The Illusion of Choice

I was playing Ultimate Alliance 2 with TK the other day and I've come to fully realize how black and white that game is. To a certain extent, it offends me.

If I wanted a someone to tell me what to think, I'd watch FOX News. I would hope that intelligent video game designers would have a better understanding of moral ambiguity. Although it may make for a more linear storyline, I hate when you're given a supposed "moral choice" only to be crowbarred back into the main story for Act III.

In UA2, you choose either Pro-Regulation or Anti-Regulation in a so-called modern civil war. In truth, your options are very clearly douchebaggery or the American Dream, respectively. Though the choice of obeying possibly questionable governmental laws versus violently rebelling in order to remain unidentified is very clearly ambiguous, the character dialogue makes for a very obvious dichotomy of right and wrong. The Pro-Regs are evil, and once you are "shown the folley of their ways" you are railroaded back onto the path of the righteous.

To put it another way, there is a game about Anti-Regulation with the option of playing as the bad guys for a few levels.

Why can't your choices ever matter? So many games have this "choice" feature that is as superfluous as the "customize" feature. Take Fallout 3, for example. You choose your gender and race free of any social persecution (for a world based off the 50s, that seems... inaccurate). You get down to choose every little detail right down to the width of the bridge of your nose. Of course, you cannot change height, weight, or any other physical feature of your character, but, hey, making a scale function in two dimensions is incredibly... uh, easy, actually. But I digress. The fact of the matter is the customization process has no effect on gameplay and neither does your "Karma." If you're bad, the good guys try to kill you. If you're good, the bad guys try to kill you. The townspeople act the same, Raiders will always attack, Mutants will always attack, the Enclave will always be your enemy. Nothing you choose changes anything. I understand that something like that becomes immensely complex, but for something like UA2, why not play out the ramifications of Pro-Reg winning?

To voice this argument another way, and to reference Zack's latest post, if an element is unneccesary, why have it? If the choice of good or evil doesn't change anything, who cares? If you can't join the Empire, why join the Dark Side? That would be like Luke doing everything Vader told him, but he still has to blow up the Death Star in the end.

As I said before, I understand that an impactful choice system exponentially complexifies a game. It's like having to design multiple games in one and weave them all together. It's hard work. But so is realistic physics, dynamic ambient light, interactive environments, multiple character choices, Co-op modes, user designed levels... the list goes on about features of a game that make it harder to make. But designers work on them and do them well. So why don't designers put that kind of effort into the "choice" feature?

We're paying for WHAT?!

Apparently we've been paying for sex-change operations for years! Now, I need to come right out and say this now: I am not opposed to people having these operations. You want to be a girl? Be a girl. You want to be a boy? Be a boy. Gender isn't as restrictive as it used to be and we should be free to take advantage of that without prejudice. That being said, why the fuck are we paying for it?! I'm no mathematician, but 18-70G per operation times roughly 20 people a year is anywhere from $360 000 to $1.4 million dollars every year. Forget programs to reintegrate the homeless into society. Fuck updating highschool textbooks from the 60s. Hell, let's ignore hiring more police or funding hospitals' emergency care. Marc wants to become Marcy and we need to pay for him/her to do it.

I understand that nowadays that isn't exactly a backbreaking amount of money for the government, but there are plenty of other things we could be spending that money on! Not to mention, why do I have to pay for other people to change the way they are because they're not satisfied with their body? I don't pay people to go to the gym. I don't pay people to eat properly. I don't pay for people to shop. The bottom line is that I don't pay for other people's vanity (unless we're going out...). So why is it so important that we "reassign" people their genders?

If you want to do it, go ahead and do it. But don't be looking for a handout. Especially not now.

The Food Exchange

Flat out, mega-stores should not sell perishables. This is just ridiculous. You shopping trolley should never contain a mix of fresh fruit and trousers. Wal-mart and Zellers and all those other huge stores that were not created for fresh food sales can go suck a letterbomb (a figure of speech).

The only mega-store that I can accept the sale of perishable foods is Cost-Co, purely by virtue of scale. You cannot buy a single apple. You purchase all perishables in some large quantity. These are utility foods, not personal foods. They feed numbers, not people.

However, single fruits are to serve to individual people. People that are not numbers. Non-numeric people may consume non-numeric quantities of fruit; an apple, or a couple of apples. Maybe even several apples. Not a 10 pound box of apples, nor a fraction there-of.

Now, of course, apples are the smallest of my worries. Apples are built to last. I ate an apple today I stored in my refrigerator for probably 3 weeks. Well done, apple.

Time, however, is less kind on my bananas, my peaches, my mangoes, mushrooms, carrots, peppers, lettuce, etc. These things go bad. They shrivel and mold and leak (the worst of them leak).

Let me get to the point. I want a banana. I may want another banana. I may want a banana tomorrow and Thursday and then again on Saturday. Then again, maybe not. I drive 15 minutes to the Superstore. Do I buy 5 bananas? What if I wanted 6? What if I eat that first banana and my body says, "Alex, your banana quota is filled for the week. Now, bring me an apricot."? Do I tell my body to fuck itself and eat a half dozen bananas because I have them? No.

1) Do not make enemies with your body. It will have it's revenge. See Diets and Exercise.
2) Maybe I'll want bananas in my cereal on Sunday. Wouldn't that suck if I forced myself to eat them all by Saturday?

So what's the problem? Grocery mega-stores. You build them so big that they have to be at least 20km away from one another, which means there is always someone who has to drive a few minutes down the road just to get their goddamn bananas.

I know what you're thinking: "'A few minutes! Wah wah, I want my banana!' Grow a pair, already."

Fuck you.

Either I buy so much that it goes bad, or I'm driving every other day to make $15 purchases and in doing so directly contribute to road traffic and long lines at the grocery store, the very thing all you bitches hate, not to mention the environmental impact that all of you non-bitches are properly concerned about.

I miss the days of the local grocery store. Sure, the selection wasn't great and they were expensive and they cost a bit more, but that's what the Superstores are for: to add the solutions. If you can't find it at your local store (which carries bananas and apples and peaches and mushrooms and not dragonfruit or papayas or plantains or African horned melons...) then you can go look for it at the Superstore.

I hear you guys again: "Why not just have it all at the Superstore and you can go to 7-11 for your bananas?"

First, 7-11 is not a particularly food safe environment. Second, their fruit has 2 moves: apple or banana. I like all of the fruits and vegetables that a normal 5 year old can name. Third, there still isn't a 7-11 within reasonable walking distance for a banana.

Back to my point. By minimizing the "individual fruit/vegetable" sections you expand the diversity of the rest of your store. For example, the Superstore may actually carry some fucking water chestnuts! I can buy a can of pennyworth.... drink (juice?) imported from Thailand that takes like springtime faceplant and that no one has ever heard of, but I can't get a little tin of water fucking chestnuts!

You know those kind of white crispy round deals you find in Asian stir-frys?
Those are water chestnuts.
They are great.

And you know who had them, Superstore? That's right, my goddamn local grocery store.

So what do we get out of it? We get fucked out of water chestnuts, bar soap, and the variety of deodorant that pretty girl told you she liked! Although I probably can't blame that last one on the grocery store.