Games | Issue 14 by Salient

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vol.77 issue.14

the games issue

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contents weekly content 4. Letters 6. News 2 3 . C r e at i v e 36. VUWSA 38. Arts 43. Odds And Ends

features 1 8 . Fo ot b a l l Fi e s ta 2 0 . S o m e t h i n g W i c k e d Th i s Wa y C o m e s 24. Fitspo Is the Pits, Bro 2 8 . A n I n t e r v i e w w i t h a n A l l Wh i t e 30. App Smear

columns 1 4 . A rt i c u l at e d S p l i n e s 15. Sports Banter 1 6 . R a m b l i n g s o f a Fa l l e n H a c k 17. Bone Zone with Cupie Hoodwink 3 3 . We i r d I n t e r n e t S h i t 33. Conspiracy Corner 34. Food 35. C B T 3 5 . M āo r i M at t e r s 37. Bent 37. Shirt and Sweet

online content Th e R o a d Th a t Wa s n ’ t Th e r e R e v i e w Te U r u r o a F l a v e l l a n d C h r i s M c K e n z i e o n S t a t e o f O r i g i n w w w. s a l i e n t . o r g . n z

The Games Issue

2014 is an amazing year for sports and games.

he Football World Cup, the Winter Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the All Blacks, Steven Adams, Lydia Ko, Oculus Rift, PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, GTA V, FIFA 2014. This week, we wanted to bring physical sports and virtual gaming together into one issue. Both demonstrate the human instinct to compete and to improve. What drives Steven Adams to shoot hoops for thousands of hours is the same thing that drives a gamer to get as many headshots as possible in Call of Duty. They both find enjoyment in pushing themselves to do better and testing themselves against others. They both hone their skills, learn from their mistakes and go through hard to reach easy. They’re both

people we should look up to. Unfortunately, because games and sports aren’t purely intellectual pursuits, they’re snubbed by people who don’t play. Gamers are childish and nerdy. But in truth, video games are works of art. Sportspeople are called dumb jocks. But they’re using all of their muscles – especially the brain. That thinking also exists between different sports. It’s weird that Luis Suárez gets paid millions a year while the best Ultimate Frisbee player works to support himself. The All Blacks are amazing, but we never hear of the Black Ferns. This, despite the fact that they are one of the most successful sporting sides in history. The reason for these differences is culture – football has been

around forever. Sports fans can be a bit sexist. Sports and games aren’t perfect. But they are important. They are important because of the things that games teach you about yourself – improving your body to do something that it couldn’t do before; in working hard to get results. You learn to be a champion, and how to be in a champion team. You find out if you are a leader or a follower. You discover that winning is awesome, but it’s important to lose sometimes too. You make friends for life. Without sports and games we would be a sad, sorry lot. Your IQ is only one part of you. Games allow you to improve the other parts. This week, sports writer Sam Patchett debriefs us on the

G o o d gam e ,

Du nc an & Cam

Football World Cup. He makes the bold claim that this is one of the best Football World Cups ever and picks his tournament team and tournament twats. Penny takes a critical look at the #fitspo obsession. She asks whether the focus on being strong and fit stops us from living healthy lives. In the gaming world, resident feature writer Phil delves deep into the world of smartphone game apps. He doesn’t actually own a smartphone, so it is a hilarious read. Jonathan Hobman looks forward to the future of video games. Where is the industry going, and how fucking cool is it going to get? Sports and video games enrich the lives of billions of people every year. Just do it.

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Letter of the Week YOU’LL HAVE TO DO BETTER THAN THAT Dear Salient, I spent many minutes trying to come up with some witticism to impress you enough to print my letter, but truth be told, I’m not a great writer, I just really, really want free coffee. Cheers, Talentless and Thirsty ONLINE EXPOSURE SATISFIES US Hi, My name is Jerry. I’m run a website design firm. I came across your website, and was wondering if you are currently satisfied with the results you’re seeing? I have some great ideas in mind to increase your online exposure. Let me know if you’d like to set something up. Jerry 84% OF PEOPLE USED TO THINK THE EARTH WAS FLAT While it appears you are taking an objective stance by saying that we are all entitled to our own beliefs, you are also taking the moral highground by asserting that faith is ok, provided it is moderate. This contradicts the tolerant attitude towards faith which you are trying to convey. You are claiming that your belief in watering down faith is superior to fundamentalism. Of course, it’s infinitely easier to say that you don’t believe in anything, than to actually commit to a single belief system. You cannot criticise those who are courageous enough to devote 4

The Games Issue

themselves to one faith by labelling them derogatorily as ‘zealots’. It is your opinion that faith should be watered down to please those who do not subscribe to an official faith, but it’s mine that there is no point practicing a faith unless you are in it 100%. On the other hand, I agree, it is never acceptable to attempt to force your beliefs on others. But you are making some pretty hefty faith claims yourself. How did you arrive at the bold opening statement ‘God’s probably not real’? Is that simply from your own experience? Interestingly, the majority of the world’s population does believe in a God. According to a study presented in the Washington Times in December 2012, 84% of the world’s population in 2010 identified with a religious group. There’s a good possibility that God is real then, isn’t there? Regards, Truthseeker UNIDENTIFIED FOLLOWER OFFENDED Dear Athi-ent, After seeing the cover of your last issue, I say your nonprophet organisation can go to hell. Jesus was not an alien, he was sent here to Earth by the

Are you angry, elated or apathetic about Salient? Send us a letter of less than 250 words to editor@salient.org.nz. Pseudonyms are fine, but all letters must include your real name, address and telephone number. These will not be printed. Letters will not be corrected for spelling or grammar. The Editors reserve the right to edit, abridge or decline any letters. The letter of the week wins a coffee from Vic Books.

Heavenly Father to relieve us of sin. We are his chosen people, not some little green men who wouldn’t know enlightenment if it bit them in their non-existent ass. I’m sick of seeing Jesus made into a alien in media, like what Spielberg did with E.T or DC making Superman an analogy for Christ (although I can concede, perhaps the youth of today would pay more attention to the Bible if Heaven exploded after God sent his only son to Earth).

your publication the week last. I have only ever spoken jokingly with some about the articles of faith, but truthfully I do not know with whom, or where, or when. Yet my inquisitors still reply, “How is it that you were joking about matters of faith? is it proper to joke about the faith? What lie were you saying? Come, speak up clearly!” Yet still, truthfully, I cannot say.

Unkind regards, An Irreverent Reverend

YEA FUCK YOU Dear Nexus magazine,

DON’T YOU MEAN PINOCCHIO? Dear Salient, With a lightened heart, I read

Fuck you and your shit.

Yours forever, Menocchio

Love, Hate

Games (Mostly Sports) Quiz 1. How many times have Germany and Argentina now faced each other in the grand final of a FIFA World Cup? 2. The coach of the Greece team which won the 2004 European Football Championship shares a first name with which Simpsons character? 3. True or false: Irene van Dyk has been selected for the Silver Ferns squad for the upcoming Commonwealth Games. 4. Which team finished bottom of the overall 2014 Super Rugby standings? 5. Which Sri Lankan cricketer has announced he will retire from Test cricket next month? 6. Basketball superstar LeBron James shares the initials LBJ with which former US president? 7. Which team scored the most points across all three games of State of Origin this year: New South Wales or Queensland? 8. Cyclist Mark Cavendish is from which Crown dependency: Guernsey, Isle of Man, or Jersey? 9. What aquatic sport is sometimes also known as ‘Octopush’, especially in the UK? 10. Which video-game developer made the Crash Bandicoot series for PlayStation, the Jak and Daxter series for PS2, and the Uncharted series for PS3? 1. Once (though in 1986 and 1990, West Germany and Argentina faced each other) 2. Otto 3. False 4. The Melbourne Rebels 5. Mahela Jayawardene 6. Lyndon B. Johnson 7. Queensland 8. Isle of Man 9. Underwater hockey 10. Naughty Dog

Letters

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tistic efforts send us your ar rg.nz editor@salient.o

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ATROCIT Y OF L AST WEEK

BY THE NUMBERS

TENSIONS HAVE FLARED IN THE GAZA STRIP

530

FOLLOWING THE KILLING OF THREE ISRAELI TEENAGERS BY HAMAS AND THE SUBSEQUENT REVENGE KILLING OF A PALESTINIAN TEENAGER.

The number of copies of Robin Thicke’s new album, Paula, sold in the UK. The (stalky, creepy, disgusting) album has sold fewer than 54 copies in Australia.

ISRAEL BEGAN A MAJOR OFFENSIVE AGAINST HAMAS IN GAZA ON 8 JULY. ROCKETS ARE BEING LAUNCHED BY BOTH SIDES, OFTEN EXPLODING IN CIVILIAN NEIGHBOURHOODS. LAST THURSDAY, FOUR YOUNG PALESTINIAN BOYS WERE KILLED BY

4/1 The odds bookmaker Ladbrokes were offering that the Duchess of Cambridge would announce she is pregnant in July, before they froze betting after a flurry of online bets.

AN EXPLOSION WHILE PLAYING ON A GAZA BEACH. AT THE TIME OF PRINT, THERE HAD BEEN 214 PALESTINIAN DEATHS AND ONE ISRAELI DEATH. PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS DESCRIBED THE ATTACKS AS “INEXCUSABLE” AND SAID THE DEATHS WERE A

$40,000 The amount a first edition of Das Kapital, the book in which Karl Marx attributes the growth of capitalism to the exploitation of labour, sold for on AbeBooks.

“TRAGEDY”.

2021 The year that the UAE plans to send an unmanned spaceship to Mars. The Emirates would be one of nine countries trying to explore Mars, and its current investments in space technology total $5.4 billion.

US$450M What Apple has agreed to pay in the US to settle claims it conspired with five major publishers to fix e-book prices.

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Feature

NEWS

K een

STUDENTS SWAMP STAFF UNIVERSITIES NEED SMALLER CLASS SIZES TOO, SAYS UNION by Simon Dennis

he Tertiary Education Union (TEU) has called on politicians to address rising lecturer/student ratios.

The OECD average for studentto-staff ratio is 15.6.

Figures released by the Ministry of Education show an increase in the ratios between 2008 and 2012.

Tertiary Education Union president Lesley Francey said the increasing ratio “means lower quality research and lower quality education for New Zealand’s students.”

In 2008, there were 227,920 tertiary students to 12,739 staff members, or a ratio of 17.9 students per member of staff.

Francey believes that smaller ratios would reduce staff fatigue as well as boost academic achievement by students.

In 2012, student numbers had risen to 243,969 while staff numbers had fallen to 12,711, increasing the ratio to 19.2 students per member of staff.

“We know that tertiary education sector staff are overworked with an ever-increasing number of students to teach, papers to mark, and theses to supervise.”

At Victoria in 2013, there were 15,595 EFTS (equivalent fulltime students), and an EFTS/ teaching staff ratio of 20:1.

“Reducing the student-to-staff ratio will improve the quality of research our academics produce and increase the time teachers can spend with each student.”

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S end

any tips , leads or gossip to news @ salient . org . nz

The TEU called on political parties to commit to a ceiling of 19 students per staff member by 2015, a move which they say would cost an extra $12 million a year. Professor Penny Boumelha, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) said ratios were “only one contributor to student success. Victoria University considers a range of ways of evaluating and improving the quality of learning and teaching.” Among the factors listed were the number of contact hours per course, the course or programme design, level of student engagement, and quality feedback to students. “Whether any additional funding from the government would have any effect on ratios would depend in part on the basis on which the funding was made available.”

students

19.2 17.9

students

Steven Joyce declined to comment to Salient.

editor@salient.org.nz

VUW 2013

NZ 2012

TEU President Lesley Francey

NZ 2008

1 lecturer

News

STUDENTS GET BAD REP UNI COUNCIL REFORMS PASS SELECT COMMITTEE STAGE by Sophie Boot

Select Committee has recommended the Government’s Education Amendment Bill pass with no suggested amendments to the controversial changes to university governance. The Education Amendment Bill would cut down university councils to no more than 12 members, and remove current requirements for student and staff representation. The changes would come into effect from the beginning of 2016. Minister for Tertiary Education Steven Joyce told Salient that he thought that universities would still have student representatives on their councils. “We should trust the councils and the universities to make the call about their own constitutions… We already trust them with billions of taxpayer dollars, so we should trust them

to make the right calls for their institution,” Joyce said. The Labour Party’s minority view on the Bill outlined their opposition to universitygovernance changes. “At no point in the process of submissions has there been either a sufficient explanation for the proposed changes to tertiary-institution governance or the mischief they are designed to remedy.” “Allowing student and staff representation is very different from prescribing it in law... In addition, concerns were expressed regarding the impact of the number of ministerial appointees to councils.” The Green Party also stated their strong opposition to the Bill in its current form, saying that “there was a tiny minority of submitters who saw any value in the changes proposed around

SCARFIES GET FAIR FARES VIC STUDENTS STILL FORCED TO WALK IN THE RAIN by Emma Hurley

tudents in Otago now receive a 25 per cent discount on all bus fares in Dunedin, after the Otago Regional Council (ORC) responded to a decade-long campaign by student associations. Following a three-month trial period, the ORC recently decided to make the discount permanent. The decision came in response to lobbying from the Otago University Students’ Association and Otago Polytechnic Students’ Association.

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ORC Support Services Manager Gerard Collings says the Council is “putting some faith in the students that they’ll migrate to public transport if the incentive’s there’’. OUSA President Ruby Sycamore-Smith said the move was “awesome news”, particularly for students living in Dunedin and farther away from the university. OPSA President Rebecca Swindells says the discount will

tertiary governance,” but a “huge range” of submitters who had opposed the changes. “The Green Party rejects the Bill’s plan to cut numbers on councils, and give the Minister of Education huge powers to appoint and remove board members.” NZUSA have also been strident in their opposition to the changes. President Daniel Haines said that the changes were “wrongheaded and unnecessary.” “Of the 1568 individual submissions and 298 oral submissions, only one supported these widely condemned reforms,” Haines said. VUWSA President Sonya Clark was also critical, saying it was “pretty shocking to see that the Select Committee ignore the views of students, of tertiary institutions... of all those who know best how universities work.

This is a sad day for the student voice, and a sad day for the independence of universities.” In response to the Committee’s report, Joyce said he wanted to “make sure that university and wānanga councils are able to respond quickly and effectively to the various strategic challenges facing the tertiary-education sector. Smaller, skills-based councils will better enable them to do this.” “The changes will give universities and wānanga more flexibility to reflect their unique stakeholders on their councils and tailor their councils to their specific needs.” Now that the Bill has been reported back, it will move to a second reading in Parliament. For more information about the Bill, visit: www.minedu.govt.nz/ EducationAmendmentBill.

benefit students who use buses regularly, saving them $10 to $15 each week, a “significant amount when you’re living on less than $170 a week.” She says previously students had been spending “almost 20 per cent of their income on just ten rides a week”. VUWSA Engagement Vice-President Rick Zwaan says Otago’s discount makes Wellington one of the only cities without a student discount on transport. He says: “it’s time that

the Wellington Regional Council picks up its game.” VUWSA attended a Greater Wellington Regional Council meeting on 11 June, and the council passed a motion to conditionally approve a 25 per cent on-peak student discount, provisional on funding from the WCC and the University. Zwaan is hopeful that the Otago discount will add weight to VUWSA’s ongoing calls for Wellington to become a studentfriendly city.

