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| Quirel- okay here's the response. | |
| Posted By: Narcogen <narcogen@rampancy.net> | Date: 6/13/11 5:01 a.m. |
In Response To: Reprise: Testing size limits on individual posts. (Quirel) [snip] : You could have fooled me. So, your position is that I don't hold the position I hold? Interesting. : Hey, I don't own every bit of media either. I'm not interested in tracking
I regard it as more than fanfiction but of less canonical value than works by the original author, just as I would any sequel written by a different author than the original, like the Rama sequels where Clarke collaborated with Gentry Lee, or "H" the sequel to Wuthering Heights, written by Lin-Haire Sargeant-- a Bronte scholar, but not Bronte herself. : Maybe that's too extreme of a statement, but I don't make it lightly.
Yes. That was Bungie's own position during their tenure. Now, of course, they are no longer in a position, legally or commercially, to set the policy, but as I regard Bungie as the originator of the work, and I find this position compatible with my own reading of the work, it is the policy I have adopted. I find it to be consistent with how I view other works with more than one author, especially where, due to form, identity or chronology, meaningful distinctions can be made between one author or group of authors and another. : B: Not what the original writers intended, as the Halo story is apparently
To the extent that Staten was prompted to say "for better or worse, the novels are canon" indicates to me that even when he said that, there was divergence from Bungie's intentions. I'm also entirely willing to entertain the idea that there were divergences inside the development team itself; it's just harder to address those. : C: Not something the original writers endorse, or ever intended to expand
That's probably too broad unless I'm wearing my auteur theory hat and throw out my reader response one. I may change one for the other, depending on context, but I don't think that Bungie has full control over what Halo is or what Halo means. Neither, though, do I accord third party authors with any more participation in that process than what I accord readers. For some players, the "story of Halo" is the story of the war between the UNSC and the Covenant. For others, it's the story of encountering the powerful artifacts of a mysterious lost race. For still others, it's the discovery of a virulent intelligence that threatens all life. For some, it's a combination. All those things are in the work, and it's possible that some things are in the work that Bungie did not consciously intend. I don't think that makes interpretations that can be backed up by a close reading of the work invalid just because Bungie didn't intend them, for instance. : I'll argue against each and every point here. Okay. : A: Yeah, we're going to argue until we're blue in the face over Staten's
I honestly don't really see an opportunity for that. The only possible point of contention is authority, as the content of the statement is clear. You can either accept Staten as an authority on that point, as I have, or you can reject him-- in which case there's no argument to be had. Accepting Staten's position has to mean being willing to throw out extra materials if they conflict; if one is not willing to do that, you don't accept Staten as an authority on what was intended with Halo. That's fine; that will be where we disagree. : B: It would be hard to argue author intent with Bungie for two reasons.
The letters were essentially authored and distributed without oversight by a person who left Bungie long before Halo was released. There is plenty of support for the idea that the Halo story changed significantly during the development of all the games, perhaps most noticeably due to the truncation of Halo 2's development. : Second, Halo was a collaborative effort, a shared universe, from the get-go.
Shared with who? If you mean "shared outside of Bungie" I think you're very much wrong. Halo was in the works since right after Myth II shipped, and I very much doubt anybody outside of Bungie was involved at all until they were purchased. Even afterwards, they insisted on separate office space, and it was given to them. : When getting Nylund, Dietz, and Buckell ready to write those books,
Because more is not always better. In fact, many times, it's worse. An "expanded universe" is not an absolute good unto itself, unless one considers "more units of things to sell" to be an absolute good, and that's a publisher's viewpoint, not necessarily a developer's or an author's. : Now here's where it gets interesting.
