I’ve given up, and I’m not afraid. Only there’s something I would like to understand. And I don’t think anyone can explain it. You see, I know it’s the end for me. I know it, but I can’t quite believe it, I can’t feel it. It’s so strange. There’s your life. You begin it, feeling that it’s something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it’s like a sacred treasure. Now it’s over, and it doesn’t make any difference to anyone, and it isn’t that they are indifferent, it’s just that they don’t know, they don’t know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there’s something about it that they should understand. I don’t understand it myself, but that’s something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it, Kira? What?

Ayn Rand, We the Living

It's good to be back!

Last week I had one of those urges that only a pregnant man can have, to step back into the shoes of Tommy Vercetti and relive the delights of Vice City. This 2003 Rockstar outing was easily one of the best games I ever played, everything about it simply oozed style and polish. It’s almost as if the developers took a standard checklist of things that get rated in a game, made sure every area got given the works, and then spent the rest of their time filling in the gaps. Because it’s exactly that which nails it for this game, the attention to detail that makes playing Vice City like stepping into the ’80s: the clothes, the music, the cars, the giant mobile phones, heck, even the intro scene features the game being loaded on a Commodore 64. Rockstar’s particular sense of humour is also here to see by the bucketload, from the tongue-in-cheek nature of some of the missions, through the fantastic dialogue and hilarious radio stations, to the small jabs and puns that little the streets of Vice City.

All of which is without even touching on the gameplay. Sitting firmly in the sandbox genre, Vice City gives you a wonderful feeling of being able to go about things your own way. Goofing around, stealing cars, running from the police, there’s plenty to do in the game when you aren’t really doing anything! But fortunately that doesn’t mean that Rockstar skimped out on the main storyline, which is by all means fantastic, and features all sorts of mission types, from starting riots, racing through the streets, to knocking off banks and delivering numerous methods of ‘persuasion’ to various denizens of the city. Aside from the main plot, there are plenty of other side missions and extras to discover, which add ample distraction to the standard mayhem generally meted out whilst driving between missions.

Censorship

Unfortunately, on account of where I currently live, the copy I got hold of was one of the draconian censored versions designed for people with severe mental disabilities and no wish to stand up for themselves. Frankly, the censorship wasn’t immediately conspicuous: it’s been long enough since I last loaded the game up, that I didn’t notice the lack of blood under the tires, or the inability to kick people when they’re down. Even in a mission involving a chainsaw and a nice Hawaiian shirt, it didn’t immediately occur that there were no droplets of blood on the screen.

Eventually, however, I found my way to a location where I knew there to be a hidden rampage, one of Vice City’s mad little sub-missions involving a mad psychotic killing spree against the clock, only it wasn’t there. After a quick search on the web, I realised that this was in fact on account of the censorship, and not any corruption in the game or an error on my part. Fortunately, whilst searching for the reason I also found the solution: the BlutPatch replaces the game’s main executable and restores all of those missing features hacked out to try to put some kind of moral fibre into this hellraiser of a game.

And honestly, what is the point of it? On installing the ‘patch’ I realised just how many little details had been taken out of the game. Like the ability to rob the people you’ve killed was entirely removed, so what exactly is the message we’re supposed to get? Ripping someone from the front seat of their cars and being them to death with a hammer is fine, but taking $20 from their wallets afterwards is beyond the pale? Or the issue of sex. The game revolves around the criminal underworld, it kicks off with a drug deal, ends in a massacre, and has everything in between, yet it was the ability to hire a prostitute and sit in a squeeking car whilst your health goes up that was deemed unfit for polite society. Unfortunately I didn’t play the game long enough without the BlutPatch to tell if the censored version also touches on those other likely offensive areas in the game, namely the strip club and the porn studios.

Vista Issues

Sadly, the game hasn’t entirely lived up to the test of time. Whilst the gameplay, humour and polish of the game are still as fresh as they were on its release, getting the game to run with any degree of reliability is a bit of a trial. I was running it under Vista, which wasn’t necessarily the greatest problem, but no doubt the BlutPatch did nothing to help matters. Fortunately after a bit of tinkering I got the game to run fairly smoothly, albeit with a couple of annoying issues:

• Mouse sensitivity was unfortunately rather crazy, and affected the vertical rather more than the horizontal. This mouse has a few buttons for tweaking the DPI, but there are also some tools below which may help.
• Occasionally the mouse would refuse to function at all, generally fixed by pressing escape, or restarting the game. This would not happen mid-game, only when moving from the main menu screen and back again.
• The game would occasionally crash outright after some kind of collision involving a police/military vehicle. Not entirely sure what this was caused by, nor if it was restricted to police vehicles, and it was fairly infrequent, though highly annoying when reminded of it on Vigilante level 15.

For most of these and many other problems, there is an excellent guide over on the GTAForums. Some of the solutions call for the use of some tricks produced by the ToCA Edit team, sadly rather hidden away on their website and so reproduced below.

There are also a couple of patches originally produced here (original website now defunkt) for fixing two specific bugs, namely the never-ending slow motion camera on doing Unique Jumps, and the unreachable Cuban outfit on doing missions in a certain order. Using the patches is a simple matter:

All game fixes are meant to be coding fixes for common game issues. As their role is intended to be fixes, they are in fact plug and play. That means you drop them into your data folder (AFTER backing up your original main.scm), rename it to main.scm, and you load your save without having to start a new game.

Meine Gedichte brauche ich dazu nicht mehr; in meinen Bücherregalen ist das alles viel besser gesagt. Aber was würde mit einem passieren, wenn das schon ein Grund wäre, etwas aufzugeben? Wo blieben wir alle? So schreibe ich weiter, doch oft genug erscheint es mir grau und papieren gegen den Abendhimmel, der jetzt über den Dächern weit und apfelfarben wird, während der violette Aschenregen der Dämmerung schon die Straße füllt.

Erich Maria Remarque, Der schwarze Obelisk

Steam

I’ve been using Steam for a fair while now, in fact pretty much since the beginning, and have seen the program grow on from its fairly humble origins. There are now hundreds of titles available, including games from big-name publishers and independent game houses alike, and the usual crashes and quirks that afflicted the early releases are pretty much gone. Nevertheless, there are still a number of key areas in which Steam continues to live up to standards, at times making using the system a bit of a nightmare. This is a list of some of those issues which in my eyes prevent Steam from becoming a really top class product, delivering everything the platform really promises. Some of these issues admittedly have their origins outside of Valve’s headquarters, but the way in which they are dealt with only compounds the problems further, for both customers and clients.

Steam Friends

It’s an instant messenger on a budget. Think of your favourite system, but without any of the frills. There are no file transfers, no webcams, none of the various add on junk you find with most of the big name instant messaging clients. And let’s face it, Steam Friends is all the better for it. It’s a simple service that does what it needs to. At least most of the time. Which is exactly where this little service fails to live up. Steam Friends suffers so much downtime, it makes you wonder what the system is actually running on; it crashes about as often as Windows 95.

For the most part, that downtime isn’t much of a problem, since few people use it for anything important, and even if the service is up and down like a yo-yo, the periods of downtime generally aren’t particularly long. But the outages are sufficiently frequent to leave you wishing that Steam really did have some of those standard added extras common to other instant messaging services. The lack of being able to send offline messages means you end up having to hold staccato conversations trying to keep in time to the downtime conductor’s baton. And with no chat logs there’s no recourse to checking what was last said if you happen to close the window. Which can be doubly troublesome if you happen to have the Steam overlay open at the same time, since the messages people send might appear on the window on your desktop, but not on the game overlay, meaning you’ll still have to ALT+TAB out of the game you’re in to read the messages, one of the supposedly key advantages of using Steam Friends in the first place!

Why hasn’t this API been opened up to third party clients? Why can users navigate the Steam Communities pages, leaving messages and reading profiles, but have to run Steam as soon as they want to send a live message? The downtime, exclusivity, and lack of ‘regular’ frills leave Steam Friends to be a last resort mechanism, when it has the potential to be a very promising communication tool.

Steam Group Chat

Similar to the Friends service above, Steam’s Group Chat provides every group on the Steam Communities page with their own little chat room. Very generous, very appealing, but does anyone actually use it? I’m sure there are some groups out there in the dark corners of the gaming world who actually pop into those chat rooms and spout some drivel, but for the rest of us, I really can’t see the point. Most other groups have already come up with their own solution to such problems, using IRC or other such technologies, and those who haven’t will have difficulty finding the Group Chat options anyway. If group administrators had the ability to tie in their chat rooms to other pieces of software, particularly IRC for example, these rooms actually might find some use, but as it is they stand pretty exclusively neglected among Steam’s various other appendages.

Steam Prices

One of the key supposed advantages of buying games via an online content distribution service such as Steam is that the savings made by the ‘publisher’ are passed on to the customer. And not to do Steam any discredit, the customer has certainly had the opportunity to benefit from some great prices and bargains, in many cases undercutting in-store prices considerably. But that isn’t always the case. Particularly since the introduction of prices in Euros and Pounds in December, 2008, customers have been able to see the discrepancies between the various zones. Especially in the Eurozone this could leave games for sale that were actually more expensive than their box-and-disc in-store equivalents, and significantly more expensive than the prices listed in pounds or US dollars.

Whilst Valve cannot be held to blame for the price differences of many of the titles chosen by other publishers and distributors, the discrepancies can often also be seen with Valve’s own titles, most especially when games are put on limited-term offers. Of course, some users can work around the restrictions, by having others buy them games as a gift (see below) or else logging in themselves in another country, and making their purchases in the relevant currency.

Steam Payment

Of course, giving your money to Valve for Steam purchases should be one of the easiest things in the world, but unfortunately, this just isn’t the case. Probably related to the differences in pricing mentioned above, Steam has some pretty pernickety requirements when making purchases above the payment method used and the location you’re buying from. I’ve had my Steam account locked from purchases on two or three separate occasions, without notification, for using a payment option on another account (these were the days before Steam Gifts). Clearly that’s one step away from money laundering. And only recently, my payment was refused because the address of my payment option wasn’t in the country I was buying from. This despite there being a clear option to check a box whether or not I was currently in the stated country; quite what this option is for if it is irrelevant to them, I can’t say. Is there something particularly insolent about making purchases from another country that I wasn’t aware of?

Steam Geography

As a system capable of delivering content to pretty much anywhere with an Internet connection, it’s perfectly reasonable that Steam acknowledges local laws and adjusts its own system to abide by them. This applies to a large extent to the pricing issues mentioned above, where various distributors only have the right to publish games within certain geographic locales. In which case, it’s up to the people of those nations to find workarounds, or to complain to their governments if they feel they are being unfairly treated. But it does lead to some rather irritating and odd situations when using Steam’s services. Take one of Valve’s own recently released titles like Left 4 Dead 2. The game generated a little controversy with its content, and ended up requiring Valve to publish milder versions for customers in Australia and Germany, according to the laws in those countries. Naturally the government of Germany feels that its citizens are a little more puerile and paramnesic in character than the rest of the world, and didn’t want to risk having a few people see a bit of gore. They might have been incited to invade Poland again, who knows. Anyway, buying a copy of the game in one of those countries will result in the customer having a permanently crippled version of the game,¹ which as far as I’m aware, cannot be fixed easily. On the other hand, loading up an account with a copy of the game purchased in another country will present the full flavour version that was supposed to be banned.

Steam Gifts

As mentioned earlier, I had my Steam account blocked from purchases in earlier days because I had the audacity to use my payment methods to log in to other people’s accounts and buy them games. Fortunately, with the introduction of Steam Gifts, this no longer became necessary. When buying a game, just tick the box that makes this available as a gift, and the copy will go to the person of your choosing; similarly, should you buy a game that you already own in a bundle, you can simply give the extra copy away.

The idea is all well and good, except for the limitations listed above about payment options, added to the problems of products only being available in certain versions in certain countries. But this is compounded by the fact that buying a gift means delivering that gift on the same instant; if you actually do want to buy someone a present for a specific occasion and want to keep it as a surprise, you’ll either have to concoct your own time-delay private email address, buy the game on the special day, or just apologise your gift is coming early!

Steam Accounts

Buy a game, a book, a car, a house, or a tube of toilet paper, and you generally find you have the right to sell it on to someone else. Alright, second-hand toilet paper is still a growth market, but you get the picture. With Steam, buy something and Valve reserve all rights for you to resell your items, including the account you bought the games on, refusing you even the right to “sell, charge others for the right to use or otherwise transfer [an] account.” Some might consider this to be a reasonable condition, for the lower prices and level of service Steam offers, but for those of us used to selling off old copies of games, the physical versions of that software does maintain some of its appeal. Perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that tying the serial keys of games bought in the shops to a Steam account can render them similarly unsaleable.

Steam Files

Just how does Steam organise the files it puts on your system? Is there actually meant to be some method to the madness? Whilst I can see that for the most part, Valve have little say over how its clients utilise the Steam system, Valve’s own titles are about as confusing as the lot of them. Most of Valve’s titles appear in the Steam\steamapps directory as compressed .gcf files, whilst third-party titles appear under the Steam\steamapps\common directory. Valve’s Left 4 Dead title, however, does the latter. Some of the titles store their user files in sensible places under in the user directory, others store them in their own folders in the common directory, whilst most of Valve’s titles go one step further, creating extra files per Steam account under the steamapps directory. That’s difficult enough when trying to backup your savegames, locate your screenshots, or edit a config file. But the latter variety causes even more problems if you have even just a few Steam accounts being used on a single PC; since each account creates its own personalised files, items such as cached models, sounds, third-party maps and extensions are all replicated, swelling the size of the installations entirely unnecessarily. I sometimes wonder how LAN centres which have several users signing in per day deal with the associated cruft (ignoring for the moment Valve’s Cyber Café Program).

Steam Backup

One of the obvious (dis)advantages of Steam, depending on which side of the fence you’re sitting, is the ability to download your games from wherever you are logged in. If your Internet connection is fast enough, you can get your games downloaded ready for play the moment they are ‘released’; faster than it can be delivered in most cases, certainly faster than having to get your copy from the shops. But for those of us with slow connections, downloading items from Steam can be a slow and painful experience, and one that you don’t like to have repeated every time you decide to switch hardware. Which is why the implementation of a backup system to Steam was pretty much a no-brainer. Select Backup games from the main Steam menu and you can have your downloads all neatly arranged in CD or DVD sized chunks, ready to be reinstalled at the touch of a button.

Not a bad idea, except it functions about as well as combing your hair with barbed wire. The backup process is fairly slow, slower than simply copying the files manually, but that’s reasonably forgiveable since it does at least chop up the files in reasonable sized chunks. The real problems come when trying to reinstall games using the backed up files. Installing more than one game at a time left my Steam program actually trying to download the games from the Internet, exactly what the backups were supposed to avoid, and actually left the program so unresponsive I had to kill it. Trying to install the programs one at a time often threw up the error that the servers were too busy to handle my request; when I looked again, the games were being updated from the Internet. Not too busy to suck up my bandwidth I see! Third time lucky and the game actually did start installing from the backups, albeit as slowly as it was backed up in the first place, and for each game I had to go through the same rigmarole, which would have been even more painful had I actually had the backups spread across half a dozen DVDs.

Valve

However, the number one thing holding Steam back is Valve. You can normally draw a line in the sand separating companies into those with decent moral standards, and Microsoft, and Valve would almost certainly fit into the former category. They listen to their customer base, they generally keep their products up-to-date, fixing bugs and releasing new content for free, and they opened up the Steam platform to what are essentially their competitors. Each title released is like a mini-celebration in the industry, and is generally met with decent reviews and rewardingly good sales figures.

Yet the power they wield with Steam is not to be underestimated. Since no sales figures are actually published, one can only speculate, though it is bound to be a considerable proportion of the online distribution market. This monopoly type situation is particularly problematic when you consider Steam to be a marketplace run by one of the main competitors. Even if there is no deliberate attempt on Valve’s part to give themselves pride of place, with such power comes great responsibility that should not rest in uneven hands. I’ve seen days in which one of Valve’s titles will take pride of place in their store front, ahead of game of the year winners and new releases. And I forget now where I read it, but the number of people Valve actually has working on Steam is incredibly small, something like half a dozen staff. If it were properly managed, all of the above issues with the platform could no doubt in some way be addressed, for the benefit of customers and clients alike.

Summary

Fair play to Valve, they had the idea and they ran with it, dealing with the early teething problems and creating a popular and successful piece of software, and they deserve the financial reward for it. Ideally, however, Steam should now be hived off from Valve as a separate, independent company, to focus on the equal online distribution of titles from all software houses. It’s surprising in fact that many of the larger publishing houses haven’t already pushed for such a move, or made overtures to the courts. Who knows, with that bit of extra development, they could even get round to porting the Steam platform over to other operating systems and opening up the market further. As things stand, however, that little development push on Valve’s part is lacking, and this potentially well functioning, open marketplace is slightly stifled by the monopolistic nature of Valve’s position. Steam is not a bad product. Far from it, the complaints in this list are mostly areas lacking polish, oversights that a little more focused development would soon fix, or issues that arise from Steam’s interaction with national laws and distributors rights. But the basis is certainly there, for a free, open marketplace that gaming enthusiasts and developers alike can benefit from.

1. As an aside, I’ve tried the crippled version of the game’s demo, and have to say the changes are pretty drastic. Instead of reacting bloodily when challenged, dead enemies instead disappear unrealistically into the ether, an effect which is rather surprising and at times quite confusing. Do German soldiers in Afghanistan get a shock when Taleban soldiers actually start bleeding when shot?

Since the new Intelligence² website appears to have done away with transcriptions, I’m publishing this one here. Please note that this is an entirely unofficial transcription, so any mistakes are my own. The full video can be found on the official site, as well as on YouTube.