News

NEW BUSINESS HUB AT VIC

“These construction projects are part of the University’s commitment to providing a first-class student experience and maintaining Victoria’s reputation as a leader in teaching and research. “Continued investment in the University’s facilities ensures we have the capacity and capability to continue to add value to the Wellington economy.”

UNI PLANS COOL BUILDINGS YOU’LL NEVER USE By Steph Trengrove

Third-year Commerce student Siena Goldwater believes that the investment in facility extension, while expensive, is a sage investment.

he University will spend over $100 million on new campus buildings over the next 20 years.

Major redevelopments will take place at Kelburn, with a new Science building and a redevelopment of Rutherford House at Pipitea.

“It will allow Victoria University to both keep up with and surpass the development of other universities, and could serve to add to the attraction of the University among potential students.”

Rutherford House’s redevelopment will be modelled on the recent Hub development at Kelburn, which the University says will “support the growth aspirations of Victoria’s Business School.” It is anticipated to be completed by 2017.

Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford says the investment in new facilities will help to ensure the University has the right environment to achieve its strategic goals.

The new Science building will house teaching and research laboratories for Biological Science alongside general teaching facilities. Chancellor Ian McKinnon said the projects represented a significant investment in the further development of the University’s facilities to support continuing growth.

“These plans give an exciting glimpse into the future of Victoria and its place as New Zealand’s globally ranked capital-city university.”

$100 million

spent over the next 20 years

2017

anticipated completion of the Hub

6000

students studying at Pipitea

Work on both projects is still subject to a variety of approvals, as is standard with any large capital development initiative, but detailed planning work is continuing.

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News

GOOGLE IS FRYING OUR BRAINS DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A EUGOOGLIZER IS? By Francesca Shepard

f you’re reading this online, you’re probably on Facebook at the same time and, chances are, you won’t remember it tomorrow.

Victoria Associate Professor Dr Val Hooper and Master’s student Channa Herath looked at online and offline reading for their study ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Impact of the Internet on Reading Behaviour’.

Despite this, however, online reading was discovered to have a positive impact on reading behaviour, with individuals acquiring the skills necessary to read faster and more selectively – and as a result, getting through a larger quantity of material. Overall, the study highlighted the “need to learn how to read and write digitally, as well as how to effectively interpret and retain the information we read.” According to Dr Hooper, this process could “take at least a generation for significant change to happen.”

According to the study, online reading was discovered to have a negative overall impact on an individual’s cognition and reading behaviour. The study found that an individual’s concentration, comprehension, absorption and recall rates were much lower when reading online material as opposed to reading traditional material. Dr Hooper discovered that “multitasking when reading online was common” with the constant interruptions and distractions provided by emails, video clips and hyperlinks. Furthermore, the study revealed that people preferred to print out important material, as they were “more likely to remember material they had read offline.”

STUDENTS TO BENEFIT FROM GREEN DOLLAR BILLS MORE MONEY MORE PHYSICISTS By Alice Peacock

he Green Party has revealed its plans to fund an additional 1000 university places for students of mathematics, engineering, and both physical and computer sciences.

ICT, renewable energy, and manufacturing. Greens co-leader Russel Norman has claimed that the Party is alone in its pledging of “significant” R&D investment.

The funding, estimated by the Greens to cost $50 million a year, comes as part of a $1 billion package for investment in research and development.

This claim is, however, disputed by economic development minister Steven Joyce, who bluntly says the Greens have “been asleep” to the wider political efforts towards R&D development.

Injection of the funding would take place over three years, and would be channeled into

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“It’s good to see the Greens playing catch-up and endorsing our shift into encouraging more

students in engineering, ICT and science careers, and our approach of dramatically increasing R&D investment.”

This incentive for student votes could just be what the Greens need to set their poll ratings ablaze.

News

VICTORIA PUBLISHING WRITTEN UP VIC WRITERS PRIZED BY POST By Gus Mitchell

wo writers published by Victoria University Press have won prizes for best first book in fiction and poetry at this year’s New Zealand Post Book Awards. Amy Head, a editor based in Wellington, was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) Best First Book in

Fiction for her book Tough, a collection of short stories set in the South Island’s West Coast. Featuring “rugged people in equally rugged landscapes”, panel judge Miriama Kamo described the book as being “then and now in a literary panorama mirroring the very place upon which the

collection is built.” “So much of the history of the coast [...] has been about adapting to isolation. Geography still holds sway, and I wanted the stories to reflect that,” says Head of her work. Marty Smith, a teacher from Hawkes Bay, was awarded the Best First Book in Poetry for his compilation on returned servicemen and the effects of war on families, entitled Horse with

Hat. “If Kiwi filmmaking can be characterised as ‘cinema of unease’, then Horse with Hat is the literary equivalent – dark, quiet, explosive and compelling,” Kamo describes. Both writers have Master’s degrees in Creative Writing from Victoria University’s International Institute of Modern Letters.

SLOW NEWS WEEK

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News

NEWS OF THE WORLD BY SOFIA ROBERTS

Roar Denim In a move that could possibly make ripped jeans even more pretentious, a Chinese designer has developed a way to make jeans designed by wild animals. The jeans in question are wrapped around tyres and are then thrown into the dens of lions, who enjoy ripping, biting and playing with them. The design has split critics. Some are labelling it “environmental enrichment” and heralding it as a positive way

The Games Issue

for zoos to make money from their animals while at the same time encouraging exercise and good health. Others are calling it exploitation.

service costs almost NZ$50 a day, and according to the airport, “makes the distances between planes and passengers’ vehicles even shorter.”

Ray the Robotic Valet Düsseldorf Airport in Germany have introduced the world’s first robotic valet. Its name is Ray, and drivers simply need to confirm via touchscreen in order to have their car carried by the forklift-like machine to a parking spot. The

They probably play better than Brazil, amirite? The ‘Robocup’ games are kicking off in the Brazilian coastal town of João Pessoa. The robots range from life-sized, humanoid players, to miniature robots on wheels.

Some ambitious designers are aiming to create players that will be able to defeat real human football players, a feat they say will be a reality within the next 40 years. The robots have to be designed not only to be physically able to kick a ball around, but also to make decisions and to think tactically. Organisers make the game tougher each year to compete with the rapidly developing robotic capabilities.

News

EYE ON EXEC

he most recent Exec meeting on 11 July was mercifully brief, due in large part to the VUWSA Exec taking part in future planning, which left them exhausted and with a long workshop on VUWSA’s future to conduct. The meeting commenced with Sonya’s President’s Report. She first discussed the imminent departure of Mark Maguire, VUWSA’s General Manager, and the hiring of an interim general manager on a part-time basis for a fixed term, before a permanent general manager is appointed towards the end of the year. A new member of the VUWSA Trust was also appointed. Nicholas Green, whose wife is also on the Trust, was unanimously appointed by the Exec to replace former Trust member James Shaw. Shaw left to pursue his political career as a candidate for the Green Party in the Wellington Central electorate. The Exec were impressed by Green’s CV and were confident there was no conflict of interest. VUWSA also approved the appointment of an administrative support staff member. Money was re-allocated from the budget for the staff member, who the Exec consider essential in allowing them to work efficiently. The staff member will be hired soon.

GRANT ROBERTSON TO BE NEXT LABOUR PARTY LEADER.

69%

JACINDA ARDERN TO BE NEXT LABOUR PARTY LEADER.

10%

SIMON BRIDGES TO BE NEXT NATIONAL PARTY LEADER.

Pictured: Sonya Clark, VUWSA President

JUDITH COLLINS TO BE NEXT NATIONAL PARTY LEADER.

17%

STEVEN JOYCE TO BE NEXT NATIONAL PARTY LEADER.

45%

iPredict is a market-based political and economic prediction market owned and operated by Victoria University of Wellington. Visit www.ipredict.co.nz to get involved. Probabilities are correct at time of publication.

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Sports

Sports Banter

Tour de France Robbed of Best Riders by Ollie Ritchie

t’s been a funny old Tour de France so far in 2014. I The rider who is going to win the Tour did not go in as one of the favourites. We know that because most of the favourites have crashed out. This hasn’t been good. Now I may be one of the only 20-year-olds who obsesses over the biggest cycling race on Earth – Le Tour de France. However, in 2014,

Top 5

Biggest Upsets in Sport

there is little to be getting excited about. That’s because most of the good riders are crashing out big time. And it’s not their fault. Weather has so far been the main cause behind the horrific crashes, which has seen defending champion Chris Froome crash out, and former champion (and massive cheat) Alberto Contador also needing to pull the pin. His shirt and shorts torn, 5. 2014 FIFA World Cup Semifinal – Germany vs. Brazil. This isn’t to say that

Germany didn’t deserve to win this game, let alone the World Cup, but no one saw a 7–1 scoreline coming. Four goals in the space of 25 minutes was unbelievable, and had local supporters balling their eyes out. Classic Brazilians. 4. Buster Douglas vs. Mike

Tyson. Tyson was a pitbull. He was on top of the world and he demolished his opponents. He mowed down boxers with extreme power, intensity and viciousness, and constantly had the boxing world in awe. Enter Buster Douglas. To watch Douglas destroy Tyson, and leave him dazed, barely putting his mouthpiece backwards into his mouth after being knocked down, was simply one of the biggest upsets ever. 14

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Contador sat on the side of the road to receive treatment from the race doctors, blood dripping from his right knee. He got back to his bike and was being helped by his Tinkoff-Saxo teammates, but after climbing the Category 1 Col du Platzerwasel, Contador got off his bike again in thick fog and stepped into his team car. Meanwhile, Chris Froome’s attempt to win a second successive Tour de France ended in bitter disappointment after less than a week of the race on Wednesday when he crashed out on Stage 5. On a miserable, rain-sodden day in northern France, the Briton appeared in great pain after falling for the second time, some 70 kilometres from the finish. The Team Sky rider stood holding the wrist he injured in another spill on Tuesday, and was limping heavily as he eventually climbed into a team vehicle after chatting to team doctor Alan Farrell and sports director Nicolas

Portal. So with two of the biggest names in cycling gone from this years Tour, it’s becoming a bit hit and miss. We had a Frenchy in yellow for one day. One day. Then he realised he had mountain stage on his hands, and that was his time in yellow gone. And then there’s the big sprinter. The one fans love to go and see, one of the fastest men on two wheels in the world. Well you can’t see him either, because he too has crashed out. The sprinter for Omega Pharma-Quick Step crashed out spectacularly in the final sprint yesterday as he pushed to capture the dream of wearing the first yellow jersey. This isn’t to say I’m not still up at 6 am every morning to catch the last two hours of the stage, but this year’s Tour has lost a certain flair. It’s lost its big names, and therefore all I can think is: “Would this guy still be winning if those others hadn’t crashed out?”

3. 2004 NBA Finals – LA Lakers vs. Detroit Pistons.

winning the fifth 6–2. Things certainly didn’t go well for Federer after this tournament either, as he has only won one Grand Slam title since the loss.

Before playing the Detroit Pistons in the 2004 NBA Finals, coach Phil Jackson was 9–0 when his team reached the championship round. The Pistons handled this ‘dream team’ quite well, finishing them in just five games. Jackson didn’t handle the loss too well, deciding to retire shortly after the loss. 2. 2009 US Open Final – Roger Federer vs. Juan Martín del Potro. Roger Federer came into

the 2009 US Open with the goal of winning his sixth straight title in New York. Things didn’t go as planned, as the tall Argentine del Potro, who was the No. 6 seed, found a way to upset the then world No. 1. Federer was clearly the favourite going into this match, and there was really no way that anyone would have seen him dropping this one. Del Potro took the champion to five sets,

1. Euro 2004 tournament – Greece winners. This Greece

side had no star names in their team. They had only played in two major tournaments before, and hadn’t won a single match in either of them. Every game they played in the 2004 tournament knockout stages, you were expecting them to get beaten heavily. But game after game, their spirit grew, and in the final against the hosts Portugal, who boasted players such as Figo, Cristiano Ronaldo and Deco, the Greek tactically outplayed them. Portugal’s 2004 team was an attacking one, but Greece soaked it up and scored from a corner in the second half, and hung on to claim the trophy.

Games

Articulated Splines My, Earth really is full of things! by Carlo Salizzo

e have an awfully large number of video games available to play these days. In an awfully large number of diverse ways. Obviously on one level, there are at least six or seven major gaming platforms out there, each with their own exclusive titles, and it would be prohibitively expensive to own them all. But even on those two or three platforms that we do own – say, a console, a mobile and maybe a PC – there are a bunch of different kinds of games that are so different to one another that they make for an almost completely different experience.

I hesitate to use the word ‘genre’ here, because it’s not quite the same meaning of the term as

genres, sure, but they’re also fundamentally different in nature in a way that “genre” doesn’t really describe. Take Towerfall: Ascension. A game originally for the Ouya, it’s now on PS4 and PC. You play as a little 2D archer jumping around on platforms battling your friends competitively or little monsters cooperatively. So what’s its genre? Metacritic describes it only as “General”, because the ‘too hard’ basket is an aggregator’s best friend. Some reviewers call it “Action”, which is true, but that broad description covers everything from FIFA to Gears of War. “Action Platformer” might be closer to the money, but only just. And how do you recognise the fact that Towerfall

It’s now up to us to curate our own game libraries, and figure out what is worth playing. The marketplace becomes more crowded, and differentiating between games to figure out what we want to play becomes our job. applied to film, books or music. A mystery film is watched in much the same way as a comedy, a cartoon or porn. But when you’re playing a casual game like Temple Run, you’re doing so in a very different way to Skyrim. Battlefield is different again, and so is Towerfall. Then there’s Dota, or Minecraft. They’re different

is designed from the ground up to be played sitting beside a friend or lover, taunting them mercilessly between rounds? It’s often called “couch competitive”, but that doesn’t tell you anything about what we’d classically consider “genre”. Tekken was couch competitive too, but a very different genre.

The words that most gaming sites call genres don’t have anything to do with what we understand the word to mean elsewhere. Genre is about the content, not the way it’s presented or interacted with. We might as well call books “paper, chapter-based” or “single-player”. My point is, the classical idea of genre is inadequate to explain the differences in format between games because no other medium has ever been interacted with in so many different ways. There can be games of the same genre with very different formats, and games of the same format with very different genres. And then you can have games with more than one of each. Battlefield has the genre of war, in the format of first-person shooter and online multiplayer. Mass Effect is a sci-fi action-adventure, in the format of single-player RPG, third-person shooter with online multiplayer.