: And O'Brien comes out on top, just because he's a Bungie employee? Yes, unequivocally. I intend this as no slight to Mr. Nylund, with whom I have had a few short exchanges over the years regarding his contributions to Halo. I enjoyed his work. However, conflicts are inevitable in these sorts of undertakings, and sometimes distinctions must be made on the narrowest of slivers. In this case, being "part of Bungie" no matter how short-time overrides the length and breadth of one's outside involvement. Nylund was contracted to write some books, which he did. O'Brien was hired by Bungie to work at Bungie on Halo. I am sure O'Brien had access to at least as much compiled information as Nylund did, as well as more direct access to those who generated that information as well as worked on the previous games. If we were comparing two books with single authors, it would be easier to make such distinctions, but attempting to pull apart "Bungie" as an author by separating out the contributions of the individuals that make it up isn't something I'm willing to do; mostly because of how terribly impractical it would be. You'd have to try and take all the games, and all their disparate elements, and attach various bits of dialogue, plot, theme or setting, and decide who was most directly responsible for that particular contribution, and then rank the canonical value of that contribution based on the seniority of the individual. I'm not willing to do that, so yes-- the fact that Bungie hired O'Brien is good enough for me. : I don't agree that the original work is the only metric by which a new entry
: Contact Harvest had compelling (Covenant) characters, explored new ground,
Agreed on all points. : Halo Wars simply retread old ground, reused old formulas with uninteresting
: Would you rather be respected, or disrespected?
Thanks! I knew all my hard work would pay off someday. : I mean, I would love to hold an extended conversation with you over this,
: I can see where you're coming from, but I can't agree with it. Not as it
Not up until Reach, where people want to throw out the game in order to venerate the novels. I admit that Reach has its flaws, but its flaws are its own. Failure to cleave to the novel is not a flaw, at least not in my opinion. Failure to tell a compelling story is. Fan rewrites here on HBO have shown how the exact
: Again, the novels generally created more history than they revealed. The Fall
To the work's detriment, if you ask me. The more times they reveal that more is known than we thought-- especially prior to when the player, together with Master Chief and Cortana, arrive on Installation 04-- the greater the degree to which the majesty and mystery of that artifact is minimized. This, I think, is a shame. ONI's very existence, if you ask me, adds little to the Haloverse aside from an acronym in-joke. Bungie does an excellent job at space opera, but I don't think spy thriller is really what they are good at. : There's a difference between having mysteries and details to speculate about,
Most of the elements to which a great number of fans contribute their wild guesses to are immaterial and trivial, though-- as are most of the answers, regardless of what they are. : Because half the retcons we've seen (Mostly in Halo Reach) have been
Again, that's entirely dependent on your perspective of treating the novels as established, rather than provisional canon. You see Bungie retconning the novels and want them to provide a reason why. You consider the retcons poor because they do not come with their own justification. I see no reason for them to provide justification because I see Halo as Bungie's to do with as they wish. My behind-the-scenes interpretation is this. At some point, Bungie wanted to stop doing Halo. MS didn't want them to stop. The two sides hammer out a deal on how to do this-- Bungie will go independent again, and MS will get Halo. But that's not quite enough. MS wants more. They want two more Halo games. Bungie can't really think of what to make those games about. They hadn't really planned on doing three Halo games to start with-- they had thought one, or maybe two. Two more means a total of five. Their answer? Well, they'll do a side story in the Halo 3 engine, at a setting they know many fans didn't get enough of (Earth) and using some actors they know are enthusiastic for the work, and whome they enjoy working with (Firefly cast). They get to squeeze in a new AI character who isn't Cortana (Superintendent) and a Covenant species that was cut from the previous games (Engineers). They don't have to make a whole new multiplayer title, just some new maps for a new mode, Firefight. So that's one title. What about the second? Well, since they've already established that prior to Halo 1, the last human colony fell, they could do a game about that. That means they don't have to bother the Master Chief-- they put him to bed nicely, and gave his story the ending they wanted (assuming they hadn't actually wanted to kill him outright, which I'm sure MS would not have allowed them to do-- would have made that Halo 4 teaser even more complicated). Frankly, I doubt just making a game version of TFOR would have been interesting to Bungie-- I think it was already true that they'd told the Halo story they wanted to tell. But if MS was going to insist on them making another game, they'd have to be free to reinterpret that event their own way, not just stick to Nylund's novel. That's how I imagine the process went, and that's why, where they conflict, I resolve in favor of Reach, despite its flaws, over TFOR. : This gets into why Staten's post cost him a couple of respect points from me.