Transcript:

Zeinab Badawi

Hello and welcome from central London. We’re just a stone’s throw away from the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, we’re here in Central Hall for this Intelligence Squared debate on the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Well, that’s a subject that’s going to generate a lot of heat, I think, and some light too, I hope. I’m delighted to be chair of this debate. We have a panel which includes some of the most provocative, intelligent and stimulating commentators and practitioners on the subject. Arguing for the motion: the Archbishop of Abuja in Nigeria, John Onaiyekan; the British Conservative MP, Ann Widdecombe. Arguing against the motion: the actor, broadcaster and author, Stephen Fry, and the journalist and commentator, Christopher Hitchens. Well, our first speaker is John Onaiyekan, His Grace the Archbishop of Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and His Grace is one of Africa’s best known, most respected commentators of the church, the Catholic church, so please make your way to the podium, speak at the microphone.

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

Friends, I must, I certainly must say I am grateful to be here, because for me this is more than a matter of debate, because that’s what my life is all about. If I didn’t believe that the Catholic church is a force for good, I would not devote my whole life to precisely working in that institution, hoping that I am involved in something that is good for the whole world. You see, for me to be a Catholic is a gift of God. Let me start with the word ‘church’, the Catholic ‘church’. Obviously, it means many things to many people, but I think as an Archbishop I should be in the position to say what it does mean, especially to us Catholics. Yes, the Catholic church is an institution, and some people say it is perhaps the best organised institution in the world, but that’s not really the essence of our church. We should go beyond institution. Now for us the church is first and foremost a community of believers. And this is a community of believers that is spread all over the world, made up of all kinds of people. And the institution itself, as well as those whom we normally consider church people—people dressed up like me, for example—we are there only because of that huge community of people who claim, who are Catholics. I’m stressing this, so that when you are asking yourself “is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?”, don’t look at me, don’t look at Benedict XVI, look at the Catholics all over the world.

That the church is a force for good in the world seems obviously to me, is quite obvious, the question probably which you will ask is “what kind of force?” There was once an arrogant dictator who asked in disdain “how many battalions has the Pope?” Obviously, he completely missed the point. It is not about military force or physical force, but it is about force, it is about the force of the spiritual message. The force of values, which has stood the test of two thousand years. And not only two thousand years in time, but has spread its message all over the world among different kinds of people, different races. We must also not forget the sheer weight of the number of Catholics. I have checked the statistics and we have told you that now we have about 1.2 billion Catholics all over the world, out of a population of 6.6 billion, 17.3%, and these are young, these are made up of all categories of people—young and old, women and men, peasant farmers and high tech professionals, simple citizens and even heads of states and world leaders. This is the great army, that is a great force for good in the world, and whatever they are doing, we consider it as being done, largely also as a result of the spirit which guides them. Independent statistics have shown that the Catholic church is doing far more than its numbers and its population would probably suggest. The action of the church is most significant in communities that are reduced to poverty and misery by human neglect, and sometimes by hostile environments. Talking of statistics, I spoke recently with the Director General of UNAIDS, which is the United Nations agency for HIV and AIDS, and he said that 26% of the health institutions in the world directly involved with the treatment of HIV and AIDS are run by the Catholic church. And please note, that it is a well-known policy of our church, whenever we are engaged in social welfare work, it is always given to all without any discrimination, whether you believe or not, irrespective of creed. Indeed, it is an integral part of our faith that our church is made up of saints and sinners. We are all struggling towards that perfection which Jesus asked us all to follow. Nor am I denying that the Catholic church has always and everywhere done excellent things, even sometimes in high levels, but this again only proves that we are in this world. Even the late Pope John-Paul II had no difficulty at all in admitting the mistakes that people who claim to be Catholics or to be working in the name of the church have done in the past. And he apologised, and suggestions of apology is very rare in our world today.

Let me conclude by drawing your attention to one particular aspect of my faith, which I admire greatly: we are very open to dealing, and moving, and collaborating with others. And I think this is very important for the world of ideas. We are talking of the world of today. We need more and more effects to link hands across all divides, so that we can manage to make our planet a better place. A world of peace and peace. Is there still anybody here who still doubts whether the Catholic church is a force for good in the world? Thank you very much.

Zeinab Badawi

Our next speaker is Christopher Hitchens, he’s arguing against the motion. He is a writer, journalist and commentator, particularly well known for his trenchant views and very original thinking. So, Christopher Hitchens, let us hear what you have to say, your time starts now, please make your way to the podium.

Christopher Hitchens

Now I’m sorry to have to begin by disagreeing with His Grace. If you’re going to be a serious grown-up person, and appear to defend the Catholic church in public in front of an educated and literate audience, you simply have to start by making a great number of heartfelt apologies and requests for contrition and forgiveness. Now you might ask <applause> You’re fully entitled to ask, brothers and sisters, who am I to say that? Well, in the jubilee millennium year of 2000 the Vatican spokesman Bishop Piero Marini said, explaining a whole sermon of apology given by His Holiness the Pope, given the number of sins we’ve committed in the course of twenty centuries, reference to them must necessarily be rather summary. Well I think Bishop Marini had that just about right, I’ll have to be summary, too. His Holiness on that occasion—it was March the 12th, 2000, if you wish to look it up—begged forgiveness for, among some other things, the crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of the Jewish people, in justice towards women, that’s half the human race right there, and the forced conversion of indigenous peoples, especially in South America, the African slave trade, the admission that Galileo was right, and for silence during Hitler’s Final Solution or Shoah. And it doesn’t end there, there are smaller but significant—equally significant—avowals of a very bad conscience. These have included regret for the rape and torture of orphans and other children in church-run schools in almost every country on Earth, from Ireland to Australia. These are very serious matters, and they’re not to be laughed off by the references to the occasional work of Catholic charities. But I draw you attention not just to the apologies, ladies and gentlemen, but to the evasive and euphemistic form that they take. Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope, considered by some, considered by Catholics to be the Vicar of Christ on Earth, in his comment, one of the few he’s made on the institutionalisation of rape and torture and maltreatment of children in Catholic institutions, he said it’s a very severe crisis which involves us, he said, in the following: in the need for applying to these victims the most loving, pastoral care. Well I’m sorry, they’ve already had that, and to say that this is the response to be laid upon you, by the horrific admission that you’ve already had to make is not accepting responsibility in any adult sense. The same euphemism comes, in the term some Christians allow themselves to be deceived in this way and to act against the gospel, well, anti-Semitism was preached as an official doctrine of the Church until 1964. Do you think that might have something to do with public opinion in Austria, and Bavaria, and Poland, and Lithuania? There’ll come a time, when the church will issue apologies, and explanations, and half-baked appeals for forgiveness for things it’s still doing. I think that there will be an apology for what happened in Rwanda, the most Catholic country in Africa, where priests and nuns and bishops are on trial, for inciting from their pulpits and on the Church’s radio stations and newspapers, the massacre of their brothers and sisters. Staying in Africa, I think it will one day be admitted with shame that it might have been in error to say that AIDS is bad as a disease, very bad, but not quite as bad as condoms are bad, or not as immoral in the same way. I say it in the presence of His Grace, and I say it to his face, the teachings of his church are responsible for the death and suffering and misery of his brother and sister Africans, and he should apologise for it, he should show some shame. For condemning my friend Stephen Fry for his nature, for saying you couldn’t be a member of our church, you’re born in sin. He’s not being condemned for what he does, he’s being condemned for what he is. You’re a child made in the image of God – oh no, you’re not, you’re a faggot, and you can’t join our church and you can’t go to heaven. This is disgraceful, it’s inhuman, it’s obscene, and it comes from a clutch of hysterical, sinister virgins, who’ve already betrayed their charge in the children of their own church. For shame! For shame!

I don’t wish any ill on any fellow primate or mammal of mine, so I don’t at all look forward to the death of Joseph Ratzinger, I don’t, or any other bloke, not really, except for one tiny reason which I ought to confess and share with you. When he dies, there’s quite a long interval till the conclave can meet, and for that whole time, that whole interval—it is a delicious, lucid interlude—there isn’t anyone on Earth who claims to be infallible. Isn’t that nice? All I think, all I want to propose in closing is this: that if the human species is to rise to the full height that’s demanded by its dignity, and by its intelligence, we must all of us move to a state of affairs, where that condition is permanent, and I think we should get on with it. Okay, thank you for having me.

Zeinab Badawi

Well Christopher, thank you very much for all of that. Our next speaker is going to have her work cut out, because she’s speaking in favour of the motion that the Catholic church is a force for good: the Conservative MP and former government minister, Ann Widdecombe. She’s as well-known for her religious views as for her politics. If you recall, she left the Church of England in 1992, in a blaze of publicity, when it allowed the ordination of women priests. The following year she converted to Catholicism, and has become one of the most vocal and staunchest defenders of the Catholic Church since then. Ann Widdecombe, the floor is yours.

Ann Widdecombe

If apologies are due tonight, they are due from Christopher Hitchens, who has just run through one of the longest series of misrepresentations of the Catholic Church that I have heard in a long time. He has said, with that certainty that characterises his utterances, that the Catholic Church has had a history of anti-Semitism. Let us just look at the record of the Catholic Church, when the Jewish community was under the most serious threat that it has faced in recent centuries, and just look at the role that the Catholic Church played in the last World War. Mr Hitchens ignores the thousands of Jews who were secreted and rescued in churches and monasteries throughout Europe. He ignores the 3000 Jews, who in the course of that conflict, took refuge in the Pope’s own summer palace. And coming nearer to our day, of course Christopher Hitchens is right, and who could possibly dispute with him, that the abuse of children, of innocent children, is one—in fact it is the—worst offence that anybody can commit. Of that, no doubt. But again he seems to think that the Catholic Church should have had some unique insight, which demonstrably was lacking in society as a whole, do not expect the Catholic Church somehow, when that was the state of knowledge at the time, to have acted in a unique and completely different way. In retrospect, yes, of course. In retrospect, yep. In retrospect, it should’ve done–so should the magistrates, so should the Samaritans, so should the National Council of Civil Liberties. But when we ask, whether the Catholic Church is a force for good, let’s just try to imagine a world today without, for example, the billions of pounds that are poured into overseas aid by the Catholic Church, contributing year on year more than any single nation. Imagine the developing world had been left without the input of the medicine and the education that was brought to it by the missions. Imagine the absence of those collections, Sunday upon Sunday, for famine relief. Imagine the absence of the church in the local community. We play a vital role. And you don’t need to be a Catholic to acknowledge that we play that role. What is the church? It is its members: it is the nuns and the monks and the priests and the layworkers and the congregations. It is not just the hierarchy of the Church. And I believe that the Church to which I belong is a massive, massive force for good. But, let us not just keep the debate at that level. I knew somehow that when we were here tonight, we would be discussing child abuse—and condoms, they came in the end, I almost thought we were going to get through an entire speech from Christopher Hitchens without condoms, but we got them at the end—but that isn’t what the Catholic Church is about, it isn’t only about the physical relief of the poor, it isn’t only about the work it does on Earth, but it is the message that it preaches. And that message is one of hope, that message is one of salvation. And it is all very well for some people to say, in an intellectual arrogance, we can do without that, but actually billions of people across the world live by that message of hope and of salvation. They try to live by the commandments and also by the interpretation of those commandments by Christ. Yea, sometimes they fail, sometimes their leaders fail—human beings do fail—but overwhelmingly, I say to you tonight with no apology whatever, that a world without the Catholic Church would be poorer, would be more hopeless, and would be a worse place in which to live.

Zeinab Badawi

Well thank you very much indeed, Ann Widdecombe. And our final speaker is against the motion: Stephen Fry, a bit of an all-rounder really, Stephen can turn his hand to many things. Stephen, let’s hear your views.

Stephen Fry

I genuinely believe that the Catholic Church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world, and therefore it is important for me to try and martial my facts as well I can to explain why I think that. But I want first of all to say that I have no quarrel and no argument and I wish to express no contempt for individual devout and pious members of that church. It would be impertinent and wrong of me to express any antagonism towards any individual who wishes to find salvation in whatever form they wish to express it. That to me is sacrosanct as much as any article of faith is sacrosanct to anyone of any church or any faith in the world. It’s very important. It’s also very important to me, as it happens, that I have my own beliefs. They are a belief in the Enlightenment, a belief in the eternal adventure of trying to discover moral truth in the world, and there is nothing, sadly, that the Catholic Church and its hierarchs likes to do more than to attack the Enlightenment. It did so at the time: reference was made to Galileo and the fact that he was tortured, for trying to explain the Copernican theory of the Universe. Just imagine in this square mile how many people were burned for reading the Bible in English. And one of the principle burners and torturers of those who tried to read the Bible in English, here in London, was Thomas More. Now, that’s a long time ago, it’s not relevant, except that it was only last century that Thomas More was made a saint, and it was only in the year 2000, that the last pope, the Pole, he made Thomas More the Patron Saint of Politicians. This is a man who put people on the wrack for daring to own a Bible in English: he tortured them for owning a Bible in their own language. The idea that the Catholic Church exists to disseminate the word of the Lord is nonsense. It is the only owner of the Truth for the billions that it likes to boast about, because those billions are uneducated and poor, as again it likes to boast about. It’s perhaps unfair of me, as a gay man, to moan at this enormous institution, which is the largest and most powerful church on Earth, has over a billion, as they like to tell us, members, each one of whom is under strict instructions to believe the dogmas of the church, but may wrestle with them personally of course. It’s hard for me to be told that I’m evil, because I think of myself as someone who is filled with love, whose only purpose in life was to achieve love, and who feels love for so much of nature and the world and for everything else. We certainly don’t need the stigmatisation, the victimisation, that leads to the playground bullying when people say you’re a disordered, morally evil individual. That’s not nice, it isn’t nice. The kind of cruelty in Catholic education, the kind of child—let’s not call it child abuse, it was child rape—the kind of child rape that went on systematically for so long, let’s imagine that we can overlook this and say that it is nothing whatever to do with the structure and nature of the Catholic Church, and the twisted and neurotic and hysterical way that its leaders are chosen, the celibacy, the nuns, the monks, the priesthood, this is not natural and normal, ladies and gentlemen, in 2009, it really isn’t.

I have yet to approach one of the subjects dearest to my heart, I’ve made three documentary films on the subject of AIDS in Africa. My particular love is the country of Uganda, it is one of the countries I love most in the world. There was a period when Uganda had the worst incidence of HIV/AIDS in the world, but through an amazing initiative called ABC—Abstinence, Be faithful, Correct use of condoms—those three, I’m not denying that abstinence is a very good way of not getting AIDS, it really is, it works, so does being faithful, but so do condoms, and do not deny it! And this Pope, this Pope,  not satisfied with saying “condoms are against our religion, please consider first abstinence, second being faithful to your partner,” he spreads the lie that condoms actually increase the incidence of AIDS, he actually makes sure that aid is conditional on saying no to condoms. I have been to the hospital in Bwindi in the west of Uganda, where I do quite a lot of work, it is unbelievable the pain and suffering you see. Now yes, yes it is true abstinence will stop it. It’s the strange thing about this church, it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we with our permissive society and our rude jokes, we are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly, because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult, it’s a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.

Do you know who would be the last person ever to be accepted as a prince of the Church? The Galileean carpenter. That Jew. They would kick him out before he tried to cross the threshold. He would be so ill-at-ease in the Church. What would he think, what would he think of St. Peter’s? What would he think of the wealth, and the power, and the self-justification, and the wheedling apologies? The Pope could decide that all this power, all this wealth, this hierarchy of princes and bishops and archbishops and priests and monks and nuns could be sent out in the world with money and art treasures, to put them back in the countries that they once raped and violated, they could give that money away, and they could concentrate on the apparent essence of their belief, and then, I would stand here and say the Catholic Church may well be a force for good in the world, but until that day, it is not. Thank you.

Zeinab Badawi

Well, Stephen Fry, thank you very much. So, you’ve heard all our four speakers. It’s going to be your turn, the audience, next, and I’ll give you a couple of minutes to think about what you want to ask our panellists, any questions or comments you may wish to make. Because I’m going to give you, now, the result of that vote that you all gave when you were coming in here to Central Hall. The motion is: the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. In favour of the motion were 678. Against the motion, that the Catholic church is a force for good, were 1102. Big difference. However, 346 of you were undecided, so Archbishop and Ann Widdecombe, you’re not only going to have to win over the undecided, but actually convert some from the other side. Let’s see if we can sway any opinions here amongst all of you by listening to some points that you wish to raise with the panel, and then we’re going to ask you to vote again. Now, put your hand up if you want to speak, a question, the lady with the spectacles.

Question

I would like to ask Mr Hutchens if he is only against the Catholic church or against all religions.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, go back there, the lady in the pink.

Question

Hi there, this is a question for Christopher Hitchens. Many people today feel that we’re really living in some kind of moral crisis, and you can see that all around us. Now, if one thing that the Catholic church does do for good in my opinion, is give us the ten commandments, a very basic and obvious way of giving us some kind of moral guidance. Would you not agree with that?

Christopher Hitchens

The lady in front began by asking me do I reserve this condemnation only for the Holy Roman church and not for Catholics, for example Byzantine Catholics and Protestants and so on. I think they’re all the same equivalent glimpses of the identical untruth. Now of the commandments, the first two or three are entirely about fearing the author of the audits, entirely about being terrified of someone you’re enjoined to love. I don’t know about you, ladies and gentlemen, but the idea of compulsory love has always struck me as a bit shady, especially if you’re ordered to love someone who you absolutely must fear. So, the first three are: look out for me, and keep at least one day of my way or you’ll be terrified full-time.

Zeinab Badawi

Ann Widdecombe, Ten Commandments, bedrock of moral teaching?

Ann Widdecombe

I would have thought it quite obvious that the Ten Commandments set out a blueprint for a moral and successful society. Let us just look at some of them: honour thy father and thy mother—think of today’s disrespect—thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, and thou shalt not covet – tell that to the bankers with their bonuses.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, Archbishop, do you want to come in briefly on this?

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

The Ten Commandments are in the Bible, but my father know it before he became a Christian. All African religions recognised those basic norms of morality, everybody knows that.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, let’s take some more questions from the floor, okay.

Question

This is a very simple question for Ann Widdecombe. You might think it may be a naïve question, if so I’d be very happy to be educated, why is it wrong for a woman to become a priest, but perfectly acceptable for a woman, such as yourself, to become an MP?

