Built to Play

Built to Play explores the great beyond with games about the human heart, the future and cosmological afterlife.

It's taken us a few weeks to get back into gear thanks to DICE, GDC and PAX East all being in short succession of each other, as people are either at a conference or will be soon. With that in mind, welcome to our first theme of 2015, Space. We're going to explore games and media's relationship to space and how it was almost inevitable that the black background of early video games would be explained as "Oh, that's just space." Not included on that list funnily enough is Space Invaders, which takes place in the upper atmosphere and therefore has no excuse. 

Infinity, whether it's expressed as the infinite blackness of the void or the range of infinite possibilities, has often been alluded to by games. In Gravity Ghost, Erin Robinson uses our impression of space as a glimmering and distant wonder to set a stage for a purgatory of sorts, where hurts can be healed and children can be redeemed. Zach Gage doesn't refer to space at all in #Fortune, unless one is lucky enough to have a prediction involving it. Instead, #Fortune reaches into the seemingly infinite output of Twitter and delivers an often random collection of potential events. Both projects attempt to describe something beyond us, the future or death (or maybe both),  and trust that we'll like what they find. 

With the vaguely philosophical rambling out of the way, on this week's episode you will find the following:

• Zach Gage on sharing, tweets, and his leather box that predicts the future (00:30-11:55)
• We cover the news. ** Evolve has too much DLC.We cast the Zelda TV show. Peter Molyneux breaks one promise too many, and John Walker attacks. (11:55-37:30)**
• Yosef Safi Harb on playing with our heartbeat and howSkip a Beatcan teach you more about your body. (37:30-46:30)
• Erin Robinson on her new game Gravity Ghost and the relationship between space, loss and growing up. (46:30-58:20)

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "if (Johnny_Ripper Remix)" by A K U A, "Buildings Stays Offshore" by Augustus Bro Gallery Six, "heartbeat" by Jake Allison, "red Shoes" by Johnny Ripper, "Nana Veloz" by Crisopa, "Snow Monkeys" by CandleGravity. Our Opening theme was "touching" by Souvenir Driver.This episode used clips from Gravity Ghost, Soda Drinker Pro, and the Wizard of OZ. Thanks to thenudo on Freesound for "Heart-beat" and to Will O Neil for his dramatic reading of his fortunes. BUILT TO PLAY IS A MET RADIO PRODUCTION. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

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We haven't had a chance to discuss the news for a while, so we thought it's time to catch up on everything we've missed since mid-January. Sony Online Entertainment was bought by Columbus Nova, and renamed Daybreak Game Company, alerting our suspicions. The Club Nintendo is becoming more exclusive to the point it no longer exists. Microsoft expects to believe that people will play Minecraft on the Hololens. Square Enix, against the will of God himself, made a profit. Persona 5 may have the coolest menus in video games. Net neutrality may be a real thing in the US and Canada. 

We wrap up the main four Metal Gear Solid game with an in-depth look at 3 and 4

We explore the history and development of one of the strangest entries in the Zelda series to discover how the game became the black sheep of the family.

_The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask _is one of the few Nintendo games where the consequence of your failure is planetary genocide. Link, searching for his lost friend Na'vi, is robbed and is then forced to stop the moon from plunging into Termina. The happy mask salesman, who looks eerily like series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, tells Link early on that has "met a terrible fate" and that he has to fix this calamity in three days. But don't worry, he knows Link can do it. 

The titular Majora's Mask doesn't play into the game's frightfulness. While Ganondorf may have threatened to  rule Link's home with a tyrant's fist, he does not bring about the end of the world. Then there's the subdued colour palette, the off-kilter music, and a three day cycle that can be punishingly difficult if not carefully managed. Link needs to keep his eye on the clock every day because everyone is busy in on their final days, and may need him at various hours. 

Danielle Rosen argues much of this difference can be attributed to Eiji Aonuma, and his freshman direction on the series, which has left it feeling dissonant from the rest of the franchise. Plus, he's got his hands on the upcoming Majora's Mask 3DS remake, so it's probably a decent time to revisit it.

BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF CJRU. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ON ITUNES AND STITCHER. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

Built to Play ventures into the harsh outside world to find games that take our mind off the cold. We manage with this with laser tag at Battlegrounds, an ancient English treasure hunt, and the Clash of Talons.

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For those just joining us, this is Part 2 of a series about the history of Metal Gear Solid, from the MSX to the PS4. If you haven't listened toPart 1,we recommend you do that now. This episode still works as a standalone, but we do call back to earlier points in the series.  Continue at your own peril. With that out of the way...