I'm not sure which of Staten's posts you're referring to. You're entitled to your own opinion, of course. I'm just not sure where you see this being a "screwed up" position. I don't think any of the changes in Reach are unintentional. They are not mistakes. If there was a "mistake" it was approving the novels. However, I imagine there was pressure from MS to do this. Bungie could not, at the time, commit the resources to write the books themselves. So that meant letting somebody put their own spin on things and letting that through. I think if Bungie had imagined they'd be doing a game based on Reach, things might be different. Of course, there's no guarantee that, had they copyedited Reach more closely, there might still not have been conflicts. However, I think given that Reach needed to be made (from a commercial perspective, at least) Bungie was going to author it with the state of mind they had at the time of finishing Halo 3, not the state of mind they had before Halo 1 was released. : Furthermore, it's a fundamentally broken system. I can understand not wanting
I couldn't possibly care less. : By Staten's system, that 285 meter figure is now canon, even though it makes
I generally don't consider such a figure to even have a "canon value". It doesn't impact plot, character, or theme, and probably isn't congruent with gameplay, either. As such it's simply not a topic I bother to argue about, except to the extent of asking aloud why people bother to argue about it. Of what consequence is the gun's range? The canon value of this is within the game's code, not within the novels or a forum post or anywhere else. No other value means anything. : Personally, I've got the Known Space Universe in mind. Cthulhu Mythos is a
Known Space has a single primary author-- Niven, and some recent sequels with a co-author. It's a lot easier to maintain continuity in a situation like that. However, if Niven and Lerner were to split and write separate novels that conflicted, I'd accept Niven's version over Lerner's. : What I'm arguing is the following, I guess.
Again, because you require a reason. I require no reason for the work's creator (Bungie) to unseat the contents of a tie-in novel that most likely only existed because Microsoft wanted to use it to make extra cash and promote the game, said contents likely being approved before anyone ever dreamed that Bungie would author a game based on those events (however loosely). If Bear or Nylund or anyone else wants to conflict the Bungie games, they need a reason. For Bungie to reinterpret their own vision-- or the vision of someone else-- it doesn't need to be necessary. If Bungie deemed it necessary, that's enough for me. : B: The Halo franchise has the potential to be something special here, because
Yes-- as in the games, created by Bungie. Let's be honest, the rest of it is really not exceptional. The Halo games are better examples of games, as works in a particular media, than the Halo comics are as comics, or the Halo novels are as novels. : C: That the Halo EU is Expanded, but neither ancillary nor of less
Sorry, can't accept that at all. The expanded universe's reason for existence is because it helps monetize the property-- first and foremost. : I think you misapprehend a lot as well. I think you underestimate other
Ability is not at issue. I might think I have the ability to contribute to Halo as well, but that ability does not give me the authority to do so, nor to override what Bungie has created or could choose to create. Likewise, in an asymmetrical relationship such as that between Microsoft and Bungie, I think it would be unwise to infer complete approval from Bungie in a situation where any other outcome was commercially unthinkable. Nylund's novel isn't as much "Halo" to me as "Halo" is not because Nylund isn't as good as Bungie but because he isn't Bungie. No matter how good he ever gets, he won't become Bungie; he can't, any more than Edward Lerner can make himself into Larry Niven, or Gentry Lee can make himself into Arthur C. Clarke. I think you