DayZ, sandbox exploration and construction straight out of Minecraft, and a freemium subscription model (free-to-play with a basically cosmetic paid option). In terms of genre, Steam lists it as “Action, Adventure, Casual, Free to Play, Indie, Early Access”. We have to turn to community tags for description of the actual genre of the game, which gives us “Zombie”, “Survival” and “Open World”. All of this mess can be separated into two things: descriptions of the game’s content, and descriptions of how you play the game. And then there’s “Indie”, which is for the ego, I guess. Given the choice, I’d say it falls into the zombie survival genre (which is technically a subgenre, I suppose), and is a sandbox game. It might seem petty (because it is), but it becomes more

It’s now up to us to curate our own game libraries, and figure out what is worth playing. The marketplace becomes more crowded, and differentiating between games to figure out what we want to play becomes our job. Towerfall is low fantasy, in the format of a platformer with local multiplayer. Minecraft is low-ish fantasy, in the format of a sandbox. There are two distinct metrics, not just one. Steam divides games by genre, but then its listed genres are all just kinds of format, like Action, Adventure and Strategy, along with Indie which doesn’t seem to fit in that list at all. It’s not a very efficient way of categorising games, especially when a game like Portal could fit into four or five categories. Frankly, the definitions are so broad as to make the whole thing messy and pointless. Take a game like Unturned, for instance. It’s so hot right now, perhaps because it mashes together three concepts that are very much in vogue: zombie survival à la

important as game sales move increasingly online. It’s now up to us to curate our own game libraries, and figure out what is worth playing. The marketplace becomes more crowded, and differentiating between games to figure out what we want to play becomes our job. It’s also something you notice when playing early-access or amateur games: that often the developers don’t have a clear idea of how to label or market their creations. It’s not the practical point that matters to me, though: it’s just the simple fact that video games are a very different art form to the other media in our lives, and we do ourselves a disservice when we try to analyse or think about them as one homogenous group.

editor@salient.org.nz

Sex

The Bone Zone With Cupie Hoodwink

espite being educated of its importance from early on, bombarded with public health messages featuring catchy jingles and glossy ad campaigns, and showered with free condoms once we got to university, us young’uns are notoriously bad at using contraception. A 2012 study of nearly 3000 young New Zealanders confirmed what most of us probably already assumed to be the case: only 50 per cent of us had used a condom the last time we had sex. And while discussing contraception might seem more suited to your high-school health class rather than The Bone Zone, given that great sex is safe sex, healthy bodies are the hottest ones, and we’re all being really stupid when it comes to both of those things, it’s high time we had a wee chat. ‘Contraception’, which is derived from the Latin for ‘no babies’, is perhaps something of a misnomer, given that contraception is important for all sexual relationships – regardless of what’s going where, and whether your union is even biologically capable of making a baby. If you have genitalia that you intend to rub all over someone else’s genitalia, then – no buts about it – it’s your business to make sure that you’re protected. Unless you’re in a

The Games Issue

monogamous sexual relationship, with both partners well up-todate with a glowing STI report card from Student Health, then you need a barrier method up in thurrr, pronto. This means condoms (male or female) if there’s a dick involved, and dental dams (chronically underutilised, but available in yum flavours from Family Planning, chemists, or online, or DIY from condoms or rubber gloves) if you intend to be licking pussy or munching butt. So if it’s as simple as rolling out the rubber and peeing into a cup once in a while, why aren’t more of us just getting on with it? In the course of my field research, I’ve come across many a heartfelt objection to being safe. I’ve been with men who claimed, “My penis just doesn’t like condoms,” men who had never bought their own condoms, and men who didn’t even know how to put one on, despite having been sexually active for a number of years. What stands out from these experiences is the overwhelming expectation that contraception simply isn’t something that these young men thought they had to worry about. Unwanted pregnancies, the risk of STIs – these were, to their minds, ‘Women’s Issues’, along with period pain, whether to have children or a career, and dealing

with lukewarm spunk seeping out of your body when gravity runs its course half an hour after business time is over. This, quite frankly, isn’t good enough. The fact that there is an About.com page dedicated to sassy lines you can use to persuade your partner to practise safe sex speaks volumes – 50 per cent of us didn’t use a condom last time we had sex, and that’s because 50 per cent of us just don’t give a fuck. That those who insist on safe sex can be made to feel awkward, embarrassed, prudish, distrustful, unloving, a mood killer or a party pooper is completely absurd. Safe sex is in everybody’s interests, and you should never be made to feel – or make anyone feel – like a fool for wanting to wrap the tool. After all, do you know what really “kills the mood”? Chlamydia. What else “doesn’t feel as good”? Genital warts. And if you just can’t enjoy sex with a condom, you’re probably going to enjoy it even less with gonorrhoea. There really is no excuse. Three months’ worth of contraception costs less than a beer, and STI checks are completely free. Be prepared – keep a flat supply of condoms in with your earthquake kit, for those not-so-civil emergencies. And remember, if you ain’t got a rubber, what the hell are you even thinking trying to put that in there? Be smart, be safe, be sexy, Cupie xx This column is about being safe, regardless of your gender or sexuality. For Cupie’s guide to birth control, head to salient.org.nz/category/ columns/the-bone-zone Quickie of the Week: Is sex even that great? The thing with sex is, like many things in life, it is what you make it. Pardon my cliché, but really,

what other explanation is there for the fact that one relatively simple, biological act can be, on the one hand, so mind-blowing you’re still getting shivers thinking about it the next day, and on the other, rhythm-less, pleasure-less, and when you ask them to stop halfway through they promptly fall asleep inside you? The key, I’ve found, has nothing to do with size, beauty, or how long you’ve had a crush on them for, but rather trust, communication, and knowing that you are sexy as hell and deserve to be loved. And if all else fails? Lube up and keep reading The Bone Zone. Tip of the Week: With winter well and truly here, and bringing with it chapped lips, dry skin and a perpetually runny nose, it’s not at all uncommon for your libido to go the same way as your summer tan: AWOL. So if you’re feeling like you’d rather wrap yourself in a duvet than a lover’s limbs at the moment, don’t be too hard on yourself! Spend a little time putting yourself first – treat yourself to a candlelit bath, spend time moisturising your bod from head to toe after a long shower, or put the focus back on kissing and cuddling for a while, and you’ll be sure to be feeling more sexy, and less Sex and the City box-set and a pack of Tim Tams (although that sounds A++) in no time at all.

Sexual Connections: Got a burning question for Cupie? Ask her about all matters of the heart… and other romantic organs, anonymously at ask.fm/ CupieHoodwink Got a burning sensation in your nether regions? Give Student Health a call on 463 5308, or pop in to their clinics at Kelburn and Pipitea.

Politics

Ramblings of a Fallen Hack By Jade D’Hack

olice cars aflame, millions marching through the night. Tear gas and riot shields, black bandanas and aerosol paint. This was meant to be Brazil’s Carnival World Cup, but before the football started, it seemed more like a carnival of chaos. The World Cup’s over and the riots are lost within the aftertaste – bitter, yes, but easy enough to swallow. Pity that the protesters spat a deep truth when they attacked the tournament’s $14 billion cost. Pity that 20 million Brazilians earn less than $2 a day, that the murder rate there is 28 times the one in New Zealand. As Brazilian woman Maria Rodrigues wrote: “The World Cup has no legacy for me or my community. It has just been a big party with

public money, a huge disruption... We might be hosting the party, but we’re not on the guest list.” The economists always told us hosting is a rip-off. Partly, we can blame the maths – when bidding, the country which overestimates the benefits and underestimates the costs will be the country which over-promises and thus wins the rights. But the real culprit is politics. When our leaders need only shout “macroeconomic injection” to throw themselves a good party, we shouldn’t be surprised to find they shout loud. But again and again and again they’ve been wrong. And if Brazil is any indication, we’ve finally stopped listening. FIFA’s found the solution: if the people don’t want to pay, find

a place where they don’t have the choice. The next World Cup is in Russia, the one after in Qatar. The Economist’s Democracy Index calls Russia an “authoritarian democracy”. Qatar is an unabashed monarchy accused of winning its bid with million-dollar bribes. When your product costs a billion dollars, pawn it to the father who can force his kids to pay. It’s not just the beautiful game tarred by the muckery of money. At the start of the year, six countries were in contention to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. Poland and Sweden have now withdrawn, blaming a lack of public support, and polls find most Norwegians want to do the same. Ukraine was also in contention, but of course they’ve run into bigger problems. That leaves only China and Kazakhstan. Neither are exactly what you’d call flourishing pluralist democracies. FIFA earned $4 billion during the World Cup – entirely tax-free, courtesy of Brazilian sacrifice. These are facts that foster fatalism: what else to expect of monopolous multinationals and the greed of the elite? But FIFA are just a sports club. They should have every reason to sacrifice the decadence of their party for the dignity of their game. The problem, of course, is that FIFA have swallowed the corporate ideology of our time. Let’s hope they find the guts to spit it out.

Political Tidbits

By Jordan McCluskey Quote of the Week “Ahhh, we’ve got a date, the 14th of July” — With these fateful words in 1984, Sir Robert Muldoon would end his own government, and unleash the Fourth Labour Government on unsuspecting New Zealanders, 30 years ago last week. Top 5 Fourth Labour Government Reforms 1. Floating the dollar 2. Reducing income tax and introducing GST 3. Homosexual Law Reform 4. Nuclear-free legislation 5. Introduction of university fees (thanks Phil Goff) Countdown

61 days

As at 21 July 2014, there are 61 days until the election. No new polling has been released at the time of publication. As Salient went to print, iPredict had National’s chances of winning the election at 79 per cent.

“FIFA’s found the solution: if the people don’t want to pay, find a place where they don’t have the choice. The next World Cup is in Russia, the one after in Qatar.”

editor@salient.org.nz

Feature

FOOTBALL O v e rv i e w On 12 June, the opening night of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, 32 of the best international teams were stationed in Brazil with dreams of taking home the world’s most sought-after sports trophy. One month and one day later, we were admiring the efficiency and clinical nature of Germany, who stood on the winner’s podium holding football’s holy grail at Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã Stadium 4 things this World Cup will be remembered for Initially, the Uruguayan and former Liverpool superstar made headlines for the right reasons, returning prematurely from knee surgery to score a double against England and ultimately end the Poms’ World Cup campaign. However, the cheeky little nibbler simply couldn’t help himself in Uruguay’s final pool match against Italy, biting Italian defender Giorgio Chiellini on the shoulder to receive a four-month ban from FIFA, the sport’s international governing body. Incredibly, it’s the third time Suarez has been cautioned for biting an on-field opponent, raising serious questions about his integrity and sanity. 3 . F o o t b a l l : It may seem rather obvious that the world’s biggest football tournament will be remembered for football, but it is worth noting the exceptional on-field action that was on offer. We were treated to some dramatic matches and saw some thrilling football. A total of 171 goals were scored throughout the tournament, an average of 2.7 goals per match, making it equal 4 . Lu i s S u á r e z :

The Games Issue

after beating Argentina in the final. The tournament proved why many consider the Football World Cup the best sports event on the planet. Not only were the globe’s biggest football superstars present and matches of the highest quality on display, but we also got to appreciate some of Europe’s and South America’s finest talent thanks to the stealthy work of FIFA’s best cameramen.

T o u r na m e n t t e a m

Manuel Neuer (GER)

Philipp Lahm

with France 1998 as the highestscoring tournament in history. 2 . T h at r e s u lt : Eight goals in a World Cup semifinal; who would have thought? Historically speaking, Germany has a reputation of not knowing their limits when humiliating an ethnic group. Their national football side certainly reinforced that perception when they embarrassed Brazil 7–1 to advance to the tournament decider. The match may just be the most record-breaking match in football history, both on and off the pitch. The result was Brazil’s largest defeat ever, the biggest World Cup semifinal scoreline ever, and saw Miroslav Klose become the outright top World Cup goalscorer with 16 goals over four tournaments. It also became the most-talked-about sports match on Twitter, generating 35.6 million tweets. 1 . D e u t s c h l a n d : You have to give it to the Germans: they know how to win. Whether it’s a 7–1 hiding or an extra-time thriller, the victors showed their class from day one and fully deserved their fourth World Cup title. Who needs Neymar, Ronaldo or Messi when you have a near-flawless set of 11?

M at s Hummels

Ezequiel G a r ay

Daley Blind

(GER)

(ARG)

(NED)

(GER)

Toni Kroos

J av i e r Mascherano

(GER)

(ARG)

Ja m e s R o d r í g u e z (COL)

Arjen Robben

Thomas Müller

André Schürrle

(NED)

(GER)

A f t e r m at h According to businessinsider. com.au, which I’m assuming is a credible source as it has a fancy website and colourful charts reinforcing their figures, FIFA will make profits of approximately

$US2.61 billion from the tournament. And that’s excluding the bribes and lavish gifts. As if Brazilians weren’t emotional enough, their limp exit from the World Cup sparked scenes of shock and mourning throughout the host nation.

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F I E S TA T o u r n a m e n t t wat s

Iker Casillas (ESP)

Maicon

Pepe

D av i d L u i z

Leighton Baines

(BRA)

(POR)

(BRA)

(ENG)

Yaya T o u r é

Steven Gerrard

(CIV)

(ENG)

Eden Hazard (BEL)

S h i n j i K a g awa ( JA P )

D i e g o C o s ta

Fred

(ESP)

(BRA)

We all know how much Brazil loves football, and we all saw the tears streaming down faces of fans and players following (and during) their semifinal loss at Belo Horizonte’s Estadio Mineirão. There are suggestions that the consequences of the hosts nation’s

inability to win the tournament on home soil could be more than emotional, with political commentators predicting the result will have a detrimental effect on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election campaign later this year.

BY SAM PAT C H E T T

Biggest Winners • James Rodríguez: We all love a young superstar, and the footballing world certainly showed its appreciation for the Colombian striker, who scored six goals in Brazil to take home the Golden Boot award. Not only does the 22-year-old have one of the biggest futures in the beautiful game, he’s also the proud owner of perhaps the most crowded bandwagon in world sport, with online fans and international news outlets creating a media frenzy over the Colombian hero. • USA: I know they weren’t the most impressive side at the tournament, but American ‘soccer’ might just be the biggest winner from the World Cup. Despite widely considering the sport an after-school activity for uncool kids, Americans were captivated by their national side’s progress in Brazil. 25 million American viewers tuned in for the USA’s second pool match against Portugal, making it the most-watched ‘soccer’ match in American history and putting it ahead of the NBA Finals series and Baseball’s World Series. Biggest Losers • Spain: Defending World Cup champions and ranked number one in the world before this year’s tournament, Spain simply failed to fire in Brazil. Humiliated 5–1 by a rampant Dutch side in their first match, the Spanish were sent packing after losing their second match to Chile 2–0. • England: Did we really expect them to go far? Not really. However, their failure to win a match, inability to show any real spark, and at times dreadful defence were still sad realities of their short stay in Brazil. • Brazil’s defence: Including the likes of David Luiz and Thiago Silva, the home side’s defence should have held a lot steadier than it did. Remarkably, Brazil became just the third team to concede 12 goals in the current World Cup format, alongside Saudi Arabia and North Korea. In their defence (excuse the pun), the extra matches they played didn’t help, especially considering they conceded 10 goals in their last two matches. • Fred: He was awful. Just awful. The Brazilian so-called ‘striker’ looked ordinary at the tournament and scored just one goal, making his exploits on the football field about as exciting as his name.

