My favorite headline of the week goes to a St. Louis news website, and my favorite glaring oversight goes out to Madison County in Illinois. Turns out, it’s totally cool to have sex with dead bodies. The government can’t do anything. Call a representative to argue the bill, just to see how long you can keep a straight face. And this wasn’t even the first time it came up! To quote the article, “one such case in the county many years ago that could not be prosecuted for lack of such a law.” The bill was overdue after someone was tried for having sex with a dead body and straight-up bested judge and jury in the worst appropriation of “Haters Gonna Hate” that comes to mind.

In similar news, The Simpsons aired their 500^th episode. It was pretty good for The Simpsons now, as The Simpsons for the last few seasons has been reliably decent television, but it’s still a far way from the show that produced the “138^th Episode Spectacular” because the writers thought they would never reach a milestone number. It actively fought and television sitcom conventions and form to define an entire generation’s humor writing. You can blame a lot of things for the show’s downfall (as I’m sure you have loud friends), but the major problem came from inelasticity in form. Simpsons became a “procedural comedy,” allowing the basic rules of pop-culture parody to decide narratives and styles while never breaking the rules established by the earlier writers once things grew stagnant. The trademark middle-finger The Simpsons gave to story structure relied on the first five minutes misdirecting the audience as to what the story was about. Every episode followed this rule unless it was an episode focused around parody, or an episode of three different tales, but The Simpsons at its best (“Homer’s Enemy” and “You Only Move Twice” come to mind) transcend this rule for the sake of narrative.

On the other hand, Community was announced to be resuscitated on March 15 to finish its third and possibly final season. It’s not as surprising as it is inevitable, and a damn shame, if not just for Dan Harmon’s dedicated adherence to the Hero’s Journey, but for making a sitcom that goes to absurdist places while grounded in character. In the imagined utopia of Community fans, it would have the highest ratings and single-handedly cancel American Idol. Yet, smart television seems impossibly hopeless in today’s market. What sitcom in the last 22 years could hope to rival The Simpsons, at its best a biting satire and amazing comedy, as pop-cultural icons? What the hell can the next 22 years bring to top that unparalleled reign? My hunch: the fifth season of Celebrity Nutshots.

If you were looking for the proper way to celebrate President’s Day, you should have gone to Rebel Bar in Chicago to celebrate George Washington’s birthday with all the founding fathers. Let me calm your “Huh-wha” and “Guh-guh-guh-ghost” responses, room full of Don Knottses that I assume read every article together and aloud. I Made America is a webseries following the exploits of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Hamilton as they try to make the best of being trapped in modern-day Chicago. What sets it apart from other webseries, besides the costuming budget, is the willingness to use the entire city for their narrative playground. Each weekly episode is supplemented with Twitter and Facebook feeds for each character, along with small videos and events around Chicago that either move narrative along, or stand alone as an absurd slice of future shock. It still has its flaws, and I sometimes wish the main episodes were as funny as the actors riffing off each other in the smaller videos, but the boldness and ingenuity is worth marveling upon. Get it while it’s alive.

Joe Anderson

After the movie ended, I initially thought the relationship between the two main characters didn’t make sense. When Zack (boxing guy) and Mike (high school wrestling guy) begin their tutelage under Michael Jai White to become awesome MMA dudes, the two are dicks to each other for no reason. Granted, it’s possible that I am unable to comprehend chest thumping between two alpha males because I don’t know how to do push-ups. However, by the end of the movie they are serious bros despite the fact they have every reason to hate each other.

Let me drop some drama on you: Mike starts crushing on Zack’s girlfriend and Zack’s girlfriend is generally receptive to said crushing because Zack treats her like shit. Then, later, Zack realizes that having a girlfriend is going to get in the way of all his stripper fucking so he dumps her via text. This causes formerly-Zack’s-girlfriend-now-nobody’s-girlfriend to 1) enter a state of emotional distress and 2) run to Mike for comfort and then they totally bang and start dating.

A lifetime of examining love triangles between pretty white people tells me that Zack should hate Mike for banging and then dating his ex and Mike should hate Zack for treating his love interest like garbage. But no! Their growing friendship is unphased by these Dawson’s Creek shenanigans!

