Why the Internet is Better than Malls for Your Shopping Needs

The last thing one would expect to find on a pop culture site that features posts about comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies is a post about an advertisement for an online fashion retailer. Well, this is such a post. The ad starts predictably with two women interested in the same article of fashion, then escalates to violence, only to reveal that the malls have been overcome with flesh eating zombies.

Okay, that last bit might be an exaggeration, but when you consider the lack of blood loss when the one woman rips off the other woman's arm it isn't that much of an exaggeration.

Apparently, people who shop at malls are zombies ergo smart people order their fashion online from the safety of their bunkers.

Hat Tip Tulkinghorn and Andrew Sullivan.

Jody Drew Me a Custom Troll for Trollhalla

One of the advantages to having a multi-talented wife is that when you ask if she might have the time to draw a troll dressed like Sherlock Holmes for you to submit as a profile picture on a website -- you get one with lightning speed.

I have recently joined the Trollhalla community. Trollhalla is a website created by Ken St. Andre, the author of Tunnels and Trolls (the second published fantasy role playing game), as a place where supporters of the Tunnels and Trolls game can come together and chat while simultaneously supporting the game they love. As many of you know, though I am a huge fan of the King Kong of mass market role playing games, I am also a very big supporter of smaller press and independent game designers.

I have always thought that much of the most innovative developments in gaming come from the smaller companies. In fact, one of the reasons I like the King Kong of the industry so much is that each edition of that game has responded to innovations in the gaming industry -- either by altering mechanics or hiring people who were innovative designers for smaller companies. The most recent giant behemoth shows influences from a number of my favorite games -- Feng Shui, Savage Worlds, and The Burning Wheel among them -- and I eagerly await seeing how the next "mutation" of D&D incorporates current developments like the "how to run mystery scenarios" systems of the excellent Gumshoe system.

But my support for smaller companies is not the only reason I am surprised that it took me over 25 years to find this group -- they subscribed to a fanzine by Ken before the internet. No, I should have found this group much earlier because when I was younger Tunnels and Trolls was the game I played more than any other. There was probably a time when I had nearly memorized all the encounters in The Arena of Khazan, and my 3x5 library of gladiator npcs for that adventure easily numbered in the hundreds.

When I was young, as today, I liked playing fantasy rpgs with friends. But I also liked playing baseball, playing soccer, wrestling, dating, and I had a part-time job. Marathon gaming sessions with friends were something one could only really do during winter and summer breaks. Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures were something I could do right after I finished my homework and they were a lot more entertaining than a lot of prime time television.

So here's to T&T and Trollhalla, stop by if you want to chat with some people who are enthusiastic about a very fun game.

Now to email Ken to see how I can submit the image.

Axes Don't Attack Cops, People Attack Cops With Axes

Earlier this week, I posted about a tragic event where a sword fight between family members led to the death of an elderly woman. Now we have this news of a man attacking police with a battle axe.

More on How Playing Games Can Increase Your Employment Marketability

I would probably take fewer than two minutes of perusing the archives of this website for even the most dense person to deduce that I am an avid lover of games of all types. I am a ludophile extraordinaire. I'm the type of person who reads that the CEO of Spirit Airlines owns over 1700 board games and asks himself,"hmmm... Do I have that many?" The answer to which will vary depending on whether you get to count Role Playing Games, Board Game Expansions, and Card Games. It varies even more if you count each product within a Role Playing Game line as "one game" or as individual games in the equation. In other words, my answer might be -- depending on the initial criteria for the variables -- "Yes, I own as many games as the CEO of Spirit Airlines." Sadly, without the paycheck of said CEO.

It should be noted that Mr. Baldanza, the CEO I am referring to, has owned over 3000 games -- and currently owns approximately 2000 -- according to his BoardGameGeek Profile. I trust his profile more than the New York Times as he -- unlike me -- appears to have time to actually update his profile. My profile significantly underestimates my game collection and I really ought to get to work making my profile accurate. Though the fact that Mr. Baldanza's profile is actually updated may provide a clue why Spirit Airlines receives so many customer complaints -- just sayin'.

I also own a fair collection of video games ranging from the Atari 2600 era to the modern 360 era with a couple of stops over in PC land.

All of this is to say that if anyone would be excited to read articles regarding how playing games increases your value as a potential hire, it would be me. So when I read articles, like this one from the Washington Post discussing Changing the Game: How Video Games are Transforming the Future of Business, I read them with a pretty open mind (especially when the book can be purchased for my Kindle 2 in seconds while writing a blog entry) -- maybe too open. Add to this that the CEO of Spirit Airlines thinks that certain games provide real world skills that can be applied to running an airline, and one can see how it might be easy to get excited about how all that time I've been playing games hasn't been wasted time. And if 97% of teens spend time playing video games, it might help worried parents to discover that their kids are also developing some useful skills while beating Guitar Hero: Metallica or setting up a World of Warcraft raid.

There are reasons to believe that playing games can be beneficial in developing a variety of skills -- social and otherwise, but one should always keep in mind that not all games are created equal. Candyland is a great gateway game that is one of the best ways to introduce children to the norms of gameplay, and the fact that who wins the game is completely random can be a tool to teach young people how to be gracious when they lose a game. Learning that losing isn't the end of the world by learning that sometimes winning is impossible, can be a wonderful experience for children. Especially, when the outcome of the game is "hidden" and that the only way to find the result is to actually finish the game. Candyland teaches how to lose, how to persevere when things look glum, and that winning doesn't make you a better person. Candyland's approach, with winners and losers, is a far better way to teach self-esteem (and its limits) than the modern "no losers," "no conflict," "no touching," and "no dodgeball" movement that seems to be pedagogically popular.

All that said, Candyland isn't the best game to teach a young person mathematical skills, or how to look at challenges critically and logically, or how to develop deductive skills. Games like Settlers of Catan, Chess, and Clue are much better for these skills. And you can also learn many of Candyland's lessons through physical sports which have the added benefit of being good exercise as well. If you want to maximize the benefit of playing games, then one would imagine you might want to play a "balanced diet" of games.

Recent research has also demonstrated that young people who play video games are less likely to experience depression than those who spend time watching television. This is good news indeed for parents who worry about their Prince of Persia obsessed tyke might become a lonely couch potato. Video games, and games in general, are active experiences. But studies like the one related to the link between TV and depression should also be read skeptically. As much as I only want to read happy things about games, I can't help but have my "is the research normatively biased gnome" whisper into my ear, when I read explanations for the different reactions to the various stimuli like the following:

What is it about TV that makes it more detrimental to an adolescent's health than gaming?

In a word, advertisements. Most hour-long TV programs now have over 15 minutes of commercials. That adds up to a lot of time spent listening to advertisers tell you exactly what's missing from your life - and how their product will improve it. "The bottom line is that when we do sit down and think it is nice and relaxing [to watch TV], the reason we feel that way is because our thinking brain is completely turned off," Dr. Primack explains. "It can almost be related to commercials brainwashing us, and saying 'you want this in your life.'

