When Spheres of Interest Collide

Why people read what they read and watch what they watch has recently been of interest to me. As a cultural consumer and producer both, I know that advertisements and reviews are hardly the overwhelming factors, just the most reassuringly quantifiable. Recommendations from friends have the advantage of being motivated by passion rather than profits, but subjective passion can also misfire: as anyone who's had someone feverishly press something into their hand and heard "It's gonna change your life" can attest. That said, I have a few friends whose recommendations have hugely enriched my life, people with shared sensibilities that span genre and medium.

But that wasn't why I finally played StarCraft (Blizzard, 1998).

Lots of people I respected had spoken highly of it, many of whom weren't gamers and for some of whom it was the only game they played. There were stories of people going to Korea to play it professionally in televised games. I'd played Warcraft III (Blizzard, 2002), the company's fantasy real-time strategy game, even though I'm more inclined to science fiction (though in that case a friend had actually lent it to me). I expect that had a lot to do with it -- like the book you read because it was at the airport bookstore, it's often a case of convenience that's the deciding factor. Look at all the Solitaire players out there, courtesy of it being built into the Windows operating systems. I've been bored enough to play Minesweeper.

It wasn't Bill Gates that influenced what I played this time, however, it was Hayao Miyazaki. The legendary Japanese animator might be best known for Princess Mononoke (1997), but it was Spirited Away (2001) that sent me scrambling for everything else he did. This story of a girl who gets trapped in fairy-land is a stunning mix of intricate and detailed mythology filtered through a modern perspective. It's impossibly cute and surreal without being manipulative or contrived. One scene where the little girl's protector thrust out his hand to magically encase a demon was so reminiscent of Bubble Bobble and yet consistent with the magic in the movie that I was left unsure: was this a reference to the videogame, or was the videogame referencing Japanese magic?

I decided a bit of research was in order, and discovered via a search on the Internet Movie Database that Miyazaki had credits not only for his other movies (of which My Neighbour Totoro is another standout) but also for StarCraft. I hadn't known that imdb.com did videogames as well, so I read that Miyazaki had been thanked in the credits to the real-time strategy game with the pleasant surprise of worlds intersecting.

It was obviously meant to be. I tracked down the game and loaded it up on my PC, wondering why it had taken so long -- I guess because I had had the impression that StarCraft was a really complicated version of chess, the science fictional background a pretext for cold strategizing and world conquering. But if it had even a tenth of Miyazaki's baffling and beautiful whimsy, it was worth checking out.

It was worth checking out, though it's more James Cameron (who's also thanked in the credits) than Miyazaki. It's funny, though, cresting the edge of satire: at the beginning, you're a human who decides to betray the "Confederate" cause in the interest of greater humanity, despite the drawling outrage of one General Duke. The marines and biker gangs that populate the game are anachronistic but a good deal more colourful than the whitewashed Trekkie model. Another clear influence is the comic book Heavy Metal, where European graphic novelists fetishize everything from curvy hipped robots to shoulder mounted nukes -- though in StarCraft things aren't sexed up so much as confabulated.

If the artwork shows its age, not so much in style but in graphical chunkiness, the voice acting is excellent. Which is good, because every time you direct your troops (which is a lot) they talk back to you, and the missions can be long. An early mission had a goal to survive for 30 minutes against wave upon wave of invaders. It went by quickly, however, as I had my troops gather crystals and Vespene gas so I could build more defenders.

At one point, having gotten all my factories a-building and not wanting to watch the progress bar, I went to pour myself a cup of tea. It was peculiarly satisfying, like it is whenever I can leave something working when I go to do something else -- and I kind of miss the days when computers were so slow that we naturally had more of these interstices as the obsolete machine processed or loaded. At one point we were forced to take a break, which was actually kind of healthy --now that things are so much faster, we have to decide to take a break, which requires a kind of discipline.

But between cues like progress bars, and the way you draw boxes around the troops you want to move, I have to admit that it feels like too much work. I found myself trying the shortcut CTRL-A to select all at some points. A wave of invaders almost wiping me out gave me a brief boost of anxiety and excitement: what if the next wave of invaders had 10 big monster guys instead of two? But as I made more and more stuff I was getting positively existential. Can one ever have enough?

Tags: animation , Azeroth , fantasy , Hayao Miyazaki , Heavy Metal , science fiction , StarCraft , strategy