And what knowledge have I gleamed from this? Simply that MMA conquers all. If you want to take a bromance to the next level, the best way to do this is to climb into the octagon with a buddy and try to wrap your legs around his torso while he tries to sit on both your elbows. Oh, and you get a free pass on being a douche to women if you’re training for an underground UFC tournament. That too.

Dominick Mayer

As Joe mentioned, both Mike and Zack’s lives are fraught with tension. They also look identical, which led me to believe that Never Back Down 2: The Beatdown might just be a cleverly subversive thesis on the mirrored edges of the male psyche, with Zach the stripper-fucking id and Mike the more sensitive, throat-punching ego. I also learned that MMA can help somebody deal with a gay family member. Seriously. Mike spends much of the film angry at his dad for coming out of the closet. However, later in the film, we learn that it’s not his dad being gay that Mike resents, but rather his resulting infidelity. After choking out several people with his thighs in a short space of time, Mike finds the courage to call his dad and begin to repair their frayed bond.

I also learned that weird kids are out to kill everybody. We see this through the cautionary tale of Justin, a weird kid. We know he’s a weird kid because he has swoopy bangs, works in a comic book store and gets turned down by a girl one time. After nearly getting mugged, Black Dynamite starts training him in MMA. Where the other three guys learn positive life lessons from punching sheets of paper and doing squat thrusts, though, Justin is corrupted by his new power. He also apparently starts taking steroids, because he ends up swole as fuck by film’s end. The movie also conveniently forgets that he beats a guy to death with a retractable cane at one point, because I mean, The Beatdown is coming and they have  to settle this shit in the ring. That is the only law that matters in the underground MMA world.

I also learned that if you roundhouse kick the shit out of, like, twenty cops, it’s cool as long as someone posts the video with one of them being racist on the internet. Because, I mean, racist cops deserve to be roundhouse kicked.

For crunching out four albums in a little under two years, this girl’s got it going on. Grimes aka Claire Boucher, is a 23 year-old singer-songwriter whose stomping grounds hail north of the border where maple syrup and dance music seem to be a prominent thing this time of year. This Montreal-based gem not only produces everything you can hear, but she is also the magic behind the artwork.

Visions is Grimes’ first record with 4AD, an indie label responsible for giving us Grammy award winning artist Bon Iver and other memorable musicians Blonde Redhead, The National, and the like. The album plays on the musical elements of panning, layering, delicate vocalizations, and sappy lyrics packaged in a form that allows the listener to dance carelessly in the dark alone. It’s an emotional journey. Let’s begin.

Just as the cover art clearly depicts, the album itself is all over the place. With tracks like “Colour of Moonlight (Antiochus)” that have Prince-like influences very reminiscent of “When Doves Cry” to her hit single, “Oblivion,” which shows off Boucher’s Lykke Li-esque voice, you’d be surprised that this girl doesn’t even know how to read music.

Two tracks in particular stand out simply due to the strong, oriental influences they carry with them. Her latest single, “Genesis” has a cascading piano line that reminds you of dragons, fireworks, and the Chinese New Year. While, “Be A Body (侘寂)” is one that touches upon the Japanese aesthetic of Wabi Sabi, a belief that embraces the beauty of transience, which when applied to music is a no-brainer since the listener knows right off the bat that the song is eventually going to end.

From a lyrical standpoint, the songs are very simplistic and have a sort of sadness to them as if they’re trying to reach out to a specific person, something that can be very typical of a young artist. Regardless, the vocal style of Grimes keeps your interest. “Circumambient” speaks to this concept, while throwing you in a world of cyborgs and confusion. Many of the songs have a very symmetrical set up that gets jumbled up in the breakdown with a copious amount of lyrical layering and catchy beats.