Really? It's commercials that cause depression? Not the inherent passive nature of the medium? Not the lack of social element in TV watching? (All points brought up by Nachbar -- the journalist who wrote the article for The Escapist -- as things that are benefits of games.) Commercials make us feel inferior? Wow. [sarcasm]How insightful in that Frankfurt school cultural hegemony kind of way.[/sarcasm]

I don't know about you, but when I watch the most recent Suave commercial it isn't telling me "exactly what's missing from [my]life." It seems to me, the commercial is saying that Suave is a good product for those who live busy lives. And when I see a car commercial for a BMW (or a sports car) driving swiftly along some coastal highway, my first thought is usually "that's pretty." I don't spend time thinking to myself, "why don't I have the latest model of Mercedes." I'm just not that obsessed with certain material goods defining my sense of self. Not that my personal experience proves anything -- one cannot generalize from an n of 1 with any degree of accuracy. But social sciences are at their weakest when they try to describe "why," especially if the study didn't have a second test group who was exposed to television shows without commercials, and various groups exposed to specific genres of television entertainment. I'll need to read the full report to see what variables they account for, and how they account for them, but unless they test specifically for a correlation between watching advertising specifically and depression, this sounds like a normative bias to me.

All that said regarding a potential weakness in the study -- one cannot know if it is an actual weakness unless one sees the test design -- that doesn't mean that there is not a correlation between television viewing and an increase in the odds of exhibiting depression. There is. There also is no similar correlation between playing video games, many of which do actually have ads in them. The good Dr. and I will have to discuss what all that "unlocking" of vehicles in various race games is other than advertising.

Anyway...no one ever said watching TV would help you develop job skills.

Swords Don't Kill People. People Kill People.

This isn't the kind of news you expect to read in the 21st century, but it appears that a 70 year-old woman was killed trying to break up a sword-fight. According to the news story, it isn't clear whether the 70 year-old woman was killed by her husband or her grandson.

For some reason this strikes me as more shocking than a shooting death. It seems to me that a shooting death, as a result of an escalating argument, can happen "accidentally." Accidentally, in the sense that a person who is inappropriately waiving a gun around might have the gun go off. My imagination is finding it difficult to create a scenario where a sword "accidentally."

I had considered including a gallows humor Elric reference here. But after reading the first commentator on the news site's blog, I can't do it. This is truly, as the Unlocked Wordhoard wrote, the least cool swordfight of the year. The Highlander references in the comments section are even worse.

As a gamer, I hope that it isn't later discovered that Chris Rondeau played D&D, was an SCA member, or any other gaming link you can imagine.

Spirit Airlines CEO's Board Game Recommendations

Do you ever dream of becoming the CEO of an airline that receives more complaints per customer than any other airline? Do you dream of running an airline that runs commercials comparing its low prices with how low it would be if your friend were having an affair with your mom? Do you dream of running an airline that pretty much charges for everything except the air you are breathing while flying?

If you answered any of the above questions, then Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza has a list of board games he believes will help you become an airlines CEO some day. That's right, Mr. Baldanza is a board game geek who believes that the skills he uses every day in running his airline can be honed by playing board games. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, none of his recommended board games are actual simulations of running an airline. Baldanza's introductory paragraph to this list states, "if you really want to do the job well. No game with an airline theme even comes close...."

The board games he does recommend vary from long standing classics like Go to popular modern Eurogames like Power Grid. Given the depiction of Spirit in the NY Times article, I was surprised that friendship ending games like Diplomacy and Illuminati were nowhere to be found. Given the large volume of board games at Cinerati headquarters, I was surprised that there were so few of these games in the Cinerati library. We have Go and Power Grid, and have been hunting desperately for a good copy of King Oil, but none of the rest have found there way onto our game shelves.

Apparently, the Cinerati headquarters isn't the place to learn the skills to become the CEO of an airline that punishes the price insensitive, but Baldanza's list has ensured that the Cinerati headquarters will soon host a copy of Chinatown.

Paizo vs. RPGNOW (aka DriveThruRPG): Two Different Ways to Satisfy Consumers

When Wizards of the Coast decided to remove all availability to purchase their gaming products (past, present, and future) as PDF files, the decision left ripples throughout the gaming industry. Wizards left due to rampant piracy of their products and the effects that piracy was having on physical (and digital) sales. Last week, I wrote that I thought this was both a good and bad decision by Wizards -- good on the new products and bad on back catalog.

I also argued that this would be a good thing for the gaming industry overall. It was my belief that gaming companies would look to take advantage of the void left in the wake of Wizards leaving the market. This occurred rather quickly with several publisher joining in a Celebration of PDFs, where they offer their current PDF products at a significant discount. This has had mixed reviews from the brick and mortar retailers, but I think it is a smart move. You can read some of the brick and mortar reactions here, here, and here.

What I didn't expect, and maybe should have, was the different ways that different online stores would respond.

Stewart Wieck and Sean Patrick Fannon of RpgNow (and DriveThruRpg), who shut down access to Wizards pdfs instantly (earlier than he was requested), went quick to work negotiating limited access for his customers who had previously purchased products from the Wizards catalog from his sites. He notified his customers that starting tomorrow customers will be able to download previously purchased Wizards pdfs for a 24 hour period. After that period, all the material will be gone for good. Stewart was seeking to both satisfy his customers, who had previously paid for access to material, while adhering to Wizards' wishes. Kudos to you Stewart and Sean.

Paizo, on the other hand, appears to have made no such offering to their customers and it looks unlikely that they will do so. Where RpgNow left dead links of my former products, so that I could at least see what I had purchased -- and so they could negotiate the deal they negotiated, Paizo removed all references to Wizards products I purchased from their website. This not only demonstrates that it is unlikely that Paizo is negotiating a deal with Wizards, it exhibits three weaknesses in Paizo's customer service.

First, it hinders my attempts to draft a letter to Wizards demonstrating how they have benefited from my digital consumership (I will have to go through my files to manually figure out which I purchased from Paizo and which from RpgNow). Second, it demonstrates a lack of foresight that Wizards might be up for some negotiations. Third, it demonstrates that Paizo cares more about its own publisher business than it does about any business revenue it acquires as a digital game store -- a short sighted view in my opinion.

Paizo is a very successful publisher, but I have found that they are a poor retailer. Physical orders from their site take inordinate amounts of time to be fulfilled as they seem to carry very little inventory. Rather it appears that they use your order as the basis for an order from a distributor. This causes delays in fulfillment and exhibits poor command supply chain dynamics. Their pdf response seems to exhibit this same poor command.

Their response to Wizards removal of pdf was two fold. First, they discounted their "in house" pdfs by 35% (all of the products they publish are discounted). This is a smart move by a smart publisher. Second, they removed the Wizards pdf -- apparently without negotiating with Wizards to have an "Download Recovery Day." This is a bad move by an online retailer.