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thanks. I think we’re going to go just across here next.

Question

Ann made a point about the billions that are poured into Africa. I respect your faith, I respect the message you give, but why to pass that message on do you need the finery you wear, do you need the palace of the Vatican?

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, point made. I think we’re going to go, here.

Question

Archbishop, of which current Roman Catholic policy are you most ashamed?

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

I don’t know whether you’re serious in that question, or you just want to provoke, because all of our Catholic policies are not just dreamt overnight by the Pope or anybody. If it is a Catholic policy, it is reasonable, it is based on our traditions and scriptures, and there’s none about which I am assumed.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, and the other question about…

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

And I don’t know what billions that he says the Vatican has. The billions of this world I think are not in the Vatican, we know where they are, and they are not coming to Africa, on the contrary, Africa is being sucked dry by those people, those multinationals, they are the ones who should be bringing our money back to us. I think we are targeting the wrong place. I come from Africa, and the funds that come from church agencies for us are very important.

Zeinab Badawi

Ann Widdecombe, one specific question to you, why not women priests in the Catholic church?

Ann Widdecombe

Well, no, the specific question was, why is it not alright for a woman to be a priest but it is for a woman to be an MP, that’s the specific question. And I have to say to you, that really does betray a vast ignorance. A Member of Parliament, male or female, does not stand in persona Christi at the point of consecration. But I don’t believe that it is any more possible for a woman to represent Christ at the point of consecration than for a man to be the Virgin Mary.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thanks. Lots of hands up and I really do want to go around everybody, so panel, if you could keep your responses to the point as much as you can. Up there, please.

Question

Question to Stephen Fry, I’m a Catholic, but I like you a lot, about … I don’t know that the Catholic church condemns homosexuality as such, only recommends chastity for everybody, and then, if I’m not married I should be chaste, whether I am homosexual or heterosexual.

Question

Hi, question for Ann Widdecombe actually. You accused Christopher Hitchens of judging the Catholic church by the standards of the time, but surely the truths in your doctrines are either eternal or they’re not.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, Stephen Fry, the question about the Catholic church apparently doesn’t condemn homosexuality, that question asked.

Stephen Fry

Well, I’m afraid it simply does, it does condemn it, yes. It calls it, the official word is a disorder, but it was refined by the current Pontiff, Ratzinger, who called it a moral evil. But on the other hand we must remember, as the point that was made, is that the church is very loose on moral evils, because although they try to accuse people like me, who believe in empiricism and the Enlightenment, of somehow what they call moral relativism, as if it’s some appalling sin, where what it actually means is thought, they for example thought that slavery was perfectly fine, absolutely okay, and then they didn’t. And what is the point of the Catholic church if it says ‘oh, well we couldn’t know better because nobody else did,’ then what are you for?

Zeinab Badawi

Can you just clarify for us on this thing about homosexuality, the Catholic church condemns the act but not the individual. Did Jesus Christ himself actually say anything about homosexuality?

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

That is a wrong question in this subject… <interjection from Stephen Fry>…no, because we not aware about homosexuality, the morality of homosexuality, being a matter that drew the attention of Jesus. But Jesus certainly spoke about the Ten Commandments and adultery, and I do not think we should deny the church the right to propound its own doctrines, you are not obliged to take it.

Zeinab Badawi

Let’s hear more from the floor, and then we’ll come…yep, go on.

Question

Our life is based on the life of Jesus Christ, not on emotion or peace or the way the world is going. So, I think all the people who are listening, I think the message we are getting here will lead us to live a good life.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thanks, let’s just get through some more comments. Okay, yep, briefly please, briefly.

Question

I spent 38 years of my life as a Catholic and then I saw the light, and my life now is going back and forth to Africa and next month I go to Uganda, and I’m working on trying to stop mothers dying in pregnancy and childbirth. What I’m saying is, please, please, reverse the ruling on condoms and family planning and contraception and save more lives, save the thousands and thousands of lives…

Zeinab Badawi

Let’s keep this moving, briefly please.

Question

As a Catholic I’m actually very pleased to be here this evening to hear two sides of a very important argument, and the positive thing I take away is that the Catholic church can take the opportunity to reflect upon these comments and that we look for the future, and that it is by actually accepting these comments and by looking for a way forward that the church can actually grow and have a more important part in the world.

Zeinab Badawi

Thank you. We can’t take any more questions from the floor, really, but panel, what I propose is this: you’ve heard the points that are raised, some of them were comments, some of them were questions, you’re going to have a few minutes to make your closing statements, please incorporate these questions that you heard in your closing statements. Because audience, I want you to vote again. Now for those of you who are watching at home, if you’d like a briefing booklet on some of those issues that you’ve heard raised today, then please go to www.intelligencesquared.com and you can download that booklet, anybody can do it and it’s absolutely free. Okay, so everybody’s doing that, so while you’re all doing that, it’s going to take a little bit of time, we’re going to hear the closing statements incorporating some of the points that you the audience raised, and we’re going to do it in reverse order this time, and it’s going to be Stephen Fry first.

Stephen Fry

Well it’s been a really interesting debate, and I’ve loved some of the questions from the floor. I suppose I’m slightly disappointed that Ann Widdecombe in particular should say “oh, I knew they’d bring up condoms and child rape and homosexuality.” It’s a bit like a burglar in court saying “you would bring up that burglary and that manslaughter, you never mentioned the fact that I gave my father a birthday present.” You know, yes, yes, are you getting the message? There is a reason we hammer home these issues: because they matter. It’s such an opportunity, owning a billion souls at baptism. It’s such an opportunity to do something remarkable, to make this planet better, and it’s an opportunity that is constantly and arrogantly being avoided and I’m sorry for that.

Zeinab Badawi

Okay, thank you. Final statement from Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe for the motion that the Catholic church is a force for good in the world.

Ann Widdecombe

Right, we have had all the usual stuff, about how the Catholic church, being against condoms, has apparently caused untold misery. As I’ve said, our opponents always try to home in on sex, when the teachings of the church, which are after all only about the stability of family, the maintenance of fidelity, the virtue of chastity, when the church teaches that as one part of all its teaching, I do sometimes despair at the way that these debates always, always come back to that. So, I’m very pleased to have been here tonight, despite the fact that I think the incoming poll was slightly discouraging. I’m very pleased to have been here, to have been here with the Archbishop, and with the two gentlemen opposite, and thank you for the opportunity.

Zeinab Badawi

Against the motion, Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens

Unanswered questions: amazing, no one, though they were asked repeatedly, would say whether they thought Stephen Fry, my friend, was in a state of mortal sin or not. They wouldn’t tell you. Something about the question brought out their inner coward. Well, I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason. That when my children were young, I’d have been proud to have Stephen as their babysitter, and I’d've told them they were lucky, and if anyone came to my door as a babysitter wearing holy orders, I’d call first a cab and then the police.

Zeinab Badawi

Final statement from our final speaker, Archbishop of Abuja, John Onaiyekan. You’ve gotta make your final pitch now, to the audience.

Archbishop John Onaiyekan

Thank you very much. I just want to draw the attention of the audience back to the topic, and the topic is quite clear, the Catholic church is a force for good in the world. It did not say it is the only source for good. It did not say it has always been a source for good, it’s not in the past, it is in the present tense – is a source for good. I still cannot see how they have in any way shown the Catholic church is not a force for good in the world. I can say all kinds of things about other people, but I think it is fair enough that when it comes to “what does the Church say about condoms? what does it say about homosexuality? what does it say about women priests?” we have to take the trouble to find out exactly what it is saying. Not what the newspapers are saying that we are saying. We never said that the Catholic church is perfect, we continue to do our best, to be as close as we can to Jesus Christ and what he wants us to be, and to constantly be a force for good in the world, and I thank you.

Zeinab Badawi

Archbishop, thank you. Audience, you’ve all voted again. Now the moment of truth, panel. Let me remind everybody that before the debate, when everybody came in, this is how you voted: for the motion “that the Catholic church is a force for good in the world” 678, against the motion 1102, and the undecideds, the ‘don’t know’s were 346. This is how you voted subsequently: for the motion “that the Catholic church is a force for good” from 678 it’s gone to 268. I’m sorry. Against the motion, it’s now 1876. And you can see that doesn’t leave very many ‘don’t know’s, it’s 34 undecided. So commiserations Archbishop and Ann Widdecombe, congratulations Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens. Thank you all, from me Zeinab Badawi, good bye.

Tommy Tiernan

Perhaps one of the most controversial of Ireland’s homegrowns in the last couple of decades, this Donegal born son is also far and away one of the most successful. He holds the Guinness World Record for the longest stand-up comedy show by an individual. He’s also been accused of blasphemy by the Irish Senate, of killing Father Ted by Ardal O’Hanlon, and provoked quite an uproar recently with some jokes on the Holocaust. And he’s great!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dara Ó Briain

I’m not a religious man, I don’t even believe in God. But I’m still Catholic, of course. Catholicism has a much broader reach than just the religion. I’m ethnically Catholic, it’s the box you have to tick on the census form: ‘Don’t believe in God, but I do still hate Rangers.’ The fact is that it’s a shared hinterland between me and every other Irish person, a collection of references that we all understand, stories we all know…  Once you’ve started Catholic, frankly, there’s no really way to stop being Catholic… It’s like a huge club you can’t ever leave.²

Ó Briain is certainly the more presentable face of Irish comedy, as his common appearance on the BBC attests. The worst criticism he has to contend with is a bit of sexism in his role as moderator of weekly satire program Mock the Week. Irish speaking he might be, at least he’s from The Pale!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dave Allen

Tallaght’s most famous son? At least for me—I’m sure Mick McCarthy would have another candidate.³ Dave Allen’s laid back, intimate style of show, with stories regaled over a smoke and a glass of whiskey interspersed with various sketches was certainly an inspiration for many who followed him. The world’s most dedicated practicing atheist will be sorely missed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. À la Thomas Cahill, How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.
2. Courtesy of An Odyssey of Quotes.
3. Robbie Keane is another.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Play for free

How do you turn a free product into a profitable enterprise? That’s normally the challenging issue to be faced in today’s increasingly competitive online market. Internet giant Google continues to have issues attempting to monetise its expensively acquired YouTube daughter. Yet game developer Turbine is looking to do exactly the opposite, converting their current business model into a subscription-supported free product. But does ‘free’ pay?

It certainly appears that Turbine’s decision to offer their MMO Dungeons & Dragons Online for free has paid off. Hundreds of thousands of new players have signed up to take advantage of the new offer, and despite the ‘free’ price tag, subscriptions are up 40%. In addition, many players are taking advantage of an in-game payment mechanism to buy additional items and open up new sections of the game. Previously the game had required players to pay a one off purchase price, followed by a monthly subscription fee. Now just about anyone can download the game and be playing within half an hour, paying or otherwise. Turbine also maintain that some players are paying even more per month than the previous subscription fee alone, removing an important cap on how much individual players could pay into the game. Rather than seeing players who play without paying as freeloaders, Turbine are confident that such players bring their own benefit to the company, generating interest, advertising via word-of-mouth, and thereby generating new subscriptions and one-off payments.

Just how successful this move will prove to be in the long-run is difficult to estimate. It’s clear that the business model has worked to some extent, generating plenty of fresh interest in a game that is already over three years old. But will the benefits dry up once the hype is over? What is clear is that this move represents yet another step away from traditional methods of sale, and is another example of a trend away from that classic method of promoting games—the demo.

Indeed, it would appear that there is plenty of evidence that offering games for free, if only for short periods, acts as one of the best methods of advertisement. Figures produced earlier this year by Valve boss Gabe Newell suggest that offering their action zombie-fest Left 4 Dead at a discount price over a free test weekend boosted sales figures to such an extent that they beat launch figures. The same source reveals that the release of new content for their other key title Team Fortress 2 also boosted Valve’s sales significantly.

Of course, in the case of games sold via Steam the main impulse for the impressive sales figures lies in the buyer’s perception of the short-term heavy discounts being offered. But the principle of no cost gaming models isn’t limited to only short-term probation periods, nor is Turbine unique in pursuing their policy of a combined free and subscription service. Gaming giant EA recently entered the market with Battlefield Heroes, a comical extension to their successful Battlefield series, this time free to play via browser, and supported by player micro-payments for upgrades and vanity items. Certainly an experimental move on EA’s part, recent figures do suggest that there has been some success, with players who make use of the game’s extra features paying an average of $20, and the total number of players recently tipping the 2 million mark.

And it’s not just the big players who are experimenting with new sales tactics. 2D Boy are taking a leaf out of Radiohead’s books, and offering their award-winning World of Goo title for a limited time at whatever price the buyer wishes. Whilst I can’t see such a risk being taken by any of the larger games producers any time soon, regardless of how successful 2D Boy’s trial proves, it does represent yet another departure from the traditional sales models.

As ever, however, failure remains an important component of every experiment. Whilst systems of in-game micro-payments are providing some evidence of success for EA and Turbine, it appears other alternatives to direct subscription gaming aren’t bringing home the bacon. id Software’s Quake Live was to be a free browser-based game funded via in-game advertising, however earlier this year John Carmack revealed that a premium subscription service would be have to be offered in addition, an honest admission that their advertising model alone won’t foot the bill.

Nevertheless, it is clear that games companies are becoming increasingly willing to try new tactics when it comes to funding their productions. Direct payment and subscription methods are being gradually supplemented in part with micro-payments, and attempts are being made to integrate in-game advertising, although to date it seems with little relatively success. Valve’s Steam content delivery system is proving to be an able testing ground for offering short-term probation periods for gamers, and the different levels of discounts and their positive effect on games sales will provide plenty of food for thought for games publishers and psychologists alike. Whilst we are still some way from seeing such methods commonly applied to mainstream games, it will be interesting too see whether these current examples remain profitable, and if they will inspire others to do the same. It seems even a free product can turn a profit.

Amazon Kindle e-book reader

Reading this post recently, I found myself asking why ebooks haven’t really taken off as a medium. Certainly more recent efforts, such as Amazon’s Kindle, have helped to reignite the market after a rather dubious development period over the past decade or so, but if one compares the ubiquity of mobile phones or digital audio players, e-books are entirely missing from the landscape.¹

In purely utilitarian terms, should the technology ever be fully and appropriately used, ebooks have a lot to offer over their paper counterparts. There are far fewer requirements and resources needed for production, and distribution is much easier. Whilst a device on which to read ebooks might outweigh a single volume, additional books add nothing, and in terms of transporting books en mass, ebooks are clearly in favour. The ability to flick through a paper volume might be lost in the electronic form, but this is clearly compensated for by vastly improved tools for search and cross-referencing. Likewise combining other forms of media such as video and audio is a perfectly reasonable conception with ebooks, that the paper variety can’t really compete with on any level. They’re also more easily manipulable, in terms of being able to zoom, highlight or simple leave your own annotations about the place. All of which is to say nothing of the potential advantages for newspapers and other periodicals.

Yet although the technology is certainly in a position to deliver an entirely new experience for readers, the potential has not really been tapped to any great extent, and in fact it would appear as though it is being deliberately held back. Tempting as the current technology may appear, there are still many questions left unanswered that prevent any real rapid transfer. Can books somehow be backed up to prevent possible corruption? What happens to the titles previously bought should one buy a different reader? When buying a paper book, customers can feel confident that their purchase is physically in their position, to use as they see fit. Even simple, everyday acts that we would normally take for granted with a paper book,² such as photocopying pages or lending it  to a friend, suddenly become problematic when dealing with the ebook equivalent. And what about being able to sell a book on when you’re finished with it? In addition, the recent case of Amazon withdrawing books sold for their Kindle reader,³ including deleting the items from user’s devices, highlights yet one more issue that users face when choosing between paper and electronic formats.

The current situation reminds me very much of that surrounding the invention and spread of mp3s in the later 1990s. Whilst the format gained in popularity and notoriety in the years following its publication in 1994-5, the music industry treated the news entirely as a threat to its position, and sought to localise and stifle the Internet phenomenon. When one considers that it wasn’t until mid-2003 that today’s largest online music retailer iTunes opened its e-doors, it becomes clear just how difficult working against such conservative forces can be. It’s an interesting phenomenon, given that most technological advances are met with very early attempts to capitalise upon them, that such an opportunity went virtually ignored and even shunned for almost a decade, before a success story could be made out of it. Perhaps all that is needed to really revolutionise the world of publishing is that mp3 format of ebooks, a format that will provide readers both the security of ownership that a regular paper equivalent manifests, combined with every advantage today’s technology can provide. That format for books has nothing to do with size and ease of distribution, as it did with music, rather a format that will open up a digital format to all publishers, and make the rather fledgling e-publishing market explode.

1. According to The Guardian in April 2008, ebooks accounted for less than 1% of the total publishing market, albeit this share has no doubt increased since.
2. Though with the potential to infringe upon copyright laws.
3. Pictured above. Image by davidking via Flickr.

“The Liar” by Stephen Fry

The Liar

This wasn’t really one on my reading list, rather something I was asked to read for my opinion. I read Fry’s autobiographical Moab is my Washpot some time ago and found it a fairly interesting tale, though wasn’t particularly attracted enough to turn to his works of fiction. Fry’s reputation obviously precedes him, and despite The Liar being his first work of fiction, came with some reasonable acclaim and decent reviews.

Plunging in, it quickly became clear how much the plot owes to Fry’s own life (at least judging from what was revealed in Moab). At every turn I was reminded of snippets of that work of autobiography, stretched and bedecked with fansifications from Fry’s extremely fertile mind. Whilst I’ve no doubt many of the characters are based on real people, the book very much feels aloof from reality and announces itself as such. But such an approach doesn’t make a book bad. What The Liar lacked was anything to appeal to it beyond the language. Plot, such as there was, often became confusing, with frequent unmarked jumps of scene and timeframe. Whilst they weren’t so outrageous as to get the reader lost, they did sometimes require a bit of backtracking, particularly when picking the book up again. Added to that were some sections in italics in which the characters’ identities were disguised, and whilst they may have been intended like so much corn flour to thicken the plot, they were abstract in the utmost and entirely destroyed come the book’s final revelations. To my mind, the problem was that the story tried to offer too much, instead of focusing on being a lighthearted yarn. It’s a work of fiction, and tries to be funny with it, but I felt the few openly amusing moments were all too infrequent on account of making the plot out to be something that much more than it was.