Panning vocals during the intro play on the ears in a musical game of hide and seek in “Skin.” When Boucher whispers, “You act like nothing ever happened but it meant the world to me,” you can’t help but relate to this girl. We’ve all been there before: that one that got away and left you to sulk. Regardless, this track  fully exemplifies the common threads that pieces the entire album together: complex layering, clever panning, somber vocals, and a nice sweeping chord progression all put together in a very symmetric way. And then the album ends, just like everything else does…

Hollywood is not a nice place for actresses, something even a passing glimpse into the career trajectories of Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson or Janeane Garofalo will indicate. If you’re a woman in Tinseltown, the industry is not a space that’s run by you or for you—and any success you have is seen as ancillary, a tie-over to summer tentpole season.  When a movie you’re in does well, like Oscar-nominees The Help or Bridesmaids, people won’t stop talking about what a huge surprise it was, and if your movie tanks, studio heads will threaten not to cast women as leads anymore.  Unless you are Meryl Streep, Judi Dench or Helen Mirren—women known more for being “thespians” than “entertainers”—this treatment intensifies as you get older.  Even one time box-office darlings Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon can’t open a movie these days; Witherspoon’s new film, This Means War, counts her third disappointment in a row, and Roberts’ highest-grossing recent film as a lead, Eat Pray Love, failed to come even close to the $100 million success mark—starkly underperforming especially when considering its star power and mega best-selling source material.

However, some actresses and performers are their own worst enemies, women who use their fame and success to do almost everything in their power to derail their own careers.  The best examples of this are Whitney Houston, Lindsay Lohan and Sean Young—known more for their unreliability, tabloid dramas, drug problems and outlandish public appearances than their talent.  Although many of their problems can be blamed on their fraught personal histories, Young and Lohan must, at the end of the day, blame themselves for the mess they made of their enormous potential.  With Houston, little more can be said about the incredible tragedy that became her career, a woman who built her acting and singing careers on empowering women of all colors and became a harrowing cautionary tale on the perils of fame and fortune.

This brings us to Katherine Heigl, a woman who went from being the great white hope of women at the box office to not being able to outgross $50 million or even make back her budget.  Much has been said, including by me, about how Heigl herself has created the fiasco that has become her career—her alleged difficult behavior on set, her unpopular public statements about the projects she’s involved in, her perceived irritability—but this has more to do with media gender bias than Heigl herself.  For instance, Daniel Craig and Matt Damon have recently taken to making increasingly brash public statements about projects they’ve worked on, their personal politics and views on modern society—and no one has criticized them, questioned their box-office viability or used their gender to explain their remarks.  Like Sean Penn, they’re men in an industry dominated by men—and unless they’re saying something overtly racist, they can say just about whatever they like, and in the case of Charlie Sheen, they might even be applauded for it.

In fact, I would argue that the male-dominated public backlash about Katherine Heigl’s statements on Knocked Up—in which she called the film “a little sexist”—proved her own point on the film’s sexism.  I like most of Judd Apatow’s films, but I don’t think even Apatow would call himself a writer who understands women—as the women in films like Knocked Up are generally mothering figures or unsympathetic—brittle, shallow or unstable.  If women are seen as being “cool,” it’s because they’re like “one of the guys.”  In Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Funny People, which were, respectively, produced and directed by Apatow, it’s the laid-back, dude-like qualities of the female leads, Mila Kunis and Aubrey Plaza, that attract their male counterparts.  When he does create sympathetic women, it’s because he’s leaving the writing of women up to women, as in the case of Bridesmaids, or because he’s writing for a man—but with boobs.

Although I think that Hollywood needs more tomboys in film—more women that subvert the gender binary—that doesn’t make what Apatow is specifically doing much better, as his films don’t exactly problematize traditional gender roles, or Heigl wrong for criticizing it.

However, the problem with Heigl herself is that she’s good at talking the talk—speaking out about the inherent sexism in the movie industry—but terrible stepping out and doing anything about it, and she seems almost willfully against challenging the norms of gender in cinema that she criticizes.  In an interview conducted shortly after Knocked Up made her a star, Heigl criticized the fact that every up-and-coming actress is touted to be the “next Julia Roberts” but mentioned, “There’s not another woman and think, ‘That’s it.  That’s whose career I want to have.”  Similar statements on the subject and her subsequent career choices show Heigl doesn’t care about awards; she wants to be a rom-com queen, a genre not exactly known for empowering women.  However, what Heigl doesn’t get is that rom-com stars like Roberts got to their A-list positions by taking chances within those genres and pushing the boundaries of what women are allowed to be.  Although Pretty Woman wasn’t doing much for equality, Julia Roberts’ best vehicles, My Best Friend’s Wedding and Erin Brockovich, show the lead achieving happiness by not ending up with the guy.  Roberts finds herself through her career, getting involved with her community, helping others and becoming a better friend to those around her.  She does not need to find a man or become more male to be powerful, and in Erin Brockovich, her femininity is the source of her strength.

