But now it’s over – and after sitting down for an all day crunch session spent powering through the single-player campaign yesterday, I’d like to talk about the storytelling in Starcraft 2. There are some great moments and storytelling techniques in the game, but for the most part, the story and storytelling techniques are largely disappointing. If you haven’t played the single player campaign yet – don’t worry, I intend to keep this analysis spoiler free. I’m going to talking about the concepts, not the plot specifics.

So let’s start with what Starcraft 2 does well. There are some great techniques in the game that betray a real understanding of how gamers want to learn story in games.

The Good: Short, Punchy Cutscenes

First and foremost – the cutscenes are short, punchy, and don’t overstay their welcome. I know that some gamers love watching 30 minute cutscenes in RPGs, but most don’t – most are playing games to play them, not to watch them, and Starcraft 2 does a good job of getting gamers the plot and character information they need to know and letting them get back to the action.

The Good: Characters and Characterization

Starcraft does a lot with setting, mood, and nonverbal storytelling to get character details across without words. Instead of having a character saying, “I’m one brutal goddamn badass,” it’s shown through small actions instead: dark eyes in a cutscene, cigar smoking, facial expressions, etc. This is preferable – there are still so many games that forget storytelling in games is a visual medium – it’s not just about dialogue. The dialogue, for its part, is well done – filled with colloquialisms and interesting phrases – this is another plus. There are a few times where characters feel a bit stock, but the characters are pretty damn good for a video game.

The Good: Players Can Choose More or Less Story

Good God, I’ve been waiting for a game that did this effectively for so long, and finally Starcraft is an example of optional story done right. In between each mission players are sometimes shown mandatory cutscenes, but many of the cutscenes are optional – players can choose to talk to other characters in between each mission, or watch an ingame “news” segment, but they aren’t required to do this to still have a basic grasp of the story and the characters. If a player chooses, each mission can be started directly after the previous mission ends – all that optional story can be skipped. It’s about time that there was a game players could pick their level of immersion. Kudos, Blizzard. You did this right.

But now it’s time to talk about the flipside – there are a number of things I would have expected a game in development for as long as Starcraft  2 to have cleaned up, but these problems remain nonetheless.

The Bad: Nonlinear Missions Lead to a Weird Plot Arc

Many of the missions in the game, after the first few, can be undertaken in any order. This mechanic is fine – it’s worked in other games (like Dawn of War 2) – but for a game that really needs a consistent plot arc, it’s a poor choice. There are several subplot arcs in the game that take a few missions to complete, but the player can choose to undertake the missions interwoven with missions for other subplots. This is fine for the mercenary, go collect the Macguffin missions, but for missions that instill a sense of urgency (“OMG protect these people before they all die!”), it feels a bit silly to come back to them after taking a few side jobs.

Now, of course, the player can choose to power through and ignore the side jobs until the urgency is over, but this goes against decades of gamer logical progression. The side jobs are generally easier missions that give good upgrades, so doing them first allows makes the urgent missions easier. Plus, the way they are revealed to the player still gives the sense that missions revealed to the player first should be undertaken in the order they are revealed, so as to not get overwhelmed. Overall, it’s a poor mechanic that could have easily been remedied by allowing players to choose several mission arcs instead of individual missions. This would have made the plot hang together better.

The Bad: Not Enough Content? Hey – Throw in a Subplot

The other major problem with this choice is at least one major subplot with a player choice that doesn’t seem to matter all that much in terms of overall story – the subplot may carry to the sequels (via a save game or something) but it still feels strangely tacked on. Without giving too much away, I’m talking about the “Spectre” plot arc specifically. This arc only slightly impacts gameplay and feels like filler content. It doesn’t really fit into the overall story and just serves to compound the pacing problems brought on by a user-selected mission order.

The Bad: Mishandled Emotional Moments

This is a hard notion to discuss without spoilers, but I’m going to do my best. The plot mishandles several moments that could be interesting emotionally. It also relies way too heavily on a Macguffin that brings about a Dues Ex Machina ending in the worst way – instead of solving problems through character growth, the problems are solved by a particular item.