The problem here is that where RpgNow (and DriveThruRPG) are viewing me as a consumer of all the products they offer, Paizo seems to be viewing me primarily as a consumer of their in house products and not of their store in general. This is a mistake that runs the risk of alienating me as a customer, since it appears they only want my business when it directly benefits them and not when they only receive a percentage of the proceeds.

Paizo should offer a recovery day as well. Failure to do so will not cost them my business, I am a loyal Superscriber, but it might cost them other consumers who are on the fence.

Dave Arneson 10/1/1947 - 04/07/2009 R.I.P.: Another Gaming Legend Passes Away

If it weren't for Gary Gygax and David Arneson, my Saturdays would look very different. Between the two of them, they created a game (and hobby) that has altered the face of recreation. When Gary and David organically created the role playing game called Dungeons & Dragons, I don't think they could ever have guessed that it would lead to the creation of so many exciting games. Without them there would have been no Champions, no Tunnels & Trolls, no Magic the Gathering, no Space Hulk, no Ultima, no World of Warcraft.

Without these men and their creation, the world would be less fun. Given the number of heated arguments about which edition of various role playing games is superior, the world would also be less interesting.

As I read the words, "these men" and "their creation," I realize that I am doing one of these men a disservice. It is true that the combined activities of these two men led to the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. They are after all the acknowledged co-creators of the game, as Wizards of the Coast's website so eloquently remembers. But in many ways Dave Arneson is the creator of the role playing game and of the continuing dialectic between mechanics and persona that moves innovation in role playing game design.

Role playing lore tells us that Major Wesely's Braunstein was the ur-roleplaying game. Major David Wesely was the first Dungeon Master (or Game Master), but role playing games may have died in their seedling state if not for the efforts of the first "role player." That gamer was David Arneson. I can try to describe what happened or what it meant for gaming, but I doubt I could do a better job than Ben Robbins from Ars Ludi. Ben writes:

Dave Arneson: Gamer Ex Nihilo

“Peaceful revolutionary. Gets points for printing and delivering leaflets to each of his revolutionaries, and more for handing them out to other civilians (who may be agents or guerrillas of course…). Starts at home. (B-4)”
–Braunstein 4, Banana Republic

When you started gaming you read all these books, and they told you you could be a cleric or a thief or an elf (or a vampire or a Prince of Amber) and they told you you should probably pick a caller and set up a marching order and listen at doors and all that other stuff. You marched your character around and talked in funny voices. Sooner or later you may have realized that the rules didn’t drive the game, your imagination did.

But what if you never had any of those books? What if no one had ever explained to you what roleplaying was? Were you a good enough gamer to become a gamer without even knowing what a gamer was? Could you have just started being a gamer out of thin air, without anyone ever telling you how to do it?

Dave Arneson did.

He lied, swindled, improvised, and played his character to the hilt. He came to the game with fake CIA ID he’d mocked up, so when another player “captured” and searched him he could whip them out. Other players were still moving pieces around the board and issuing orders like a wargame while Dave Arneson was running circles around them and changing the whole scenario. He was winning the game entirely by roleplaying.

You may think of Dave Arneson as one of the godfathers of GMing, but even before that he was the godfather of players. He was, literally, the proto-player.

###

“You’re the student revolutionary leader,” Wesely says “You get victory points for distributing revolutionary leaflets. You’ve got a whole briefcase full of them.”

Much later, having convinced his fellow players that he is really, perhaps, an undercover CIA operative, and that the entire nation’s treasury is really much safer in his hands, Dave Arneson’s character is politely ushered aboard a helicopter to whisk him to safety.

Far below the streets are still churning with fighting, plastic soldiers colliding with innocent citizens and angry rioters. In his lap sits the forgotten briefcase of revolutionary leaflets. “I get points for distributing these right?” And with a sweep of his arm he adds insult to injury, hurling reams of pages into the downdraft of the helicopter where they scatter and float lazily down upon the entire town…

Final score: Dave Arneson, plus several thousand points

Big whoop, you say, this is all old timey stuff. We modern gamers are way beyond dungeon crawls and listening at doors and all that primitive stuff. We have indie games and story games and narrative control and yadda yadda yadda.

Yes indeed. But even skipping the “standing on the shoulders of giants” argument or the “know your roots” argument, look again at what happened in that game: Dave Arneson was winning entirely by roleplaying. He isn’t doing tactical combat or playing some dumb-ass linear quest, he is making his own rules and being, for lack of a better word, an excellent player by any modern definition. He is making the game.

Don’t think Dave Arneson would kick your ass in some Sorcerer or Dogs In The Vineyard? Then you haven’t been paying attention. He would, as the kids say, take you to the net.

Modern gamers are pushing into new territory, but they’re also reclaiming old territory whether they know it not — the lands of their ancestors. If you’re an indie gamer or an avant garde gaming revolutionary, old school titans like Dave Arneson and Major Wesely are your peeps. They were trying things that had never been done before in their day too. They are your guys.

It is rare that people come along and create something truly new. The cliche that there is nothing new under the sun is very often true, but when it isn't we can be inspired and entertained in ways we never thought possible. Role playing games were (and still are) such a new concept in play that theorists debate whether role playing games are merely games or whether they are also a form of art. When you look at a group of gamers moving pieces around a board and rolling dice, role playing games certainly seem to fit nicely into the niche of game. But when you see those same people, descendants of Arneson's CIA agent, acting out their actions and creating entertaining narrative experiences -- some semi-scripted like a Christopher Guest film and others completely improvisational -- the argument that role playing games can be art gains some traction.

One thing is certain, role playing games can move the soul by being immensely pleasurable experiences. They can have this effect no matter how you play them -- hack and slash or persona immersion intensive -- the games make for good friends and good stories.

To repeat a thought above, they make the world more fun.

Thank you Dave for making the world a more interesting and entertaining place.

Wizards Pulls PDFs: Good and Bad for Wizards, Just Good for Competitors

Yesterday, I read a tweet that Wizards of the Coast would be ending all pdf sales of its current and back catalog of products. Wizards required that all of the web-based stores that sell their pdfs not only cease selling pdfs (as of midnight last night), but that they also remove the capability to download previously purchased pdfs from patrons who had purchased pdfs in the past. I regularly purchase pdf products from DriveThruRPG (I use their RPGNow gateway) and from Paizo Publishing. Like many consumers, I am disappointed that Wizards of the Coast will be -- at least temporarily -- suspending all digital sales of their products.

The twitter news was verified by both RPGNow and Paizo. In fact, Paizo sent me an email reminding me to re-download any products that were not currently on my hard drive. The email read as follows:

Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of the Coast PDFs will no longer be available for purchase on paizo.com; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.

At the time, Wizards had given no reason for the cease and desist on all sales, but it quickly came to light that it was response to rampant piracy of their products. Wizards has recently taken eight individuals to court for illegally distributing their recently published Player's Handbook II.

While I am disappointed in Wizards' decision, unlike a lot of people on the internet, I am not angry. In fact, I understand and think that in the long run this choice may be good and bad for Wizards and just plain ol' good for the industry as a whole.