Following the tournament, Nigeria was suspended from all international football by FIFA. The drastic action came as a result of Nigeria’s government dissolving the country’s Football Federation after the national side supposedly had a poor showing in Brazil,

despite making the second round. It comes four years after Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan declared the national side were banned from competing at all for two years after an unsuccessful World Cup campaign in South Africa. What a ridiculous country. editor@salient.org.nz

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES BY JONAT HA N HOB MAN

The Games Issue

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t the height of the Wii’s sales, Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi was the wealthiest man in Japan. The highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar, made US$232.2 million in its first weekend, while recently, Grand Theft Auto V made US$1 billion in the same time. That’s one million, ten times, in 72 hours. Hotcakes. The most exciting development in consumerism right now, followed closely by mainstream solar power and autonomous cars, is video games. Undoubtedly. I’d go so far to say that video games are the most relevant, flourishing and lucrative art form in contemporary media, with a short history that becomes more interesting and vibrant with every passing year. This past decade has been abundant with game-changing content, both technically and artistically. The internet, above all, has been the key driver of change in the gaming world, enabling ideas to bounce back and forth in a blur of collaboration, making everything become harder, better, faster, stronger. It’s in the wake of computer programmers’ relentless building and tinkering that the lazy artists can paddle. Games are getting easier and cheaper for designers to make, and with that, professionallooking games that fall outside of the narrow archetype of the blockbusters are become more prevalent. It’s not as much of a blood-curdling financial risk and time commitment to make something that’s different from hyper-realistic, hyper-violent, mainstream games. THE INDIE KIDS This online scene has resulted in an independent-developer boom. Typically, the indie scene has remained on PC, but has through the rise of downloadable games made its way to console. This can be seen through PlayStation’s

‘We <3 Devs’ campaign, where the architects of the PS4 worked closely with developers and programmers, independent and otherwise, to build a system so that the people actually creating the games had more control in creating the system that will run them. Lorne Lanning, cofounder of Oddworld Inhabitants (developers of PS1 classic Abe’s Oddysee), had this to say about it: “This is a system that’s going to allow innovation to happen faster and cheaper, which is a great, great thing. Innovative work needs to be delivered with less friction and a lower cost. . . there needs to be more room to take chances and fail at them but still survive. This system gets closer to that goal.” Games that have found critical acclaim on console include eerie horror platformer Limbo and uncoordinated adventure game Octodad: Dadliest Catch. SHARING IS CARING A good example of progress made through collaboration and sharing of technology can be seen with Frenchman and Rayman creator Michel Ancel, who recently opened up the ground-built UbiArt software, used in Rayman: Origins, to other developers. “If you look at the best artists at Disney for example. They create incredible books and artwork and share their processes. That whole medium has evolved on the basis of sharing ideas. But in games, we lock it all in a black box and keep it to ourselves. We need to

be more open. I don’t believe that keeping the technology to yourself is interesting.” UbiArt allows 2D hand-drawn art to be layered easily into games. We’re already seeing a turnout of visually beautiful games from developers (within Ubisoft the wider mega-publisher) who’ve picked it up ranging in aesthetic, from watercolours (Child of Light) to graphic-novel sketch (Valiant Hearts). DIY VIDEO GAMES As the means to make video games becomes more streamlined for artists, we will no doubt approach an age where, like with film, you will be able to make them from home. You almost can currently, with the current trend of user-generated content, making your own games with the “Play, Create, Share” slogan of Little Big Planet (narrated by Stephen Fry; check it out) and Minecraft, to name popular examples. Media Molecule, the masterminds behind LBP, are hard at work creating a 3D modelling game utilising motion control, where you make your own in-game objects from scratch – or collage the creations of those with more skill – with what looks like a similar premise of play/ create/share; a sort of YouTube of interactive worlds. One of the most important impending advancements in gaming culture is cloud streaming, which allows you to stream games to other devices, as

you would an online video. Sony Worldwide Studios President, Shuhei Yoshida, recently predicted that game consoles will soon be a thing of the past. “Speaking of the ultimate goal, we would like to deliver PlayStation games to all devices… considering various things like PC, TVs, Blu-ray players, smartphones and tablets. We hope to continue to expand not only to Sony devices, but even to devices other than Sony’s.” This movement breathes more fire into the idea of a culture shift. Suddenly, customers won’t have to spend $600 on a console, or more on a spruced-up computer, to gain exposure to high-end video games. As more and more people become gamers, the very title of ‘gamer’ has come into debate. Mark Rubin, executive producer at Infinity Ward, creators of the Call of Duty franchise (the most popular and highest grossing first person shooter series of all time) said in an interview that those most heavily engaged with the franchise aren’t really ‘gamers’ at all, as they don’t play any titles that aren’t affiliated with the series. “It’s kind of a weird, ironic thing to say: they aren’t hardcore gamers, or even gamers, but they play Call of Duty every night.” This is quite a strict criterion for ‘gamer’, restricting it to simply those who immerse themselves in a variety of games, but really there isn’t just one type of gamer any more than there is one type of film-watcher or book-reader.

AS TTH HEE MEA MEAN TO MA MAKE KE AS N SS TO VIDEO DEO GA GAM MES ES BBECOM ECOMES ES MORE MORE VI STRREA EAML MLIN I NED ED FOR FOR ARTISTS ARTISTS,, W WEE ST WIILLLL NO NO DOU DOUBT BT A APPROAC H AN AN W PPROAC H AGEE W WH HER ERE, IKE W WITH ITH FFIL ILM M,, YOU YOU AG E, LLIKE WIILLLL BBEE A AB TO MAKE MA KE TH THEM EM W B LLEE TO ROM HOM HOME. E. FFROM editor@salient.org.nz

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YOU LOOK LOOK AT AT T TH HEE BBEST EST A ARTISTS RTISTS AT AT ""II FF YOU DISNE S NEY Y FOR FOR EXA EXAMP MPLLE. E. TH THEY EY C CREATE REATE DI NCRE REDIBL DIB LEE BOOKS BOOKS A AND ND A ARTWORK AND D SSHARE HARE IINC RTWORK AN T HEIR IR PROCESSES. PROC ESSES. T THAT HAT W WHOL HOLEE M MEDIU EDIUM M HAS HAS THE E VOLVEED D ON ON T TH HEE BASI BASISS OF OF SSHA HARING IDEAS.. EVOLV RING IDEAS T IN IN GAMES, GA MES, W WEE LOC LOCKK IT IT AL A LLL IN IN A A BBLAC LACKK BBU UT BOX A AND ND KKEEP EEP IIT T TO TO OU OURS RSEL ELV VES ES.. W WEE N NEED EED BOX TO BE BE MOR MOREE OP OPEN EN.. II DO DO NOT NOT BBEL ELIEV IEVEE THAT THAT TO PING T TH HEE T TECH EC HNOLOG NOLOGY Y TO TO YOU YOURS RSEL ELFF IS IS KKE E EEPING N TEEREST RESTIING NG.."" IINT The Nintendo Wii was a raging hit in old-folk’s homes, and the majority of people with smartphones dabble in gaming in some way or another. With cloud streaming, the massive ‘casual’ mobile game market will meet the current high-profile ‘gamer’ game industry, and the next video-game campaign plastered all over cities will be available to all who have access to broadband, not just those who’ve splashed out on a console specifically for games. It won’t be long before we see people playing PS4/Xbox One games on their iPods. Perhaps once virtual reality becomes affordable, we’ll all become helmeted drone creatures, streaming all of our game + computer + phone stuff onto Oculus Rifts like the guys from Daft Punk. Cloud gaming also solves the problem of archiving old games. Typically, to make ye olde titles playable again, companies have to do a lot of tinkering to make them compatible with currentgeneration consoles. With the physical hardware gone, there would be no need, meaning we won’t have to keep our 1983 Nintendo to preserve these precious artifacts. Perhaps like the current projects attempting to digitise all literature, the same will come to pass for video games; 22

The Games Issue

it’s certainly a far shorter history to reclaim. For now, though, lag (or latency) issues stand in the way of cloud streaming becoming commonplace. FILTHY, FILTHY MICROTRANSACTIONS I’ve mentioned how phenomenally lucrative the video-game industry is. Amid this gold rush, the darker side of capitalisation rears its head in the form of microtransactions (one of a few parasitic strategies used to make games as lucrative as possible). The biggest blight on the industry right now, grim, desanctifying microtransactions pull content out of video games and drip-feed it to you at a price; turning the game from art into extortion. Examples of this include slowing down game progression to a frustrating pace, so that you are forced to spend a dollar or two on ‘optional’ extra resources to progress; alternatively, items such as costumes, characters or levels are taken out of the game and sold alongside in a similar fashion. There can be some leniency on the latter in the interests of economics, but certainly not the former where the whole experience becomes focussed on psychological extortion. Some fat cats say that this is the future of

gaming because it’s the strongest economic model. I say not so for anybody who cares about video games as an art form. The video-game industry is very young, its genesis (arguably at around 1947 with the cathode ray tube amusement device, though more popularly at around Pong in 1972.) That’s about a 30-year lifespan, rivalling film’s approximate century. I believe cloud streaming will be a huge boost to the video game as an accessible art medium. Video gaming is not a niche culture or a filthy habit, so long

as, like anything, it isn’t binged on, and it deserves your attention beyond Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty and Candy Crush. Look out for games, on Steam (massive, awesome online video-game store, notorious for bargains), your phone or even just in YouTube walkthroughs (note: Pewdiepie), and support the indie kids. Game developers are creating some incredible experiences and they are only going to get more incredible. We are in a golden age of video games; be excited about it. l

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S WITC H BOARD A

team of students from Victoria University teamed up over summer as part of the Viclink Digital Futures/Product Futures programme. They created a physiotherapy balance board that connects via a cellphone app and Bluetooth to a video game, controlled by the movement of the board. Engineering student Lukas Stoecklein was the project manager. He was joined by Connor Broad, Martin Chan, Joshua Scott, Sarah Hadfield, Zac Bird, Jordan Shand and Ryan Geels who are Software Engineering, Industrial Design and Media Design students. Lukas says the Switchboard is a balance board which has been extended to be a game controller. As the user plays games on the Switchboard, their movement data is tracked and charted, so they and their physiotherapist can monitor progress. The goal of the Switchboard is to â&#x20AC;&#x153;Game-ifyâ&#x20AC;? rehabilitation. Motivation to train at home can be difficult for some people and we believe there is potential to make it much more enjoyable!

editor@salient.org.nz

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Fitspo IS THE PITS, BRO

BY PENNY GAULT

ion

h t l a e H y d o B e i elf S t c e f r e P e h T h Wit

#IsTheObsess

The Games Issue

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e live in an age where it’s not unusual to be confronted with semi-naked photos of friends while scrolling through our news feeds. Individual meal plans, squat challenges, and progress pics are apparently now everyone’s business, whether we’re interested in protein pancakes and whether ‘she squats, bro’, or not. The scrawny munchkins of high school now look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, while kids who chainsmoked or imbibed on weekends are spending Saturday evenings drinking coconut water and preparing a week’s worth of chicken and rice. Fitspiration, aka ‘fitspo’, has taken the world by storm, and social media’s played a prolific role in getting us on the bandwagon – or should I say treadmill? Fitspo images of impossibly toned bodies overlaid with ‘motivational’ messages tell us: “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. I beg to differ, as I sit here with my bag of Pineapple Lumps. Like, have you ever tried a pie?

Strong is the new skinny

Visual representations of the ideal human form are nothing new. Peter Paul Rubens painted sensual portraits of full-figured women in the early 1600s. Corsets and crinolines were used to control and accentuate the body from the outside from the 16th to early-19th centuries – perhaps symbolic of a strict and unrelenting society. Sex-bomb Marilyn Monroe was reputedly a UK size 16. It was not until the 1960s that there was a fundamental change in the way Western society viewed the human body – especially female. The body became something to control from the inside, through disciplined diet and exercise. A svelte figure was the ultimate embodiment of restraint. If you’d burned your bra, I guess you had to take back control somehow. Thin is no longer in. Instead, we should apparently all aspire to be strong, fit and lean; in peak physical condition. Strength is a natural human aspiration. As Socrates said: “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.” But the suggestion that strength is fashionable, and

demonstrating what ‘strong’ is expected to look like with an image of a svelte figure with less than ten per cent body fat, is more than a little concerning. If strong really is the new skinny, why isn’t Valerie Adams our poster woman of strength? What could have been (and was probably intended as) a means of empowerment towards body confidence has been capitalised on as another way to promote unrealistic bodies as the ideal; just as skin-and-bones supermodels once were. Strength and discipline are surely important. As our lives get busier and more stressful, it’s comforting to know that we still have control of our bodies, at least. But the ‘strong is the new skinny’ mantra focuses too heavily on an idealised outcome, at the risk of internal weakness, or illness, if those results are not achieved. Since we don’t usually attach stigma to exercising, there’s a danger that we’re too quick to pass off strict exercise regimes and obsessions with ‘clean eating’ as healthy behaviour. Fitspiration messages prey on our innermost insecurities, and shame us into submission. “Suck it up, and one day you won’t have to suck it in” tells us not only to exercise more and lose weight, but also that if we don’t look like the people in these images, we should be ashamed and tuck in our bellies. Fitspo equates getting ‘healthy’ with getting ‘in shape’, using supposedly motivational images to demonstrate how ‘good health’ physically manifests itself. But ‘healthy’ doesn’t necessarily look like anything. Fitspo conflates freedom from disease and a basic level of fitness with chiselled abs and thigh gaps. More questionable is the way people are going about getting their dream body. I’m no scientist, but surely eating KFC and three bags of lollies for dinner while you’re bulking (and then shredding) for RnV can’t be ‘good’ for you. Since we’ve developed a problematic way of measuring good health, fitspiration is, potentially, equally as harmful as the more commonly recognised disorders and addictions. If strong is the new skinny, is fitspo the new anorexia?

Quitting is unacceptable

The dangerous implications of a fitspo lifestyle are poignantly articulated on drunkspo.com,

“Exercise and clean eating can easily turn into obsessions as people are disappointed with their progress, misguided by the ‘inspiration’ which suggests that by running and drinking green juice, you will look like a fitness model who does chinups and barbell squats for a living.” editor@salient.org.nz

Feature

If strong looks the way fitspo says it does, the implication is that any body that is not thin, toned, and tanned, is weak. By dictating what strong and healthy looks like, fitspo suggests we can only measure and live in our bodies in one of two extreme ways: fat or ‘fit’, ignoring everything in between and invalidating the idea of a fat, healthy body.

which swaps the six-pack of abs for a sixpack of beer and superimposes extreme fitness motivation over pictures of people drinking. Picture, if you will, “Crawling is acceptable. Puking is acceptable. Tears are acceptable. Pain is acceptable. QUITTING IS UNACCEPTABLE.” plastered across an image of an elderly woman holding a full bottle of spirits. The drunkspo series exposes fitspo as symptomatic and triggering of disordered or addictive behaviours. Exercise and clean eating can easily turn into obsessions as people are disappointed with their progress, misguided by the ‘inspiration’ which suggests that by running and drinking green juice, you will look like a fitness model who does chin-ups and barbell squats for a living.