In the case of Heigl, it’s her less-than-progressive scripts that present the problem—ones that, as a producer, she has a strong hand in picking for herself.  Her best post-Grey’s Anatomy film, 27 Dresses, was penned by The Devil Wears Prada scribe Aline Brosh McKenna and revels in the exact kind of light-hearted fun that Heigl should be having.  27 Dresses doesn’t push boundaries, but it’s a great role to showcase her talents, allowing her to be the magnetic mixture of sassy and sweet that made her Grey’s character so likeable and relatable; however, vehicles like The Ugly Truth, Killers, New Years’ Eve, and One for the Money don’t portray her as spunky and fun. They make her, well, ugly.

All of these films have been some of the bigger critical and commercial flops of their respective years, movies that almost everyone stayed away from.  Although each is each horrendous in its own special way, One for the Money and The Ugly Truth, in particular, share an interesting vision of a woman’s place in the world and means of achieving happiness, an image that—as someone who cares about sexism in cinema—Heigl should be trying to subvert.  In The Ugly Truth, Heigl’s character is a TV morning show producer forced to work, against her will, with a cynical, narcissistic chauvinist, played by Gerard Butler, one that the script calls for her to fall in love with.  He’s a relationship counselor with unorthodox recommendations, advice that Heigl uses to help her court a man she’s interested in.  Throughout a makeover process that alters her into a hyper-sexualized fembot, Butler mostly insults and degrades her, telling her that her identity is not what a man wants in a woman and not what her date will desire, and during her date, Butler tells her what to do through a receiver implanted in her ear.  Thus, she is not only transformed by the male gaze; she is controlled by it and, eventually, falls in love with it.

Interestingly, what this does is actually uphold the Apatowian view of the world, of women achieving happiness by embracing masculinity, and promotes the very sexism that Heigl made her image in speaking out against.  Her newest film, One for the Money, shows her doing more of the exact same thing.  Her character—the luckless, loud-mouthed Stephanie Plum—finds herself out of her lingerie store job and weasels her way into being a bounty hunter for a bail bond agency.  Because her background is in work that is stereotypically female, Plum is initially pathologically unfit for the job; however, she improves in her work by letting her male co-workers show her the ropes, teach her to fire a gun and help her chase down bad guys.  As the other women in the film are nagging housewives, airhead secretaries or uncouth prostitutes, the film shows that Plum’s femininity is not what empowers her, as femininity is undesirable. Only by embracing hegemonic masculinity can she become whole, and at the end, she winds up with a near-carbon copy of Gerard Butler’s Ugly Truth character.

What’s equally interesting about the movie is not how bad it is or how bad Heigl is in it, but how poorly it’s doing in the theatres and why.  At the end of it’s run, One for the Money, based off the popularly beloved Janet Evanovich series and intended to be a franchise for Heigl, will finish with around $25 million in theatres, a sum not much more than the hefty $15 million she earned for the film, one far lower than any of her other major releases.  Although the law of diminishing returns affects many name actresses in Hollywood, this one is a more pointed specific backlash against Heigl, her public persona and what her films say about women. As a producer on her own films, Heigl has a great deal of input about what films she makes and what they do for women in Hollywood.  Heigl is a terrific actress, when given a role worthy of her and a director who knows how to use her talents.  It would be a shame to see her become as “washed up” as industry analysts project her to be, used up and discarded in the way that far too many actresses are, because the ladies of Hollywood and America deserve better.  Women, LGBT persons and people of color deserve representation that better speaks to the diversity of their identities, to enjoy a cinema that challenges the limiting ways in which women and minorities are constructed, and in Heigl’s case, that change needs to start with her.  As an executive, she has the ability to affect change; all she has to do is put her money where her mouth is.

And fun.’s nostalgia-conjuring-car-commercial-ready anthem “We Are Young” jumped from 41 to 3, meaning the RoboSoulFunkyBot Beauty Janelle Monae who is featured on the track might be publicly recognized, and not just as that woman who upstaged Bruno Mars on tour.  Who brings the Lady James Brown Android on to their bill without expecting to be out performed?  Aside now tossed aside, on to what I want to actually say to you dear readers.