Certainly not. In fact, more often I am accused of defending the practices of Bungie, Microsoft, and others for being reasonable commercial decisions. However, there is a useful distinction between proceeding from "I have a story to tell, how do I tell that in a commercially feasible fashion" to "I have an intellectual property I wish to monetize; what kind of stories can help me do that"? : Look at the works of the Reniassance. Many of the statues and paintings of
: Even if Bungie was forced to work with Nylund to produce tie-in novels, they
: From what I read, they took that path. Regardless of what the reality was, there is little chance that there would be publically accessible discussions of any path other than that one :) : The value is, the story of Halo becomes a sprawling epic, made with the
: Wait, what kind of logical fallacy is this? False dichotomy? Don't quite
I think you haven't included in your post what you're responding to, so I'm not sure what you're addressing here. There is no false dichotomy, though, you're right. : Merely adapting the story of a book into a film, or novelizing a movie, is
: However, aside from the Motion Comics and The Flood, there have been no
Because it applies to a small selection of the ancillary works does not make the assertion a red herring. : "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, if Sergeant Johnson lives on Harvest,
: And people call me cynical. Do they? I hadn't noticed. : I honestly don't like it, though I couldn't quite say it's Dietz's worst
: No. Not without knowing more of what went on behind the scenes. I don't believe I made any commitment not to be vindictive. Was that mandatory? Perhaps my reaction to Dietz' treatment of the source material made me suspicious, not about his motives as an author, but about Microsoft's. Please note: I am not saying this was a cash grab by Dietz. He was asked to write a book, and he wrote one. I honestly doubt, at this level, that there was enough cash involved on his end to lead him to do anything untoward. I do think that MS choice to attempt to novelize the game was cynical, and was a cash-grab. As you pointed out, the characters are shallow, and scenes are redundant and uninteresting. So either we are better judges of literature than everyone involved at Bungie and Microsoft, or somebody noticed this about Dietz' novel and then decided to publish it anyway. I'd call that a cash grab, that this was deemed "good enough" to put the name "Halo" on. : And therefore, he is obviously a liar who doesn't know what he's talking
Stay on point. You linked three posts and then said "As per a Bungie employee, one of the original writers , Bungie participated with the writers in creating the product". However, none of the authors of the posts in question were written by a Bungie employee, current or previous. As such, the links you cited did not support your assertion. I made no allegations whatsoever to the effect that they were dishonest or unknowledgeable. However, not being Bungie employees they are no more qualified to be an authoritative source on the issue than you or I are. The only content of substance in that thread is Boren's post, which is nothing I disagree with; nor do I think there is anything in it which is inconsistent with treating the novels as canon material of lesser priority than the games. : For better or for worse, the novels are canon.
: For better or for worse? Aside from a crappy newspaper comic strip that was
Until they are retconned. If you're going to accept Staten's admission that the novels are canon, and that Staten is an authority who can make such a statement, then I fail to see how you can refuse the corollaries he offers-- which are, namely, that Bungie game material trumps novel material, and new material trumps older material. If you don't accept those as well, then it's all out-- including Staten's admission that the novels are canon. : In such words? No. Somewhere else in this massive post, there exists my
There's no rebuttal there, just an assertion that what I am saying is not what I am saying. There is a spectrum of canon value, with Bungie's games at the pinnacle, and fan fiction-- if it can even be put on the scale-- near the bottom. The novels are clearly closer to the former than the latter. I need not equate them to fan fiction to freely resolve any and all canon conflicts between the two in favor of the games. : Oh, great, I get out of Philosophy 105 for this?