It’s strange, for a game that has great characters and great characterization, the characters don’t feel like they are fully explored in terms of their backstory and emotional reactions to situations. For a company that has created some truly beautiful emotion dilemmas in their Warcraft universe, I was disappointed that the story telling in Starcraft 2 didn’t live up. There are a bunch of missed chances for better character-driven story – the kind that elevates a cheesy plot to a good one – and I’m scratching my head as to why these opportunities weren’t exploited fully. I have specific examples for this, but I’ll save them for another post so as to not give away spoilers in this one.

So that’s the good and bad of the storytelling techniques in Starcraft 2, at least for the first installment. It’s a 3 part game, so maybe the story will get better as more expansions are released. But I’m not holding my breath.  The thing is, for as long as it takes Blizzard to release games, I should be salivating for more and cursing Blizzard for being so slow. I should be on the edge of my seat.

But I’m not really. In fact, I kinda don’t care. And that, really, is a huge mistake.

Now, WoW gets a lot of bad press for being an addictive tinksink, and while that may be true, there are some worthwhile skills there to be learned as long as the game is played with moderation. I don’t play WoW anymore, but I did play the game for about four years, off and on. The Yahoo post didn’t cover everything I think feel like I there is to be learned from WoW – there’s a few things it missed. So here we go:

Persistence

MMORPGs in general, and WoW in particular, are designed to keep you playing for long periods. Their revenue model is subscription based, so the longer they can keep you playing, the more money they make. While this may seem nefarious at first (and it certainly can be, if not kept in check), after months and years spent playing working toward in-game rewards, I found it much easier to focus and work singularly on creative projects. I don’t know if I’d have completed half of the creative projects I’ve finished without learning what it meant to sit there, day after day, and slowly grind something to completion. This is a skill I knew before, but WoW brought me to a whole new level. The ironic thing is, once WoW taught me all that persistence, I realized I had better things to while away the hours than play WoW. Go figure.

Research and Planning

There are aspects to WoW’s gameplay that require obscure knowledge of in-game items, locations, and game mechanics. Some of the game’s battle and character systems are so convoluted that it takes complicated algebra and mathematics to determine which in-game item is better to improve a character. While this may be a flaw for the game itself, for the players, these convoluted systems encourage extensive web research, planning, and the ability to analyze vast quantities of technical and jargon-filled information. WoW is its own world – you don’t just play it, you live in it – the ability to find out what you need quickly using the research tools you have available is essential to succeeding in the game. I’ve found these research skills carry easily to other knowledge areas – picking up jargon via in-context immersion is a skill WoW encouraged.

Leadership and Organization

I spent several months in the game as a member of guild leadership, organizing twenty-five people several times a week to conquer in-game objectives. Some of these objects require all 25 people to work in tandem for fifteen minutes straight, with every member needing to know their role and individual responsibilities for the entire fifteen minutes, changing their role every few seconds. Organizing this many people over the internet with only voice and text communication tools  is incredibly taxing, but also teaches valuable leadership, organizational, and motivational skills.

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Strategy

Much of WoW’s gameplay involves reacting to stressors in a timely manner with a situation-tailored response. This sounds dry when phrased like that, but I can phrase it more interestingly, too: the best part of playing WoW is trying to figure out how to react in the span of half a second when a gigantic fire-breathing dragon is charging your ass, half your teammates are dead, and you have two minutes before he goes berserk and kills everyone else, costing your team thirty minutes of progression and maybe putting off the encounter for another week. You better make the right choices.

The thing that differentiates MMORPGs from other types of games is that the tools the player has to solve any situation rarely change (maybe once every year, after an expansion). The rest of the time, the player uses the same abilities in different ways. Snap choices must be made, based on familiarity with the problems, tools, and team members. At the highest levels of play, encounters must be strategized for, execution must be practiced, and all team members must be able to think on-the-fly to make good choices. This ability to plan ahead and think on your feet while dealing with stress translates well to other situations.

Have I missed any?

Volume 1

Hello, everyone. I have returned once more with another somewhat obscure manga offering this week: Blade of the Immortal. Where my previous offering, Excel Saga, is a humorous, off-the-wall series, Blade of the Immortal is considerably different. If you are a fan of samurai stories, stylish violence, wit, bizarre characters, and deep story, then this might be for you. Read on to learn more.