As his first work of fiction, I can’t claim that Fry did a particularly bad job. It was interesting enough to make me want to finish it, and whilst at times the unexpected time jumps and secluded identities made the plot a little confusing, the ultimate lightness of the storyline meant that this wasn’t too much of a problem. The writing itself is of course interesting and pleasant to read, as one would expect from such an eloquent and vociferous character. This itself was enough to carry the story to its rather overinflated conclusion, but the book was ultimately a disappointment. Perhaps I should’ve been more wary of the fact that some of the highest words of praise on the book’s jacket came from Fry’s longtime friend Hugh Laurie:

It’s very unfair. It took Joseph Heller seven years to write Catch 22. Stephen seems to have knocked this one off on a couple of wet Wednesday afternoons in Norfolk.

A couple of wet afternoons, indeed, and any comparison to Catch 22 is rather a tad on the optimistic side! Only for the die-hard Fry fans, I can only assume his later works show a more mature hand, but for those who expect novels to deliver what they promise, I recommend reading Moab is my Washpot, the original version of The Liar, sans the guff.

“Slow Man” by J.M. Coetzee

Slow Man

Coetzee is an author I’d never picked up before, but given the reputation thought I should try on for size. And the opening third of the book certainly appealed to me. The writing is concise, descriptive, and at times you might say beautiful. And the story appeals for its simplicity: an active, elderly man loses a leg in a cycling accident, and has to deal with this sudden change in his life. Not only has his whole way of life been affected by the alteration, but he is sharply introduced to the way society views him, an old man, perhaps even before he became emasculated.

Then come the people in his life. The early introduction of helpers with whom he has to become accustomed promises much of the story, and indeed starts off as an interesting exploration. All of which is sent completely out of the window with the appearance of Elizabeth Costello. As an author who appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the story, it’s difficult to know exactly how to deal with her. Is she supposed to embody Paul, the main character’s inner thoughts? Or perhaps she’s supposed to be Coetzee himself, and the ensuing discussions which take place principally between Paul and Elizabeth are a form of dialogue that investigate the very nature of the author’s relation to his subject? Who the fuck knows. I’m afraid to say, I don’t. It’s a very rare book indeed that I start and don’t manage to get through to the end, and for a book as short as Slow Man, it says rather a lot that I didn’t. The character of Elizabeth is irritating in the extreme; her presence, quite baffling. In the end I found myself put off by the combination of these two factors and moved on to other things. Perhaps those interested more in writing than reading will find more to earn from reading this book, but for myself it was off-putting.

What began as an intriguing, well-styled look at such everyday relations was completely spoiled by this aggravating and unexplained intrusion. I can only assume it was all something I didn’t understand, else Coetzee’s acclaim stems from his other works.

“City of the Beasts” by Isabel Allende

City of Beasts

Moving on up from Coetzee should’ve been easy, but unfortunately I made a mistake with this work from Isabel Allende. Another author I’d never previously got around to reading, I picked this book up on a whim from the library shelves, and took it as being a ‘dead cert’ after the disappointments of Slow Man. What I hadn’t realised however (and what wasn’t particularly clear from the cover—a fact a lot of Amazon reviewers also agreed with), was that City of the Beasts is a book for young adults.

Such as it was, I actually got through a fair few chapters before giving up, which may be a good sign at least as far as recommending this book to the intended age group. The subject matter is probably sufficiently interesting, the sense of adventure reasonably acute, and the writing free-flowing and inviting enough to appeal to children of the right age. Of course the main character is a child, and the other main protagonists are suitably bland figures lacking in much depth that is probably well-suited to a younger mind. There was no way I could stomach forcing myself through to the end, however. I’m still very much of the opinion, as the wonderful and very sadly missed Linda Smith remarked, that adults who wish to ‘read’ books like Harry Potter in public should at least have the decency or common sense to disguise it with something more appropriate like pornography.¹ Not that there’s anything wrong with children of the right age reading it, but I honestly fail to see the appeal or sense in reading trivialities, largely no doubt on the basis that it is popular, when there’s such a wealth out there to choose from.

Whether City of the Beasts really lives up to such expectations then, you’ll have to find out elsewhere. But for me this was just another sad disappointment in a month of poor reads.

“White Teeth” by Zadie Smith

White Teeth

Fortunately, this month of bad picks was finally rescued by Zadie Smith’s surprisingly excellent first novel. I’d originally intended to read this book on the recommendation of a friend almost ten years ago, and it was just by chance that I finally got around to picking it up now. After the thorough disappointment of the previous books, I suppose anything with half a plot and a few interesting characters would have sufficed, but White Teeth lived up to its reputation as the award-winning bestseller it is advertised as.

The book follows the tribulations of a handful of families thrown together in the London melting pot, taking snippets out of their lives as the decades roll by. Described by some as a ‘serious comic novel’, Smith certainly approaches her subject in a light-hearted manner, weaving plenty of humourous little moments into what is otherwise a fairly serious look at the issues of multiculturalism in late-twentieth century Britain. Despite the large cast of characters, the different generations and jumps back and forth in time, Smith does a good job of keeping the reader aware of what’s going on, and it never felt unnecessarily confusing or convoluted. There are occasional threads in the story that appear to have little meaning or significance in the overall plot, and could have been left out to save a few pages, but the writing is so attractive that it didn’t detract from the overall goal.

Whether White Teeth would have come so highly acclaimed had it not been published when it was, however, is another matter entirely. Although perfectly readable, and highly entertaining, the book is not without its fair share of problems. The novel is built upon the strength of its characters, and Smith has what has elsewhere been described as a Dickensian tendency to deliver a rich array of supporting players, each of them individual, each as important as a major character. Whilst it was clear to see where the adjective had sprung from, Smith’s minor characters don’t quite have that sublime combination of simplicity and depth of Dickens, yet worse is the fact that some of her major characters felt rather more wooden than these throwaway roles. Smith’s guiding light, however, is not a man like Dickens but rather Salman Rushdie. The few references thrown in along the way are only the more glaring hints that it is this style which Smith is trying to emulate. White Teeth appeals at heart as a contrastive and comparative look at dealing with the gray areas of multiculturalism, from different perspectives and different generations, yet there are clear signs that Smith was attempting to turn the novel into an epic along the lines of Midnight’s Children, spanning more generations and decades, entwining key historical events. The only thing really missing was the magic realism of Rushdie. Yet where others have lambasted the mimicry, I rather enjoyed the similarity, because Smith is far from being just a mockingbird, and her own unique voice was a pleasure to read.

For a first novel, White Teeth certainly illustrates a lot of promise and potential in Smith’s writing. Many complained that the book did not deserve the praise it received, and they certainly are justified in pointing out certain problems in the overall picture. But personally, I found any complaints I had were niggling and temporary, and thoroughly enjoyed the style, the characters and message of this debut novel. I only need wait and see now whether it takes me another decade to pick up another Zadie Smith or not.

“Murray Walker: Unless I’m Very Much Mistaken” by Murray Walker

Unless I'm Very Much Mistaken: Murray Walker

Normally I wouldn’t review an autobiographical work such as this, let alone read one. I have little patience for most self-eulogies, but occasionally I find myself tempted, and for a man like Murray Walker, I gladly make an exception.

I should perhaps first make clear that I’m not the greatest motor racing fan. Particularly when I was younger, I was perhaps aware that it went on, and would occasionally make a mental note of the results when such would appear on the news, but this was usually limited to a few races a year, and I don’t believe I ever actually sat down to watch a race. Yet I was nevertheless aware of this man’s presence. He really was the Voice of Formula 1 like no man perhaps ever again shall be. With British television being as it was, sports coverage was for many years dominated by the BBC. As the independent stations began to take a keen interest, and of course the cable and satellite subscription services became popular, after some competitive bargaining the BBC was left with scant coverage of generally fairly lesser ranking events for some years. Formula 1 moved over to ITV, but unlike in pretty much every other instance, at least that springs to mind, that voice of commentary went with it!

And that’s pretty much where I came into F1 racing I think. For whatever reason, with the move to ITV I finally found myself taking the time on a Sunday afternoon to put my feet up and watch the coverage from wherever the event happened to be. That might have principally been down to the terrible television signal we had for the BBC stations at that time. Either way, it’s testament to the man’s presence that perhaps without really knowing his name or who he was, I knew Murray Walker’s voice like I knew my own father’s. Whoever was in the run, wherever the action took place, the scene wouldn’t be complete without his commentary.

Formula 1 is a sport that virtually cannot exist without commentary. If you’ve ever watched a race with the sound off, you’ll perhaps understand what I mean. Since the action doesn’t always happen in front of your eyes, and the nature of the race means that the full stretch of track can have important events happening at once, motor racing does at times seem singularly unsuited as a spectator sport. Perhaps the reason why the Americans took to the circular track form to make it more spectator-friendly. With cars pitting, crashing, overtaking and lapping, the order can get very confusing, very quickly, till the viewer has hardly more clue about who’s leading the race as a boxing fan knows who’s winning a fight on points.

Which is where Murray Walker seemed perfectly made for his job. As a motor racing enthusiast and son of a fairly successful motorcycle racer, he had the opportunity early in life to take up the commentator’s microphone. From humble beginnings blossomed a long-standing career, as private passion first accompanied then replaced his regular work in advertising. And what a fortune for those of us on the receiving end. His genuine enthusiasm for the sport turned Formula 1 seasons into thrilling epics akin to gladiatorial fights. When something happened on the track, you’d know instantly just how important that was, and what that meant for the race and the championship. Throwing in some extra tidbits of information from races and seasons past, even the relatively quiet moments of a Grand Prix would be filled with something informative, an important accessory in a sport in which for large periods of time, the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that nothing of any import was happening. When someone at the back of the field was making progress, you’d hear; when someone made a pitstop, you’d understand what that meant for the ones around him; when someone set the fastest lap, you’d know how that compared to previous years or previous fastest laps. All these little hints and titbits made his commentary all the more engaging and informative, but kept the viewer exactly on the button in an otherwise incredibly detailed sport.

Of course, given such details and the speed with which things happen in motorsport, people make mistakes, and Murray Walker was infamous for them. The very title of his autobiography indicates as much. Whilst some might argue that his ‘Murrayisms’ detracted from the commentary and were indications that he was losing it towards the end of his career, I couldn’t disagree more. There was always something harmless about his gaffs, something comical and endearing, that neither detracted from what he was trying to say (at least most of the time—there were occasions when it was difficult to work out what he was on about) nor interrupted the wonderful flow of enthusiasm he conveyed. A few of his more illustrious Murrayisms are on this blog’s Quote Collection—a full list could exhaust a post of itself!

After reading this book, I had originally planned to write a separate post about this wonderful man. However, since I’d already decided to write about some of my recent reads, it seemed more appropriate to append it to this post. One final thing that became clear from reading Murray Walker’s autobiography was how great a gentleman he really was. So much was fairly clear from his commentary, and I can hardly imagine a harsh word spoken by him about any of the competitors, even when all around him were screaming abuse for one reason or another. When accusation of cheating or unsportsmanship were floating around, Murray would always give the benefit of the doubt, and it’s not difficult to see why he was so well liked by his colleagues and associates. Although some of his thoughts and opinions might not be everyone’s cup of tea, he was deserved of every accolade he received, and more besides. A true pillar of sport commentary, F1 hasn’t been the same without him, and whilst rumours abound about his return with the shift of F1 coverage back to the BBC, I think it would be wrong of him to take any role greater than the one of website commentator already revealed.

1. YouTube links to Linda Smith’s Room 101 possibly available here: 1, 2, 3.

Left 4 Dead (PC)

For whatever reason, Valve deemed last weekend to be worthy of celebration, and in addition to offering a welcome discount, offered a free trial for their action-packed zombie fest Left 4 Dead. Never one to pass up on such offers, and having a few friends who’d already bought the game, I spent a fair few hours last weekend testing the game out, enough so to have convinced me to actually buy the thing!

Whilst Left 4 Dead sits firmly in the survival horror genre, it is without a doubt a shooter through and through. Whilst the genre may have its early origins with games like Alone in the Dark, Left 4 Dead is to that what 28 Days Later is to Night of the Living Dead. It’s a high-energy bloodbath, which is well and truly the game’s essence. Forget setting, plot or character development, the game boils down to an assault course for four, through levels strewn with zombies to some method of escape, with occasional safe points along the way.

That might not sound particularly novel, but the game’s central tenet is its co-operative side. Whilst there are plenty of games past that have featured zombies in one way or another, none have quite provided the experiences associated with the stereotypical zombie genre. Left 4 Dead clearly owes a lot to the zombie movie, from the opening intro to the closing credit sequences, and the gaming world has been truly aching for such a game. Mods such as Zombie Panic! or Zombie Master filled a gap, but Left 4 Dead has made full use of the Source engine to create a movie experience built for four.

Teamwork

Over the trial weekend I was lucky enough to have had 3 experienced veterans to guide me through the game’s four campaigns. Each features the characters making their way through a typical dystopian setting, liberally sprinkled with the living dead, towards some form of rescue. Generally the levels are punctuated by minor set pieces, and an occasional pause whilst something important happens, during which time the characters have to hold their ground as a horde of zombies is thrown at them. Whilst that might sound simple enough, and nothing that a player couldn’t manage on his own, without those extra three guns a player would quickly find it difficult if not impossible to withstand the tide of brain eaters.

In terms of the teamwork element, Left 4 Dead is quite probably one of the best co-operative gaming experiences to date. Although there are plenty of other games with co-op modes built in, these tend to add nothing to the single player mode save having to find extra weapons and health packs for your companion(s), and you might as well be running around on your own for all the use that the extra players bring. In Left 4 Dead, however, running off on your own will likely soon find you lying under a rugby scrum of zombies all trying to take a memento of your flesh. Players can easily become ‘incapacitated’ by being trodden down under the weight of too many fiends, or else attacked by one of the few special zombies each equipped with certain abilities. Without another player handy to rescue them, it would soon be lights out.

Instinct

Stocking up whilst there's chance

If the game owes so much to its shooter heritage and zombie film inspiration, then we can thank Valve that it plays like it should. That is to say, if you’ve played other FPS games and seen a zombie film or two, you should know what to expect. The game is peppered with time- and thought-saving features that generally go unnoticed, but which all serve to make the game run so seamlessly. Take the weapons, for example. Each player immediately comes equipped with a pistol with unlimited ammunition, which for anyone who’s experienced being reduced to playing an FPS with nothing more effective than the tattoos on your knuckles and harsh language as a means of defending yourself, immediately appeals as a good idea. The player chooses their main weapon from a small selection of the usual suspects arrayed out at each safety point in the campaign (i.e. the beginning of each stage), and ammunition is available in occasional piles scattered throughout the levels, regardless of weapon. Aside from those two guns, players can take one medikit, one grenade and one packet of pills (a temporary health booster), all of which prevents players from stockpiling weapons from their teammates, or having to constantly swap around guns for lack of ammunition.

The clever level design is another efficient time-saver. Rather than have players walking around as headless as the zombies they’re trying to avoid, the levels are laid out fairly simply and intuitively, each section leading to the next. When there is an occasional set piece, the task is highlighted so that the players know exactly which lever to press, which lift to climb into, or which radio to use. This highlighting feature is also used to show players where their teammates are, by displaying bright blue outlines of the players when they would normally be out of sight behind objects, a really excellent idea that serves to prevent players from getting completely lost and separated from the group, and really comes into its own when a player finds himself incapacitated or smothered by a wall of undead flesh. Without that ghostly blue outline to help find him, a player might as well put his calls for help on hold and enjoy the cheesy lift music.

Mr. Hyde

The regular campaign mode, although perhaps the highlight of the game, is only a part of its repertoire. When you’re fed up of running through the campaigns as a survivor (of which more later), the option is there to put the boot on the other foot and play as one of the opposing ‘special’ zombies against a team of survivors. Each of the four zombie types has its own special ability to cause general mayhem and suffering, ranging from the Hunter, a nimble, springy beast that might remind players of the alien mode in Aliens vs. Predator, through to the rarer but more dangerous Tank, a lumbering beast that takes some serious firepower to stop, somewhat resembling the untoward appearances of Mr. Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The way the zombie players spawn in is another nice feature of the game, having them able to see the ghostly outlines of the other zombie players before they choose their spawning location, as well as being able to follow the survivors around, seeing their outlines through walls, thereby being far more able to set up ambushes and the like.

Although an interesting idea, from what I’ve seen the mode really doesn’t have all that much to endear itself. The zombies, although now perhaps a little more coordinated being human controlled, are still just as easy to spot and kill as when controlled by the AI, with the zombies making the same giveaway noises they normally would: the projectile vomiting Boomer zombie eliciting sounds dreadfully similar to those heard in most British city centres on a Friday night. Added to that are the sadly long spawn times between lives, and the players on the zombie team inevitably end up feeling rather more like spectators than participants. Fortunately the teams are usually swapped at the end of every segment and the two quartets compete as to who can complete the levels with more of their brains unchewed, but it still doesn’t add very much to the original co-op mode, and feels rather much a cute novelty than a real gaming mode.

In fact, Left 4 Dead at times appeals to the rather more cynical side in me, which suggests that the name for the game really came about when the developers stopped working on the project and moved on to other things. The original four campaigns in their co-op mode are thoroughly enthralling, and the versus mode at least offers some variation on the theme, but playing through the same four segments repeatedly soon gets very tired. Naturally there are different difficulty settings—but which FPS doesn’t have one of those—and the so-called “AI director” does at least ensure that the segments aren’t entirely predictable, by changing the locations of health, ammo and special zombies and calling in zombie hordes occasionally. But honestly, whether a horde of zombies appears a third of the way through the level rather than at the half-way stage isn’t exactly the most radical alteration worthy of a repeat performance.