What you eat in private, you wear in public

Fitspo boils down to judging bodies. While it’s 26

The Games Issue

one thing to judge our own bodies (hey there, good lookin’) and decide we want to change, fitspo extends judgement to the bodies of others, unconsciously if not consciously. If strong looks the way fitspo says it does, the implication is that any body that is not thin, toned, and tanned, is weak. By dictating what strong and healthy looks like, fitspo suggests we can only measure and live in our bodies in one of two extreme ways: fat or ‘fit’, ignoring everything in between and invalidating the idea of a fat, healthy body. In New Zealand, we constantly refer to obesity as an ‘epidemic’, frequently linking it as a cause of heart disease and diabetes. It’s human nature to fear disease, or anything that threatens our livelihood. Disgust is a natural reflex, developed to help prolong our lives. It keeps us from associating with things that could expose us to disease. Because fat violates our expectations of the human form (and our expectations are created by images like fitspo), as other physical deformities

might, it’s not unusual to respond to fat as though it is disease and therefore be disgusted by it. While we don’t tend to judge others for catching a cold or flu, fitspiration turns fat into a moral failure, as it holds individuals accountable for their weight and suggests that determination is all it takes to be ‘fit’. If you don’t match the person in the image, you lack the discipline and strength they show. Fitspo ignores the fact that we’re all built differently. Even a moment’s consideration of successful sports bodies like Valerie Adams shows there’s no single way to be fit and healthy. Vices such as smoking and excessive drinking are also causative of disease, but we don’t call them ‘epidemics’. Why is fat treated differently? Why is there no soberspo? This is not to say that exercise and clean eating is bad, and fit people are evil. But it’s easy to lose perspective and forget that our bodies are for more than just looking at. You can have your cake and eat it, too. l

Feature

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Feature

here are very few New Zealanders who manage to make it in football at the highest level. 19-year-old Bill Tuiloma is currently doing so, and living the footballer’s dream at French club Olympique de Marseille. Bill was a member of the New Zealand Under-17s who visited Mexico for the World Cup, and also competed at the Under-20 World Cup in Turkey. His first call-up and cap for the All Whites was against Trinidad and Tobago, and he has been a member of the team ever since. Bill will also be a leading member of the New Zealand Under-20 side that will be playing in next year’s World Cup which is to be hosted right here in New Zealand for the first time. Bill’s signing with Marseille has been touted as the biggest football signing ever out of New Zealand. Marseille have won the French national title nine times and the European Champions League in 1993. While most of Bill’s cousins enjoyed rugby from a young age, for Bill, it was always football, and he was mentored by his father from a young age as soon as his talent was apparent. Growing up in a religious family, Bill spent a lot of time at church with his cousins playing many different sports, but it was always rugby that his cousins chose to pursue over football. The footballer of Pacific Island descent said: “I am really glad I play football and have shown that rugby is not the only sport for Pacific Islanders”. Moving to Marseille was obviously a massive culture shock for Bill, and I asked him a few questions about his journey into playing at one of the most competitive football clubs in the world: 28

The Games Issue

Interview

WHAT WERE YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE CLUB WHEN YOU FIRST ARRIVED AND HOW WELL HAVE YOU SETTLED IN SINCE THEN? At first I knew nothing about Olympique Marseille and the club, but when I got here, it’s got an amazing environment in football and it’s a nice city, so yeah I love it here and I have adapted pretty well. The language is pretty difficult; I am doing pretty good in the language department, but yeah, I love it here and I will try stay here as long as I can.

WHAT IS THE FANBASE LIKE FOR MARSEILLE? It’s absolutely crazy: every day we have training, we get around 50-plus people watching us train, every day. They sing, and yeah, they are definitely crazy fans. We get about 60,000 people at a match, if not more.

“I WANT TO END UP PLAYING IN THE ENGLAND PREMIER LEAGUE; THAT IS THE ULTIMATE GOAL, BUT AT THE MOMENT I AM LOVING EVERY MINUTE IN FRANCE.” PROGRESSED SINCE PLAYING IN FRANCE?

TEAM FOR A DAY, WHICH TEAM WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

I reckon it’s progressed a lot: my technical and tactical areas have improved and also my physical. I have got a lot better, and they have definitely been pushing me hard so that all the negative aspects of my game have improved.

Well, first of all, I am a very bad coach, but probably Real Madrid.

DO YOU THINK NZ HAS THE RIGHT APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUNG FOOTBALL PLAYERS? WHAT DO YOU ALSO HAD A TRIAL WITH THE LA GALAXY. WHAT IS FOOTBALL LIKE IN THE YOU THINK THEY COULD BE DOING TO USA COMPARED WITH FRANCE AND NZ? BETTER THE DEVELOPMENT OF NZ’S RISING FOOTBALL STARS, IN YOUR OPINION? USA was different; it was a good experience trialling with LA Galaxy, and I did actually train with David Beckham… just saying, haha… But yeah, the USA football is good for players close to retirement, but it is nowhere near as physical and intense as in France. I wanted to go to a club where I can develop and learn more as a player, where I can move to the bigger teams in England in football.

WHAT IS YOUR DAILY ROUTINE? Training starts at about 10.30, so we have to be there at 10, and it will normally finish around 12, and that will be it for the day.

HOW DO YOU TEND TO TRAIN BY YOURSELF IN YOUR SPARE TIME? After training, we tend to do more shooting or we go in the gym with a trainer and he’ll train us. It’s pretty much up to us if we want to do extra work, but I would probably work on my left foot: it’s pretty rusty. We just did the Yo-Yo test, we’ve done it twice now: it was horrible. My last score was 18.5.

HOW DO YOU THINK YOUR GAME HAS

NZ just needs to keep up its academies and keep coaching them as they grow up, so yeah: we have coaches who know their stuff, but they just need to find the kids and recognise them.

DO YOU THINK YOUNG NZ FOOTBALL STARS ARE BETTER OFF TRYING TO MAKE THE WELLINGTON PHOENIX FIRST, OR ARE BETTER OFF TRYING THEIR LUCK IN EUROPE? I think it’s pretty much up to the individual, but trialling at different clubs allows you to learn and develop at each club, and if they want you, that’s just a bonus; but if not, you just have to move on. But yeah, going to Europe, I think, is good.

DID YOU HAVE A FAVOURITE FOOTBALL CLUB GROWING UP? My favourite club was always Manchester United, and that was partly because my favourite player was Ronaldo.

IF YOU COULD BE HEAD COACH OF ANY

SO WHICH TEAM WERE YOU GUNNING FOR IN THE WORLD CUP, AND WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE 2014 WORLD CUP MOMENT? I was all for Brazil, but unfortunately that was short lived. My favourite moment would have to have been the winning goal by Götze. That was awesome.

WHAT DO YOU MISS MOST ABOUT NZ? Chilling on the beach, and also, pies. They don’t really have pies in France.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS FOR THE FUTURE? I want to end up playing in the England Premier League; that is the ultimate goal, but at the moment I am loving every minute in France.

SO OBVIOUSLY YOU WILL BE LEADING THE NEW ZEALAND UNDER-20 FOOTBALL TEAM IN 2015 AS NEW ZEALAND HOSTS THE COMPETITION FOR THE FIRST TIME. TELL US ABOUT YOUR HOPES FOR THE TOURNAMENT, AND WHAT YOU ARE MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? I think this team right now is going to be very good. Now we have players playing in Europe and playing in top clubs. Having an Under-20 World Cup at home is once in a lifetime! I’m so happy and excited! All my family and friends will be coming to watch. l editor@salient.org.nz

Feature

Feature writer Philip McSweeney doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a smartphone, so we got him to investigate the world of mobile-phone gaming apps.

The Games Issue

Feature

n the interests of full disclosure: I am a technologically inept guttersnipe who does not own an iPhone. I still wield an ancient Alcatel, so most of my experience with iOS platform games comes from watching over people’s shoulders or through ‘borrowing’ smart devices under the pretext of a family emergency (my mum didn’t even need surgery LMAO JOKES ON U). So when I was called upon to write reviews of smartphone games, I immediately went out to canvass the people and probe the punters. To all the people I accosted in the Hub with screams of “You look hip and affluent!!!” or “Do you have an iPhone on your person pls respond”, I’d like to offer: 1) my sincerest apologies and 2) my heartfelt thanks. Almost everyone I talked to recommended Tinder, with two especially candid people confessing that they’d never intercoursed anyone they hadn’t met on the popular app. The second-most common app that people flourished was, surprisingly, one that keeps tabs on the weather. Aside from these, there were a plethora of other apps people swore by, including a social network for wine-lovers called ‘Vinino’, and ‘Lulu’, which lets jilted lovers write reviews of dudes they’ve dated in a public setting.

those puzzles for people in the three-to-five age bracket. The payoff of getting to glimpse more architecture – no matter how lovely – doesn’t quite cut it. The quirky attempts at in-game interaction and titles (“In which our protagonist meets the Face of Death”) are more cloying than arresting. Still, my God is it pretty.

THE UGLY Pimple Popper

When it came to games, however, many of you were as woefully ignorant as I am. Though the usual suspects – Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja – cropped up, outside of these there was zilch. Think of all the lectures that are being attended in lieu of being glued to a screen! It was enough to make me blanche. So, armed with an iPhone and an intrepid mindset, I tested the world of iOS games with the goal of separating the APPles from the lemons. To quote Drizzy, thank me later.

Does what it says on the tin. You’re presented with pimples that you’re encouraged to pop in ways that create the most gratifying explosions. I originally thought that the game would be too close to home to my acneplagued adolescence, but I was happily proven wrong. It’s gross, sure, but so cathartic.

THE BAD

My Virtual Girlfriend

Flappy Bird Flappy Bird gained notoriety earlier this year when its creator, Nguyễn Hà Đông, removed it from circulation under the pretense of moral qualms over its ‘addictiveness’. Now, iPhones with the app installed have sold for as much as $2000, such is its novelty. Fortunately, a pal installed it before the furore and as such I got to play it. Here is a list of things I would rather do than spend five more minutes of my life playing Flappy Bird: - accept a call from an unknown number - watch an entire season of Two and a Half Men without a laugh track - get an erection while working as a life model - die. It really is that execrable. Đông’s claims that he removed it because of its ‘addictiveness’ do

not stand up to the fact that: a) it blatantly plagiarises a bunch of other games, and at the time of its removal, various irascible game creators came along to call in their debts, and b) despite its ludicrous difficulty, it is not addictive in the slightest. Disasterous. Doodle Jump

0/5 did not play. Streaker Run

An example of how NOT to convert a game to the iPhone format. The ninja outfits are pretty cute though.

In which you play as a female streaker. To achieve a high score, you have to expose as much of yourself to the audience as humanly possible before you get tackled by burly security. Dear God. Why.

Monument Palace

Frederic: Resurrection of Music

First and foremost, I will concede that the game looks absolutely gorgeous. The use of colour is resplendent, the design work is nuanced, and I’ll admit to letting out a gasp at some of the ways the titular ‘monuments’ twist and turn. But while it succeeds as a Design major’s fourth-year presentation, as a game it just doesn’t function well at all. My spatial awareness is shot to shit, but I still only found it about as difficult as one of

The game begins with renowned classical composer, Frédéric Chopin, emerging from his grave. Things only get more fucked from there; you have to replicate Chopin’s classical pieces on a piano on the screen in order to defeat ‘scourges’ of modern music – rappers, reggae junkies, pop stars et al. It’s like taking part in an epically lopsided rap battle. It’s actually a shitload of fun and a really interesting premise, and the cutscenes feature editor@salient.org.nz

Feature

“In case it wasn’t immediately apparent, I’m not much of a gamer. I think I just lack the attention span, and a lot of the time I get bored because all the levels are the same, just slightly harder each time, or the cinematic cutscenes are so riddled with clichés (“I’LL SAVE YOU ALEX! I’M COMING”) it takes all the effort I can muster not to fling the controller (or myself) out of a nearby window.”

a number of in-jokes that will be like catnip to classical-music nerds, but I can’t condone the elitism entombed in the game’s premise. Nor the appalling racist caricatures you’re pitted against.

The Good

attention span, and a lot of the time I get bored because all the levels are the same, just slightly harder each time, or the cinematic cutscenes are so riddled with clichés (“I’LL SAVE YOU ALEX! I’M COMING”) it takes all the effort I can muster not to fling the controller (or myself) out of a nearby window.

VVVVVV

How, then, do you explain the shit-eating grin that was still smeared across my face three hours into playing VVVVVV? It could be the ingenious missions that change from level to level, the deceptively simple gameplay, wherein you don’t jump but instead reverse gravity; the allusions to Atari games of yore, the charmingly archaic 2D designs, the extraordinary use of physics mechanics in a way that hasn’t felt so canny since Half-Life 2... On the face of it, it doesn’t seem especially innovative – you’re the leader of a bunch of scientists who crash in a space dimension and have to reunite your friends and explore your new surroundings – yawn. But the things that are done with this premise are mind-boggling.