Blade of the Immortal, known as Mugen no Junin in Japan (literally meaning Inhabitant of Infinity), comes to us from the imagination of Hiroaki Samura, a classically trained artist who turned his pen to manga in the mid nineties, following his dreams of becoming a mangaka (a writer and illustrator of manga). His style is unique amongst mangaka, being done in black and white pencil-sketch style, with a masterful eye on subtle details and elements of anatomy. His knowledge of how the human body moves and functions imparts a high degree of expression into his characters, which greatly aids in his often frenetic battle scenes, where many characters can be engaged in combat simultaneously. One of the most well-known features of his work in Blade is his “center-fold,” a highly detailed snapshot of a character, usually the main character Manji, in motion while fighting. These sketches take a great deal of time and are filled with details that most manga don’t bother with. This is not your average comic book artwork, though many of his frames are simplified in style due to necessity. The balance of simple and complex art is one of the reasons I adore Blade so much, but pretty pretty pictures are just a small part of it.

Dark Horse Comics, issue 126, featuring Rin.

The style and feel of Blade of the Immortal is unique as well, blending the historical background of 1780’s Japan with characters whose style and speech seem to come from the here and now. It might put some readers in mind of Samurai Champloo, but Blade is considerably deeper and more mature story-wise, but the anachronistic similarities are there. Fans of the series also look to see what ridiculous weapons the characters will be wielding next – things straight from Samura-san’s mind, with often impractical applications in real life, but that make for some really awesome fight scenes. However, without a good, compelling story loaded with engaging characters it is all for naught. Luckily, Blade of the Immortal is strong there, as well.

The central plot is this: A young girl, Rin, watches as her family and friends are slaughtered before her in her father’s dojo by a band of renegade kenshi (swordsmen) calling themselves the Itto-ryu, lead by Anotsu Kagehisa. Rin then embarks on a quest for revenge, but with little skill of her own, it would be suicide to go up against such skilled fighters, so she had to find someone to help her. Enter Manji, the series’ main protagonist. Manji was once a samurai, but was made a ronin and wanted man after he battled against a hundred other officers and slew them, including his own sister’s husband. He wandered bondless, hiding from the law until an encounter with the enigmatic Buddhist nun, Yaobikuni. She infected him with creatures known as kessen-chu, or blood worms, which will unnaturally prolong his life and instantly regenerate any wounds he suffers, and she challenges him to find meaning in a now nearly unending life. Nearly unkillable now, short of a rare poison that attacks the kessen-chu directly, Manji pledges to slay a thousand evil men – ten for each good man he killed – and so be freed of his burden. When Rin approaches him with her request to hire him as a bodyguard, Manji sees it as a possible way to come closer to his goal and accepts the job. In due time Manji finds himself fighting everyone from renegade swordsmen to corrupt shogunate lords, who crave the secrets of his nigh-immortality.

Rin, preparing for her mission into the "Badger Hole."

The plot, however, goes far beyond a simple revenge yarn, and as the story unfolds and the characters develop, the motivations that drove them (protagonist and antagonist alike) seem less important as time goes by. The series is now approaching its finale, starting with volume 22, Footsteps, beginning the Winter War arc that will complete the story, and I can tell you it’s a hard wait. One of the largest problems Blade of the Immortal has is an extremely slow print-run, with only one volume printed every year to year and a half. So even if only three to four volumes remain, it’s still plenty of time to get caught up. The series is published in English by Dark Horse Comics as a collected volume, though it was once published monthly as a normally-sized comic, but that run was discontinued due to low sales (since people like me usually waited for the whole, complete, volume instead). Prices per volume range from $14.95 to $19.95, quite a bit more than most manga, but the effort that goes into the manga helps explain that. It is printed in standard English comic format, rather than the more standard Japanese style right-to-left, by Samura-san’s request, no less. He wished to preserve the way the art flowed, and so rather than simply flip it to English style, each frame is cut and pasted before printing to assure accuracy.

"Blade of the Immortal," animated version, 2009.