In this shuffle it seems one person has had a small drop, one that I hope does not continue.  Jessie J’s “Domino” has fallen – and I so badly didn’t want that pun to occur.  Like a grubby-fingered toddler with clenched fists yelling at the line of falling tiles, I am so frustrated at the inevitable momentum that this fall will have.  I will do all that I can to stop it, but I need your help.

I want to do this because out of all of the behind the scenes pop songwriters stepping into the light: Lady Gaga [Stephanie Germanotta], Ke$ha [Kesha Rose Sebert], Bruno Mars [Peter Gene Hernandez],  Jessie J has this strange and genuine air about her.   She’s like a British hip-hop Zooey Deschanel but with more range, vocally and stylistically – maybe with a dash of Judy Garland, her camptastic outfits make this statement sound.  Though her image of ironed flat pitch black hair, milk white skin with berry red lips may be coming close to clichéd – even when it rests above Technicolor jumpers over a leather jacket top or a unitard and 4 inch spike stilettos – it’s her smart fusion of her soaring voice and earworm primed pop melodies that shines through.  I do think she underplays her voice for her more successful hits, “Domino” and “Pricetag,” but that I know it is there makes me smile.  Her determination is there as well.  After breaking her foot, she performed on a large golden throne, then went on to wear a bedazzled boot cast and walk with glittering crutches at the MTV Video Music Awards.  She is giving you all of this America, plus this, and you are letting her go.

This treatment just reminds me of another oft forgot diva, the Queen of Australia and American Pop’s Prodigal daughter: Kylie Minogue.  Oh, you don’t remember her all of America who doesn’t go to gay bars nor have European roommates, but in 2001 you couldn’t get her out of your head.  Yes, I am angry enough to make that pun.  Because I am maybe one of the seven people in the United States that are excited to hear a new Kylie single.  Yes, they still happen.  Her last album, Aphrodite, was released in 2010 and toured globally all of 2011 to promote it.  She has been doing this since 2001 people, hell her first hit was back in 92 and she was a child star before that.

I’m not as bitter as I seem to be about these facts though.  We didn’t bite because we thought Madonna had it all, not knowing that Minogue offered something actually quite different- effervescence, subtle sex, and fun.  This is why screaming queens shan’t, no can’t, say no to this Kangaroo Country maiden. The difference between Jessie and Kylie is that Kylie is well-established.  Her career is not lacking due to her reduced popularity in America, something she has publicly acknowledged.  The Prime Minister of Australia offered his damn condolences to the woman when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I think she’s doing all right.

I know J can be secure in her native British following. They have pop over there that we have never even heard of.  Have you heard of the Eurovison Song Contest? No? The entire landmass and surrounding islands of Europe go honestly bonkers for the type of semi-self aware ez-cheese pop I pine for in the States. It’s geo-political bubblegum shimmer, and its ilk continues on without us across the Atlantic.  I just want nice things for us America, especially when it comes to the ear swill we at times consume. We deserve nice things.

The album opens with the sounds of someone walking into the room where a song is being played. It sounds, a bit at first, like a religious hymn, with a light piano and softly rhyming lyric scheme. Adopting some drums and ambient background sound, “Entrance” takes on an entirely unexpected element, becoming a wordless composition that gives me a little chill even in its simplicity. What I thought would be another pep album now has new expectations.

Name-dropping the album title in “O! The Noise!” Moore sings sincerely of having “built hundred-storey monuments, to me/ I mean, to you.” And then there’s that mention of the promise land and I wonder how religious this is going to get. After all, the song was inspired by a quote from St. John The Baptist (apparently a relative of Jesus?). Looking at the bio sheet I was given, all of it (all two songs so far) makes more sense to me given that Moore discusses how “the guys in our band are Christians,” but then my doubts begin to clear since he then remarks, “but we are a band first.” That “but” speaks volumes. OK, Moore. I’m testing you now – I’m taking your word about being this new rock band as a priority over being another Christian-wielding faith-rock band.

Hadwynn’s influences come through clearly (Tooth & Nail names such as Emery and As Cities Burn), almost like a hardcore rock sound (sample “Frames”) that has the occasional indie-or-folk vibe, such as with “Sort of Grey.” Like a taste of The Fray, the song is slow and hollow in a comforting way. And then I note “Jesus” and “God” are both mentioned within 30 seconds of each other. So far, Moore isn’t doing so well on my test.

