five out of ten thought beyond play preview find out who you really are This is just a sample of what’s in our latest issue, Identity. Go to our website http://www.fiveoutoftenmagazine.com to purchase the full mag with ten fantastic features! Your purchase includes PDF, ePub and Kindle downloads. Did you know that we’re now on Patreon? Visit https://www.patreon.com/fiveoutoften to support us – never miss an issue! identity Five out of Ten is three years old, and apart from the usual combination of pizzas and cocktails, there’s no better way to celebrate than with another great issue. We visit the mysteries of Shapeir, examine why vast games are better than epic ones, explore glitch space, critique videogaming nostalgia, and discover Jewish identities in games. Plus, five great features on Identity. Thank you for supporting the best in independent writing – enjoy the new issue, and let us know your favourite bits on Twitter and Facebook! Alan Williamson Editor-in-Chief – narrowly avoided running through Frankfurt dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog by developing tendinitis. Phew! Favourite cocktail: vodka martini (stirred, not shaken) Lindsey Joyce Managing Editor – contributor to Critical Distance, First Person Scholar, and Kill Screen. She once stood on a dead whale in the middle of the Atlantic. It was gross. Favourite cocktail: mojito. Craig Wilson Design Editor – responsible for at least half of the design, especially the good looking bits. He is the other co-founder of Split Screen. Favourite cocktail: whisky with a splash of water. Robbie Pickles Copy Editor – History and Politics graduate whose pop culture references dry up around 1997. His previous works include a comment on the Guardian website and a terse quote in his high school magazine. Favourite cocktail: White Russian.. #16: Identity Editor-in-Chief: Alan Williamson five Managing Editor: Lindsey Joyce Design Editor: Craig Wilson Copy Editor: Robbie Pickles Tech Wizard: Marko Jung out of Special Thanks: Our Patreon backers [email protected] ten fiveoutoftenmag fiveoutoften contributors Daniel Korn Writer and musician based in Toronto, Ontario. He has written for The Plaid Zebra, Cadence Canada, and The Drummer’s Journal. Jody Macgregor Freelance music and games journalist living in Australia. He has written for PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and Games- Radar. Ben Meredith Narrative designer and writer living in Brighton. He’s spoken at VideoBrains and Nine Worlds, worships Poseidon for The Rusty Quill podcast, and spends a lot of his time dressed up in silly costumes pretending to be someone else. AR Teschner Writer, game designer, and breaker of machines, and has no business being associated with all these lovely people. Carli Velocci Freelance writer based in Boston. Her work has appeared in Paste Magazine, Kill Screen, and in other places that are brave enough to publish her. Cover image: Craig Wilson © 2015 Five out of Ten. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without explicit permission is prohibited. Products named in these pages are trade names, or trademarks, of their respective companies. http://www.fiveoutoftenmagazine.com 16-1-P contents Editor in Brief: Identity 5 Hail to the Chief? A Tale Of Two Cities 8 In Quest For Glory II: Trial By Fire, Shapeir is a city you can settle into, but not until after you’ve gotten lost in it. The Big, The Vast, and The Epic 15 Vast games have the same scale as epic ones, but leave control and creativity to the player. Exploring Glitch Space 22 Game spaces are created for the player, but glitch spaces reveal something about their developers. Nostalgia in Absentia 28 When nostalgia affects how we talk about and make games, we limit their audiences and potential. Diaspora Tales 36 The number of Jewish characters in games is limited, but each one provides a unique perspective on Judaism. A Guided Meditation 46 Meditative games aren’t about relaxation; they’re about narrowing our focus. Archaeology of the Self 52 Our game save files act as archaeological artefacts, defining who we were and the choices we made in a moment in time. To Be This Old Takes Ages 57 Old Sega games transcend their imperfections through creative daring. Uncanny Bodies 63 When our high fidelity avatars don’t move as they should, the result is incredibly creepy and jarring. Some Kind of Monster 69 In Bloodlines, being a monster tells us a great deal about the measure of our humanity. Editor in Brief: Identity Editor in Brief: Identity Hail to the Chief? With the release of Halo 5: Guardians, I’ve been thinking about the Chief. As a Sega fan (not the only one – see To Be This Old Takes Ages, elsewhere