Blade of the Immortal was recently turned into an anime, though I must say the anime cannot capture either the beauty of Hiroaki Samura’s art or the intricacies of his story, and largely falls flat. The manga, meanwhile, is widely regarded as a masterpiece, but still has a comparatively small following. According to Anime News Network, based on a weighted average, Blade of the Immortal ranks #230 of 2079 – not very low, and far higher on the scale than Excel Saga, which I featured a couple of weeks ago (#1826 of 2079), but still not enough people know how incredible this manga is. There is nothing out there quite like Blade of the Immortal, and If you want a mature, adult-oriented story with incredible, unique art and amazing action, try out Blade of the Immortal. You won’t regret it. Cheers, everyone, and happy reading!

Cubicle Bear Archives

And none-too-soon, because the AVP films were some awful shit.  Harkening back to the classic age of Universal movie monsters, 20^th Century Fox had teamed up its two most unique and terrifying sci-fi monsters in an effort to reignite both franchises.  The idea, originating in Predator 2 (1990) and several comic books and games, was wildly kick-ass in theory; I mean, why wouldn’t the universe’s most advanced hunter chose to pursue the universe’s most dangerous beast?

Fans were let down, however, and the first Alien vs. Predator (2004) was eventually directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, a man who specializes in popcorn video game movies like Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil ( call him a slightly more talented Uwe Boll).  Eagerly anticipated by fans, AVP, as it was dubbed (…groan…), turned out to be a watered-down and infantilized cash-in, featuring some of the worst dialogue of that or any other year.  AVP was released PG-13 (odd considering all previous six films across this two franchises were universally Rated R) and even Lance Henriksen’s sallow crags couldn’t save it.

The sequel, Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), turned out to be nearly as bad. Both were terrible retreads offering nothing new to the mythos, save the dreadful Predalien (half Alien, half Predator, get it?).  Hey, Hollywood producers, the Alien was one of the most terrifying movie inventions of all time, but Predalien is just…Poochie*; it’s like putting gaudy rims on a Ferrari or skittles in a milkshake; I mean…why? Thank Christ there were only two AVPs, as I was fully expecting the obligatory third outing of Alien vs. Predator Meets Abbott and Costello.

Note: Predalien died on the way back to his home planet

Anyway, Predators is quite a step up in every possible way, largely because it necessarily and wisely ignores the AVPs, as well as most of Predator 2, and recaptures most of thrill of the original 1987 Schwarzenegger vehicle.  Predators evokes the suspense and intrigue of the first, and seems to use most of the original, tense score.  The Predator always had several really cool characteristics that seemed to be largely wasted and even taken for granted in the last few movies. But this time, the audience is with the characters as they terrifyingly discover, piece by piece that–holy shit–these things have targeting lasers, can see in infrared, and are fucking invisible.

The premise is simple and keeps in line with the primary foundations of the Predator concept; in this installment, rather than hunt on earth, the Predators kidnap a handful of mercenaries, thugs and psychopaths from around the world, air-drop them onto a strange jungle planet, hand them a bunch of giant machine guns, and stalk and slaughter them for sport. Headed by an ex-special forces American (played by Academy Award winner Adrien Brody) our prey for this outing is some of the worst of the worst, including a Russian fighting in Chechnya, an Israeli Sniper, a Yakuza enforcer, Mexican cartel foot soldier, an death squad soldier from Sierra Leone. Oh… and Topher Grace as Topher Grace. Pretty horrifying people all around.  All they’re missing is Pol Pot and Ratko Mladic.  Probably one of my favorite things about this movie, as we discover, is that these guys aren’t gonna get out alive. Unlike other hunting-people-for-sport films (Surviving the Game, Hard Target, The Running Man), they aren’t going to get set free if they survive long enough or get far enough away.  They’re just going to be stuck there until Predators eventually kill them all.  Pretty bleak stuff. (“They’re bad, but they’ll die, so I like it”)

Great idea, though, right? Hell, when I first saw the previews, I thought to myself, “this is a movie that thrills the viewer with the threat of being stranded on a deadly, alien planet with an ugly, battle-scarred, merciless killing machine… named Danny Trejo.” And I guess I was excited when I found out Predators were involved too.