Closing the album, “The Seed Song” starts acoustically with Moore’s lyrics alluding to how his grandfather had died at a young age from an unusual arthritis – and how he had been suspected to have it as well. The song was written before receiving the results – and the lyrics became a goodbye letter to Moore’s wife, just in case. A few “hallelujah” calls, but it feels appropriate for a requiem. One that even recalls Jesus and his weeping. I think back to the opener that gave me a certain anticipation, and how that didn’t go in the direction I expected whatsoever. If you, like Hadwynn, call Emery an influence, then Monuments is for you. If you’re into Christian rock, then this band is for you. But if Jesus isn’t your thing, it’ll be hard to avoid him on this album. You’ll have yourself a much better time catching up on Thus Spoke Zarathustra and some Beatnik satire.

Van Etten approaches the stage, she is in a black lace camisole and black jeans. Her hair glistened in the smoky low-lit hall. A silver band shined on her ring finger as she strummed her acoustic guitar.

She makes a remark about her “funny stance,” which is more of a lunge or a warrior yoga pose, after the first song, saying that she didn’t make a running start, but could have right in to the crowd. Sharon and Heather, back up vocalist and keyboardist, were very light-hearted through out the set.

“What did you say?” Van Etten stops to ask Heather, “Did you say ‘Can you see my tongue ring’?”

“Have you seen my tambourine?” Heather responds.

Van Etten points to the tambourine sitting in front of Heather and they both giggle.

“It’s right here, shit!” Heather grabs the tambourine and leads into the next song, “Serpents,” a devastating and heavy song from her latest record, Tramp (Jagjaguwar, 2012), which featured talents such as Julianna Barwick, on the recording of the album.

The bassist, a mild mannered young blonde man, stood awkwardly until he whipped the bass behind his shoulder to play to the harmonium, an incredible instrument in sound and vision. The harmonium is manipulated much like an accordion; placed on its side it began moving like a respirator, slow and elegantly.

“Are you guys ready for another depressing song,” Van Etten asks the crowd, who all cheer emphatically. “Or would you rather hear banter?” Again the crowd cheers.

Sharon makes an astute observation about the couples holding hands in the audience. “I love how these sweet couples just sit here, holding hands to a song like ‘Serpents’. Oh Chicago, you are so cute. I love how cute this city is.”

The remainder of her set is a series of sad songs, strummed so lightly, with quirky intermissions that lighten the mood.

Sharon Van Etten entertained the audience- wooed them and made them laugh, cry and applaud endlessly.

Ben Kessell
Mass Effect gets launched into space – Earlier this week I received an email from EA games telling me that because I beta tested Battlefield 3, I would get early access to the Mass Effect 3 demo. Normally, I would be delighted, except they sent this blast email after the Mass Effect demo had been released. Nice going EA, you guys have a talent for fucking your customers until they love you. Then they demand that I use their terrible “Origin” PC platform. Look guys, I already paid $80 for the collectors set. You cant make me use your terrible software.

Then this happened. It put a kind of childish wonder into my heart. Take the epic space opera of our time (sorry Lucasfilm, putting a busted wagon in 3D doesn’t fix it) and put in space. I remember being younger and reading about how high weather balloons went. That some end up freezing slightly and drop in elevation as a result. The idea made my 10 year old persona want to attach a bunch of birthday balloons to my neck and see what happened. Put the game I’ve been waiting three years for into space and you might just have calmed my burning hatred for a publisher. So a few copies are headed around the globe on balloons and you can track it on the games website. Effectively allowing you two weeks early access.

I can wait, honestly, I’ve waited this long. I can wait long enough to rub my own purchased copy on my sweaty basement-dweller body. The real treat of this stunt is that it actually made me hate EA less. With an amazing track record of dog-fucking customers and developers whenever they feel like it, it’s hard not to hold a grudge against these guys. When you get my grizzly, jaded man child to smile and remember his dreams of being an astronaut/superhero/space cop with a dash of Spaceman Spiff/Commander Keen, you’re doing it right EA.