We laugh at the most problematic game in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. 

No matter which way you cut it, Metal Gear Solid 2 is the weird one. If Metal Gear Solid is military fiction built on camp but with delusions of grandeur, its sequel is military fiction subsumed by that delusion. The game remains fun, at times, but it has the poorest gameplay, worst level design and easily the most outlandish plot of the series. It's also closest series director Hideo Kojima has come to producing a video game art project.

Metal Gear Solid 2 pretends to be a post-modern masterpiece. The game mocks the player, and goes out of its way to obfuscate its story. It tries to be about the need to break away from well-worn paths, by making you run well worn paths until you can see the ridges in the game's repetitive level design. The fact that it shifts lead characters from Solid Snake to Raiden is almost besides the point when the game introduces the poorly-motivated Patriots, an artificial intelligence bent on creating Big Boss' perfect future because of reasons. The story doesn't have the cocaine-addled madness of Snatcher to bring you along either. It just drags along, occasionally intermixing real life footage with cutscenes to further blur the line between reality and fiction to the point that it's not worth caring about.

The whole effort feels like first-year literature student's attempt at post-modern fiction with a military pastiche. With bad characters, a confusing plot, and stunt marketing, it's no surprise Kojima isn't particularly proud of the project either. Agness Kaku, who translated the game, has faced no end of grief in the years after its release. A project for which she had so many restrictions, it had little chance of crossing the Pacific without complaint. Metal Gear Solid 2 is a game so off-track and laughed at, Kojima needed two sequels to make the series feel relevant again.

Which we'll get to next time.  For now, this episode contains the following:

• A history of the game's development and it's plot. (00:00 - 16:45)
• Agness Kaku tells us about her translation of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Ghost Babel, and her current feelings on the project. We reference an ongoing libel suit she is currently engaged in. Agness presents her case in more detail here. (16:45- 39:20)
• Metal Gear Solid 2's legacy and why it was originally reviled by the fans. (39:30-47:50)
• "Big Shell West Bristol" by BenCousins with music taken from Metal Gear Solid 2. (47:50-50:40)

Next time: Snake gets naked. 

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR "BUILDINGS STAY OFFSHORE" BY AUGUSTUS BRO GALLERY SIX, "IS THAT YOU OR ARE YOU YOU?" BY CHIP ZABRISKIE, "SCHOOL BOY" BY PIETNASTKA, "SIMON" BY L'HOMME MANETE AND "RED SHOES" BY JOHNNY_RIPPER. FROM OCREMIX, OUR OPENING THEME IS "LIQUID METAL" BY VIG AND OUR ENDING THEME IS "BIG SHELL WEST BRISTOL" BY BENCOUSINS.WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM METAL GEAR SOLID 2. THE FEATURE IMAGE IS BY YHANCIK.BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF MET RADIO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

The Built to Crew explore the world of Metal Gear Solid, tracing the series from its MSX origins to its increasingly nonsensical conclusion.

Metal Gear Solid, first released in 1998, is one of the biggest game franchises out of Japan. Its combination of stealth gameplay, cinematic presentation, and charismatic voice acting has lent this series a charm it would have had otherwise. As for all of its moments of brilliance, Metal Gear Solid often feels like a game about the American military made by a film director for a Japanese audience. Which is exactly what it is, in all of its glory. Metal Gear Solid so frequently crosses the line between camp, military fetishisation, and half-hearted attempts at meaning that its hard to make heads or tails of any one part of it.

Yet, it's impossible to deny that it's entertaining. Metal Gear Solid is the kind of game that drives up to your house around 3 a.m. and screams, "Get inside!" without telling where it's going or why. You get in anyway, not because you trust the driver, but because your life was so boring up until this lunatic stopped by.

In the next two episodes, we follow Metal Gear Solid from its beginning to its conclusion, andhow the game intersected with our lives and those who worked on it.   

In Part 1: 1987-1998, we trace the origins of Metal Gear Solid and how it affected games as a whole:

• The history of Metal Gear on the MSX, and the rise of its designer Hideo Kojima (1:00-12:30)
• The localization efforts of Jeremy Blaustein, and his time working on Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid, and Blackmore's Bane (12:35 - 30:20)
• Metal Gear Solid's plot, development and legacy, digging at why it became so popular (30:30 - 46:10)
• The novelisation process with Raymond Benson, and how Snake became more like Kurt Russell in the novel (46:10 - 56:30)

This post and the audio file have been updated to reflect a correction regarding Jeremy Blaustein's translation work on Metal Gear Solid. The erroneous statement has since been removed. We regret the error.