Messrs. Trejo and Predator

When I heard Robert Rodriguez was involved, I had mixed expectations.  In his time, he’s directed some pretty entertaining movies (Desperado, Sin City), some intriguingly bad movies (Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Planet Terror), and a lot that was aimed a completely different viewer than I (Spy Kids 1-17).  Luckily, Predators is in that first category.

It’s entertaining and well-paced and (except for the samurai sword scene) never distractingly stupid.  Adrien Brody is good even though his character never says more than what is absolutely required and during the climactic battle when he doffs his shirt is pretty impressive, in that his abs are bitchin’ enough to actually distract from his cubist face (seriously, you can see three sides of it at once).

On a funny sidenote, right before this movie started filming, my friend Dana actually met Adrien Brody randomly in a bar (yes, it was him). He was dressed down and Dana, not having any idea who he really was and never guessing he’d actually show up there, proceeded to flirt with him for half an hour. Later the friends who with her had to tell her she just hung out with an Oscar Winner. So she and Adrien Brody did they end up doing right before he went off to shoot Predators?  They played Big Buck Hunter.  Take that for what it is.

Anyway, for the price of admission, you even get to see a decent cameo by Laurence Fishburne (SPOILER: anyone else think that he gets chopped into Cowboy Curtis Kibble pretty easily given he’s supposed to have been there for ten years?) And at the very least, it’s enough Rodriguez and Trejo to get fans through the summer until Machete comes out in August.

Verdict: If you enjoyed the first Predator, you’ll largely enjoy this one.  If you miss for the storytelling of AVP, then you’re just an idiot.

*(Read Ruthlessreviews.com)

Not on trial here though. Come on. It's a metaphor.

In summer the need for genre reading grips me, stacks of fat squat books howling my name like newsprint-scented wolves. I love serious fiction. There are Great Books gathering dust unread on my shelf. But ultimately the call of the genre will get me, wrap me up in a quick-drawn world and plot-drive me where it will. The inevitability makes me wonder how bad a fate that is.

[Want to know what I mean by genre? Luckily I told you here.]

Most of genre is reading for entertainment—it’s choosing Saturday morning cartoons and blow-stuff-up movies instead of Citizen Kane or something poetic and subtitled. And let’s all say it together: “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

But literary empty calories do cost. When I’ve been reading genre, I speed through with barely a thought about whether I can trust the narrator, or whether all is what it seems—unless the author wants me to think something’s fishy, which is generally noted with a line like, “Samara thought something seemed fishy.” I don’t think about symbolism. The emotional weight of what happens to the characters doesn’t hit me—even if the murder victim is the sleuth’s dear ol’ grandma, I know she’s basically a blue-haired, peppermint-scented MacGuffin, nothing more than an excuse to push the plot forward.  I excuse clichés and flat characters and terrible writing with hardly a thought.

And then I find myself writing things like “with hardly a thought”—tied-up stiff phrases that mean next to nothing. It’s contagious. If you’re a writer, genre can cost more than time. Garbage in, garbage out.

If you’re an omnivorous reader, think of the bad reading habits genre forms—skimming, speed-reading, ignoring insignificant details, expecting side players to come from Stock Characters ‘R’ Us and avoid unnecessary movement. That hurts anyone who wants to appreciate what the written word can do for truth and beauty.

But there’s also something to be said for these plot-driven page-turners. Genre opens doors to other worlds, often wider and brighter-lit doors than the narrow crevices of Serious Fiction.

Barbara Neely’s Blanche White series of the 90s is definitely genre—but it’s edgy, political, and some of the best writing on contemporary African-American culture in the business. In 2000, Neely told Ms. magazine, “I thought I was writing a novel that happened to have murder in it… But when the book did so well, I realized the mystery genre was perfect to talk about serious subjects, and it could carry the political fiction I wanted to write.”

Science fiction genre entries usually involve ludicrous sexual politics and at least one scientific impossibility, but many books use the “speculative fiction” angle to tease out questions of morality and philosophy, or toy with the consequences of real developments. The Laws of Robotics are the classic example, but I’ve also read stories from midcentury discussing the backlash from an issue as seemingly modern as in vitro fertilization—before the first human test succeeded, of course. Then there are the books that blend mythology into their plotlines, passing on centuries-old folktales in a new guise.