In case it wasn’t immediately apparent, I’m not much of a gamer. I think I just lack the

My recommendation comes with a caveat that the conversion of this PC game to iPhone format wasn’t entirely seamless, and you do

Flight Control If ever proof was needed that simplicity equals greatness, you could find it in Flight Control. All you do is use your finger to guide planes and helicopters to their rightful landing places while avoiding in-air collisions. Sound dull? Au contraire! Prepare to be entranced for hours on end while you try to angle a high score of 200 or above. Also, prepare to swear like a drunken member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

The Games Issue

lose a bit of functionality; but it’s cheap as chips and just as satisfying. BADLAND (!) Oh. My. God. BADLAND is the whole package: visually sumptuous enough to earn comparisons to Terrence Malick’s film of the same name; with complex and heady levels, a tail feather that shakes, and a mischievous glint in its eyes throughout. You play as a qtpie, folkloric woodland creature who has the ability to clone. It notices something amiss, and goes on a mission to rectify it – and the fairy-tale elements of the game quickly descend into dystopian horror pastiche. It’s eerie and disquieting but joyous, and the game is fiendish enough that when you finish a level it feels like a genuine accomplishment. The icing on the (deliciously moist) cake is its replay value. There are extra missions to accomplish in order to ‘clock’ a level, further achievements to unlock, and the levels are so much fucking fun you’ll want to revisit them just ‘cos. If you’re looking for a procrastination outlet, I implore you to choose this one. l

Columns

Conspiracy Corner

By Incognito Montoya heard about the anomaly I that was Germany scoring 7 goals against Brazil, and decided to fly to Rio to investigate if there was a conspiracy afoot. As I couldn’t afford to put up in a hotel, I’ve ended up slumming (literally) in the Brazilian favelas with a colleague known only

Weird Internet Shit By Henry Cooke

omewhere in North America, ‘olivia taters’ is composing a tweet. “saudi arabia are basically the same”. She sends the short messages every hour or so. Her brand is lowercase, her bio “ugh dad”, her profile picture She-Hulk. “please do not hit on me while you are waiting for your

as “El Conspirador”. We snuck into the final, taking advantage of the camera looking away when the streaker came on, and managed to climb to the top of the Estádio Maracanã for the perfect view to witness the winning goal. Doesn’t get much better than that. But as I turned around to behold the crumbling infrastructure and abject poverty from the glittering stadium, I thought that could be a whole lot better. If only we could look up from the ball. As the lame-stream media has been spotty to report, reception to the World Cup from the host country has been mixed. The ten per cent of the population who own 75 per cent of the wealth tout the economic boon the games will bring to the country, funnelling around $14 billion to tourism-essential developments. However, the remaining population have protested the

necessity of the Cup, saying that the money could be better spent to improve the region’s infrastructure and bring its poorer citizens out of poverty. Most of that money had instead gone to the police, who are paid to steer the tourists away from anything they shouldn’t see, such as the cartel-controlled slums. All eyes are on Brazil, but only where they want you to look. I may not know how many bases there are in football or what club to use in cricket, but I know every Olympics and geographic Cup has its share of conspiracies. We demand a beautiful game, so the host country covers up its ugliness on a foundation of lies with the mascara of deception. For instance, before the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Putin demanded that façades be put up around the buildings to hide the dilapidated city. When Beijing

hosted the 2012 Olympics, the city’s factories shut down production three weeks before the Games to clear up smog, and rumours abounded that the famous Bird’s Nest stadium was built at gunpoint from the military in order to finish it on time. The Bird’s Nest is perhaps the best metaphor for the fleeting boom these events provide. The stadiums are built to foster the visiting cuckoos, before being left to rot after the event. El Conspirador told me that while the situation seems bad, the Brazilian populace has a remarkable ability to maintain a positive attitude in unfavourable conditions. There’s a motto here – “Sou brasileiro e não desisto nunca” – meaning: “I’m a Brazilian and I never give up”. It gave me hope. Paradise may be troubled, but it’s paradise nonetheless.

mandatory dna testing to determine if you are delicious.” olivia reads Rookie and frankie. She’s deep into 5SOS fandom, and a season and a half into Twin Peaks. olivia taters is a #teen. She is also a robot, duh. “just saw a vine of a girl pushing a big load of gummy worms out of her ass . white people are inexpensive handheld cakes.” Rob Dubbin, a writer for The Colbert Report, created olivia accidentally. He was attempting to make a bot which took two ‘this is actually that’ statements (from tweets!) and combined them, so “salient is actually important” and “cameron slater is actually an abhorrent cowardly man” becomes “salient is actually an abhorrent cowardly man”. He hated this language tic, and expected the bot to sound cocky and oracular, but it ended up sounding emotional and playful, even slightly manic. This was fun – so Dubbin added in some other phrases for it to chew

up, from ‘literally’ to ‘totally’ to ‘100%’ to ‘so’. “man really contemplating on navy, air force or coast guard....i was 100% out there....” Twitter is full of bots, as is pop culture. Anyone can program something to spit out 140 characters that make some kind of sense, and Twitter’s API makes plugging code into the service a breeze. But most of them are boring – either simple spam-machines or automated feeds of information. Bots with ‘personality’ are generally either real-life humans or weird projections of insecurity voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Not olivia.

“i haven’t worked out in over a week and you’re pissing me off. don’t fucking try me. i am macaulay culkin hello” olivia will respond to anything you say to her, feeding the essence of your question back to you in a new, slightly garbled sentence. The other day, deep into a conversation with another bot (“different are softtttt”), one of them made the mistake of mentioning the Bank of America, who earnestly tried to answer their questions – principally “why do people break up?” and “have you seen them kiss?” Beautiful.

editor@salient.org.nz

Columns

Review: Red Hill by Julia Wells

Meals and Feels Homemade hash browns with smashed peas and poached eggs by Eve Kennedy

’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: brunch is a great meal. It’s also expensive to go out for brunch – just as expensive as a dinner meal in many instances, except without the possibility of bringing your own bottle of wine. This is an easy brunch to make that will impress your other half/flatmate on a hungover Sunday morning.

Homemade hash browns:

2 potatoes, finely grated (I used the finest cut on the grater, and Agria spuds) 1 egg Pinch each of thyme, dried basil, sage 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh basil 1 garlic clove, finely chopped Salt & pepper to taste 4 tablespoons flour Smashed peas:

1 cup frozen peas 2 tablespoons goat feta 2 tablespoons cream cheese Method:

Once the potatoes are grated, get rid of any excess moisture by pressing the mix in either a clean tea towel or a paper towel. Repeat this a couple of times until the potatoes clump together and the towel isn’t getting any wetter. Put the potato into a medium-sized bowl. Lightly beat the egg and add 34

The Games Issue

the herbs, chopped garlic and salt and pepper. Mix this into the potatoes, stirring well. Add the flour, one tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is dry enough that you could form hash browns for frying but not so dry that you feel you could roll it in your hands. Avoid adding too much flour as the hash browns will only go glue-like. Use a spoon to put the mix into a heated frying pan. Make the hash browns as thick/thin and big/small as you desire, but remember that thicker ones take longer to cook. Fry the hash browns one or two at a time in oil, or butter if you’re feeling truly decadent. Avoid crowding the pan, so only cook one or two at a time, dependent on how big you make them. Cook for 2–4 minutes on each side, until golden and crispy. If you make your hash browns thick like I do, put them in the oven for 10–15 minutes at 180°C so the potato is cooked the whole way through. Smashed peas:

Cook the peas until just done, then mash with the feta and cream cheese. Serve the hash browns with the pea smash spread on top, then add a poached egg, some salt and pepper, and a sprinkling of fresh basil leaves.

Location: 119 Manners St Cuisine: Chinese Price: Moderate BYO: Oh yes. Also karaoke. Rating: 8.5/10 ’ve heard it said that if you provide the event, Red Hill will provide the party. Which – having never been there before – sounded both unlikely and like an advertisement for home insulation. However, having ventured up its narrow and terrifying stairs for the first time (no BYO restaurant should ever make you navigate more than four), I have to say that it’s true.

An important public-service announcement: do not, do NOT go to this restaurant on one of the party nights if you aren’t wanting a wild night. It converts into a karaoke bar at ten-ish, with a screen at the front and a microphone passing around. On the night I went, even before then, the noise levels had risen to unacceptable-if-sober-and-tired, and the table next to us were wearing their napkins in a culturally insensitive way. Despite the fact that the restaurant was fully booked (always a good sign), the staff were attentive. Unusually for a Chinese restaurant, Red Hill has an extensive vegetarian menu, which made me very happy. After long deliberations (for which I apologise to those unlucky enough to sit by me), I ordered the Homestyle Tofu with Vegetables and Black Fungus. It wasn’t bad, and was saved from a generic-Chinese-takeaway flavour by plenty of ginger. I enjoyed the tofu particularly, and the texture of the fungus. Overall, I liked Red Hill a lot, and would go there again for a large BYO. Although my food wasn’t hugely memorable, the atmosphere was heaps of fun. Wellington has a shortage of interesting BYO restaurants for large groups, and a plethora of bland establishments whose main distinguishing feature is that you can get drunk there. Red Hill is a place you’ll remember going; one that helps make your night rather than simply hosting it. Put it this way: at one point the smoke alarm went off and firemen came into the middle of the restaurant, there was alcohol in teapots, and a friend of mine almost cried when Blue came on the karaoke machine. I don’t ask much more of my evenings than that.

Feature

CBT

Māori Matters

by Jane T

his instalment of CBT T was brought to you by the shitty individual’s epiphanies concerning their critical inner voice.

CBT tells us that critical inner voices are very real-feeling maladaptive thoughts. CBT tells us that critical inner voices stem from assumptions we hold about ourselves in relation to the rest of the world. CBT tells us that assumptions we hold about ourselves sometimes stem from beliefs which were reinforced during our early development, and these can be challenged. I’m driving in the car with my mum and I am the passenger and she is the one doing the driving and it is the holidays. She is talking to me and I am probably being a little too harsh on her as regards the way she sounds when she eats and then she almost misses our turn. My thoughts are like uhhhhh as in they are not up to much. I’m telling my mum that she almost missed the turn and I’m telling her my thoughts about my teenage brother and how their relationship works and I am doing this without realising what a brat I am being but then she is like ah OMG you are a weirdo and you are mean-spirited and you are not well-intentioned and I cannot relate to you, and then my thoughts are like ahhhh damn. And I am then remembering how unsure I am feeling about myself as a not-mean, relatable

Nā Te Po Hawaikirangi

person, and my thoughts are like you are mean, and my thoughts are also like wow we sound like your mother. So I’m thinking: I do not want to be a cliché and blame my maladaptive thought patterns about my self-worth on my mother/ guardian/other-significant-relative but maybe I could entertain a little bit of this idea for a little while. I’m thinking that it might be useful to understand where parts of my critical inner voice come from, in order to disassemble those parts and make them feel less real. I am remembering that I should try to examine how these harmful sentences reinforce untrue assumptions I have about myself, and disassemble those assumptions. I’m thinking also that family love is weird and hard and if it is too hard less time should be had with family. I’m thinking (in kind of a sad way) that not all people can sing like the Spice Girls about their mama/other-significant-relative but some of us can love our family members in a way that remembers to be kind to ourselves first. CBT tells us that assumptions we hold about ourselves sometimes stem from beliefs which were reinforced during our early development, and these can be challenged. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a talk therapy used to treat disruptive thinking as well as diagnosed mental illnesses. Each CBT client will use it in their own way, and students who think it could help them can visit Student Health.

BJECTIVE OF KI O RAHI: Have fun and

outscore the opposition. Kioma score by touching pou(s) with the Ki (for potential points) then running the Ki through Te Roto and placing it down in Pawero to convert pou touches into points. Taniwha score by hitting the Tupu with the Ki; both teams attempt to stop the other team from scoring. FIELD LAYOUT: Ki o Rahi is played on a circular field with concentric circles. The size of the field varies depending on the amount of players, level of fitness and the type of rules being played. Team zones: Kioma can go into Te Marama, Te Ao and Pawero, use Te Ara only to get into and out of the Pawero to help attack or defend, and run through Te Roto to convert pou touches into points on the board. Taniwha can go into Te Roto and Te Ao zones only. EQUIPMENT NEEDED

- 1 Tupu (central target): approx 40-gallon drum or rubbish bin - 7 pou - Ki: woven flax ball, normal ball, rocks, rolled-up jersey, or anything - Field marking RULES

- Play is started from Te Marama, with Kioma throwing or kicking the Ki to a teammate in Pawero area. - They attempt to pass the Ki to a teammate, who touches a pou (for a potential point) and then can either touch more pou to accumulate more potential points, or run it through Te Roto then

place the Ki on or over the Pawero line to convert all pou touches into points on the board. (This is the only time they can enter Te Roto.) - Kioma can not go through or over Te Ara to score. - If a Kioma player is ‘tagged’ in Te Roto while trying to score, it is a turnover; if they run into Te Roto and run or pass the Ki back out without being touched, they retain possession but the pou touches are recounted. - Kioma scores, and play restarts with a kick-off from Te Marama. - Out of bounds: last team in possession hands possession over to the other team. - Taniwha scores by hitting the Tupu with the Ki, and play carries on. - Jump shots may be allowed if the Taniwha player jumps from Te Roto and releases the Ki before landing in Pawero: they must leave immediately and not affect play, or Kioma gain possession. - Players in possession must be moving, or they have 3–5 seconds to pass, shoot or hand it over. - Players cannot enter Te Ara, unless they are Kioma moving between Pawero and Te Ao. - Players may get the Ki from other zones as long as part of their body stays in their legal zone. Taniwha may take jump shots at the Tupu as long as the ball is released before they touch the ground. (Some iwi play no entering other zones or penalties may occur: this is called the Turangawaewae rule.) Come on whānau, give it a go! Mauri Ora! editor@salient.org.nz

Your students’ association

Sonya Says by Sonya Clark

VUWSA President ccasionally, someone asks the question: “Why doesn’t New Zealand have a strong competitive inter-university sport culture? Where are the mascots and fierce competitive spirit?” For this week’s Sport issue – let’s talk about about an organisation called University Sport New Zealand. University Sport New Zealand (USNZ) was the governing body for university sport in New Zealand. All New Zealand university students’ associations (including VUWSA) were members, and paid levies (funded by students) which partially funded its operation. The first UniGames was set up in 1902, and the first NZ University Sports Union (USNZ’s precursor) was created in 1957. To most students, USNZ was the body that organised SnowGames, UniGames and the NZ Universities Blues Awards for top sportspeople. I say ‘was’ in the above paragraph because USNZ hasn’t really been alive for the past two years – there are no staff, and NZUSA (the NZ Union of Students’ Associations) do some admin and host some of the history in a couple of boxes in their office. This is really sad. New Zealand students deserve a thriving tertiary inter-sport culture, with tournaments that cater for both social players and top sportspeople. How did USNZ get here? Before Voluntary Student Membership came into law in 2011 (see last week’s column for

The Games Issue

how this law affected students’ associations), students’ associations felt that USNZ wasn’t performing as it should. With VSM around the corner (and a whole lot of uncertainty about money), the Board of USNZ commissioned a review on the future of tertiary sport in New Zealand, and how to make USNZ work in this “new environment” where students’ associations could no longer afford to fund the organisation. The review recommended that USNZ completely change: from being governed by students’ associations to a board comprised of largely tertiary institutions’ Vice-Chancellors or their delegates. 2012 VUWSA President Bridie Hood felt strongly that this wasn’t the answer – that a model that retained student direction could be balanced with the need to have more institutional support. VUWSA voted against this proposal, because we believe that student voice is really really important in things that affect students – it’s the same reason that the Vice-Chancellor doesn’t choose the bands at Orientation. In the end, nothing has really happened from this review – and next month, the original members of USNZ (including VUWSA) are having a Special General Meeting. For tertiary sport to thrive in New Zealand, it will need: - Strong student ownership and direction. - To be supported by expertise from the sports sector to provide continuity. - A sustainable funding model, most likely through the universities. I’ll be in a better place to report back after the SGM next month: VUWSA will be advocating for the retention of student ownership balanced with the need for continuity and support from the institutions. We all benefit from a stronger inter-university competitive culture in New Zealand. Sonya Clark

VUWSA President M: 027 563 6986 | DDI: (04) 463 6986 | E: sonya.clark@vuw.ac.nz | W: www.vuwsa.org.nz