Conclusion

A molotov cocktail in the right place can decimate a zombie horde

With the help of a team of experienced zombie fest veterans, I managed to play through the four campaigns in the one evening of the free trial, arguably exhausting a good chunk of the game’s playability. And despite that fact, still went out of the way to buy the game. In fact, as ever with Valve, actually parting with my money was a more difficult feat than pre-loading the game and taking advantage of the free trial. Apparently, purchasing from them using a payment method that isn’t tied to the country you’re in is considered somehow suspicious by Valve, a completely retarded policy if ever I heard one, which I swiftly outmanoeuvred through a bit of remote administering of a computer in another country. This wasn’t even the first time I had difficulties paying via Steam, having had accounts locked in the past for using payment methods in ways deemed incompatible with their policies.

But I digress. Although I was persuaded enough by the trial (and the discount!) to buy Left 4 Dead, as the package currently stands it really doesn’t live up to its regular price tag. The original co-op campaign modes are really well made, and easily one of the best four-player co-op experiences available in an FPS, but with around an hour’s playtime for each, the game weighs in extremely short in terms of regular play, replayable though it is. The versus mode on the other hand has its moments, but in general doesn’t live up to expectations, and really feels more like a way of distracting four players whilst the other team actually plays through the game.

What Left 4 Dead really does have on its side, however, is Valve’s reputation as developers. Their dedication to adding features and fixes long after a game’s release is certainly to be factored into the game’s longevity. There was recently a new game mode introduced, which I haven’t yet had the time to try out, and no doubt there are many other ideas swimming around in their fertile little minds. As with many developers today, Valve’s development cycle really has shifted much further beyond the release date than ever before, with Left 4 Dead being a perfect example of a game released in a half-complete state in terms of content, albeit that half being well polished and gruesomely good fun!

Pros

• Graphics—perhaps not the prettiest graphics around, but still looks very authentic
• Co-operative mode—grab three friends and have some of the most fun you can have with your clothes on
• Gameplay—set off a car alarm by mistake, and hear the howls as the entire zombified neighbourhood comes to dine

Cons

• Length—the four main campaigns last perhaps an hour each, and apart from replaying those, there isn’t very much extra content
• Versus mode—more of a gimmick than an extra playable mode

And if you came here mistakenly expecting to read something entertaining, here’s a saving grace in the form of Yahtzee‘s wonderful 4 minute Left 4 Dead review.

]]> http://www.amindatplay.eu/2009/05/08/left-4-dead-review/feed/ 1 http://www.amindatplay.eu/2009/05/06/the-repeatables/ http://www.amindatplay.eu/2009/05/06/the-repeatables/#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 15:19:40 +0000 Fips http://www.amindatplay.eu/?p=197 This isn’t meant to be a list of classic films. In fact, many classics would find it difficult to creep on to this list. These films don’t have to have bemusing screenplays, flawless acting, blood-pumping soundtracks, or brilliant cinematography. But they are all linked by that special je ne sais quoi which makes me able to watch them time and time again. That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of great movies that share this rather dubious accolade. I could and would watch many of them again, but the experience is always be somewhat diminished from that initial viewing.

The films on this list, however, have something special that gives them enduring longevity. It’s not the film itself but the film experience that counts. With the intricacies of the plot laid bare, the twists, turns, shocks and surprises all blunted by experience, what’s left is whatever ethos the film can conjure up. Which is precisely what some cult classics manage so successfully. Umberto Eco once wrote that “Casablanca became a cult movie because it is not one movie. It is “movies”.”¹ His point was that the film itself wasn’t any particular gem, but it encapsulated what movie-goers expected to see. The lines were famous before they were spoken, perhaps the most famous line of all being the one that wasn’t even in it (“Play it again, Sam”). But films that are able to do that go on to be remembered long after they’re made, irrespective of their individual merits and the quality of their cinematography, acting or screenplay.

This is simply a list of films that qualify merely on account of springing to mind first when considering what makes a film rewatchable. They’re mostly quite mainstream, with a heavy slant on the action side, no doubt in part because drama is a singularly poor trait for repeat value. But they are foremost a very personal example, and I doubt whether others will share even a portion of their number.

James Bond series

Bond

This is of course a complete cheat entry, as there are more films here than in the rest of the list put together. Nevertheless, the series is a perfect representation of what I mean by a film ethos somehow entirely separate from its content. In fact, the film ethos is so far separated from the material, that there is no real storyline threading the films together—one could go as far as to say the films do better being stood in isolation than seen as part of a series. The contradictions are numerous, the plots often bear scant relation to one another, with hardly ever a reference to what went before or what will come after. How else could so many actors have played multiple roles in the series?

The Bond films are an encapsulation of fantasy and escapism, the same as their belletrist predecessors. The third Fleming novel, Moonraker, was less well received in comparison to the other Bond outings, primarily because it is set entirely in England, and without the exotic locations that characterise so many of Bond’s adventures, the book lost some of its charm. The films endear to precisely those same principles, and would in a sense be incomplete without the clever gadgets, fast cars, racy women, wicked villains and so on. That’s not to say that each film is a carbon copy of the others, merely that watching a Bond film is entirely akin to unwrapping a chocolate bar: the experience will be entirely what you expect.

Although the films are not in themselves particularly bad, there is nevertheless plenty to criticise. The plotlines are often genuinely ludicrous, the villains are cardboard cutouts, and Bond himself, despite the change of actors and the seemingly unaged complexion after nearly 60 years of service, is a great ball of clichés. Which is curiously entirely to the series’ credit. Bond can find himself challenged by a chess Grand Master, a karate world champion, or a marathon race through the desert against a camel, and he will come through looking as though he were about to attend the embassy ball. As Raymond Chandler put it, “Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.” That just about sums up one of the greatest figures in cinema’s history.

Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade

Indy

Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade was the film which started this list. One idle Sunday afternoon when I should probably have been mowing grass, revising for exams, or generally doing something vaguely productive, I had a flick through the TV guide and noticed this film was on. Before another thought popped into my head, the TV was on, my feet were up, and a mug of hot tea had magically appeared on the table beside me.

This film certainly bears plenty of relation to the previous entry. The most obvious link is that the character of Indiana Jones was modeled to a large extent on that of James Bond. Adequate reason to have ‘the father of Bond’, Sean Connery, play Indiana Jones’ father in this outing. This extra dollop of charisma on top of Harrison Ford’s already powerful on-screen presence was probably what made this film the best in the series in my opinion. But the film series in general also shared much in common with its Bond inspiration, including the characteristics of its tough and endearing hero, the exotic locations, evil villains (plundering the Nazi legend for all its worth), and plenty of stunning action sequences, lightly peppered with short comedy elements. Even the formula James Bond intro sequence, that had little if anything to do with the main plot, was incorporated into the series.

Whilst the film offers nothing truly spectacular in comparison to many other films of the action/adventure category, nevertheless it built upon a successful heritage and represents one of the best in the genre. The story is solid enough that the film doesn’t simply feel like a collection of action sequences flimsily strung together, although if we’re honest, the film might just as well be described as a visual rollercoaster. John Williams’ accompanying music provides one of the most recognisable signature tunes, and as I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, the ending provides one of the most satisfyingly cheesy farewells in cinematic history.

Duel

Duel

Should you already have pictured what the rest of this list would look like, Duel probably wouldn’t have figured among many people’s guesses. This low budget and innocuous little film has earned the acclaim of having established Steven Spielberg’s career, as the first of three TV movies he produced for Universal Studios.

Quite how I’ve managed to watch this film more than once is rather a surprise to me, given that I think every time I’ve noticed the film broadcast it has started at some unreasonably small hour in the morning. Nevertheless, the film has a certain charm about it that makes it so readily watchable. The simplicity of the story—a commuter on a lonely road finds himself harassed to the point of attempted murder by the unknown driver of an articulated truck—nevertheless fills the film’s 90 minute runtime nicely. With only one real character, and the open road for most of the filming, watching it is something akin to experiencing the thoughts of a man having a nightmare. The viewer literally is David Mann, murderously pursued by a great hulking truck for no apparent reason, attempting to find some kind of compromise, solution or escape.

Whilst elsewhere described rather nicely as a cross between a road movie and a monster film, Duel somehow has a satisfying, almost calming effect watching it. Perhaps it’s the TV equivalent of staring into a burning fire. Or perhaps it’s just a damn good film.

1. Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality, (London, 1986), p. 208.

Classics of their medium, but which will have a harder time in the future?

In comparison to a medium like cinema, computer games suffer from a particularly poor level of longevity. The vast majority of films can still happily be viewed today, often in an updated format, though keeping to the original production. That isn’t to suggest that films do not become dated, nor that more than just distribution formats are updated in later productions. Only recently I had the privilege of watching a once lost silent Polish film, A Strong Man (Mocny Człowiek), rediscovered in 1997. As there were no hints as to what musical accompaniment was meant to be played with the film, the DVD was released with a modern ambient style, that took a short while to get used to, but actually fit the film’s plot and style rather beautifully. On the whole, however, a film produced fifty years ago can be viewed with much the same clarity today as on the day it was released.

With computer games this issue is all too obviously unsolved. Not only do games age, as with any form of media entertainment, but they do so astonishingly quickly. The systems in place to support many of them gradually fade away, the communities surrounding them normally dissipate before too long (if there even is one), and in many cases the hardware and software required to run them simply move on.

To compare games to cinema is perhaps unwise, but many of the principle facets remain the same. Older games may not have the same visual complexities of today’s successors, nor the scope of their worlds or the detail of their mechanics, but their storylines and gameplay can remain as fresh as ever. A game such as Tetris will never die, on the basis of its blinding simplicity and addictive gameplay – but most importantly thanks to the myriad of rewrites, updates and clones that have kept the game alive to this day. Even the signature theme tune will live on as a classic example of gaming heritage.

Yet for every classic such as Tetris that has survived or been adapted for the modern era, there are simply thousands that have been essentially lost under the rolling wheels of technological advancement. Worst of all is that whilst many games become unplayable as operating systems and hardware develop, and as publishers stop producing them, copyright holders generally maintain their grasp on the games and consign efforts to keep them alive to pirates. This is quite frankly one of the more maddening aspects of computer game development, that golden classics should be consigned to history or piracy, since they cannot legally be made available for free, and cannot be purchased in any store that isn’t still anticipating the Millennium bug, is in my eyes simply a crime. All power to the outfits that make their games available after a certain period, or like id software have a policy of releasing their source code for free after a certain period.

Nevertheless, all is not Doom or Gloom. This post was originally inspired when I came across the remake of a classic of the 1980s game Ghostbusters, entirely rewritten for today’s machines. No doubt the original is out there somewhere, and playable via one of the many decent emulator programmes available, but trying to acquire and run these things can be a challenging experience. The more popular platforms have well developed, stable emulators with a lot of support, and finding ROMs for these isn’t particularly challenging, but for the more obscure platforms and titles, this can still be a frustruting and fruitless search.

Fortunately, some really great work has been done on a number of projects to keep certain niches alive. The ScummVM project has done some excellent work to make a number of classic adventure games playable on today’s operating systems. Quite how they’ve run into battles with the LucasArts legal team when trying to rescue their back catalogue from the dustbin is beyond me. A number of projects have also arisen around the selection of older id software games, such as Doomsday, which providing an updated game engine for Doom, Heretic and Hexen, helped in large part to id software’s laudable policy of releasing the source code (not to mention having the temerity to port many of their games in the first place). With a more general aim, the DOSBox project empowers a great many classics with a new lease of life, although this can be a tricky process, made much easier by the D-Fend Reloaded frontend. As per the recent entanglements with Worms, however, even this can cause some headscratching.

My favourite project of this ilk, however, has to be the astoundingly good OpenTTD. The ultimate goal being to create an entirely free re-working of Chris Sawyer’s classic Transport Tycoon Deluxe, the project certainly sits on shaky legal ground for attempting to present a copy of the game, but that aside the software is able to utilise the original game’s graphics and sounds, and not only recreate the original experience, but also improve upon it. Amongst other merits are the plethora of options, the feature additions which are well within the tone of the game, and of course the brilliantly updated multiplayer options which has given this game a decidedly extended lease of life. I could happily go on raving about this project, but that’s probably best left for another post altogether.

One might like to believe that the future looks brighter as far as gaming longevity is concerned. Distribution platforms such as Valve’s Steam allow games to be ‘published’ long after the traditional cycle, and has even been in large part responsible for resurrecting some old classics (e.g. Commander Keen). It may also spur developers to keep their catalogues ‘current’, at least as far as running on the latest Microsoft operating system. Nevertheless, the modern computer game has certainly moved far from its humble origins. The classic games of yesteryear that have remained with us on account of their unique simplicity, are mimicked today in the largely plotless gameplay oriented multiplayer games of the Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament ilk. There are of course more recent and highly successful moves in the direction of more immersive and detailed worlds, and although World of Warcraft alone probably accounts for well more than half of all players of MMORPGs, clearly in terms of gaming attributes the multiplayer aspect has grown to highly significant proportions.

Ultimately then, whilst there are numerous well-intentioned projects out there to attempt to rescue many classic games from the grave, will the future of gaming make that job actually harder rather than easier to achieve? Certainly any multiplayer gaming experience relies to some extent on the quality of the players involved, but setting up a multiplayer game of Doom is probably easier today than it was when it was released, the only thing needed are the players. But for games that rely on servers and a myriad other players cannot really hope to be recreated in the future, in the same way that an old DOS or Amiga game can be rewritten or emulated. In the future, will we be forced to look back upon a game like World of Warcraft as a phenomenon?

Basic tools

For simplicity we used D-Fend Reloaded, a handy graphical frontend for DOSBox. This emulates the DOS environment that allows Worms to run exactly as it did when it was released. The installation should be pretty straightforward, simply download and run the latest installer package.

Installing the game

Depending on your source, the game itself will need to be installed. It may be possible to find this game on abandonware sites, or lurking elsewhere in the tubes, but I’ll assume you have the game on CD.

1. Launch D-Fend Reloaded.
2. In the window which pops up, double-click the entry “DOSBox DOS”. You should be presented with a classic C:\> DOS prompt.
3. Enter the following commands, replacing “d:” with the drive letter your CD is loaded in:

   mkdir WORMS
   mount d d:\
   d:\
   install

4. This should run the Worms install programme. Install the game, ensuring to choose C:\WORMS as the installation target.

Install the game via DOSBox

Setting up

Assuming the previous stage completed successfully, you now only need to set up Worms in D-Fend Reloaded.

1. Press F3, or select Add –> Add with wizard…
2. In the ensuing guide, select DOSBox if it isn’t already highlighted, and click Next.
3. Select the programme to be run (normally .\VirtualHD\WORMS\WORMS.BAT) and optionally the setup programme (this will depend on your version of the game) and click Next.
4. The programme should automatically choose a template that matches your game (either Worms or Worms Plus). If this isn’t the case, you can choose one of these templates from under the Use user-defined auto setup template list. Click Next.
5. The next screen simply contains details of the game and how it will be displayed in the D-Fend menu. Alter these if you wish, otherwise click Next.
6. The final screen should list the drives mounted by DOSBox when the game is run. Currently this should only include .\VirtualHD as the C drive, but we also need to mount the CD. Click Add… and in the following window change the Type to CD-drive and select the root of your optical drive as the Folder for mounting. The Drive letter should be D and the Label can be WORMS or anything else for that matter. Click Ok.
7. Before closing this wizard, tick the box labelled Open profile editor when wizard closes, and then click Ok.
8. For some reason, the sound is disabled by default, so in this final menu, we need to select Sound and then tick the box Activate sound. Click Ok.

Worms listed in D-Fend Reloaded

Play

There should now be a second entry in the D-Fend menu in addition to DOSBox, which should run the game in virtually all its former glory! We still ran into a few problems with our version, namely that the intro FMV sequence had to be skipped (by pressing S when prompted) and the few little FMV sequences in the game itself ran extremely jerkily, and were better off being by-passed altogether (pressing Escape). More disappointingly, the CD music refused to play, an ingredient sorely missed! Otherwise, the game failed to disappoint any of those expectations heaped upon us by nostalgia.

Worms menu screen

In many ways, this book is little out of the ordinary, or at least its subject matter isn’t. Over the past few centuries this world has produced many remarkable personages: daring adventurers, shocking geniuses, revolutionary thinkers, and in this instance, plain hard-working pioneers. The age of discovery was perhaps particularly fertile in producing such remarkable characters, and a complete survey of the eighteenth century could easily fill a small library.

Which is precisely why Sobel’s book is so charming. In a period so active, a society so effervescent with ideas, Sobel has picked one lonely character, and one particular problem, and distilled a story that any layman can pick up and read. Despite the prominent cast of characters, the Isaac Newtons and Edmund Halleys, James Cooks and astronomers royal, the book in its entirety stretches to just 175 pages, and that in a fair spaced typeset. This brevity is precisely the book’s strength. The story needs no embellishment, it virtually tells itself, each iteration of John Harrison’s timepiece carried its own chapter heading in his life, each page a new development in the search for accurately keeping longitude at sea. Where many other books of this sort ramble on for a few hundred more pages about things entirely unpertinent to the theme, Sobel’s Longitude is concise and self-explanatory. What longitude is, how it proved such a problem to calculate, what rival solutions to the problem were being developed, and how John Harrison managed to essentially solve the riddle in one swoop, in a manner completely against the contemporary views of the time, all are clearly outlined and explained in this wonderfully distilled book.

Phantoms in the Brain

In Phantoms in the Brain, V. S. Ramachandran has attempted to emulate the forebears he cites in the Preface, who inspired him to write science that is both informative and interesting to the general reading public. In this he has certainly succeeded, his style is highly approachable, and the content not only comprises interesting tidbits, but wholly thought-provoking suggestions and analyses. I picked up Phantoms in the Brain on the basis of a recommendation from a friend more involved in the scientific fold than I am, yet found the book to be readily accessible to these with even only a meagre understanding of the way our brains function.