Before I begin my analysis, you should know that I am a strong advocate for creator rights. This means that I am very much pro-copyright and anti-piracy, though it also means that I am highly critical of corporate "work-for-hire" agreements. I understand some need, in a company like WotC/Hasbro, for "brand ownership" of a property for the purpose of continuity, but I think most writers should receive royalties based on current and future sales of IP they helped create. The fact that Gygax and Arneson saw little money from D&D after they were no longer directly contributing to new editions was a tragedy, as is the fact that Wolfgang Baur sees no royalties from Dark * Matter. The gaming industry could learn a lot from the film, tv, and music industries (particularly the film and tv industries) when it comes to acknowledging creator rights.

In addition to being pro-copyright myself, a friend of mine is former Senior Counsel, Content Protection Litigation at Fox. Not only do I think that he isn't evil for suing the hell out of pirates, I think he was right to do so. This is especially true since Section 512 of the DMCA affords Internet service providers with general immunity for transmitting, routing, or providing connections for materials through their networks. The law prevents companies like Fox from attacking the "deep pocket" highways that allow for the illegal transmission of data, and forces Fox to go after the actual criminals who -- lacking deep pockets -- are often sympathetic compared to big companies like WotC and Fox.

I think Section 512 is good and necessary (because I am a fan of free speech and I don't want corporations deciding what I can and cannot write...as I wrote I am a fan of creator ownership and control), but that the current environment forces corporations to act as "law enforcement" which is potentially bad for everyone. By making corporations the enforcers, the law forces corporations to act against their own interests while acting in their own interests. This is the situation that WotC/Hasbro find themselves in. They must defend their property, because no one else will, but in doing so they will alienate fans and cost themselves money.

So, what do I think they should do? According to Landslide (the American Bar Association's IP trade publication), entertainment piracy is "estimated to cause $18 billion in trade losses around the world last year." The ABA information was based on the International Intellectual Property Alliance's Special 301 Letter to the U.S. Trade Representative dated February 11, 2008. This isn't an industry ending problem, but it is a significant one. There is very good news regarding the majority of IP providers cooperating with IP holders when there is alleged infringment, (according to the same source) "ISP compliance rates remain high even in jurisdictions where the framework of intellectual property laws generally is perceived to be weak." But there is also bad news in that there are (once more according to the same source) "rogue sites and ISPs that refuse altogether to play by the DMCA's rules. One of the most notorious examples is the Swedish torrent index site The PirateBay...it has been estimated that The PirateBay enables more than 40 million downloads of protected content every month."

We have a serious problem, and it's a problem that doesn't merely affect big corporations. I have been a patron of Wolfgang Baur's Open Design Project since its inception and have contributed to every project he has worked on so far. The purpose of the project was to create a product that only the funders would have the ability to use. It isn't cheap to participate at the "Patron" level, and I have never felt so used as a consumer when I discovered Open Design Projects listed in bit torrent indexes. While it is true that small companies can actually benefit from file sharing, it can replace advertising for these firms, it is also true that word of mouth without file sharing could work just as well. There is such a thing as fair use and while the particulars of fair use are vague, it certainly includes reviews on websites and message boards.

This problem isn't limited to entertainment either. The AP recently announced that it will be taking a more active role in enforcing the proper use of its content on the internet. For years, people have been cutting and pasting AP articles without paying for the right to publish them and have been contributing to the strains on the news industry. The news industry certainly has other problems as well, but it is still true that the "information wants to be free yo" crowd are helping to nail the coffins in on that industry. And if you think that web ads are going to pay for everything and allow for all the free content you want, you might want to read this article in The Register. Apparently, YouTube "will lose parent Google $470m this year, because it can't generate worthwhile income from advertising." And if advertising won't make up the difference for what is given away free, Atlas will Shrug and the content will go away.

And that is exactly what happened with WotC. Atlas Shrugged and essentially told the world that it was taking its digital toys home and not letting anyone else play with them. This has made a lot of fans very angry. And while it certainly won't stop pirates, it will allow WotC to look for ways to better predict the impact of piracy on their profit margin and provides them an opportunity to look for alternate ways to offer the products digitally.

And here's where I finally write how this is good and bad for Wizards, and just good for the industry.

THE GOOD AND BAD FOR WIZARDS

The good is that Wizards is protecting their intellectual property and is showing a genuine desire to proactively go after pirates. The music industry lawsuits may have been onerously expensive and cost the labels a lot of goodwill, but they also reduced piracy. The lawsuits work. People are actually rational actors and weigh the costs of paying a small fee for a song or potentially getting sued. Wizards actions will likely reduce the amount of piracy they are suffering.

The bad, well...it's the same as the good. Wizards' fans are beginning to feel as if they are the ones being attacked. I don't personally understand how any non-pirate could ever feel this way, but many do. Add to that the fact that Wizards' isn't just suing the fans who are pirates, they are punishing fans who have done no wrong by removing the product from the internet and you have a public relations disaster. This is bad for WotC/Hasbro and is more evidence that the current legal team at WotC have no idea how to deal with their consumers. The first was their awful attempt at a Game System License for 4th edition -- it was too restrictive and like yesterday's action seemed to punish those who wanted to work in WotC/Hasbro's best interest.

I think it is a good thing that WotC/Hasbro removed all of their newer product from digital availability. They still have publishing costs on most of this stuff. They have physical product, which is far more expensive to produce than digital, that needs to "turn over." The 4th edition stuff, contrary to naysayers, is selling well, but it would sell better if piracy were minimized. This is moderately sound business.

I think it is a bad thing that WotC/Hasbro have removed access to all of the out of print product. The bandwidth costs for the products was being absorbed by the online stores, so these were nothing but a revenue stream for WotC/Hasbro. Now the only way to get these products is through second hand distribution, legal and illegal. Either fans hunt the books down on eBay or fans download them illegally. They have no other options. This is bad business.

What WotC/Hasbro need to do is make the old and new available in ways that minimize, because you cannot eliminate, the affects of piracy. The first thing they can do is use a World of Warcraft/Music Subscription model for their digital content. By using a Flash based reader they can allow DDI subscribers to access all of the 4th edition books currently available. They should do this at two fee levels, the player fee and the DM fee. "Players" would be able to access, with an internet connection, any and all player oriented books that are currently in publication -- in addition to other DDI materials -- anytime they want. They will be allowed to read the books for no additional charge. When the core books were the only books, this would have meant just the Player's Handbook, but as time passes it includes more and more books for the same fee. "DMs" should be allowed to read all publications, on Flash Paper, that are in publication for the current edition. It is up to Hasbro whether they want to allow the printing of these books, rather than just the reading of them, but I would recommend that they do.

They should also make available Kindle editions of the books...just for me.

Second, they should allow the purchase of all older editions through either traditional channels or their own pdf store. Piracy is no more, and actually less, a problem with these products when they are available for sale. Currently, you can get the entire catalog on various bit torrents, but you cannot buy them. Let consumers buy them and minimize the damage that piracy is doing to your bottom line. Do this now!