As for romance, that behemoth of fiction sales, the genres within it break down in their own ways. But some of those bodice-rippers involve real history, accurate portrayals contemporary conditions and plenty of period research. Some are half travel log or Dirty Jobs episode. When the plotline and outcome of the story are basically a given, you’d better have some pretty great window dressing to control 60% of the fiction market. Legal and military thrillers, likewise, can use their platforms to educate as they titillate, competing between books for the most “authentic” issues as well as the most exciting.

And then there are the methods any decent genre writer has mastered—the kind of thing plenty of weightier wannabes could do well to learn. Pacing. Suspense. Tight plotting. Giving just enough of the big reveal to keep us one step behind the game. Those are not simple techniques, and yet read enough genre, and you can manipulate that familiar dance to whatever ends you can imagine. Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose is a masterful exploitation of those cues—I really want to spoil it, but I won’t here. Read it.

There’s no point arguing, really. Genre is and undoubtedly will remain the silent bulk of books read and written, whether it’s classed as pure brain candy or some potentially redeemable sort of light snack. The pack is calling me regardless. But as I reach for my beach reads, I’m going to remind myself about all those mitigating circumstances.

Anybody have a recommendation?

Kefka from FF6 (credit: Square Enix)

A few months ago I was arguing on facebook with a guy about Kefka from Final Fantasy 6. The guy claimed Kefka was an awesome video game villain. I didn’t agree with him, but it took me awhile to fully formulate my arguments. This post is the result of that formulation. I present to you, for your unadulterated amusement, what makes a good video game villain.

The thing is – I believe Kefka, while better than some, is just a poor villain masquerading as a good one. If you don’t play video games, or have never played Final Fantasy 6, this post is still useful to you – some of the criteria surely surpasses both the specific game and the medium. Anyway, here are the essential characteristics of a good video game villain:

Actions that Betray a Low Pathos

The best villains act in a way that demonstrates their lack of human concern. This, unlike the Greek tragic hero, whose fatal flaw is traditionally hubris, is the fatal flaw that makes a villain a villain (though hubris can lead to a lack of pathos). They have a personal agenda that must be satisfied no matter what. Good villains always think the ends justify the means. The best villains care about the carnage they inflict on other human lives, but don’t care enough to stop.

An Understandable Motivation, Explainable by Cause and Effect

I absolute loathe villains that are just evil for the sake of evil. This is the lamest motivation a villain can have. People like that don’t exist. This is especially loathsome for the standard video game villain endgame: destroying the world while laughing like a hyena. I just don’t buy it.

I mean, if you live on the world, why the hell would you want to destroy it? Being batshit insane is the only motivation that explains this desire, unless the dude is so bummed that he wants to kill himself and take the world with him. But still. It’s so dumb.

Money and Power do in a pinch here if motivation is needed, but only if the reason for wanting to acquire those things is explainable. A guy who wants to get rich to just be rich is a poor villain. A guy who wants to get rich to save his family, buy a specific item for important reasons, or has a direct personal motivation (dude was poor when he was a kid) to acquire riches is a good villain. This explainable motivation is the key difference, especially for the “I’m evil so I want to destroy the world types.”

The very best villains are presented with dire circumstances and you understand why they made the choices they made. Even if you wouldn’t have made the same choices, you understand how a sane human being could make those choices, too. This is why Kefka is a lame duck villain. He has no motivation  beyond abject insanity.

Personal Choice (As Opposed to Fate)

Personal choice is as essential to a villain as it is to the hero. If anything, a good hero and a good villain are flipsides of the same coin – when presented with an awful situation, the hero decides to do the right thing and the villain decides to do the wrong thing. But the point is: the choice matters.

So many games try to flit around this point (probably because it’s damn difficult to pull off as a storyteller) but including some type of “fate.” While this is a lazy story telling technique for both heroes (“Because you are the one, Neo.”) and villains, it’s especially asinine with villains. What kind of lame villain is so spineless that he’s fated to be evil and he just accepts it? If there’s no personal choice, there’s no drama.

Again, the best villains are placed in a situation where you can understand their choices and you understand exactly why they made them.