The book is for the most part concerned with the fundamental inner workings of the brain revealed to us through curiously specific medical conditions, often brought about by severe physical traumas such as strokes. Some of the findings are, perhaps, fairly well known by now, yet I’ve no doubt that many will still be quite shocking to most readers. However, Ramachandran keeps the presentation of both old and new findings fresh, in his natural inquisitive approach to each individual problem. His curiosity and novel attitude in dealing with many of these strange rarities of medical science at times remind one of the naïve questioning of a young child, who by approaching problems from altogether unexpected angles can come up with profound thoughts and solutions that would not normally strike an adult.

In the form of this popular presentation of at times rather technical science, Ramachandran is liberated to explore the themes discussed to the very brink of conjecture. In such a young area as neuroscience, there is no doubt that such speculation is a necessity, in the face of such a formidable lack of experimental evidence, yet the author does an excellent job of keeping the focus on the actual cases available, leaving the more madcap suggestions and ponderings to the footnotes. The relations of his own personal investigations mark the highlight of the book, with a jocular style that only adds an extra gleam to the clearly sparkling prose that Ramachandran uses to relate what he is so clearly very passionate about. Many of the topics covered are extremely precise in scale, and thereby perhaps quite difficult to relate, but by relegating any complicated elaborations to the endnotes, the book remains perfectly readable despite the occasional paragraph gleaming with words of Greek origin. The text is also punctuated with small tests that the reader can try out for themselves, alone or with the aid of a partner, to get some sense of the kind of symptoms under investigation. Whilst these little optical illusions and sensual tricks obviously cannot replicate the bewildering changes that some of Ramachandran’s patients have suffered, they do help to illustrate some of the hidden workings of the brain on a more tangible scale to the everyday reader.

However, these aforementioned endnotes can, as a result of their extensiveness, cause something of a problem, if like myself you’re a reader who checks endnotes as and when they crop up. Not only does that result in a lot of flicking back and forth between the main text and the endnotes, but when doing so to read an endnote that is itself two pages long, it’s quite easy to lose thread of the narrative. In addition, since there is no way of telling whether that endnote is merely a citation reference, an entertaining anecdote, or some detailed explanation of the particular brain anatomy under discussion, it does leave one wondering whether a couple of dedicated appendices, along with a set of regular footnotes or endnotes for citations, would not have been preferable.

Whilst this popular science medium allows Ramachandran plenty of scope for hypothesis and exploration of his topics, I couldn’t help get the impression that his conjectures on occasion got rather more “off topic” than would normally be the case. He himself at times corrected himself whilst taking a tangent that led him into the realms of evolutionary biology, for example, no doubt hearing in his mind the criticism of colleagues and friends working in those particular fields. Yet his similar forays into religious and philosophical areas went rather much more unchecked, and the book could probably have been lightened somewhat, had these more meandering speculations been left out.

For my own part, Phantoms in the Brain was an interesting read, highlighting numerous facets about the human brain that are yet to be properly explored. Ramachandran’s writing is entertaining and informative, yet not quite as well distilled as it probably should be. However, it is clear from the experiments and investigations he himself has undertaken, that his mind is extremely sharp, and he is not afraid to test out his theories, nor expound them to the greatest extents of conjecture in this little book. I was personally rather disappointed with his conclusion, in that despite the discoveries laid out in the main part of the book, Ramachandran felt it necessary to expound his own theories of the ‘self’ and share his ideas on qualia.¹ Each chapter unveiled another brain process of which we were perhaps previously unaware, each piece pointing to a subconscious that makes up a far more significant part of ourselves than we either realise or, far more importantly, care to admit. Almost as an apology, however, Ramachandran appeared to feel it necessary to reinforce his belief in consciousness, free will, and the self, arguably inspite of the evidence he himself had accrued, ideas which jar with my own personal philosophy.

It is perhaps unfair to say that future research will clear up some of the many questions left, since there are only questions left to be answered in this vast area of unexplored scientific territory. Ramachandran’s book offers a glimpse into that vast, uncharted land that does well to follow in the footsteps of those other great pioneers he was hoping to emulate. And he is clearly already on the way to following them outside of the literary field.

1. Ramachandran, V. S. and Hirstein, W. (1997), “Three laws of qualia; What neurology tells us about the biological functions of consciousness”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4:5-6, 429-57.

The gaming elements are simple enough that the rule booklet, which is clearly written, can be read through and understood virtually in its entirety immediately before play. Each turn of the game runs through four phases. Firstly, power plants are bought at auction, each player proffering an available plant in turn, with the plant going to the highest bidder. Purchased plants are replaced from a visible ‘futures market’, allowing players to plan ahead with their bids. The second stage involves buying raw materials from the market. Each plant produces energy from one of five sources: coal, oil, garbage, nuclear or renewable. The latter plants require no raw materials at all and are oft hardest fought over at auction. The other fuels become increasingly expensive as supply dwindles, forcing players to either diversify their sources, or stockpile for future shortages. The third phase has players building an electricity network to supply power to their consumers. The network costs are based on proximity, and as players can only initially build in unoccupied cities, good initial placement can be a crucial factor. The final phase of the game is called the ‘bureaucracy’ phase, dealing with the supply of electricity (and thus generating profits), and various bits of setup to keep the game flowing.

Far and away the most crucial and successful element in the game’s mechanics is the turn order. Players in a leading position are essentially penalised in every phase of the game, enabling players who are lagging behind to catch up. Going first means having more competition during the power plant auction phase (since you may only buy one power plant each round, other players may bid on your choice, but you may not bid on theirs), and then the turn order is reversed for the following two phases, meaning buying raw materials last (generally more expensive) and building the electricity network last (also potentially more expensive). A final ‘cap’ on players’ advance is the increasingly poor return on electricity sales, the more consumers are supplied, so that the player with the network twice as large as anyone else may only receive an extra sixty percent of earnings over the others if he is able to power it all.

Of course, this turn order isn’t decided by human invention but by the game’s mechanics, meaning that it can (and should) be manipulated by the players to avoid having to be in pole position. Turn order is determined by the size of a player’s network, and thereafter on who has the highest rated power plant in the event of a tie, and players often end up deliberately underdeveloping in order to stay their hand until a later stage in the game. Whilst some might decry the unrealistic way in which this serves to level the playing field a bit, it does mean that players cannot turn an early advantage into a runaway success quite so easily, simultaneously adding an extra tactical element to the game.

The German Board

Although playable with a minimum of just two players, Power Grid really benefits from bringing extra players to the table. The game comes with a double-sided playing board, with a map of Germany and the USA on either side, with each country being split into regions, with the number of adjoining regions played over corresponding to the number of players. Furthermore, the resources are restocked at a rate relative to the number of players taking part, and other restrictions are made on the power plants market with fewer players present. In these ways, the game attempts to increase competition for games with few players, but these measures cannot hope to replace the competition that can be provided by thinking players. With just two players, every city is open to be built in, there is more chance that specific resources can be monopolised, and the competition in the power plant market is largely negated. With six players, cities can easily be blocked (a maximum of three players can supply electricity to a city, and that only at the latest stage of the game), resources monopolised, power plant competition becomes more vocal, and in general the game becomes much more involving and less like a game of multiplayer patience.

Nevertheless, the game isn’t to everyone’s liking, and isn’t too forgiving on beginners. The rules which allow players doing badly to catch up can often times be manipulated, to such an extent that a player gaining a reasonably early lead who can then artificially maintain a low position will go on to win the game later as long as he times his move right. The key element to the game is the auction stage, which relies on players being aware of what power plants are potentially available, as well as calculating their paper worth against the available resources. Whilst this is a strong central characteristic, it relies on players being able (and willing) to keep track of their finances, and can often be the cause of many a headache, as those carefully laid plans are altered by another player sending the price of coal up. Furthermore, as this isn’t an elimination game, players who make an early mistake and find themselves beyond the game’s built-in rescue mechanisms will end up going through the motions in last place till the game’s conclusion, entirely unable to make up for their earlier mistakes. Whilst not so common when players have a few games under their belt, this unforgiving element can easily put beginners off playing the game again.

Overall then, Power Grid offers a decent business game that has enough elements to keep the game quite tactical even after several plays. The mechanisms in place to ensure the leading player doesn’t run away with it, and the collateral ability of players to manipulate this element, work quite nicely, with the whole ruleset in general feels quite tight and well tested. Unfortunately, that does leave the game to be quite precise on the financial side, forcing players to continually plan ahead and keep up the arithmetic to ensure they’re getting the best deals and still have enough money left over to do all they wanted to. With a smaller number of players, the game doesn’t force enough competition between the players, and players are unable to directly impact on others (particularly not without detriment to themselves) leaving the game all too often a foregone conclusion well before the end. With more players, the competition increases in a number of areas, and gives players behind in the rankings a chance to at least retard the big players between them. Nevertheless, the final result very rarely comes as a surprise, and in my experience the game always ends on something of a low ebb, checking to see that the player expected to win actually did, with the peak in excitement coming somewhere in the middle. And given the unforgiving nature of the game for beginners, this isn’t one that works well when integrating new and experienced players.

As for getting through the list, I doubt very much if I’ll even read 1001 books before I die, let alone fiction books, or the particular ones from this list. However, I have ticked off a few titles already, and no doubt as many of them coincide with titles on my reading list I’ll be able to whittle the list down a little further. Titles I’ve read to date are in bold.

Last update: 31st December, 2011

2000s

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Double – José Saramago
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Unless – Carol Shields
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Youth – J.M. Coetzee
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
Pastoralia – George Saunders

1900s

Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
Amongst Women – John McGahern
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
London Fields – Martin Amis
The Book of Evidence – John Banville
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
Libra – Don DeLillo
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Perfume – Patrick Süskind
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter – Nadine Gordimer
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
W, or the Memory of childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow
V. – Thomas Pynchon
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Counterfeiters – André Gide
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s

Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
Silas Marner – George Eliot
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

1700s

Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
Pamela – Samuel Richardson
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700

Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

Risk

It’s about coming up to another one of those birthday events soon, the kind where you get together with a few close friends, have a meal, a few beers, perhaps watch a movie, before whiling away the rest of evening playing a board game. And as it’s in the UK, you only need a few guesses before you’ll stumble upon which game that will be.

Now I don’t claim to be any kind of expert in the field of board games, but that serious lack of diversity in most UK households makes most games evenings feel like you’re stuck in the same old rut again. Take a look at Wikipedia’s list of popular games, and you might see what I mean. Ignoring those that aren’t easily or commonly played in groups, there’s Cluedo, Monopoly, Risk, and Trivial Pursuit. And let’s face it, if a household has anything, it’s probably one of those. Of course, there’s plenty of fun to be had there, but to be honest there just isn’t enough variety in what’s usually available.

A lot of this comes down to British culture. There are in fact plenty of games available, and most families with young children will probably have a great many more board games specifically designed for the youngsters than those suitable for the whole family. One can only presume that board games are seen as belonging to the realm of childhood, but there doesn’t need to be a specifically adult genre of games to counter this. What should be avoided, however, is the mass-produced clone versions of the very same games, which add mere seconds of novelty value to the overworked formulae. Oxford Monopoly? Scotland Monopoly? Star Wars™ Monopoly?

Another key problem I have with the majority of the games mentioned above is the strong, pervasive element of luck. Since most adults are perfectly capable of deducing the murderer in a pretty efficient way in a game of Cluedo, the roll of the die and the luck of the draw come into play far too heavily for much enjoyment to be had. In a game of Risk, a strong strategy should triumph in an average night of dice rolling—but when everyone has a strong strategy?

The Escapist has summarised a number of key areas in which German-style games make an improvement over the typical offerings available in the UK, and just why they do so well. Some of these might be seen as undesireable, such as the inability to eliminate players, or the rather less open-ended scope of the games, but these factors together with the easy to pick-up rules, high level of interaction and more measured amounts of luck tend to make the games more appealing to that more grown up audience.

Carcassonne

Take a game like Carcassonne. You can learn to play it in minutes, involves plenty of player interaction, a splash of luck with drawing tiles, and yet has enough scope for developing tactics that the game has decent longevity about it. Players can’t ‘die’ part way through, nor is the victor generally known long before the game’s end, and you can generally work out how much time to set aside for a game. Plus of course, there are a number of expansions and reinterpretations which can add even more variety to the basic game.

But who knows? Perhaps there’ll be something new on the table this year. Or maybe there’ll be enough alcohol to numb the pain of continually rolling snake eyes in my defence of Siam!

I had originally written this post, long lingering in the limbo of the drafts bin, pointing out a number of weaknesses with the game as it stood. The most recent patch has done much to address those problems, and is a welcome and rather unexpected update, given Valve had denied there would be any releases for Team Fortress 2 until 2009 on account of the amount of work going into their latest release, Left 4 Dead. I’ve gone through and added some comments or changes where necessary, to reflect the recent update, though on the whole this post retains its original state.

Balancing issues

Whilst I stand by my initial view from earlier in the year that Valve have done a miraculous job when it comes to balancing the various classes, there are still some issues that need to be ironed out, hopefully in future edits and packs. Of course it would be impossible to make a truly level playing field without removing the many classes’ uniqueness, and there will always be situations and maps in which one or another class will show a clear advantage. And it would be unfair to decry Valve’s efforts in creating a balanced game, since there are no classes which go unplayed, and each pack does a lot to reinvigorate them, as well as ironing out some of the more glaring inequalities between them. The welcome improvements to the Pyro class in fact led some players to argue that the Pyro was now overpowered, though the majority of these statements to my eyes came from those predominantly playing Soldier or Demoman, and thus are used to being in a more dominant role.

Engineer has some sapping problems

Yet there are still some problems that need to be solved, and until the relevant pack arrives, can detract from game’s balanced playing field. Engineers in particular have a tough call. Whilst they are the backbone of many a successful team, their actions are rarely merited with just reward. I think it would be fair to say that a large proportion of Übers are used against Engineers’ sentry guns, a worthwhile respite for many a team, yet the Engineers’ reward is to have his hard work destroyed by something he can almost never avoid. Similarly Spies can often be the bane of an Engineers’ existence, destroying his teleporter entrances with no one around to defend them, sapping his buildings and leaving them prone to attack from every other attacking class, and particularly if he’s the only Engineer on the team or in his area, killing him directly (even at the expense of the Spy’s life) and leaving all of his buildings unprotected for a period of time. Another source of grief for Engineers comes from the fact that one of his major sources of points, that is to say teleports, relies on his teleporters being in appropriate locations. Since many maps change spawn locations according to the state of play, Engineers often find themselves constantly shifting teleporter entrances/exits if they want to earn points, all the while neglecting their other sentry duties.

This particular point of contention will be a difficult one to solve, and it will be very interesting to see how Valve approaches the Engineer in its class update. One simple addition to the Engineers’ current points source would be to award him for ammunition handed out by his dispenser. The tweaks made to the Soldier and Demoman classes in particular mean they are constantly needing a resupply, a fact that could be awarded in addition to the usual health bonus (taking into account of course the common occurrence of Pyros and Heavies standing beside dispensers and firing wildly). There are of course numerous new weapons with which the Engineer could be equipped, beyond alternatives to his regular weapons, such as decoy buildings that explode when sapped, or extra sentry guns of a smaller size, or perhaps even two-way teleporters, the possibilities are limited only by the developers’ imaginations (and bravery). Yet one of the key problems with the Engineer class is its stacking effect. A single Engineer at the moment often has a terrible time dealing with Spies and Übercharges directed against his buildings. With each extra Engineer on the team, however, these problems diminish, as Engineers can help to check for Spies, remove saps placed on other Engineers’ buildings, and generally provide backup that no other class can provide. A concomitant effect is that whilst a single sentry can easily be overcome (and takes time to be rebuilt), two sentries can not only be rebuilt faster (with competent teamwork between Engineers), but also provide greater firepower that may prevent certain classes being able to reach and destroy them even whilst Übercharged.

Of course, this issue and many others might be addressed when the relevant class update arrives. Also, whilst certain classes find it difficult to do well in the open playing field of the public server, there are few that are not played in this basis, and the Engineer is a prime example of a class that is not underplayed despite its deficiencies, on the basis that it is an important constituent of a balanced team. Today’s update has certainly gone some way to improving the Engineer’s lot when it comes to supporting the team, though until the update arrives the points issue will probably remain. Whilst upgradable teleporters offer some scope for improvement, their use is still limited by the choice of map, still hampered by potential Spies destroying the entrance (who have also been given a great boon in this recent update), and their cost in terms of time and metal spent upgrading them might outweigh the benefits in most situations. The upgraded dispenser is of more obvious benefit to the Engineer and team in general,¹ and becomes both a prized possession and greater target for the opposition team, though it would be nice to see points being given for dispensing ammunition to teammates. Hopefully this class will gain some further tweaks in a future pack.

The market for explosives

The other obvious gripe in the game as it stands is the nature of the Demoman. As many players point out, the class is overpowered on a number of levels, particularly when compared to his nearest rival class, the Soldier. In large part this boils down to the class essentially having two primary weapons, in particular with the secondary being preferred by most players as the primary weapon, and in sum having thrice the explosive ammunition than the Soldier. In addition the Demoman can perform maneouvres similar to the Soldier’s ‘rocket jumps’ enabling him to get into hard to reach places. The class is faster than the Soldier, and only marginally slower than the Pyro and Sniper classes, whilst losing little in terms of health points. With his sticky bombs, the Demoman has the ability to defend control points and particularly doorways and other bottlenecks,² or alternatively provide backup to a friendly Engineer through mining his buildings as a deterrent to enemy Spies. Against enemy Engineers the Demoman is a particularly bane, with the ability to lob grenades or sticky bombs from an angle out of range of his sentry guns, and with an Übercharge can generally cause more destruction of enemy buildings than any other class. This indirect fire can also be an advantage in normal combat, with the further benefit that the Demoman’s weapons are the only ones apart from the Sniper that do not suffer a decrease in damage dealt over distance. Thus although technically a defensive class, and particularly where maps have severe bottlenecks a very potent one, the Demoman is equally adept in an attacking role. At least at medium range, the Demoman is thus well equipped against the vast majority of classes, with the exception perhaps of the underplayed (and underpowered) Scout.