in this issue), I found refuge in the Xbox – owning a PS2 would have been like marrying the bunny-boiler who murdered your spouse. My mum saved to buy it for my birthday, and Halo was the only game I could afford, but it was also the only Xbox game I needed. Halo is now one of gaming’s biggest franchis- es, and Master Chief is an industry symbol. As I watched the launch trailer for Halo 5, I was reminded of all the things that make Halo so fun and memorable: purple lasers, bouncy Warthogs, co-op campaigns against the Covenant, all-night deathmatch marathons with friends. Halo has changed over time: it’s more explicitly futuristic now than the Aliens-inspired space marines of early games, and it has inherited Call of Duty’s speed and spectacle. Yet it has retained its person- ality, its larger-than-life systems and situations that naturally gravitate towards fun. Halo has an identity. Master Chief is perhaps unique among action heroes in that he’s not just fighting to save his canonical universe; he’s fighting for the ability to fight on a metaphysical level by encouraging Xbox sales and sustaining the franchise. Lara Croft and Solid Snake can exist anywhere; Chief is Xbox made flesh. Halo 3’s launch was a genuine Media Event that echoed the ascendance of the Xbox 360; Chief’s minor makeover in Halo 4 matched the 360’s revised hardware. Conversely, my reac- tion to Halo 5 echoed the Xbox One’s market fail- ure: rather than “oh yeah, I can’t wait for this!”, it was “oh yeah, I remember Halo.” Other franchises’ identities are more malleable favourite football team and more like choosing a than Halo. Metal Gear and Final Fantasy on the brand of shoes: it’s a practical choice, made from Xbox; Shenmue on the PlayStation; Pokémon on the head rather than the heart. a smartphone; Sonic the Hedgehog on every- thing – even if no one wants to play it. The Xbox Perhaps this shifting, crumbling identity is at One, PlayStation 4 and PC have never been closer the heart of the tensions we see online. When in terms of architecture, leaving fans to bicker over everyone plays games on a mobile phone, when the sharpness of shadows in online forums in the games are as ubiquitous and mundane as movies vague hope of differentiating their purchases. or music, when your identity becomes less “Xbox fan” and more “Adidas fan”, how does this affect But this homogeneity also affects our identity as how we perceive ourselves? Last year, many players. What does it mean to be a PC gamer, an online commentators wrote about the “death of Xbox or PlayStation fan, when they’re all just simi- the gamer”, but perhaps what we’re seeing is the lar boxes with equal features? Look hard enough normalisation of the gamer, or the fracturing of one and you’ll still encounter ‘fanboys’ – remember homogenous identity into many sub-identities: that word? – but these days, a Triforce tattoo is online FPS gamer, MOBA gamer, Hearthstone an emblem of belonging, not one of differentia- player, MMO explorer. tion. Choosing a console is less like choosing a One day I’ll buy an Xbox One. It’ll be an impulse buy in a sale, many years from now. I’ll blast through Halo 5 and remember those good times with the Chief while wearing a Sonic t-shirt that has changed from retro cool to the equivalent of an Alvin and the Chipmunks singlet. Some parts of your identity change more readily than others. Getting lost: that’s the first thing that happens when you arrive in the city of Shapeir. A Tale Of Two Cities In Quest For Glory II: Trial By Fire, Shapeir is a city you can settle into, but not until after you’ve gotten lost in it. Actually, the very first thing that happens is a cat-person magically transmuting your clothes into an appropriate outfit for the pseudo-Arabic fantasy setting. Your friends retire to the inn they run and refuse to leave. Then you try to buy something, but have the wrong currency, and ask for directions to the money changer. And that’s when you get lost. A Tale Of Two Cities Jody Macgregor hapeir’s plazas are connected by a vein- The streets of Shapeir are dark and identical, Slike spread of alleys that are a nightmare hidden from the desert sun and lit by sporadic to navigate, and asking strangers for direc- torches. Doors lead to private residences, but tions results only in semi-helpful babble. Quest even if you overcome your foreigners’ shame For Glory II: Trial By Fire is an PC adventure and knock on one, they’ll never open. Locals game from the early Nineties, and like many sometimes appear at intersections in the games of the era, it has an unconventional distance, forcing you into a panicked dash means of copy protection: a physical paper to ask for help.