled and intimidated by her, but we don't know why ... yet.

Then, Juliet goes home to her work-out room finish her exercise for the day, thus completing the training mode of the game. In her basement, she has an arsenal of weapons, not to mention punching bags, a weight bench with all the accoutrements, and motivational posters of all the greats: Jill Valentine, Purna, Buffy, and so on. She's got shelves full of zombie flicks and video games.

The girl is Prepared with a capitol P for the zombie apocalypse. We soon learn that her family has trained her to live this life. She doesn't have a boyfriend. She doesn't have friends, either. Even though she's gorgeous, her Amazonian strength and height intimidate everyone, and her gleeful obsession with the zombie apocalypse freaks people out; this explains why she doesn't realize how attractive she is. Zombies are the only thing she cares about -- although, in spite of this apocalypse obsession, she also maintains an almost childish, over-the-top interest in performative femininity and an affinity for pigtails, sparkles and the color pink. No one understands her, and her unusual interests make her a target for mockery at school. But she'll be the only one who survives when the undead burst from the ground. And by the time they do, both Juliet and the gamer controlling her will be fully prepared to kick all manner of ass.

The juxtaposition of performative femininity with hardcore violence has been done before in Buffy and Bayonetta, and in the right hands, Lollipop Chainsaw could be a feminist critique of gender roles and how we define "toughness" and "hardcoreness" in video games, the horror genre, and American society at large. The very title Lollipop Chainsaw suggests a study in seeming contradictions.

Unfortunately, most of the game's promotional videos emphasize the sexualization of Juliet rather than what makes her a subversive character. The "interesting" part of her character -- her joyous, bouncy embrace of both rainbows and wanton destruction -- gets overshadowed by up-skirt shots. The video game looks less like gender critique and more like a zombie-themed porn. Not that there's anything wrong with porn or sexualized images of barely-legal cheerleaders -- but all of that stuff is certainly not "unique" or "interesting," now is it?

Why be lazy? Why be cliche? If you wanted to, Mr. Gunn, you could create a subversive, mind-bending game that really makes gamers think about their own expectations for what a blonde female cheerleader can do. Perhaps the panty shots are just to lure in and fool gamers into watching a clever, feminist take-down of traditional gender roles. One can only hope.

In the meantime, good luck finding a "stunningly beautiful" actress to portray Juliet in your internet promotional videos. If you want a feminist to help you write the sketches, you know where to find me. One last thing, though: I don't like the sound of IGN's Greg Miller saying that he will be "bugging the hell out of each of these women." You should probably tell him to tone it down a little bit.