Cyclops survives again

Quite how Valve will approach the Demoman issue remains to be seen. One thing is for certain, however, and that is that they are not short of options. Any number of alterations would help redress the balance, from changing the class’ core statistics (i.e. reduced speed or reduced health), through alterations to the weapons (either changes in damage or ammunition levels), to giving other classes the boost needed to combat him. Personally, I feel one of the simplest modifications to the Demoman would be an increase in the delay that currently exists between firing a sticky bomb and detonating it – and in fact altering the delay such that it is one between the sticky bomb touching another surface and subsequent detonation. The purpose of the weapon is principally to lay traps for other classes to walk into, being a special secondary weapon, but instead is more commonly used as an offensive, primary weapon, with sticky bombs all too often being detonated as quickly as possible, often even in mid-air. His other core advantages described above would remain the same, but the alteration would force players to use the class’ secondary weapon more intelligently, and the primary weapon more routinely.

A critical issue

A more open and contentious problem with Team Fortress 2 has to be the presence of ‘criticals’, regular shots that are by random chance upgraded to do double the damage of a regular one. With the increase in the number of unlockable weapons released by Valve that affect the generation of critical shots, it may be the case that in future criticals will become a factored feature of the game, rather than a purely (or at least predominantly) random one. For the time being, one of the most frustrating moments in the game can occur when you are killed by a ‘random’ critical having just built up and used the charge on the Kritzkrieg which would give the person you’re healing a flurry of critical shots. Predictable beaten by random.

It’s certainly a good thing that Valve has listened to the community and allowed server admins the ability to turn off criticals without the need to resort to third party mods or plugins, and no doubt this would arguably increase the skill level of the game, though as I wrote in the previous post I still stand by criticals as an important element in levelling the playing field. Which is precisely why the other issue regarding their implementation remains a problem.

Heavy like crits

Predictable criticals obviously add an extra level of skill to utilise that is a welcome inclusion, I’m sure many would agree. The various trade-offs imposed on the weapons which bring predictable criticals to the fold are generally sufficient to prevent their overuse or abuse. Yet random criticals enjoy a sense of positive feedback, in the way in which the chance of firing a critical shot is determined by the amount of damage a player does in a given period of time. I have neither the time nor the inclination to investigate how exactly the statistics are determined, but the general sense is that certain classes benefit more from this effect than others (particularly those like Soldiers and Demomen who enjoy splash damage from their primary weapons), and in particular, players who are doing well are more liable to fire more criticals, leading to something of a runaway effect. There is a natural logic to this manner of execution – players are justly awarded for playing well, and in particular situations this idea is well vindicated. Take for example a situation in which a Soldier approaches a Heavy and Medic from an oblique angle: firing the first rocket at the Medic, who then takes shelter behind the Heavy, the Soldier would be able to fire all four rockets (probably more), dealing plenty of damage but without killing anyone. Yet the increased chance of criticals might just result in the Soldier being rewarded for his efforts. Unfortunately there are situations in which this system can look simply rediculous. Two Heavies with Medics at medium range will probably be able to fire at one another for upwards of 10 seconds before one or other finally succumbs to the onslaught: instead, a more common result is that one of the two is rewarded for the damage dealt in the previous seconds with a barrage of criticals, determining the winner of the encounter on a coin toss.

A problem of attitude

This last complaint is much more of a personal gripe than a complaint with any basis on the game’s mechanics. It’s more a question of players’ attitudes to the game than a problem with the game itself, and TF2 is no more guilty of it than any other multiplayer game. Alongside the problems mentioned earlier about balancing issues is the number of players who don’t appreciate the efforts of their teammates. 3

In summary then, since I can only think to elaborate on two major issues, both of which will probably be at least partially remedied in future updates, it seems fair to assume that Team Fortress 2 is a pretty well-rounded game. I can only comment on the game from a public server player’s point-of-view, and consider that this is probably the game’s mainstay anyway. Despite my complaints over balancing issues, there are no classes which go unplayed as a result, and all of the game’s nine classes are often employed, some being virtually essential to a team’s success. With such diversity in the classes, the game has an excellent longevity factor, and Valve’s continued improvements and additions only solidify that appeal. The recent update offers some welcome tweaks and additions that were quite unexpected, and with news that the Scout’s update is in the pipeline for next year, I wish the people at Valve a pleasant festive season and look forward to future TF2 updates in the coming year.

1. Particularly as ammunition now has a further heavy duty user in the form of the Spy.
2. Although the recent update has given other classes at least some defence against laid traps, through having bullet projectiles able to destroy sticky bombs.
3. Fortunately, today’s update has provided a simple yet effective way for Medics to filter out the demanding players, through indicators of a player’s health status when they call for a Medic.

In this matter, the Internet must have been a major boon to many sellers. By opening themselves up to such a vastly larger market, second-hand book stores can be guaranteed an extra income stream. But at what cost? How can resellers make themselves known on the Internet market, and whilst open to such massive competition, remain profitable? It’s pretty clear on the face of things that Internet prices for second-hand books are much reduced from their on-shelf equivalents. In Chapters’ new premises in Dublin, the second-hand book section prices are so ‘astronomical‘ such that you can occasionally find copies of the books cheaper in their own new books section. The same book on Amazon’s marketplaces, Abebooks or eBay might technically be listed for as little as a penny.

Of course, it would be folly to think that those prices are actual representations of the cost to the buyer. There may be many reasons for such low prices being on offer, one of which is clearly the threat of competition, as buyers generally list items by price and only buy those which top the list, but there are obviously other problems for the seller to overcome. The problem of putting themselves on the Internet market can to a large extent be negated by using services such as the ones I listed above – the problem however is being able to afford to do so.

On a recent purchase from Abebooks, I was dismayed to note that whilst there was technically a benefit to purchasing more than one book from the same seller in terms of postage costs, the reduction was clearly much smaller than what should be expected. One paperback cost £3.35 shipping, already a little extreme you might think, whilst eight paperbacks cost £16.00 – for roughly the same weight of parcel, Royal Mail quote a first class delivery (whilst the quoted price was for second class) at £8.22. This kind of price shuffling is fairly typical, which recently caused a fairly negative reaction from Abebooks through adding fees to the shipping prices. Whilst charging shipping at such high prices might seem unfair, however, it seems entirely just when considering the number of charges laid at the sellers door when dealing with the large marketplaces. I recently saw a sale via Abebooks wherein the total order amounted to £3.92 excluding shipping, and Abe’s commission was £2.10. Add to this the fees charged by Paypal (as that was the payment method) which could be as much as 20p plus 3.5% on the total amount including shipping, and it’s little wonder that book-sellers try to add extra to their shipping costs in order to maintain a sliver of profitability. For those that deal in rare books or expensive volumes, the smaller cuts that are made through listing and payment fees might be dealt with, but for smaller sellers just getting a foot on that ladder seems like a daunting prospect.

Unfortunately, there would appear to be very few alternatives. Even Abebooks was recently acquired by Amazon, and no doubt their fees and market models for second-hand sellers will be homogenised further than they already were. Sites such as UKBookworld from The Clique offer no commission sales in return for annual listing fees (amongst other services), though leave sellers to handle credit card or other payment methods themselves (though thereby avoiding a ‘skim’ from the host). The site of course suffers from a small number of participating shops, and tends to focus more on antique and out-of-print volumes than low cost second-hand paperbacks as a result.

Unless bookshops can set up their own sites that are popular enough and large enough to attract customers and direct sales, is there any alternative for those needing to use one of the main marketplaces mentioned? Or is this just an example of the failure of the Internet to democratise finances as well as ideas?

Warning: possible spoilers ahead.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull isn’t as good as classic Indy, that’s for sure, and it does rather ruin the previously well-rounded ending to the series. The first thing that strikes is that Harrison Ford really is a lot older now. He has the charisma to pull the character off, and that counts for a lot, but when it comes to the action sequences it really shows that the reactions and flexibility of old simply aren’t there any more.

One thing that really seems to have griped a lot of fans is the realism factor. I imagine this partly comes since a lot of us just aren’t the youngsters we were when we first saw Indy. The original Raiders of the Lost Ark was released back in 1981, so even people currently in their 40s may have only been young teenagers when they first saw that absurdly clad archaeologist creating mayhem in the desert. That similar loss of magic no doubt dispelled a lot of Star Wars fans’ hopes when the prequel trilogy was released. Yet where the recent Star Wars trilogy had a reason to be made—the episode numbers were blank and the story untold—The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull smacks much more of a cash-in. This financial incentive is another criticism many film-goers have, but making money is the point of most movies, so why should this Indy adventure be treated any differently. There were a number of scenes in the film which were blatantly unrealistic, but the previous films contained as many obvious impossibilities that were simply part of the magic of Indy. Jumping out of an airplane and sledging down the Himalayas in a dingy, sneaking onto a German submarine from the open sea (exactly where would you hide?), or diving under a burning lake of petrol are all part of an average day in the life of Indiana Jones.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull certainly delivers on the entertainment aspects, with so much happening in its 124 minute runtime that you barely have time to take it all in. The storyline is perhaps a little hit and miss, and many have remarked that they weren’t particularly impressed with the extra terrestrial aspect (no doubt more into the religious mysticism of the other films) though the oodles of action knitted the scenes together well enough. Shia LaBoef probably deserves an award for the least annoying new character of recent years. If there are future films planned it seems clear that LaBoef’s role in this film was fleshed out to provide a possible successor to the ageing Harrison Ford. The latter’s age is humourously dealt with, with Indy playing a far more conservative role in his older years, often times pointing out the dangers to his more impetuous companions. The film really grips its 1950s environment, something the other films largely glossed over, from the Fonzi-like character of LaBoef, to the nuclear tests and the cafe brawl set to the tune of Shake, Rattle & Roll. The music of course is first rate, which is little else we come to expect from John Williams, though as he himself admits, getting back to working on an Indiana Jones film was like wearing an old pair of gloves (i.e. he didn’t have to work too hard at it). It was also rather nice to hear some authentic Russian in a film for a change instead of the usual hashed attempts—and all credit to Cate Blanchett for trying.

There were however plenty of poor elements to the film. The promised CGI rebate wasn’t forthcoming, with many scenes obviously touched up and others overly reliant on the green screen. The ants scene in particular was virtual plagiarism of The Mummy. Mutt’s Tarzan-esque swinging through the jungle was more than a little on the childish side, and whoever dreamt up the atomic blast scene was clearly enjoying some illegal substance or other, although the humour just about made up for it. The film also suffered from a deluge of poor supporting characters. Sullah stand-in character ‘Mac’ turned out to be more of a pointless confusion than anything else, given that he revealed himself to be a mole almost from the off (which the FBI confirmed), the unnecessary double-agent shenanigans did little to disguise the fact that he was the obligatory “moral death” character (see Elsa Schneider in The Last Crusade or perhaps Rene Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark). Marion Ravenwood’s return might tie up some loose ends but her demeanour made the whole jaunt down the Amazon seem more like a family vacation than a brutal race against time. In fact very little in the film smacked of danger, perhaps the key reason that the film really failed to live up to its predecessors. At no point did Indy ever look to be in any real trouble, even as a guest of the villain Irina Spalko. Whilst the Nazis had to be transplanted by the Soviets for reasons of chronology, the end result was a much more carnival atmosphere to the fight against evil and life and death situations of the earlier series.

Ultimately, your reaction to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull depends mostly on your attitude and expectations. If you hope that this latest offering will enable you to relive those childhood memories and the magic of the earlier films, then you will only be disappointed to find that time has changed us no less than it has changed Indy. On its own merits, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull delivers as an action movie but perhaps too much for its own good. Had the action been toned down a little and made more believable, and the script toughened up to make us will Indy to the finishing line (instead of merely willing it to finish) then the film would have been deserving of the box office receipts it will no doubt take. Harrison Ford deserves all the credit for reprising the role, and his on-screen charisma makes the film immensely more watchable than its constituent parts alone. It’s definitely Indy, but not as we knew him.

Team Fortress 2

Valve’s Team Fortress 2 is already over six months old, so now might seem like an odd time to write a post on the games merits, but with the recent release of the Medic Achievement pack, and the rather surprising (though not unwelcome) news that Valve intends to integrate some of its popular features and improvements into the ageing Day of Defeat: Source, I decided I’d jot down a few of my impressions.

The release of Team Fortress 2 came as something of a surprise, after so little news about its development, with virtually nothing concrete after the initial revelations in 1999. The finished version bears absolutely no relation to those initial screenshots, instead maintaining much stronger links to the original modification Team Fortress Classic, with a strong glossy coat of The Incredibles style graphics and an uncut, Columbian-strength injection of humour.

The game relies strongly on teamplay, and one of the greatest assets in Team Fortress’ arsenal is the balancing act Valve have worked between the classes. Many games with far fewer variables don’t manage to create as level a playing field as this. With nine different classes to play that was no easy feat, with each having different weapons, movement speeds, skills and strengths. That’s not to say it’s perfect—some classes enjoy obvious advantages with very few setbacks—but each one has its uses, and with some practice can be used to great effect. Some require a lot more fiddling and practice to master than the others, for example spying can be a deadly and irritating activity in the hands of those with an innate love of hide and seek. For those with an addiction to pressing ‘W’, however, it turns into more of a kamikaze class than anything of any particular use to the team. By contrast the role of sniper is much more intuitive, which as Yahtzee so brilliantly put it is reduced to the classic point-and-click adventure game style of “use gun on man.”

photo credit: Sam Kindler

And teamplay is well featured in Team Fortress 2. Whilst other games in Valve’s arsenal purport to rely on the teamplay element, there are annoying aspects of these that their latest game has thankfully worked to eliminate. The classic public server ‘tactic’ of many a Counter-Strike: Source player, that of hanging behind a doorway as your teammates are shot to ribbons, before charging in guns blazing to finish off the softened up enemies who are now busy reloading to claim all the glory simply doesn’t find a place in Team Fortress 2. This partly results from the fact that players can ‘assist’ in killing enemies (and score points for doing so). Similarly the Medic class is poorly armed and weak when alone, but when backing up other classes automatically scores points for kill assists, and extra points for healing injured players, extra incentive for Medics to heal all of their teammates rather than follow the top scoring player around like a dog on a leash. The Engineer meanwhile finds a supporting role and scores points through building well placed sentry guns and teleporters, whilst to some extent relying on other teammates in dealing with spies attempting to destroy his buildings.

Another attribute of the teamplay incentive lies in the nature of defeat. The defeated team finds itself unable to shoot, reduced to a crawl, and opens up all of their safe zones (i.e. respawn points) to the enemy, leaving their enemies free to ritually hunt them down and massacre them. In comparison public server gamers in Counter-Strike: Source are free to ignore teamplay objectives and look after their own skins, and are even able to go ‘frag hunting’ for some seconds after their team has lost the round. Day of Defeat: Source takes a middle ground between the two, with losing players unable to fire, but still able to move as normal and make use of the safety of their spawns, and it would be nice if those aspects could be made more like those in Team Fortress 2 as an encouragement to teamplay and a focus on objectives.

photo credit: roBurky

One of the refreshing features of Team Fortress 2 is the great injection of humour. Released alongside the ravishingly humourous Portal, it is clear that Valve’s intentions with The Orange Box were to create a selection of games intended to make us laugh and enjoy gaming, rather than take it too seriously. The cartoonesque graphics provide a beautiful setting to the gaming mayhem, and whilst slightly limited in scope, the richness of the characters more than makes up for this. Each of the nine classes has a particular persona representing one or other stereotype. The Demoman is played by a black, Scottish cyclops, the Heavy by a simple Russian obsessed with his gun, and the Soldier a madcap American with more than a passing resemblance to George C. Scott’s Patton. Each has a large number of one liners that pop up during the game, such as the Sniper, after shooting someone in the head saying “Thanks for standin’ still, wanker!” or the Heavy on hearing a dispenser being built exclaiming “I hear someone building diaper changing station!” Valve have created cute introductory videos for some of the classes, and of course the community have made many more. (Especially worth checking out the gorgeous Ignis Solus from Lit Fuse Films.)

photo credit: Bryan Sutter

A contentious issue that many criticise and drives some players to distraction is the inclusion of ‘criticals’. These essentially give weapons a random chance to do triple the amount of damage normally dealt. This is often enough to kill a player outright, and can lead to many a frustrating situation where an evenly staged fight is determined by the random number generator. It’s almost akin to a gunfight in the wild west in which you suddenly find your gun was replaced with a water pistol. Whilst this can make many a pitched battle appear to be decided on a dice roll, in my opinion that element of luck means the game is ultimately more playable for players of different skill levels. A decent player in a competent team (and with a decent medic to back him up) could probably play many a map without dying, particularly if he outclassed his opponents. The random criticals to a large extent negate such domination, and enable poorly skilled players to have a chance to enjoy the game to a greater extent. However, the system is not without its problems. Given the variety between the classes, the critical hits manifest themselves in different ways: Spies and Snipers benefit from non-random critical hits from backstabs and headshots respectively, Medics can do ‘critical healing’, Engineers’ buildings are resistant to critical shots (consolation for the fact that their sentries never fire criticals) etc. However, whilst Soldiers and Demomen can fire off critical shots and stand a fair chance of the explosion killing someone or causing major damage without hitting anyone in particular, classes like the Pyro in particular have little chance of doing mass damage with their critical flame except on more compact maps. The biggest gripe I have with that system, however, is the manner in which the random nature of critical shots can be affected by a player’s performance. In particular, as this forum post seems to demonstrate, players are rewarded with a higher percentage of critical shots for a limited time, the more damage they do. Of course since the better players tend to deal the most damage, this leads to a runaway effect, as they fire more criticals, dealing more damage, leading to yet more criticals. In defence of my previous statement I would consider a far better employment of that critical ramping to work in favour of those dealing the least damage, or being killed more times consecutively, or dominated by more players etc.

photo credit: Bryan Sutter

One of the aspects of Team Fortress 2 that prompted this post was the recent release of the Medic Achievements pack. The game originally came with a number of fun achievements for players to unlock whilst playing, such as killing a certain number of people without dying, healing a certain number of health points, setting a certain number of people on fire and so on. With the latest addition, Valve clearly intended to cater to the more long-term gamers for whom the initial Medic achievement of 25000 healing points wasn’t challenge enough. By comparison, the new achievements included one for a million healing points, together with a much greater variety of odd rituals to perform. Unfortunately some do tend to detract from the gameplay and initially led to whole servers of medics running around attempting to gain one achievement or another, hopefully an ailment that will be avoided should future achievement packs be released simultaneously. The achievements have been given some purpose through the introduction of unlockable weapons, which slightly alter those the Medic is already equipped with. The changes are small enough that the unlocked weapons do little to alter the game’s balance, though add a further bit of variety and some small advantages. Given the length of time the Medic Achievement pack took to be released it is questionable whether Valve will ever finish what they’ve started, and indeed how they can introduce new weapons to the other classes without balancing issues, though that remains to be seen. In the recently announced update to Day of Defeat: Source, a similar set of achievements have been touted, though hopefully the unlockable weapons will be left to the Team Fortress 2 crowd.