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR THE FOLLOWING MUSIC. "DARK MATTER" and "Rarified" BY PODINGTON BEAR, "It Was" by Cosmic Analog Ensemble, "Praise Book" by Bleak House, "OCLP" by Marco Raaphorst and we played the full "A Spy in The House of Love" by Noise Problems Selections by live at NP50th.From OCRemix, our opening theme is "Liquid Metal" by Vig. FROM FREESOUND, THANKS TO "diesel truck pass" BY the bizniss.WE ALSO USED CLIPS FROM Escape from New York, Metal Gear Solid, Snatcher, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The feature image is Jen Wynne as Meryl Silverberg from Metal Gear Solid by 

.BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF MET RADIO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.

IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.

Our end of the year celebrations as we talk about games we didn't play and ones we played a little too much

We talk about Mr. T, World of Warcraft, the Ninendo DS and Bob Tarantino tells us whether it's a good thing there aren't many Canadian copyright suits.

We confront enemies, war, and clones in our discussion of Battlefield 3 maps and screaming in Spaceteam

Built to Play's had a chance to explore the ways games and interactive art can bring us closer together, but like any other medium they also have the power to tears us apart. Not just in the tribal sense either. Conflicts between whether a particular console is better than another are vacuous affairs, and rarely do friendships end over having bought an Xbox One over a Wii U. Multiplayer pits us against each other and while it's usually part of amiable competition, many players don't see it that way. They call the SWAT team on players they dislike. They call other players racial epithets. 

But what if a game could make us against a whole region? Since military shooters started taking place in the near future, there's been a big focus on the Middle East and Russia. It's easy to acknowledge that the narratives in these games are frivolous sub-The Expendables attempts at storytelling, but those story maps become multiplayer maps. That's when these games, which have levels in Karachi, Tehran, and various parts of Afghanistan, leave the player to form an opinion about the place they're fighting in. 

Sometimes games lead to enemies not because of their content, but because of the people who made them. Cloning someone else's work is an easy way to lose a few friends and end up in court. Or maybe a game never set out to be competitive, but let to screaming matches anyway. 

For all of these examples and more, take a listen to the newest episode, which contains the following segments:

• Johan Hoglund of Linnaeus University wrote about the ways in which games can normalize the perception of the Middle East as a place of violence. He recently wrote a book called The American Imperial Gothic: Popular Culture, Empire, Violence.  Starts 0:20.
• Danielle Rosen brings us stories from the video game industry, like EA's promise to not buy new companies, Target Australia taking Grand Theft Auto V off their shelves, and our PlayStation memories. Starts 11:50.

• Bob Tarantino andConrad Leetell us about the trials and tribulations around game cloning, and how it's changed over the last 30 years. Starts 37:50.
• Henry Smith devised a comedy game that's been giving him strange reviews. "Your game caused me to get a divorce! A++ would buy again." Starts 47:50

Update: Conrad Lee would prefer not to be contacted at the twitter account presented in the show. The link has been corrected to reflect this.

THANKS TO THE FREE MUSIC ARCHIVE FOR THE FOLLOWING MUSIC. OUR OPENING THEME WAS "Western Chow Yun Fat" by This One. We also used "rest (johnny_ripper remix)" by Alphabets, "Wanna See My Spaceship" by Beatoven, "The Watchtowers of Sandusky" by Fields of Ohio, "Dark Matter" by Podington Bear, and "summer breeze let it out (johnny_ripper remix)" by smoking fox.From Soundcloud we used "Nightmares" and "Under the Olives" by Patrick Ellis.From Freesound, thanks to "photocopy-machine" by tomija.We also used clips from Saving Private Ryan, Star Trek the Next Generation, Battlefield 3 and Spec Ops the Line.BUILT TO PLAY IS A PRODUCT OF THE SCOPE AT RYERSON RADIO STATION IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN TORONTO. IT WAS PRODUCED AND EDITED BY ARMAN AGHBALI AND WRITTEN BY DANIELLE ROSEN.IF YOU LIKE THE SHOW PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND RATE US ONLINE. IT HELPS MORE PEOPLE FIND THE SHOW AND GIVES US AN IDEA HOW WE'RE DOING. FEEL FREE TO COMMENT DOWN BELOW.