This may be what they are planning, but WotC/Hasbro have been silent on the issue and this is costing them loyalty and goodwill. This also provides a wonderful opportunity for small businesses to fill the gap.

JUST GOOD FOR COMPETITORS

By pulling out of the digital marketplace, WotC/Hasbro have left a large number of legitimate consumers in search of a product provider. Smart companies like Paizo (they are offering their Pathfinder PDFs for 35% off the regular retail price through the end of April), Rogue Games, Louis Porter Jr. Design, are immediately seizing the opportunity. With lower overhead, and lower advertising budgets, than WotC/Hasbro they have much to gain through goodwill and less to lose from piracy. Companies like WorldWorksGames still worries about pirates, but they beg their fans to not become them. They use their small size as a marketing tool to dissuade piracy, and it works...a little (see Open Design comment above). Companies like Pinnacle Entertainment Group couldn't have survived some pretty rough patches if it weren't for digital sales. They still suffer piracy, but their rules and products are also inexpensive so hopefully many pirates become customers in the long run. As I wrote earlier, piracy can serve as word of mouth for these companies. One imagines that few people are so callous as to acquire all of their products through piracy. But it is still true that the same word of mouth could be achieved without piracy.

Nothing will stop these smaller companies from risking the seas of piracy, as they have less to lose than WotC/Hasbro -- and that is a good thing. It is good for the hobby if more companies are competing for your dollar, it leads to innovation in gaming. Savage Worlds, Pinnacle's excellent RPG, wouldn't exist if they hadn't needed to find a new way to compete. The Indie Press Revolution is filled with excellent games, available digitally, looking for your gaming dollar. As long as WotC/Hasbro stay out of the digital market, these companies will have a chance to grow, and that is good for the industry.

It might be bad for WotC/Hasbro, but that depends on what they do in the next few weeks. And I think that is all they have before to announce where they are going digitally before the ill will will overwhelm them.

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE and 24: SEASON 1

The current season of 24 is the first season my wife and I have watched. When the show started, we thought that the premise of a "real time" television action/drama was ingenious. Our lives were very busy, and we had no DVR at the time, so we missed half the first season. We then saw a commercial where Jack's daughter is attacked by a mountain lion and our suspension of disbelief was lost before our viewership began.

Years later, under the continual barrage of recommendations by our friends, we capitulated and started watching the current season.

We like it -- as unrealistic as it is -- very much. We also think they should rename the show to Jack's Very Bad, Horrible, Awful, Day. We also don't like having to wait seven days to see what happens next. We can be thankful for the fact that we haven't seen any of the other season, because now we have some content to view between our weekly updates of Jack's current horrible day.

Naturally, we began our filler viewing with Season One and we're about halfway through the season. I was amazed at how much effort the villains of the first season took just to make sure they could get a shot off at a Presidential Candidate. I thought no one would go through so much effort. But then I saw a post on a blog I regularly read (Lee Goldberg's fine A Writer's Life) entitled "There Have Got to be Easier Ways to Kill a Guy..." which bore surprising similarities to the first episode of 24. Watch the clip and I'll discuss the similarities below.

Now that you've watched the opening to Deadlier than the Male think back to the first episode of 24 -- Day One.

SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN 24 SEASON ONE

We have a woman who seduces a man on an airplane in order to get his special key card. She then leaves the plane using an explosive device on the airplane's exit door (and another explosive on board for good measure), which causes explosive decompression allowing her to escape as her other bomb blows up the plane. Mind you, this was all to get a key card that would allow an assassin, who has had extensive plastic surgery in order to make him look like the now dead journalist, to enter a location where he could eventually shoot a Presidential candidate. This doesn't even get the gun in his hands, a side of the plot that adds several layers of planning to what is already a convoluted assassination attempt.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Apparently, the creators of 24 don't agree with Mr. Goldberg. Apparently, they believe there are far more complicated ways to kill a guy.

The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft Coming to the Big Screen

In what must have been a strong application of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz have inked a movie production deal for a comic that will be released this Wednesday. The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft is a comic that combines the fiction of the famous author with biographical information from the author's life. The narrative is a kind of "What if HP Lovecraft was writing about real things?"

It's an interesting idea, but fans of Lovecraft have yet to receive a big screen adaptation of anything Lovecraftian that comes close to capturing the mood of the author's tales. The best "true" Lovecraftian film is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's "period" silent adaptation of Call of Cthulhu that was released in 2005. The made for Showtime version of Dreams in the Witch House comes pretty close to capturing the feel of the books, but the Society's adaptation far outshines the typical Lovecraftian fare like The Dunwich Horror, Die, Monster, Die!, Dagon, and 2007's Cthulhu. This isn't to say that all of these Lovecraft adaptations are horrible, just that most of them fail to capture the building sense of dread of a Lovecraft tale.

The Society's silent was so good that I eagerly await their adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness.

According to Variety and The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft blog, Universal thinks that the comic's version of Lovecraftian horror is a good fit for their Classic Monster series and might be a good vehicle for Ron Howard. For genre fans who are alarmed that Mr. Howard might be directing a Lovecraft related film, one should remember that Mr. Howard -- in addition to being a very skilled director -- got his start as a director with Roger Corman. Roger Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe tales are classics in the horror film canon, and Poe was a major influence on Lovecraft. The Corman - Howard - Poe - Lovecraft connection may seem tenuous. After all Grand Theft Auto was a long time ago, nor was it a horror film, but films like The Da Vinci Code and Willow demonstrate that Howard has a deep affection for genre films and the way he directed madness in A Beautiful Mind would translate easily into representation of personal horror.

My opinion regarding whether the comic itself is worth adapting will have to wait until after the next few months. I would say after this Wednesday, but one should never judge a comic book (or television series) by a single installment.

Most Frightening Bread in the World

Take a second and imagine what you would consider to be the most frightening bread in the world.

Is it some yeast Shoggoth oozing slowly toward you as it consumes city after city?

Is is some mold covered lump that looks as if it is about to rupture, thus producing enough spores to suffocate a small town?

Is it filled with maggots or grubs and thus seems unpalatable?

All of those are certainly frightening, but they are far from the most frightening bread in the world. None of those loaves would simultaneously please Slaanesh, Orcus, Khorne, and Lerotra'hh, as the most frightening bread in the world ought to do. The most frightening bread in the world should be something that would make Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft smile, a daunting task in and of itself. It should also make for a good decoy when being chased by ravenous zombies.

The world can be thankful that Diana Eid is letting the world know that Kittiwat Unarrom has designed a bread that pleases the dark gods and serves as a perfect distraction for those ravenous zombies. Only in this case, the brains they eat will be made of "dough, raisins, cashews and chocolate." Not exactly zombie fare...and even with those great ingredients I'm too afraid of the bread to even think of eating it.


Image Credit -- Diana Eid

End of Gaming as We Know It Announced at GDC: Hello Kitty MMORPG to Be Released in the US

Every so often there is a paradigm shifting event that occurs within the media. Sometimes it is something like Poe's invention of the detective mystery or the Lucas/Spielberg invention of the blockbuster. In the 1980s, one huge paradigm shift in afternoon animation was the shift to cartoons that were blatant advertisements for lines of toys. When the toys being advertised through cartoon stories were things like GI JOE and TRANSFORMERS, children had much reason to rejoice. But when the next shift came, the STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE and MY LITTLE PONY shift, teenage boys throughout America wept as they watched their favorite shows replaced by talking ponies.

This week at the Game Developers Convention in San Francisco, a paradigm shift of monumental proportions was announced. Sanrio, the makers of those cute HELLO KITTY artifacts we find at malls across America, are going to be launching a HELLO KITTY MMORPG in the United States. Just when beautiful women like Felicia Day were giving fathers everywhere hope that their daughters could share the joys of crushing Horde Guilds in PvP Raids, Sanrio dashes all those hopes aside by creating this game. Now the young girls of the world will be able to:



"Just soak up the super-cute atmosphere?!" We're doomed. No instanced dungeons slaying the minions of a diabolical lich. No riding giant tigers and Gryphons. No mining for ore to manufacture our sweet rifles so that we can shoot our Orcish enemies. Nope. We can spend money at malls...interact with Sanrio characters...and cultivate our own farm. This gives new meaning to "farming" in an MMO.

What is the father of twin daughters to do?

Oh well...maybe I can customize my character to be like Pochacco. He's cute as can be after all.

Listen to the Geekerati Inteview with David Gaider

Last night, Eric and I had the pleasure of talking with BioWare's David Gaider about his new book Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne and the upcoming video game Dragon Age: Origins. The discussion provided some great insight regarding what we can expect from the next rpg from BioWare.

Given BioWare's excellent record when it comes to quality PC and console rpgs, David and his crew have a lot to live up to and it sounds like they are likely to exceed expectations. Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne takes place thirty years before the event that transpire in the game and makes a natural jumping in point for those who can't wait until the second half of the year for the video game experience.

In the past, many of BioWare's successful rpgs have been based on licensed products. But with recent games like the action-rpg Jade Empire and the deep play of Mass Effect, BioWare has shown an ability to develop immersive settings with compelling narratives.

David Gaider lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and is a Senior Writer at BioWare's Edmonton studio, where he has worked since 1999. He is currently the Lead Writer on Dragon Age: Origins, responsible for story and setting design, and prior to that worked on such titles as Baldur's Gate™ 2, Baldur's Gate™ 2: Throne of Bhaal, Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, Neverwinter Nights™ and its expansions.

I don't care how cool Apple iPhone ads are, they cannot top this!

How many phones have viral ad campaigns featuring Formula 1 drivers using their phone to drive their F1 vehicle?

The Blackberry Storm does.

Watch the last minute of this viral video to see Lewis Hamilton use a Blackberry Storm to steer his F1 car.



Now, if only I can figure out which frequency Hamilton was on...then I can guarantee an F1 victory for Kimi next year!

P.S.: I know the remote thing is camera magic. It's still bitchin'

Fox Demonstrates the Madness of the Film Industry as They Plan a "Relaunch" of the Fantastic Four

There are times when studios completely drop the ball and need to remake movies, or reboot franchises. Sometimes the source material underperformed because the initial attempt to tell a story fell short of the mark, either financially or creatively. A perfect example is the 1980s film version of Captain America. The 80s film version of everyone's favorite All-American Hero is arguably the worst superhero film ever made. It was a failure both financially and critically.

Typically, film studios could care less about whether a film fails critically, as long as it succeeds financially. As long as the film brings in money, they'll be satisfied. Likely, they'll make sequels. That seems to be changing. Now the studios seem to be becoming obsessed with making "re-envisionings" of moderately to very successful franchises. First, Marvel decided to remake the Hulk. They argued that the Ang Lee version lacked the quintessential "Hulk Smash" qualities they and fans were looking for, and that the film underperformed financially. Therefore, it was "necessary" to have a remake in the theaters a mere 5 years after the last version of the film.

This was, naturally, a load of crap. Sure, the Ang Lee film wasn't what comic book fans wanted or expected (that includes the good folks here at Cinerati). It wasn't really a Hulk film. As comic book fans, we don't know what it was. But that doesn't matter. There are only 200,000 or so of us comic book fans, and that only comes to $2-million of any superhero movie's box office. For a superhero movie to succeed, it has to appeal to non-comic book fans and put rears in the seats. Did Ang Lee's film, universally panned by critic and fan alike, succeed? Yes. The film made $132-million domestically, and had a world-wide gross of almost $242-million. Enough money that any DVD sales were all gravy.

But they made a re-envisioned remake anyway. Did The Incredible Hulk do scads better than the Ang Lee's Hulk? Critically? Yes. The new version is closer to what people expected in a Hulk film. The film has its problems, not the least of which is the abandonment of the Hulk as metaphor for Nuclear Arms for the more topical Hulk as metaphor for performance enhancing baseball players. That and the conversion of the Hulk's cold-war anti-thesis into a British special forces guy who doesn't like the fact that he is aging. So...it's not the comic book Hulk, but who cares. As I wrote earlier, there are only 200,000 of us comic book fans anyway. Did The Incredible Hulk do better financially? No. It cost $150-million, which given that dollars decrease in value with time means the films cost similar amounts. $132-million in 2003 is approximately $150-million in 2008. But The Incredible Hulk made $254-million in world wide box office, which is also similar to the $242-million that Ang Lee's version made.

While it might have been silly from a certain point of view for Marvel to give us a remade Hulk, it was profitable and it gave us a Hulk film where the first hour was actually fun and where we didn't have to watch killer poodles, so it didn't seem ridiculous for the studio to make the move. If only we had known what was coming down the pipe.

What was coming down the pipe was a re-envisioning of The Punisher in last year's Punisher: War Zone. Never mind that Thomas Jane was compelling as Frank Castle. The film only managed $34-million in domestic box office and had little appeal overseas. Add to that the fact that some fans panned the film as not at all like the comic book. A claim that is patently false. Excepting the lame and over-the-top performance by John Travolta many of the scenes were cut straight from the Marvel Max series. No one understands why anyone hires John Travolta to play villains, he can't pull it off. Cast him as a nice guy and it's often a real treat, but as a villain he's like nails on chalkboard.

The Thomas Jane Punisher was the Punisher of the couple Garth Ennis series and not of the older Steven Grant or Mike Baron issues. So that explains some of the fan backlash. Older fans, who no longer buy comic books, didn't get what they expected. Newer fans got the Punisher of the books, but sadly they also got a villain who was out of the old Batman television series. So...with critical and financial "failure" Lionsgate decided a remake was in order and made Punisher: War Zone. .

If they wanted to make a better Punisher movie... they failed. If they wanted to make more money... they failed. The new Punisher film cost Lionsgate $22-million and made a whopping $8-million. There were some fun elements to the new film, but the box office demonstrated that the character only had so much appeal to him beyond the comic fan base.

That's really the crux of the issue. Some characters have a limit to how broad an appeal they have. The Hulk? He's worth around $250-million. The Punisher? $30-million if you're lucky.

The same is likely true of the latest re-envisioning coming down the pipe. Fox plans to make a whole new Fantastic Four movie with a new cast and a new vision -- less "bubble gum". I guess $329-million and $280-million aren't profitable enough for Fox. They have to dive in with a re-envisioning to make the title less "bubble gum." Because, you know, the Fantastic Four is known for its super grim story lines.

[sarcasm]Super grim stories are so easy to write when one of your characters' superpower is elasticity. Yeah, comics are filled with grim stretchy guys like Plastic Man and Elongated Man. Those guys make Rorschach look like Jerry Lewis. [/sarcasm]

It just doesn't seem to make sense, even given lukewarm critical and fan acceptance of the current Fantastic Four -- especially given how perfect Chris Evans is as the Human Torch. It doesn't make sense...unless you're a Hollywood studio who might have to turn the rights over if you don't make a film using the intellectual property and you think that a sequel might not play as well marketing wise as a re-invention.

The marketing shift for a reboot makes sense when thinking about a studio desperately clinging to IP rights. This quote from ICv2 might help to put a little light on the subject, "with Marvel eager to reclaim its properties for its Marvel Studios moviemaking arm, Fox is in a situation of “use it or lose it” with the FF and Daredevil. Since the Fantastic Four films were far more successful that the ill-fated Fox Daredevil, it makes sense for the studio to concentrate its efforts on the FF first."

You see Marvel wants those rights back and Fox has a limited window to keep that $300-million a film franchise in its stable. They have to make something and make it fast or rights return to Marvel. So instead of negotiating with the cast of the prior two films, who are more expensive now and might have scheduling conflicts, you sell the public on the re-envision angle. You kill three birds with one stone. You potentially make the movie cheaper, you talk the people who were critical of the first two into giving you another chance, and you retain the rights for another sequel if this one makes another $300-million. Win-win for Fox.

You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of the Roger Corman version of the Fantastic Four. You see...he made that one on a tight schedule just so someone could keep the option.

One Year Ago Today Gamers Lost a Legend

Today's a day to crack open your copy of Chainmail and peruse your copy of Deities and Demigods (the Elric/Cthulhu version natch) and remember the man who helped create an entirely new way to play. Without Gary, there would be no World of Warcraft, no Ultima, and no weekend get-togethers with friends where dragons are slain and dungeons are sacked. There would also be at least one fewer Uwe Boll movie, but I can endure many more of those so long as I can sit around the table with my friends and role play.

Nerdvana at the East Valley Tribune has a nice small reminder up.

Our piece last year can serve as a reminder to not let opportunities, even ones guaranteed to be awkward, pass you by. I still wish I had knocked on Gary's door.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom: The Conversation Continued

When I wrote my review of JBJ, I did so in the hopes that LA Weekly's Bollywood critic David Chute would read the piece. David has been on the cutting edge of film viewing trends since his days advocating Hong Kong cinema before it was cool to do so. He's perceptive and I wanted to know what he and his fellows over at the Hungry Ghost Blog thought about my little piece.

The blog highlighted my review and I was immediately attacked (not personally) in the comments section for beginning my piece with a discussion of a disconnect between the opinions of the native viewing audience in India and the opinions of those American critics who deigned to review the piece. Tulkinghorn, writing from his "capacious writing-table... on which is a pretty large accumulation of papers," was the one who took me to task by stating (slightly edited):

Gee.

Seems to me that trying to figure out what people in Glendale think about American blockbusters is hard enough if you... live in Glendale.

Trying to figure out from Southern California what people in Bombay think about Indian blockbusters is almost certainly pointless.

It violates either one or both of David's rules in the immediately preceding post.

On the other hand, figuring out why YOU like the movie is very useful...

I take it as a complement that the sinister attorney is interested in my own reasons for liking/disliking a particular film.

Mr. Chute, who for some reason goes by the name Generic on the blog (I will have to talk with him about this), came to my defense in an interesting comment. What was most interesting about the comment was a quote that had little to do with my JBJ review per se. His comment included a kernel of an underlying philosophy of what it is to be a reviewer, a question that I find very interesting -- and will write more about tomorrow when I look at an essay Poe wrote about Poetry criticism. Mr. Chute writes:

As I understood the code of the profession when I was coming up the ideal was not care whether a given film had been validated by the box office or other critics. If you liked something, you said so. To do other wise was dishonest and/or cowardly. Each critic creates his/her own Pantheon. Endorsing something the cool group despised was a badge of honor; in a twisted way this made you even cooler.

This is followed by comments in defense of my original review. Kind and insightful words, but nowhere near as interesting as the paragraph above. There is so much to unpack in this paragraph that one could devote a career, let alone a series of blog entries, to examining the assumptions discussed in it. I should point out that nothing in the above states that Mr. Chute currently agrees with the content of the paragraph, merely that it represents the code of the critical profession as he understood it when he was "coming up." Never the less, it is an exciting paragraph.

I wrote a quick response, which sadly ended up as the last word on the topic. I am going to reproduce my comment in full here, in the hopes of soliciting more discussion.

I believe a critic should always examine his/her own views in relation to the views of others, both other critics and "the masses." One should always be reflective when reviewing. The box office may not be a perfect measurement of the zeitgeist, but I have taken to many economics courses to dismiss Price, and the willingness to pay, as at minimum a proxy for what people enjoy.

I firmly agree that the views of others, the "public" if you will, should not shape what a critic says. Otherwise, their opinion is a mere populist voicing that adds nothing to the medium. And adding something to the medium is one of the legitimate roles of the critic.

Equally, reviling something the cool group likes, merely because they like it (I know this isn't what you are advocating) is as pointless as liking something because other like it. Certainly, another legitimate role of the critic is to champion that which might otherwise be overlooked, or even reviled, were it not for an astute critical mind.

I believe that by examining the disconnect between critical reception and audience reception, one can find both why one enjoyed a film, but also what one might otherwise overlook.

I would never have overlooked the slow first act of JHOOM BARABAR JHOOM, it was readily apparent but as readily overwhelmed by the overall enjoyment of the film. A large rock takes a lot of effort to move, but once it is moving it really moves. JBJ was the same.

I might have overlooked the soft gloved, almost trivial, way the movie dealt with Pakistani and Indian relations if I wasn't focused on thinking about the disconnect. A part of the film takes place in England, and I've read enough John King to understand that setting the film in England involves certain assumptions -- which are barely touched on in the film. Partly because we are dealing with Romantic Comedy and you don't want to go too dark. But that is what separates "Loves Labours Lost" from "Much Ado About Nothing," the stakes are different.

While I would never presume to speak for why the Indian public responded to JBJ less enthusiastic than I did, knowing that they did helps me examine beyond first impressions. One must find tools to break through their visceral and vicarious eyes to get to the voyeuristic one.

The Glamorous Life of a Hollywood Assistant

Wonder what people with Master's Degrees do while they are "writing their screenplays" in the hopes of a great job in Hollywood? The Back of the Class are rapping Truth to Power in this video.

Hollywood ASST from Back of the Class on Vimeo.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom: Once the Inertia Takes Hold, It's Hard to Stop Swaying to the Rythm

2007's Jhoom Barabar Jhoom was a financial flop in India. The film cost Rs 25-crore (250 million rupies -- slightly more than $5 million) to produce and was unable to reach the bar necessary to stay in release after its first week in Indian theaters. It had made around Rs 6-crore after its first weekend -- including international sales -- a figure close to $1.2 million and less than a quarter of the film's production costs. The film's lack of financial success, in India at least, didn't stop those critics who reviewed the film from raving over the entertainment value of the film. It's Tomato Meter rating is 83% fresh (with only 6 reviews), and the two critics who have rated it for Metacritic give it a 70 (not great, but good). The users on Metacritic haven't been as kind as the reviewers -- though none of the users have commented regarding why they rated the film as they did.

So we are given two distinct representations regarding JBJ's entertainment value. American critics giving one opinion and the domestic Indian reaction providing evidence of a disconnect between the American critical reception and popular opinion. What's going on here? Cinerati's trusted source on all things Bollywood David Chute thought highly of the film and his opinion was the primary reason that cinerati viewed the film in the security of our Sanctum Sanctorum recently. The film was a pleasurable combination of romantic comedy, physical comedy, and musical. As Chute puts it, "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is light entertainment so gratifyingly well crafted that it’s uplifting."

He's right, but then why the disconnect between certain audiences? What is it about Jhoom Barabar Jhoom that critics, and cinerati, found so engrossing that many viewers missed? Or is about "missing" something at all? What are the roots of the differing viewpoints? There seem to be three where the critic would find a film (especially a foreign one) enjoyable, while native and mainstream audiences might find the film wanting. These include, a slow first act, a passing engagement with the conflict between Pakistan and India, and a "Western" feel.

Jhoom Barabar Jhoom opens with Bollywood veteran Amitabh Bachchan as a kind of Gypsy Storyteller/Greek Chorus fusion. As he sings and dances, in his vibrant costume, he sets the stage and stakes of the narrative. The setting is nothing less than a classic lovers introduction, straight out of Shakespeare, where the destined lovers from vastly divergent backgrounds encounter one another in what begins as a mildly antagonistic situation. Nothing new about this setting, we've seen it a hundred times or more. It works when the characters are charming and it fails miserably when the characters are flat.

In this case, our fated couple are Rikki (Abishek Bachchan) and Alvira (Preity Zinta) and they meet at London's Waterloo Station. He's a borderline con-man from India, she's a born Brit from the middle-class with Pakistani heritage. On a typical day class and racial issues would prevent them from even greeting each other pleasantly, but today is different. Today the train station is so crowded that the only place Rikki can find to sit is next to the lovely Alvira. At first, she is uncomfortable tells Rikki that she is waiting for her fiancé to arrive on the Birmingham train. After he reveals that he too is engaged, the stage is set for conversation and romance...But wait, they're engaged right...or are they?

To pass the hours, Rikki and Alvira share stories about how they met their respective fiancés. Rikki's story comes first, and so does the films first and third problems.

It takes almost 15 minutes to get through the story's set up, and it seems to take forever for Rikki to tell the story about how he and his fiancé Anaida (Lara Dutta) met in Paris. There are several attempts at slapstick comedy during his tale, but most of them fall flat and one begins to wonder how Abishek Bachchan was cast in this film in the first place. The written jokes are dull and the narrative drags until the act ends with a spectacular dance number on the streets of Paris that incorporates the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre.

The dance number recaptures any waning audience interest. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom seems to have approached the introduction of the first full dance number with baby steps, as if it were educating an unfamiliar audience to a new form of entertainment. It is during Rikki's story, and the build up to it, that one begins to think that Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is attempting to introduce "Western" eyes to Bollywood storytelling. It doesn't work. All it does is make the first act take far too long. Like the more Western parts of Bride and Prejudice, the attempts at making the storytelling style less dramatic only make the story less entertaining. Thankfully, once the film begins to "dance" the enjoyment begins to rise.

Alvira's tale about her fiancé Steve (Bobby Deol) is hilarious, but it is also the tale where the underlying cultural and racial conflicts come most to the fore of the narrative. In her tale, we find out that Alvira has made a promise to God to never marry a dark-skinned man. It is a promise she modified when she "fell in love" with Steve, but the scene where she makes the promise is simultaneously amusing and disturbing. Imagine a similar scene in an American film where race is one of the underlying relationship barriers and you can begin to see the problem. One can imagine that Indian viewers might not appreciate the lighthearted way that this subject was treated. They might not have found it disturbing at all, but it isn't hard to imagine it rubbing the audience at least slightly the wrong way.

Aside from this glitch, Alvira's story is wonderful -- especially for those who are comic book fans. Steve, you see, has saved Alvira from being crushed by a wax dummy of Superman. Her rescue is followed by a wonderful magical number which features wax caricatures of several members of the Justice League and Bobby Deol's physical presence and charisma is undeniable. One finds oneself visually drawn to him during the number, even though one of the most beautiful women in the world is standing right next to him.

Continuing on the roll of engaging narrative, following Alvira's tale Rikki tells his second tale. This tale is an imagining of what Rikki and Alvira's future would be if only they weren't each already engaged. There is little dialogue, though much song, in this sequence and it is one of the most romantic examples of visual storytelling ever to be filmed. The "what if" Rikki and Alvira live an entire lifetime in the tale, and the segment ends with a soft touch of romantic pathos as this romance suffers the inevitable fate of all romances.

While one can imagine that the attempts to appeal to Western viewers, the cursory addressing of cultural/racial tensions, and a slow first act could make some view the film as less enjoyable, one finds it almost incredible that anyone who has watched the last half-hour of the film could do anything other than rave about Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

The final half-hour is one long dance number during which our secondary couple "Anaida" and "Steve" are introduced to one another and also when all the plans of our fated lovers completely fall apart. The music, the dancing, and the costume changes are fantastically enjoyable leaving the audience with the desire to dance. Bobby Deol's presence once more steals the scene as he dances with power and conviction. The only flaw in the act is that the dance number fails to fully simulate the "bed trick" during the number. There should be, and sadly isn't, a discreet section of the number where the dancers change partners only to find they are more comfortable with their new partners than with the partner they arrived with. This is a small quibble, but it is significant. This number should be an allegory for the entire film's narrative, and it is but for the one flaw.

Overall, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is an engaging romantic comedy that stumbles a little, but gets its audience to a fulfilling ending.