Can Only Be Overcome By the Growth of the Hero

If Superman fights a normal gun-wielding yahoo, it’s no contest. The bullets bounce off his manly star-emblazoned chest while he laughs at their ineptitude before punching them in the face and going to make time with Lois Lane. Get the point? You have to have villains that are powerful enough that they can only be overcome by personal growth of the hero, but not so powerful that the hero’s growth is unrealistic.

An ant is not a good villain for Superman, but an ant could be a great villain for a termite. Superman needs world-class villains. World-class villains need world-class heroes.

Conclusion

So those are the four main things I think makes a good video game villain. Before I close and ask you want you think, I want to present some examples:

Awesome Villains

Sephiroth

Darth Vader

That fat guy from Jurassic Park

Satan

HAL 9000

Hannibal Lecter

Agent Smith

Poor Villians

Kefka

Carnage

Professor Moriarty

Most Greek Gods

Nature and Bad Weather

If you agree or not, drop me a line in the comments and we’ll argue. C’mon. It’ll be fun.

However, digital media still has one of the major problems with physical media: once you have a lot of it, accessing and organizing it can be an issue. This is especially true with the small media access devices. You might own many more gigs of music and movies than your little iPad, netbook, or mobile phone can hold, and it can be a royal hassle to keep the content you want to access synced all the time. If you’re leaving for a trip, you have to make sure you preload the movies and music you want before you leave. If you forget to do that, you’re stuck with the same stuff you loaded last time. Plus, you have to plan what you want ahead of time – if you bring all horror movies and rap and then feel like a comedy and a country song, you’re outta luck, guy.

This can also be a hassle even within your household – you might have several computers and media access devices in different rooms, all networked together but all using different software, media formats, and access protocols. It’s a pain to manage all that individually and you can easily spend dozens of hours converting media to different formats just so it will play on a specific device.

Dealing with these problems sent me looking for a cheap, easy solution to managing all that media. I wanted to be able to access it from anywhere in the world on the fly, any media access device in my apartment, and I wanted it to be as cheap as possible. I also wanted it to be simple enough, once set up, that my non-tech savvy girlfriend (she’s come a long way, I’ll give her that) would be able to easily use the solution.

First, I looked at cloud storage solutions like Dropbox. Since everything is stored in their datacenter, content can be accessed from anywhere. However, there are three major downsides to these types of cloud storage solutions: cost, limited management, and upload time. These solutions are expensive. Dropbox costs 20 bucks a month for 100GB of storage. Plus, that’s only 100GB – for 80 bucks nowadays you can buy a 1TB hard drive – 10 times the storage space. You get limited management, can’t tweak the software, and on top of all that, you have to upload all your files to the service and keep them synced. The typical home internet connection doesn’t have much upload bandwidth, so it would take a damn long time to upload 100 GB.

So instead, I looked into building a media server at home, as well as solutions for streaming from that media server to my devices.

Cheap Media Server

A media server can be built very cheaply if you have a little knowledge of how to build a computer. All you need to build a media server is a motherboard, processor, memory, case, power supply, hard drive, and a DVD player. A video card is optional. If you plan to watch movies right from the media center you might want one, but most motherboards with have some type of video out that’s serviceable for just watching movies. Most motherboards also have onboard sound, so you don’t need a sound card. For another few bucks, you can even through in a TV tuner card and use your media server as a TiVo.

Assuming you have another desktop computer at home, you don’t need a keyboard, mouse, or monitor for your media server. Not buying these pieces can save you quite a bit. I like to use Newegg.com or Tigerdirect.com to buy my parts. Make sure you do your research – buy parts that work together. A few hours a research can save you tons of money. Get help from a friend or do some googling to learn what parts are good and what works with what.

In terms of software – the only thing you’ll probably need to buy is an operating system. The rest of the software you need is open source and free on the internet. If you’re really tech savvy, you can probably even go with Linux for your operating system and not have to buy that, either. But I don’t know Linux – I’m only familiar with Windows, so I bought that, too.

Once you get all your parts, assemble the machine and load your OS. When you’re building a machine, use the mouse, keyboard, and monitor from your other computer. You won’t need these things after you’re done, but you do need them to build it.