Exec Column

by Declan Doherty-Ramsay

hen I first came to university (wayyyy back in 2009), I had no idea what to expect. I thought I knew what it was all about – I’d gotten my courses sorted, I scored a spot in a Hall, and a few people from my high school were coming to Victoria as well. Within a week of getting here though, in the immortal words of Willard Carroll Smith Jr: “…my life got flipped, turned upside down.” Figuring out Blackboard, signing up for tutorials, getting ridiculously lost in the Student Union Building; and then there was O-Week. And Clubs Day. Did I mention Class Reps? How do you pronounce “VUWSA” and what do they do? It was all a bit of a kerfuffle that I really struggled with, and led to me changing degrees and eventually taking time off from study. Now, five years later and very nearly at the end of my time at university, I’m proud to say I know the answer to most of those questions (VUWSA is pronounced View-Sa, not VooSa), and have found so many more questions and answers to pursue over my time here. Big things like graduating, the real world, making a difference; small things like flat dynamics, keeping healthy, and time management. One thing I can take away from my experience at university and will be forever thankful for, is that VUWSA has

been a huge part of it. I’m not just talking about my experience on the Exec (which has been incredible), but all the things VUWSA does and has done. When I was broke as hell in my second year and had to choose between paying the flat power bill and food, VUWSA’s Food Bank kept me going until my paycheck came through. I’ve gotten jobs through Student Job Search (which VUWSA pays the fees for so it’s free to all Victoria students). This year’s O-Week and past years’ have been incredible fun. Class Reps have organised study groups and cram sessions. Every step of the way through my degree, VUWSA has been there – serving, advocating, fighting, helping. It’s been an amazing experience being part of the Executive this year and serving in this role. The VUWSA Election opens for nominations next week. All ten spots on this team are up for grabs, and it’s going to be interesting to watch how it all unfolds. If you’re passionate about this university, about serving students, and above all passionate about making a difference – then grab a nomination form and get involved. It could well be the best single thing you do at university; not only for yourself – but the students you’ll help as well. Declan Doherty-Ramsay

Engagement Vice-President

Columns

How to use games and sport to

Generally speaking, the best way to enhance your brand with sport is to avoid organised exercise of any kind. It’s unhealthy and usually involves loud, indeterminate noises. Sometimes it even requires that you work with others. This is unacceptable. Teams are a lie. You are better than any team. Do not work well with others. Do not participate. Crush your rivals (anyone who is not you). If someone does confront you with the idea of exercise, check that they didn’t mean ‘exorcise’. Remind them that any activity involving demons is infinitely more valuable to society than anything that involves exertion or the destruction of a carefully constructed and maintained

aesthetic. Ask this sadly disturbed person if they require you to exorcise them of the demons who might suggest such vulgarity as exercise. If you truly are unable to avoid getting involved in a sport or game, here are some handy on-brand subversions of games and sports that you may be inadvertently exposed to. - In the current climate, it can be difficult to avoid the subject of football. In this situation, ensure that you refer to it as ‘soccer’. This will allow you to single out the people who care about it the most. Mark these people out with various forms of paper craft. Set your personal assassins on them. - Throughout the whole of a game of Monopoly, decry its capitalist values. But make sure you win. If necessary, have a kitten handy to distract other

players while you supplement your income from the bank. - When cornered and faced with a loss in Paper–Scissors– Rock, suddenly it’s best out of three. If you lose out of three, demand a rematch and assume a position of prayer. This beats everything else because piety is cute. - People-watching as a game is the lesser of many many evils. It is relatively easy to turn peoplewatching to your advantage, as it already involves a certain level of playing at the expense of others. The key element here is to consider all the ways in which you are better than those you observe. Above all, care about nothing. But if pressed, squirt blood from your eyes. Apparently it’s very confusing to predators, so it’s probably very confusing to competitors too.

1970s with classics such as Pong (okay: so a queer pong, not really needed). The first queer character appeared in 1986 with a lesbian couple in Moonmist, with the next famous queer character coming in 1988 in a Mario game. Birdo is a pink creature who looks feminine, but is in fact referred to as both male and female depending on what games they’re in. A pink dinosaur is obviously a great choice for a queer icon, but since then, video games have obviously improved in their representation, with The Sims allowing a choice over sexual preference. This has continued into games that allow you to play as a character you make, such as Fable, Skyrim and Dragon Age, all having queer-relationship options. By the 2000s, same-sex couples were normalised in games, with Fable being the first game to include proper same-sex

marriage. This would prove to be so successful that by Fable 3, gay adoption would be included in the game too. Games such as Mass Effect included gay relationships too, not even changing how the character acted: literally, just making them have a same-sex relationship. This is really how they should be handled a lot of the time, in my opinion. It’s great to see game developers’ increasing awareness. These characters pop up more and more, with this year even Nintendo (who have proved their progressiveness about M/M and F/F relationships, even in kids’ games) offering a public apology for not adding same-sex couples in one of their games, and then promising to allow these couples in any sequel that could potentially be made. This article is obviously pointing out the pros of the current systems, but don’t get

me wrong: there’s still a lack of diversity in characters, with companies such as Ubisoft not even remotely diversifying from its white male protagonists because it’s “Too hard to render”, and then other games with queer characters just using negative stereotypes for these characters. However, in a world where one of the three largest game companies is apologising to the queer community, it’s a good start if nothing else. Representation is something we have to create ourselves, and not just sit on our butts and do nothing about. We have to be the role models and create equality in media, because if we don’t, no one will.

enhance your brand and destroy others

Shirt & Sweet with Eleanor Merton

Your weekly column on how to be annoyed but still cute

s we all know, life is a game. Being cute is a A game. Being shirty is a game. The secret is to play harder than everyone else and to throw your brand victory in their faces. You’re not cute and shirty unless everyone knows you’re cute and shirty. This is why it’s vitally important to learn:

Bent

by Jonny Abbott

elcome back all! Gaymers and geeky gays are found everywhere; sure, you can find a gym bunny or someone who’s into fashion, but nerdy cute guys are by far the best. I’m not going to talk about these nice nerds, but rather video-game characters and representations of LGBT in the virtual world. The videogame industry appeared in the

PS Queer board-gaming night at Ivy on Sunday nights. Drink and crush the competition, or just meet your one true love over a reverting game of Scrabble.

editor@salient.org.nz

Arts

If you want to write about the arts, or think there is something we should review, email arts@salient.org.nz.

The Problem with Music in New Zealand and How To Fix It & Why Blink Started and Ran Puppies By Henry Cooke

t’s easy to get cynical about New Zealand’s music industry. We’re tiny. Nothing happens here. When it does, we either over-hype it to the point of nausea or cut it down before it properly blooms. Anything that isn’t somehow involved with cows seems doomed to fail financially – there just aren’t enough of us, and we aren’t interested in anything but drinking and fucking and rugby. The fatalism isn’t exactly unfounded, but it’s part of what is holding us back. Low expectations clash with inexperienced idealism; you end up either jaded or on the other side of the world. Or you end up as Blink. Blink (real name Ian Jorgensen – yes, you have read this line hundreds of times) is best known for Camp A Low Hum,

The Games Issue

a summer music festival with all the annoying shit taken out that ran from 2007 to 2014. He also created a Wellington bar named Puppies, with a similar ethos, which shut down last month – not due to failure, but because Blink is busy working on other things. One of these things is already out – a book, named ‘The Problem with Music in New Zealand and How To Fix It & Why I Started and Ran Puppies”. As the title suggests, this collection of short essays is split in half, the first recording Blink’s problems and proposed solutions for the the industry, the second a chronicle of putting some of the solutions into practice – that is, building and running Puppies. Blink isn’t jaded, but he is a little angry. A kind of quiet rage runs through the first half of this book, most of it aimed at two very deserving targets – APRA and booze. The alcohol industry dominates our entertainment industry at almost every level. Nearly every show is either outright sponsored by alcohol (‘Jim Beam’s Homegrown’!) or held in a fucking bar. All-ages shows are almost non-existent, despite the fact that nobody cares about local music more than local 15-year-olds, and booze appears to distort nearly every other part of the live music experience. Shows start late and run late, giving the bars more time to sell drinks, and liquor laws are often complicated and unworkable – yet needed – stifling the possible innovations many venues might put in place. He emphasises that this is a particular problem in New Zealand, that he didn’t realise how bad it was until he toured the world with bands and saw plenty of small shows that weren’t at bars. Blink isn’t against alcohol per se – understanding that a few drinks are essential for some of us to have a good time – but he still mentions the ‘student who shows up at 11 pm after a bottle of scrumpy’ (I’m paraphrasing) with particular acidity. Ahem.

I could find a succinct quote on APRA, but the title of the essay does it all – “APRA AND PPNZ ARE RIPPING OFF SONGWRITERS WHO HAVE NO IDEA THIS IS GOING ON”. Basically, the people responsible for making sure that bands get paid when people use their songs – in TV, on the radio, even on a stereo at a café – have been stuck in the past, basing songwriter compensation on radio plays, despite the fact that the radio charts in no way mirror the actual amount a song is played in various venues. Blink makes clear that he sees much merit in APRA’s mission; he just finds that their methods are wilfully ignorant, and there has already been a bit of a mea culpa from APRA, as well as a lot of support from others in the industry. Blink also rails against some of the more arbitrarily stupid shit about shows in New Zealand. Why are they still $5? The price of everything else has gone up, but we still expect four bands and hours of entertainment for five bucks? The expectation that we will buy two or three $10 drinks may have a part in this. My fourth-form metalcore band broke up after only three shows,

so I never quite realised all the bullshit that bands have to put up with to play shows in New Zealand, including literally paying for the ‘privilege’ to play in some bars. Not that bands aren’t at fault either – Blink has plenty of advice for them too, but this is starting to sound like Blink’s book is a rant. It’s not. Blink provides a multitude of ideas to deal with the problems in our industry, both ones he put into practice at Puppies (concrete advertised set times!) and ones he dreamed of years ago (two identical shows! one night!). There’s a detailed guide on how to set up DIY venues and parties, even in small towns, with New Zealand prices and recommendations and advice on liquor laws. There’s hope, but realistic hope. Blink is an idealist who has been making shit happen for years. He’s toured artists around the world, and seen that things can be a lot better, even for a country as small as ours. If you have any interest in making music shit happen in New Zealand, buy this book, or download it for free (alowhum.org). In Blink’s words: “Suck it up and make it work.”

“Blink also rails against some of the more arbitrarily stupid shit about shows in New Zealand. Why are they still $5? The price of everything else has gone up, but we still expect four bands and hours of entertainment for five bucks?”

Feature

Don’t Tell Me It’s Not Like the Book by Emma McAuliffe

“Y

eah, but the book’s better.” A phrase heard only too often. A phrase you’ve probably uttered before in an attempt to appear literate. It’s okay, we’ve all done it. It’s humanity’s secret shame. “I am more literate than you because I read a book before it got turned into a film.” The thing we always seem to forget is that books and films are two different mediums. There is no such thing as a perfect adaptation. Nor should there be. The first stories to be adapted into film are believed to be Cinderella by the Brothers Grimm and Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in 1899 and 1900 respectively. Since then, both these stories have had countless adaptations. Sherlock Holmes has had at least three in the past decade. Clearly, it isn’t a bad thing to have a book turned into a film; otherwise, it wouldn’t keep happening. Why not adapt a book? It’s already got a story and characters that people like. The Fault in Our Stars is a book by the very fashionable young-adult author John Green, a man more famous for his metaphors than his stories. The novel follows two teenagers, Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters, who fall in love and say things like “hamartia”. More to the point, Hazel has cancer and Augustus once did. In a desperate

bid to find out what happens to the characters of their favourite book after it has ended, they venture to Amsterdam to meet their favourite author. Self-referencing at its finest. I enjoyed the book a lot. However, I was pretty disappointed in the film. I know – sorry! Whether this is because I am older than the target audience or because I wasn’t altogether happy with some of the artistic visions, I’m not sure. It may even be because Green’s words are nicer to read than to hear. “I’m in love with you and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things” doesn’t sound quite right when said aloud. But films and books are different mediums, right? The cinematography made sense in terms of film. I didn’t not like the film because I thought the book was better, that’s for sure. I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t write off films because they aren’t as good as the book. Write them off because the cinematography is bad (or whatever). Film adaptations of books are great. They’re bringing the characters you love to life. They’re making your characters real; people who love and suffer as much as you do. The magic of fiction isn’t lost in film. Film is magical. Love your favourite book. But don’t ever let me know I’m not a real fan because I haven’t read it.

5 Highest-Grossing Book-to-Film Adaptions

What We’re Reading Anna, English lecturer

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)

2. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003)

3. Alice in Wonderland (2010)

4. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)

“Charles Martindale on aestheticism and the classics (why not talk about beauty?), James Elkins on Why Art Cannot Be Taught, JK Rowling as Robert Galbraith, and just finished Terry Castle’s The Professor.” Ashleigh, VUP editor

“I’ve just finished Breton Duke’s new book Empty Bones which was grim as all heck, but great. And The Night We Ate the Baby by Tim Upperton is the best poetry book I’ve read this year, to be published soon.”

Sebastian, English and Art History student (and published novelist)

“I’ve been reading & Sons by David Gilbert – a really interesting multi-perspective story about a reclusive novelist and his estranged family.” Nina, Salient Books Editor

“I’m reading Rough On Women by Margaret Sparrow, an eyeopening history of abortion in 19th-century New Zealand. And I’ve just started reading my first ever Oscar Wilde novel which is, unsurprisingly, full of rich men with glossy hair sauntering languidly.”

editor@salient.org.nz

Jimi: All Is By My Side – featured documentary in the NZIFF Review by Craig Parker

Ithe girlfriend of Keith Richards: Linda Keith. She befriends Jimi

t starts with Jimi Hendrix playing to an empty bar. In this bar is

Hendrix, simultaneously introducing him to the music industry and LSD. The 1960s are here and aren’t they just groovy. Recent films such as Howl, On the Road, Nowhere Boy, Factory Girl and countless others all offer glamorous appropriations of ‘50s and ‘60s artistic counterculture – appropriations which inspire youths to rebel, and for their middle-aged parents to look back on their adolescence with fondness. These are the disturbingly clichéd narrative expectations that the viewer is rendered with after the opening scenes of John Ridley’s Jimi: All Is By My Side. While André 3000’s performance as Hendrix was cool, the rest of feature was definitely not “Ice Cold”. All Is By My Side details Hendrix’s rise to fame from his early days as a sideman in Clarksville, Tennessee, to his early UK success which climaxed with his performance of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ at the Saville Theatre (only three days after the song was released, while The Beatles were in attendance), and his departure to tour the US and play at the

NZIFF

by Charlotte Doyle

That blissful time of year when spending all your money on films becomes even more socially acceptable is fast approaching. The New Zealand International Film Festival embraces the cultural hub of Wellington from the 25 July to 10 August with a programme which demands many circles and underlining in blue ballpoint pen. The festival always proves to be a soulsoothing couple of weeks where a spontaneous venture to whatever is on when time needs to be killed acts as the best reward for a soulsapping day at the institution we call university. Consider it an essential part of your life education, gifting memories such as seeing a documentary about Pussy Riot with a large group of

The Games Issue

apathetically-feminist boys who only knew it involved a chance to hate on Putin and enthusiastically contributed to the most verbal abuse I have ever heard flung at a movie screen. It is never a mentally passive experience, and this year is proving to have equal potential for such mindbroadening, with a richly varied programme definitely worth dedicating time to for perusal. An inconclusive list of 10 films to use as a starting point:

1. Maps to the Stars: Satirical

portrayal of Hollywood featuring Julianne Moore (for which she won Best Actress at Cannes), John Cusack, Robert Pattinson and Mia Wasikowska. 2. Boyhood: A unique and unprecedented film shot over 12

Monterey Pop Festival. We are given a plot – which is entertaining and engaging – but there is a lack of substance. Ridley was not given permission to reproduce any of Hendrix’s original material. In a fit of rage, Hendrix assaults his ginger girlfriend with a payphone, and then claims to have written ‘Red House’ as an apology – yet we are never given a performance. Throughout All Is By My Side, Hendrix is obsessed with Bob Dylan – he spends his last dollar on the LP Blonde on Blonde, and later recruits bassist Noel Redding because he had the same hair as Dylan. Thus, for appropriate comparison as far as biographical counterculture films go, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There reigns supreme. His multifaceted representation of Dylan, ranging from a negro child, an elderly outlaw and a washed-up woman, provide supreme artistic and narrative satisfaction. Yet this satisfaction is not given through Ridley’s representation of Hendrix. There is no depth, no character development, and most importantly, no songs by the man himself. Hendrix’s prophesying is hardly awe-inspiring – “When the power of love takes over the love of power, that’s when the world will change.” years following the experience of a boy evolving from childhood to manhood. It has been widely pinpointed as one of the most notable films of 2014. 3. Frank: Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Fassbender, this movie presents a quirky, satirical representation of indie-rock celebrity. 4. White God: Won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, a dramatic story about a violent canine uprising (and dogs are no longer man’s best friend). 5. At Berkley (documentary): Highly relevant to tertiary students in exploring the perspectives of both students and administrators at this incredibly famous progressive university on the challenges presented to the accessibility of tertiary education today. 6. 20,000 Days on Earth: A richly

seductive documentary on the life and music of Nick Cave. 7. Joe: dark American drama starring Nicolas Cage. Enough said. 8. Under the Skin: Highly critically acclaimed, this fantasy film showcases Scarlett Johansson as an alluring alien. 9. Yves Saint Laurent: Vibrant biopic of the fashion designer. 10. New Zealand’s Best 2014: For an experience of local talent, see this selection of the top entries from the latest short-film competition. However, the best way to find out what’s on is either online at the Festival’s website, or picking up a hard copy from locations including the Paramount and Embassy cinemas, Penthouse, Film Archive, Roxy, Unity Books, Aro Video and Te Papa.

Home and Back Again By Simon Gennard

IIt may be that before I met Hockney, I met the fervid, but ultimately

t took me a long time to warm to David Hockney’s photomontages.

piddling, attempt of some 16-year-old to emulate him to meet NCEA Level 2 course requirements. Or perhaps because I associate my first meeting with Hockney with an age of full-body acne and chronic masturbation. They were messy, I thought. Something juvenile, something about their pasting together, something resembling a scrapbook. In a 1984 interview with Lawrence Weschler, Hockney recalls his ambivalent relationship with the camera. Upon learning that the photograph didn’t necessarily demand a rectangular frame, nor did it demand a single moment frozen, Hockney remembers a sense of exhilaration. “It takes time to see these pictures… these pictures came closer to how we actually see.” There’s a sense of motion to Hockney’s images. There’s no discernable focal point; the eye moves up, and down, and across, and is allowed time to make sense of things. Julia Holden’s paintings take a while. The promotional image for her current exhibition is taken from a series called The Philosopher. A pale woman against a brown background smokes a cigarette. Holden’s lines are hazy, her figures somehow cartoonish, and, upon first glance, bear something pubescent, like Hockney’s grasping at profundity, a solid Merit at best. Holden’s Philosopher, though, in some way offers a response to Rodin’s Thinker, and, more generally, a tradition in art of indulging the figure of male ‘savant’. Her pose is open, the positioning of her hand indicative of “Upon learning that the photograph didn’t necessarily demand a rectangular frame, nor did it demand a single moment frozen, Hockney remembers a sense of exhilaration. “It takes time to see these pictures… these pictures came closer to how we actually see.””

a deliberate femininity; her gaze is restless, but never meets the viewer’s. On the wall opposite the series of four paintings is a washed-out cream canvas, with an impression of the woman burned into it – like rayograph, or an LCD screen. Holden’s practice is one of building up. The paintings that make up each series are the remains of between 500 and 1000 oil paint frames that together constitute three-to-four-minute silent films. Viewed in sequence, Holden’s paintings become an examination of the painting as an autonomous object, a meditation on the creative process, of formation as destruction. In the room beside The Philosopher is The Muse, a single portrait adjacent to a screen playing a three-minute film of its composition.

Holden’s subversion of art historical narratives is perhaps obvious, but it’s effective. The Muse paints herself. Using the frame as a mirror, the viewer enters into an uneasy relationship with her formation. She layers and re-layers herself, adorns herself in lipstick and eye shadow, adjusts her jawline. The result is something almost discomfiting. Tonally, The Muse is a slightly sickly green. There’s a violence to Holden’s work. But it’s not the masculine violence of abstract expressionism, in which the product is an excavation of process. Holden is more calculated. The paintings on show, even in the language used to refer to them – as remainders – suggest the artist takes on a role of curator, allowing the viewer to freeze particular moments of a moving whole. This violence manifests itself most evidently in Holden’s There’s a violence to Holden’s work. But it’s not the masculine violence of abstract expressionism, in which the product is an excavation of process. Holden is more calculated.

depiction of men. Two male portraits are featured in the exhibition; one, titled The Painter, complements The Muse, presented as its opposite, with a single oil painting adjacent to a film. The other, 38 Days, is larger in scope, with oil stills taking up three walls of one of the rooms, leading to a monitor in the bottom corner. Both men are pictured in a similar ritual of adornment as The Muse. The difference, however, is that the male ritual is one of violence. Shaving, or the disfiguration of the body, takes a central role in these works. Both men engage in an act of removal in order to best present themselves. In the top corner of 38 Days is a burnt impression similar to the one featured in The Philosopher. This image is repeated in the corresponding film, appearing at the end. The subject surveys his work, using the frame as a mirror, reaches out and wipes himself away. Holden seems to suggest that representation itself is an act of violence against the subject. Hockney’s photomontages disrupt the perspective of the image, allowing for an examination of the subject that seems dynamic. They seem to invite us in, to allow for a consideration that mirrors the way we examine three-dimensional works. We bend down, we circulate, we try to consume as much as we can. In a way, Holden reverses this. The viewer is locked in position, but the subject is able to move in and around the pictorial space. The inclusion of remainders allows for an extended consideration of a single moment – for the possibility of scrutiny, of an understanding – but their lack, the understanding that what is on show constitutes only a fraction of what has been produced, renders apparent the presence of someone controlling what can be seen.

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Theatre

Interview with Young and Hungry Directors by David Williams

and Hungry Festival of New Theatre turns 20 this Theyear.Young Having helped spawn the careers of noted alumni such as

Bret McKenzie, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, it allows young theatre-makers to engage in all aspects of theatre creation. I sat down with Programme Director Diana Cable and Director Kerryn Palmer. There is always quite an eclectic mix of work on in the festival. What is the process behind choosing plays for production? Diana: One of our other programmes is the Playwrights’ Initiative.

At the beginning, we commissioned established writers to create work, but around about 2000, we began commissioning emerging playwrights to create new works. We commission three new playwrights to create three original plays, and over a period of about eight months they are given a script advisor to work with them to develop the play for the festival the following year. How long have you been involved with Young and Hungry, Kerryn? Kerryn: 20 years. I acted in the first Young and Hungry when I was

young. I’ve always had a passion for youth theatre. Prior to this, I hadn’t worked with Young and Hungry for about ten years, but I decided I needed some fresh young energy. It can get a bit jaded working in this industry, especially in Wellington, so what I love about working with young people is their enthusiasm. Young and Hungry spread to Auckland in 2003. Do you see Young and Hungry going even further to become a nationwide theatre festival, or are you quite happy with Wellington and Auckland at the moment? D: We are interested in working collaboratively with other

organisations that are happy to embrace the philosophy and mentoring system that we have. At the moment, we are talking to Court Theatre in Christchurch and Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North. They recognise the connection between the established theatre practitioners and the young people, and they recognise that it provides a valued connection up into the professional industry. Court Theatre is interested in the process in the way that it might bring young people closer to the educational programmes they are already doing. For us, the collaborative process is as important as the outcome on stage. There has been a lot of debate about the future of the arts in Wellington. How do you, as both experienced arts

The Belief GamesIssue Issue

professionals, see the future of the arts in Wellington? Particularly Young and Hungry. K: I think Young and Hungry is a really important place. Theatre is a

particularly important way of getting kids away from digital screens. It’s more important than ever that theatre exists so that kids can experience something real. People say that it is a dying art; it has its place beside film. I’m quietly confident that theatre will keep going. However, things need to change, ways of thinking about funding need to change. But Young and Hungry has a really great method. D: I do think Young and Hungry plays a major part in the Wellington theatre scene, because it is a proven feeding ground for a lot of areas. All of our programmes are free to the participants. We provide all the technical aspects for theatre-making, not just acting. At the end of every year, we do a survey, and the one answer that comes up time and time again is you can’t do this alone. I have learned to be part of a team and collaborate, and from coming through us, young theatremakers are learning to set up their own theatre companies, and take on all aspects of theatre, not just the acting.

“You have to be quite resilient. As well, consider doing something else while you’re making theatre. Be realistic, but also stay true to yourself. In addition to that, question why you are doing it. How is what I am going to do going to contribute to the world, not just myself?” Do you have any advice for young theatre-makers? D: Put yourself out there. K: You have to be quite resilient. As well, consider doing something

else while you’re making theatre. Be realistic, but also stay true to yourself. In addition to that, question why you are doing it. How is what I am going to do going to contribute to the world, not just myself? The Young and Hungry Festival of New Theatre features three new plays from Wellington’s brightest young talent: Our Parents’ Children by Alex Lodge at 6.30 pm. Second Afterlife by Ralph McCubbin Howell at 8 pm. Uncle Minotaur by Dan Bain at 9.30 pm. The festival runs from the now to 2 August at BATS Theatre.

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What’s On Books:

Writers on Mondays: Weekly literary events and readings at Te Papa run by the IIML. July 21: Three poets - Maria McMillan, Rachel O’Neill and Marty Smith - read their work and reflect on the process of writing. Every Monday, 12.15–1.15 pm, The Marae, Te Papa. Free entry. Thursday 24 July Poetry reading at Vicbooks celebrate the release of Essential New Zealand Poems with six of NZ’s leading poets. 6pm, Vic Books at Kelburn Campus. Free entry. Film:

New Zealand International Film Festival - begins on the 25th of July. Grab a hard copy of the programme or check out the festival’s website http://www.nziff.co.nz/2014/ wellington/ to find out more details about screening times. Releases Begin Again - 24th July Healing - 24th July Dwayne Johnson as Hercules - 24th July Everything We Loved - 24th July The Film Archive Tricks N’ Treats, a moving image exhibition considering the framing of activities such as drinking, sex, and gambling, alongside societal attitudinal changes. Until 23rd August. Check out Gauge, the Film Archive blog for interviews and insights. Music:

I Am Giant Album release tour. Friday July 25, 8pm

Bodega, $35 Sophie and The Realistic Expectations Saturday July 26, 9pm Bodega, $10 Peanut Butter Wolf Worth leaving the house for on a Sunday. Sunday July 27, 7pm Meow, $26 if you are a Vic/Massey student Theatre:

Young and Hungry Festival of New Theatre Our Parents’ Children at 6:30pm Second Afterlife at 8pm Uncle Minotaur at 9:30pm 18th of July to the 2nd of August at BATS Theatre Constellations 7:30pm at Circa Theatre 26th of July to the 23rd of August The Importance of Being Ernest 7:30pm at Khandallah Arts Theatre 17th - 26th of July Visual Arts:

David Trubridge: So Far, A Maker’s Journey David Trubridge is one of New Zealand’s most internationally celebrated designers. The exhibition So Far tells the story of Trubridge’s development over the last four decades by showcasing many of his most celebrated pieces. Pataka, until 24th August Kerrie Hughes: Metaphor Tree Bowen Galleries, until 27th July Rob Cherry: Big People Little Trees Suite Gallery, until 26th July

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Friday afternoons from 3pm - close

Puzzle Time 1

Target 0-15 words: aw :( 16-25 words: fine 26-35 words: learned 35+ words: winner

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36. fish eggs 37. something you have when you are nervous DOWN 1. place in the woods 2. rodent 3. say no or dosn’t want 4. a type of movement 5. eve’s husbands 6. the opposite of on 7. pester 13. eat (past tense) 15. a great grade 17. something you wipe with 18. son’s best friend 19. what you put stuff in 20. a place in Scotland 21. what you get in the mail 22. what we use to hear 24. what we breath 25. the opposite of below 26. excited 28. voodoo 29. a type of pet 30. the opposite of no 32. a round circle

ACROSS 1. transportation 3. color of an apple or cherry 5. oak offspring 8. another word for monkey 9. the opposite of subtract 10. what a baseball hits 11. something indoors to cool off heat 12. Slang for cigarette 14. what you are called 16. gauranteed 19. a wild creature 21. what people do to get someone to come here 23. mom and dad ask you to take this out 27. something on a bracelet 29. what you do when your upset 31. place in India 32. a pet 33. phonetic V 34. something sticky and slimy 35. tongue sense

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VIC OE - VIC STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAMME Why not study overseas as part of your degree?! Study in English, earn Vic credit, get StudyLink and grants, and explore the world! Weekly seminars on Wednesdays, Level 2, Easterfield Building, 12.50 pm Website: http://victoria.ac.nz/exchange Visit us: Level 2, Easterfield Building Drop-in hours: Mon–Wed 1–3 pm, Thurs & Fri 10 am –12 pm Missed the Trimester 1 (2015) exchange deadline? Contact the Vic OE staff as you may be able to submit a late application.

VIC IDS Have you ever considered the limits that would be placed on your life if you weren’t granted the right to citizenship? Such is the reality for minority groups living on the Thai–Burma border. In the face of this, you might not imagine that creative expression could be of any help – but Leila Goddard begs to differ. We are excited to have Leila, a NZ artist and teacher who has spent time in Thailand, as our speaker for the first VicIDS event of Trimester Two! Leila will talk about her experiences running creative projects with marginalised people and the challenges of ‘voluntourism’. Come along on Monday 21 July (TODAY!) at 5.15 pm to hear Leila speak, in room 304 of the Cotton Building on Kelburn Campus. Fair Trade tea and coffee will be provided as usual to warm you up and fuel our discussion. See you there! Victoria International Development Society.

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B R O U G H T T O YO U B Y

The Games Issue

TOASTMASTERS Pipitea students – communicate with confidence! Toastmasters helps you improve your communication and leadership skills in a supportive learn-by-doing environment. Now, Toastmasters is coming to Pipitea Campus for the first time. