I’ve really been enjoying io9, a new gawker blog all about the sci that is fi. I dunno what super-Spaarti chambers those bloggers were grown in, but almost every post they put up there is a must-read. If you enjoy the genre known as ’speculative fiction’ I highly recommend it.

One of their recent posts resonated a lot with me because of some of the media I’ve been consuming lately. An article entitled Eight Reasons the Heroes Journey Sucks runs down some of the weakest components of that well-worn story path.

I particularly agree with this point:

It discourages originality. If you claim that every great story is really just the same great story with surface changes, you’re encouraging people to plagiarize the hell out of old stories. Instead of championing stories that are different, like say, Firefly/Serenity or James Robinson’s Starman, you’re tempted to call a schlock-fest like the original Star Wars “mythic” because it’s about a hero who’s singled out.

I’ve been watching a lot of X-Files and (new) Battlestar Galactica recently – shows that very much break the BS mold of Campbell’s journey. While the later years of X-Files definitely got a bit crufty, it stands as an amazing show today; instead of pulling from the fantastical to make real life interesting, Carter and Co. pulled from real life to make the fantastical approachable. The Files tapped into the zeitgeist of the American subconscious, that American Gothic mentality that made every new episode approachable by people from our culture. No wonder that JJ Abrahms is working to return to those heady days of yore.

Contrast this with most of the schlock we see passing for story in Massive games. The same tired retreading of elves, dwarves, etc, etc over and over ad nauseum. Yes, I know that fantasy is double coded, and I don’t have a problem with the tropes per se. It’s more the constantly repetitious cliches that get to me. Yeah, flesh-eating haflings are a bit silly, but at least the Dark Sun setting tries to switch things up a little bit.

Raph’s over at his site today talking (again) about how hardcore gamers are going the way of the dodo, because the increasingly-core casual gamer is slowly muddying the definition of the term. This change in the gaming sphere is reflected by the increasing acceptance in pop culture of more ‘hardcore’ niche topics. BSG’s popularity can be contrasted against the X-Files’ by noting how much the newer show does not conform to the American subconscious.

TV-watching audiences are an increasingly sophisticated bunch (slack-jawed mouth-breathing reality TV fans notwithstanding). My hope is that this reflection, the muddying of the gaming waters, etc, will all come together in future MMOGs that ignore Campbell’s psychobabble in favour of more visceral, real, sophisticated gameplay and storytelling. Age of Conan and Warhammer, I think, are first steps down that path. I hope they’re the first of many.

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