If building a computer scares you, invite a tech savvy friend over, pay with a few beers or a bottle of wine, and get him/her to do it. Make sure you help with this part, so you can learn how to it. You’ll probably be surprised by how easy it is. Building computers is really simple and fun. It’s a great skill to know and I’m always flabbergasted that people don’t want to learn how to do it. Don’t be one of them. Learn.

Once your machine is set up and your operating system is installed, hook the machine up to the internet and load on your other software. I usually put VLC on the machine because it’s a great media player and comes with most of the video codecs you’ll need. Plus, I use a projector for my media server, so I need a video player on there.

You’ll also want some type of streaming software that uses the uPnP steaming protocol. Don’t worry about how technical that sounds (some people run screaming once you start talking acronyms), it’s really easy to understand with a little googling. If you’re using a Media Center edition of Windows, you already have streaming software built into your operating system, so you don’t have to do this. For just home use (not accessible from the internet) Twonky Media Server is really good, but it isn’t free.

My favorite, however, is the Orb service. Orb is the best, most awesome thing I’ve ever used, and it’s completely free. All you have to do is go to their website, set up an account, and download their streaming software to your new machine. The streaming software runs all the time, in the background, serving media files to any device over the internet or local network. Orb Live even has iPad, iPhone, and Android applications. These cost a few bucks, but if you’re leery, there are free versions you can try out.

The best thing about Orb is that all the files are converted to the correct formats on your media server, and then streamed to your device. You iPad can only handle mp4 videos, right? But converting all that junk is a royal pain. No problem. Orb Live will do the converting on the fly and stream right to your device, even over the web. You can go to your friend’s house and stream from there. For you Apple users, Orb Live even streams over 3G – no wifi required. I really can’t say enough how much I love this service. It even streams to the PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 over the internet, so I can go to my buddy’s house and stream my media to his PS3. Oh, if you’ve got a TV Tuner card in your media server, Orb will stream your TV, too. You can even stream a webcam if you want. How awesome is that?

Once you’re got all that stuff set up, you can unplug the mouse, keyboard, and monitor from your computer. If you need to access the machine, you can use Remote Desktop. There are Remote Desktop clients for almost every platform, including Windows, Mac, and iDevices. If you’re using Windows on your other machine, remote desktop is built right into your operating system. If you’re on the same network, all you need is the name of the machine.

You can even access your media server from anywhere in the world by using remote desktop across the internet. All you need to know is the IP address of your media server. The problem, of course, is that most home internet connections have a constantly changing IP address, not a static IP address. Sure, you can call home and get someone to check for you every time you want to connect, but that’s a hassle. Instead, I use the Dynamic DNS service. It’s free and it works great.

To use it, you set up an account on their website. You’ll have to pick one of their free domain names during this process. Next, you download their software and run it in the background on your media server, just like you did with Orb. This software notifies Dynamic DNS every time your IP address changes, so it’s always up to date.

Now, when you’re using the remote desktop, you type in the domain name of your computer, instead of the IP address. The domain name goes to Dyn DNS, which provides your IP address, and BAM – you can connect to your media server from anywhere, even your phone.

There is only final thing that you have to consider when using dynamic DNS, and that’s port forwarding inside your network. Inside your network your media server will have a different IP address than your connection to the internet. So you need to configure your router or modem to forward any remote desktop connections to your media server by forwarding port 3389 to the internal IP address of your media server. This is a pretty simple process and done via the web interface that you probably used to set up your WiFi network.

Anyway, so that probably seems like a lot of work, but the end result is completely worth it. You can access your media anywhere in the world, on almost any device. You have access to all your media, not just the stuff you loaded on your device before you left your house, and it doesn’t cost you any monthly fees.

This was pretty much a general overview, but if you want more detail about any of these things, I’ll be happy to answer questions. It’s simpler than it sounds.

Also, the one thing I haven’t figured out how to stream yet is PDFs and comic books. I have a bunch of comic books from buying the Marvel DVD collections and I would prefer to not load them all on my iPad, since the thing is only 16 GB, which fills up quickly. I can stream my music and movies to the iPad using Orb Live, but not comics. If anyone has a good way to do that, I’m all ears. I want something that’s as easy to use as Orb. The guy who makes Comic Zeal for the iPad already told me he has no intention of adding this functionality and the streaming services for documents via Orb Live are very limited.

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