: What you're suggesting is that "Participation in brainstorming sessions
False dichotomy-- again, because equating my statement that "novels are not as canon with the games" as meaning "the novels are just fanfiction" is essentially a false dichotomy, or "exclusion of the middle". You're allowing for no possible value of canon between "written by the author" and "written by someone with no frickin' clue". There is a middle here. There is "no frickin' clue" and there is "participating in brainstorming sessions" and then there is "wrote every frickin word myself". These are not of equal value from where I sit. : Extra. Connected. Made with assistance by Bungie, fitting into and expanding
That and a nickel used to buy a cup of coffee. I'm really not sure what position you're trying to push here. Apparently you put a lot of stock in Bungie's approval and involvement earlier in the creation of these materials-- but then you take it away later with regard to the game that they made themselves. What's the motivation here? That Bungie threw out all those materials when doing Reach, however, apparently says nothing to you. What is your position? Bungie is suffering from amnesia? That they, while owned by Microsoft, freely and with coercion of no kind enthusiastically and with great effort engaged in collaborating on the novels and comic books, but then, newly independent, answerable to no one, and throwing over the wall to Microsoft their last contractually obligated Halo game, deliberately messed up the canon as some kind of revenge? I don't particularly believe Bungie was intending to make a bunch of spinoff novels and comics-- or was intending to make five Halo games. I think that Halo 1-3 represent the story they made the Haloverse in order to tell. The Haloverse exists, and was created, to tell that story. The details in the Haloverse that extend beyond that story lend the story, its characters, and the elements of that larger universe depth of verisimilitude. : *Shrugs*
: Hem-hem.
: "Hey, Sarge, when are ya going to tell me how you got off Halo?"
I must be deaf. Because I'm pretty sure he just says "That's classified." You must be very good at reading between the lines. Oh... First Strike. Sorry, wish I could un-read that one as well. TFOR is quite readable but FS is a real mess. Nearly all of it is unnecessary. : Your loss. : You want to bet?
: "First thing we always do is start gathering as much reference material
What you quoted and what I wrote conflict in no way whatsoever. I wrote that ES had legal access to the Halo Bible, and that, being wholly owned by Microsoft, as was Bungie, no one at Bungie could have legally prevented them from having access. There was no way they could sue ES for making Halo Wars. There was no way they could get an injunction to prevent ES from using Halo material in making Halo Wars. In response, you quote a developer blog entry that boils down to "it's hard to get in contact with people at Bungie because they're busy on their own projects, and behind schedule. The bit about "having no idea" about negotiations is probably true-- they probably did have no idea. However, that obviously didn't stop them from developing or publishing the game. I'm sure that MS (whether they were confident or not) would present confidence to ES, and tell them to keep working. That means that, if the terms of the deal had sent Halo out the door with Bungie, it's possible that Halo Wars would have gotten axed, or at least the deal to make it and publish it would have to be restructured. There's no indication there, however, that ES had its copy of the Halo Bible taken away. If they thought it was OK to proceed with only minimal active involvement from Bungie, that's fine. MS okayed it, and they published it. None of that produces in me a moral obligation to consider it canonically authoritative. Or a good game, for that matter. : Emphasis added. : Having had sufficient time to ponder this subject, my answer has changed
Okay? Don't look to me to defend Halo Wars, because I won't do it :) : If anything, this says "Be careful about who you contract with"
: I think that your problem (And Mr. Miller's problem) is that you evaluate the
To me, it is the only one. The Haloverse was created to tell that story. Other stories need to be at least as good as that one in order to gain entrance. So far, no takers. : Mkay. : I once met an artist who had a... something he made in a back room of his
: He insisted that the art was there for the sake of art. It didn't matter if
The meaning is in the characters, themes, and plot. Not in the technical details, which is where nearly all the conflicts arise. There is no meaning applicable to your life in whether the BR55 has a range of 285m or 300m. : Not that it was a great piece of art, by any chance. I had no clue what it
: I can understand honest-to-God mistakes and misprints. I can understand that
: What I'm against are mistakes that have been done from carelessness and/or
The two go hand in hand. The more you have of the former, the more you'll have of the latter. The further afield you look for contributions to your extended universe, too. : Here, I think you contradict yourself.