Another feature that made the crossover to the new Day of Defeat: Source Beta is the so-called freezecam which leaves the player a freeze frame shot of the player who killed them. In Team Fortress 2, this is often humorously supplemented by little signs pointing to various giblets littered around the frame with indications such as “Here’s a little bit of you!” and “Another piece.” Whilst this feature adds to the ethos of Team Fortress 2, it could certainly prove to alter the game dynamics in Day of Defeat: Source, which already has the camera aim towards the killer on dying, but would not reveal a hidden sniper to the same extent that the zoomed in freeze cam does. However, it would be nice if that feature could be expanded, in a similar vein to the “Killcam” found in Call of Duty games—a five second replay of the killer’s last movements—a very nice way of seeing how you died, and indeed a great aid to identifying cheaters.

Interesting though is the reaction of many regular Day of Defeat: Source players to the update news. Many have complained about the changes, claiming that it will only ruin the game dynamics, or that the game is becoming too much like Team Fortress 2. It appears to be a rather typical reaction to gamers who become accustomed to their particular niche and fear any changes that would upset their familiar skulking grounds. However as far as I can see, the changes bring welcome freshness to a game that was otherwise on the gradual decline, and indicates that Valve are committed to bringing fresh content and updated engine performance to games in their portfolio even a number of years after their release. Certainly welcome news, given that the touted changes are probably unlikely to improve sales figures in any significant way, beyond the reassurance that gamers may feel from knowing that the developer hasn’t given up on the game.

Overall Valve really pulled off something brilliant with Team Fortress 2. The game is well balanced, despite the massive variety afforded through the class system, beautiful to look at, comical in more than just aesthetics, and most of all—fun! The news that Valve intend to overhaul their older multiplayer games with the tricks tried and tested in Team Fortress is welcome, and shows that they have given a commitment to these older titles that gives the gamer confidence. Who knows, may we even yet see the reintroduction of the British to Day of Defeat: Source? You almost feel like forgiving them for the constant delays to Half-Life 2: Episode 2! But let’s not get carried away…

100 Best Last Lines from Novels – How great can a last line be? I’ve read some of the works on the list and can’t say any are particularly memorable, but here’s an arbitrary list of the top 100 anyway. (PDF)

The World’s Spookiest Weapons – Starting with the A-bomb and working through mind control, crowd control and animal manipulation, this little list illustrates some of the craziest weapons designed or researched in the years since the last war.

Boxhead 2play – While away some moments (hours!) with this mad flash-based zombie fest. Can also be played cooperatively or in deathmatch mode from the same machine.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

It is precisely that simple point of view that makes the book so brilliant. The war experience is palpably retold through the mundane everyday occurrences. The constant search for food and provisions, the tedium of life during the quiet moments, dealing with lice and rats, the pressures of bombardment and the psychological reactions to sleeplessness and the constant threat of death. Scenes from the dressing stations are vividly retold, as are the effects of dysentery, or the aftermath of gas attacks. The novel’s narrator, Paul Bäumer, finds himself constantly searching for the answers, the reasons, the logic behind it all, and often relates conversations with his companions over why the war started, why it goes on, will it ever end, and how life can possibly continue after it all.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its personality, its identification with the individual and the individuals as part of a collective in the great overall theatre of the war. Bäumer’s experiences throughout the war are his own, but at the same time it is only through camaraderie with those in his regiment that he is able to function, able to keep his nerves calm and endure the deadly randomness of life in the trenches. Any moment might be his last, but knowing that there are others there around him with the same thoughts and feelings allows him to stand through it. Indeed the war changes him such that he almost fears the life back on the home front, where no one can possibly understand his experiences, when all that classical liberal education instilled into him before the war has lost all shred of meaning and credibility.

At the same time, the book’s other great strength is its imprecision. Paul Bäumer, Stanislaus Katczinsky and the others might be people we are to identify with, yet at the same time they are merely shadowy figures in a much larger play. Remarque makes few references to their real identities, although we know they come from a variety of backgrounds, whether farmers, cobblers or locksmiths. Perhaps one of strongest criticisms of All Quiet On The Western Front is that the focus lies on those from poor backgrounds and the suggestion that they alone served in the fighting. Nevertheless the novel gives little intimation about the nationality of these soldiers; they could just as easily be from ‘those over there’ as Remarque often refers to the enemy. The Hollywood film adaptation of 1930 highlights this even more, as Germans with thick American accents whoop and cheer as their schoolmaster persuades them to enlist, before marching off singing “Die Wacht am Rhein”. In essence the book’s strength is its portrayal of war as an abstract concept, and featuring people of indeterminate origins who are tormented, tortured and killed under its weight.

The novel ends with the reader being told that Paul Bäumer died only a month before the Armistice, almost as if the journalistic memoirs of a soldier at war had been cut short before they could be finished. Bäumer had considered the record of his time in the war a possible source of meaning in his life after being demobbed, something which Remarque himself clearly enacted. Ultimately however, the juxtaposition of this sudden curtailment of a young man’s life, a hero’s life which the reader has shared and empathised with from the first page, with the military dispatch which can report “Im Westen nichts Neues” (more literally “Nothing new on the Western front”) leaves the reader completely unable to answer Bäumer’s searching questions, deafened by the sickening irony.

This last scene is depicted brilliantly in the film version, in a manner not described in the novel. This adaptation certainly deserves a quick mention as it is a true masterpiece of cinematography. The film still seems fairly fresh given its antiquity, and one easily forgets the primitive nature of film making at the time. In 1930 such ‘talkies’ were sufficiently new that whole apparatus had to be built around the great clunking cameras to prevent their mechanical whirrings from being recorded on tape. As already mentioned, the fact that the actors are quite blatantly American robs the adaptation of none of its truth, whilst the script stays largely true to Remarque’s original.

The book was harried by Hitler’s NSDAP as being a crime against every German who fought in the war, and naturally banned on their coming to power. Remarque himself was forced to flee the country, first to Switzerland and then on to the United States by way of France, after the Nazis revoked his German citizenship. The film adaptation even had to be withdrawn from German cinemas, after Goebbels managed to whip up such a storm of protest and disruption at the Berlin screening, and the ban was only lifted as late as the 1960s. Whilst there were many who enjoyed the war for all its glory and adventure (epitomised by books such as In Stahlgewittern by Ernst Jünger, translated as Storm of Steel), one might presume the vast majority shared Remarque’s sentiments about the war years, which leads one to query why this book was not more staunchly defended, and why so many found it abhorrent. The answer may even lie within the book itself; Bäumer finds himself on leave during one section of the book, unable to come to terms with the home front, with those untouched by the horrors of war beyond food and labour shortages. For these members of society the war is ethereal and fantastic, especially for those too young to participate (for example, see Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler: A Memoir) or too old. For them it becomes all too easy to believe in the Dolchstoßlegende, the ‘stab in the back’ myth of Germany’s loss in the First World War. For us it becomes all the more important to remember the book’s message, and to appreciate it as a masterpiece of anti-war literature.

Ranković, Tito and Đilas

It’s probably about time I got around to finally writing about some of the books that I read, a little in the vein of the 52-in-52 meme. This probably won’t start a trend, but Milovan Đilas’ Conversations with Stalin is full of sufficient tidbits to make it worth writing about, albeit unfortunately a little on the short side.

Đilas (pictured, right) was one of the key figures in the Yugoslavian Partisan movement during the Second World War, and maintained an influential position in the post-war government alongside Josip Broz Tito (centre), Aleksandar Ranković (on the left), and Edvard Kardelj. He started to write his memoirs in the mid-50s and decided to set his encounters with Stalin aside for separate treatment, but his outspoken criticism of the Yugoslav system resulted in his arrest and imprisonment in 1956. He restarted this work in 1961, which eventually brought about his re-internment.

The book details relations between the Yugoslav Partisans and later government and the Soviet Union during the Second World War until the eventual rift between the two states in summer 1948. On account of his position and his command of Russian, Đilas was chosen for a number of visits to the Soviet government, in 1943, 1944 and 1948. Đilas remains quite frank about his own limitations in perception, particularly in his first trip to the Soviet Union during the height of the war. He openly describes his naïve views regarding the west, the perfidious nature of British Intelligence, and his reverence of the Soviet lands as both leaders in the Communist world, and as the spiritual home of pan-Slavism.

Georgi Dimitrov

Nevertheless, Đilas makes numerous important observations, doubtless with the benefit of many years’ hindsight, from his early meetings with Stalin, and the men who surrounded him. He notes the description of the morale boost Stalin’s continued presence in Moscow made during the Battle of Moscow in late 1941, in a meeting with Georgi Dimitrov (pictured), the Bulgarian Communist leader and head of the Comintern until its disbandment in mid-1943. Đilas also pointed out his surprise at the influence of Russian Orthodoxy, no less than pan-Slavism and Russian nationalism, as a motivating factor in the pursuit of the war against Nazi Germany.

Of the figure of Stalin, Đilas illustrates his early reverence for this figure of genius in the Communist path, but confirms many of the facts revealed elsewhere about the pursuit of Soviet policy and the workings of the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy. He remarks on Stalin’s “Kremlin complexion” (of pale skin and rosy cheeks), the copious drinking habits of many of the key figures in the Politburo,¹ the excessive meals undertaken from late evening into the small hours (and the subsequent shift in time of the bureaucracy’s operations to account for the late rising of many department heads), and the associated requirement of a weekly day’s разгружение or ‘unloading’ – a governmental detox programme if ever there was one. Also interesting was the mention of Stalin’s penchant for watching films, a detail that Nikita Khrushchev struck upon in his memoirs.²

Đilas makes clear recognition of the influence of imperialism in Stalin’s deliberations and in Soviet policy as a whole. His private recognition of the action of British socialists within the British democratic framework lay in contrast to the public differences, which Đilas maintains came as a result of their differences in foreign policy. Stalin apparently expounded his views in terms of the unity of Slavs as being vital to success, and predicted that Germany would rise within a dozen years on account of her educated and industrious proletariat. Perhaps more intriguing is Đilas’ report that Stalin predicted the ‘next war’ to occur within 15-20 years, and that at a time when the current war was still raging.

“This war is not as in the past; whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army has power to do so. It cannot be otherwise.”

This clear imperialistic mentality is further expanded in the last portion of the book, when Đilas traveled to Moscow again in 1948 on account of relations between Yugoslavia and Albania, and the foundation of the Cominform.³ Albania and Yugoslavia had been the only eastern European nations to free themselves from the Nazi yolk without decisive intervention from the Red Army, and as such lay beyond the mental grasp of the Soviet system as the above quote suggests. The cooperation between these two states, particularly in terms of economic development and the potential integration of Albania into the Yugoslav federation brought opposition from Nako Spiru within the Albanian Communist Party, and fierce resistance to his opposition particularly from the likes of Koçi Xoxe and Enver Hoxha⁴ resulted in his eventual suicide. Đilas points out that the issue of Albanian-Yugoslav cooperation and integration was not one of major concern for the Soviets, but that the Yugoslav government could provide support, aid and most particularly advice to the Albanian regime, despite itself requiring these things of the Soviet government was hypocritical. “We agree to Yugoslavia swallowing Albania,” Stalin is quoted as saying. Incidentally, this period clearly strikes as being of particular interest in light of today’s Balkans, Đilas writing that “its [the potential Yugoslav-Albanian union] particular importance, in my opinion, lay in the fact that it would make possible the amalgamation of our considerable and compact Albanian minority with Albania as a separate republic in the Yugoslav-Albanian Federation.”

This dispute over Yugoslav-Albanian relations was to be solved through the integration of these two states into the Soviet dominated east European framework. At a meeting with the key figures of both the Yugoslav and Bulgarian Communist parties, Stalin and his associates openly derided the Bulgarian attempts at creating a customs union with Rumania without prior Soviet consultation. Soviet policy rather demanded the union of Bulgaria with Yugoslavia (and subsequently the union of Albania with this new federation), no doubt on the basis that the Bulgarian Communists relied on Soviet support, still being under the Red Army’s occupation. Dimitrov himself had been prevented from returning to Bulgaria immediately after the war, no doubt on account of his position and potential independence of Soviet aims.

These final meetings with Stalin strike as the most revealing into the degeneration of the Soviet state, and the first seeds of the gerontocracy which plagued the later Soviet years. Pointing to the vitality of Stalin’s mind during the war, Đilas remarks on his creeping senility, his increasingly gluttonous habits, his reliance on older memories and anecdotes, a more banal sense of humour, and the attitude of those who paid court to his actions. Stalin’s position was as much self-created as it was required by those very forces who surrounded him, and the rot in this symbiotic relationship strikes out particularly in the later section of Đilas’ memoirs. Đilas provides some tidbits which unfortunately aren’t fully expanded upon, such as the appearance of open anti-Semitism in the Soviet hierarchy (Stalin boasting that none of its Central Committee members were Jewish), the mysticism and religiosity surrounding the Lenin Mausoleum, returned from its wartime hiding place in the Russian interior, and the now famous account of Stalin maintaining that Benelux involved only Belgium and Luxembourg and was no real example of a working customs union, no one in his presence willing to correct him.

One should also point out Đilas’ impressions of Khrushchev on his meeting with him in 1945. Đilas noted the marked Russification of life in Kiev,⁵ despite the relative leniency of regional policy in the late war years: at this time, Ukrainian party officials sought the establishment of separate diplomatic relations with the various people’s democracies. Khrushchev himself certainly straddled the line of Russo-Ukrainian. Khrushchev impressed Đilas as being of limited classical education, but more importantly self-made and experienced beyond the normal limits of the bureaucracy, “a man of the popular masses,” well acquainted with the actualities of the Soviet system (e.g. experiences and limitations on the Soviet collective farms), and interested in modifying and reforming from within said system. Of course as Đilas was able to point out, these impressions came from a Khrushchev of a different era to the one who assumed control of the Soviet Union in Stalin’s wake.

Finally, Conversations with Stalin includes a couple of rather amusing anecdotes worth relating about Soviet views on Winston Churchill. Certainly he was well-respected within higher circles as a ruthless politician, and thus a dangerous one. Stalin had reputedly warned Đilas to be wary of British aid, explaining that it was they who had shot down Władysław Sikorski’s flight leaving no evidence behind. Đilas argues that his warnings passed on to Tito inspired the latter to leave his base at Vis for Soviet occupied Rumania in September 1944. It was this reputation which resulted in Stalin’s following remark:

Perhaps you think that just because we are the allies of the English we have forgotten who they are and who Churchill is. There’s nothing they like better than to trick their allies. During the First World War they constantly tricked the Russians and the French. And Churchill? Churchill is the kind of man who will pick your pocket for a kopeck if you don’t watch him. Yes, pick your pocket of a kopeck! By God, pick your pocket of a kopeck! And Roosevelt? Roosevelt is not like that. He dips in his hand only for bigger coins. But Churchill? Churchill – will do it for a kopeck.

Nevertheless his respect was well earned; during a trip to Moscow, Churchill apparently remarked that he should be awarded for his services to the Red Army, since it was his call for intervention at Archangel that had trained them so well.

Conversations with Stalin offers an interesting insight into the inner workings of the Soviet system, and their relations with the eastern block in the immediate aftermath of the war, in particular of course with Yugoslavia. Đilas marks the start of the deterioration of Soviet-Yugoslav relations with his inquiries into the actions of the Red Army in Belgrade, though points out earlier examples of differences between the two existed even from 1943, quoting Tito as having said “our first duty is to look after our own army and our own people” over the issue of not informing the Soviet Union of their parley with the Germans regarding the treatment of POWs. His style is readable and littered with interesting asides which unfortunately are all too often left unexplored, and one certainly gets the impression that the amount of retouching with the benefit of hindsight is at least more limited than might elsewhere be found. Despite his recognition of Stalin’s growing senility and the blatant imperialism of Soviet policy, Đilas nevertheless continued to respect Stalin, for his abilities, his accomplishments and his drive, despite the horrors that lay in his wake. Đilas describes him as a man who would destroy nine tenths of humanity in order to make the remaining tenth ‘happy’. But a man who was as much driven by his own demands as by the men around him, to drag the Soviet Union into the future.

1. Vyacheslav Molotov was one to ‘drink hard’, whilst Lavrentiy Beria was ‘practically a drunkard.’
2. Published in English as Khrushchev Remembers.
3. On the latter point, Đilas remarks that it was Stalin himself who came up with the name for the Cominform’s organ “For a Lasting Peace – For a People’s Democracy” on the basis that it would be quoted as such in the Western press.
4. Đilas wrote that Stalin described Hoxha as a petty bourgeois, inclined towards nationalism.
5. For more on this subject, see Ivan Dzyuba, Internationalism or Russification?, 1974.