Mike Haverty
Fun. is now streaming their newest album Some Night via SoundCloud. Finally there is a band that realized more music should sound like Queen.  Some bold choices pay off and some are weird auto-tuned pop anthems. Still, it’s a great album that I’ve been playing on repeat all week long.

Amy Dittmeier
I think I’ve watched Nathan Barnatt’s dance video for Madeon’s “Pop Culture” 20 times this week. This is not an exaggeration. Madeon’s mash-up of all his favorite tracks is incredible (check out the live video of him performing it and you’ll see this kid has some skill). And Barnatt’s dance moves are glorious.

What’s the difference between evolution and revolution in terms of gaming? Let me break it down with a game-related example. Evolution is about perfecting a genre, combining the good, discarding the bad, maybe throwing in some new tricks to push forward. Think Charmander becoming Charmeleon becoming Charizard. The Pokemon isn’t changing drastically, just becoming a “better” version of itself. Now as for revolution, let’s look at Magikarp, flopping around seemingly worthless to anyone. But stick with it and gut out the innards of this fish to create Gyrados, a Pokemon you never want to frak with. That is a revolution, breaking down and rebuilding, rather than building upon.

Evolution can be a good thing, there is no doubt about that. Resident Evil evolved between Code Veronica and Resident Evil 4 into an immensely entertaining adventure that aimed to strike a balance between action and horror. Final Fantasy XIII evolved to XIII-2 by focusing on ridding the previous game of perceived flaws for a more complete experience, much like allowing cookie dough to bake a bit longer for a more finished dessert.

On the other hand, evolution is not always a good thing. Resident Evil 4 evolved into 5 which is evolving into Resident Evil 6, a blockbuster adventure starring Mary Sue characters who can take on countless monsters. Wait… isn’t that why we have the Milla Jovovich Oscar-vehicle Resident Evil film series? The games are no longer survival horror, unless you happen to be one of the infected hoping not to get punched by a juiced-up former cop. Meanwhile the Call of Duty series has seen no reason for true evolution, instead delivering gamers exactly what they want, not pushing the envelope, but instead making the most of the present day gaming tastes. Can’t argue with their strategy when you look at sales, but how long until fatigue sets in among the fickle gaming community?

So evolution is fine and dandy, but I’m talking revolution here. The industry has flirted with revolution during this generation of consoles, handhelds, and smart phones, but many of these innovations have been around since the beginning of the industry. Motion controlled gaming, throwing your body around to control your on-screen characters, all old news if you remember the Power Pad or Eye Toy. There was even a terrible motion-sensing ring that let you act out your favorite fighting games for the Sega Genesis. It didn’t really sell, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist. Hell, even the 3DS is really just a Virtua Boy complete with migraines and a lack of true portability (looking at you, Kid Icarus). The rise of casual gaming isn’t new to cell phone games. We all know the casual game Minesweeper was invented as a training program for Princess Diana well before cell phones were invented. Casual games themselves are an oddity. Ask anyone who was around for the original NES and they’ll tell you all games today are casual games. There’s a reason TVtropes has an entire entry dedicated to “Nintendo Hard” games.

So what do I propose for a revolution? Simple, look to the community. Gamers are connected to each other in ways nobody thought possible twenty years ago both in game and all over the web. It is time to harness that community to truly revolutionize the gaming industry. Double Fine has started the trend utilizing the community to fund a new project, a Kickstarter campaign that as of this writing has earned over 1.6 million dollars. The community has spoken with their wallets, and now it is up to Double Fine to make good on their promise. A successful game release by Double Fine may give other developers the opportunity to take risks knowing they have the full backing of their consumers.

More than just asking us gamers for money, developers need to ask us for our input. Remember when Mass Effect was going to have loads of planets and galaxies to explore? That didn’t quite work out as planned but imagine if BioWare harnessed the power of Minecraft to allow users to create their own planets for gamers around the world to explore. Take this concept and apply it to Castlevania, a game based on the very notion that Dracula’s residence was ever changing. Change the industry by making games that literally never end. As much as Skyrim boasts quests to last you until the PS3 version becomes playable, these all exist within a large, but largely unchanging world.

My challenge for developers; open up your worlds. Allow them to change, not based on your whims, but using your community to drive the change. Let the community truly dictate the experience. In essence, allow each game to evolve in and of itself and not just between iterations. That would be a true revolution.