The EXISTENCE of the details is important. It is important that the detail exists. The world gains some verisimilitude when you see that, just like you'd expect in real life, weapons and vehicles have technical specifications. It's important that they be there, because if the Haloverse was real, people within it would need to know these things. What is not important is what the details are. Whether the BR55 can shoot 285m or 295m doesn't really matter. For the vast majority of fans, it probably doesn't even matter whether the cited figure matches up exactly, or even closely, with the in-game behavior. It should't be too far off-- a gun that shoots 2.85m wouldn't be of much use, and one that shoots 2850m would be too good. The Haloverse is not a real place. The real world cannot fail to have a value for all of these details, but in the fiction, not all are relevant or necessary. Despite this, "I don't know" is not usually deemed an acceptable response. So for those compelled to know more about the fictional universe they vacation in, a lot of these details are supplied. They don't always match the in-game behavior, and sometimes they don't match each other. : If thought has been put into them, then the details are what they are for a
There are other common calibers. Bungie could have chosen one of those, and that would also have been "a reason". Would Halo then be different? : If they're important enough for that level of consideration, they are
: And now, back to my comments about suspension of disbelief.
: So, when you're building this character in the reader's mind, you're working
: Anyway, when you're working with audience expectations, I guess there's just
So? Are you saying that this isn't the PoA, but rather a clever forgery? There's a difference between saying you can see the difference, and saying that this means the ship was a different ship. The design details of the PoA are only important insofar as they allow the audience to positively identify the ship as the PoA-- and that's only valid for people who have seen other versions of it! : Sometimes, it's unavoidable, like when the original actor for Dumbledore
I fail to find your negation commercially or morally persuasive. If I thought that somehow the changes had ruined the work-- much as I felt changes that Lucas made were detrimental to the universe he played a hand in originating-- then I could probably go with it, but I just don't see it. The sin Bungie is being accused of here isn't in ruining their creation, it's merely changing it. My reaction is largely... so what? : Don't agree.The new model only increases the inside/outside problems, and
The impossibility of rectifying the ship's interior and exterior was already so extreme that frankly I'm inclined to ignore it from here on end. : Mkay. I get it. You're a Bungie fan.
Please don't put words in my mouth. This is not an issue of loyalty; that is a mischaracterization. This is simply a recognition that, to the extent that any work like a videogame can be said to have an "author", the "author" of Halo is Bungie, and the primary work that makes up "Halo" are the games Bungie has made. Everything else is, to me, at best, secondary-- commentaries on the original, not the original itself. People's participation in Bungie is temporary. So, no, their identity as "Bungie" starts when they join and ends when they leave, but "Bungie" goes on. I suppose it's possible to imagine a situation where so much changeover has occurred that it's no longer possible to link the idea of what used to be "Bungie" with what currently constitutes "Bungie" but I haven't seen it happen yet. Perhaps the next project will tell. Right now, the project that connects today's Bungie with the Bungie of old is Halo itself, and they are leaving that behind. : Politely, sir, I disagree.
So you disagree, but you agree? I say Bungie hasn't pulled a Lucas. You say you disagree. Then you say that Bungie hasn't pulled a Lucas. Which part of that is disagreeing? But I would very much like to know
In what sense? I've given what I think is a fairly comprehensive summary of how I think Reach came to be, and why Reach, as is, is not among the best of the games (story-wise) and why it conflicts with TFOR-- because Bungie wanted freedom to tell that story, their way, without making an adaptation of a novel based on their series of games. What, exactly, do you imagine went on "behind the scenes" at Reach that results in the game as we see it, but is inconsistent with the vision I have? Why do I feel this is concentrating down to an agenda against one individual in particular? : **Anakin Skywalker slowly succumbing to the Dark Side of the Force? It's
The prequels are lousy, full stop. : Artoo suddenly sprouting rockets to save the day. Open wide, Lucas. Put that
He's got nothing on the Halo 4 trailer. Maybe that's where they got the idea. : ***If you don't get this, don't look it up. No, I mean it. It's schmuck bait.
I know what you refer to. If I could have unseen it, I would. I feel the same about the Dietz novel. Almost.
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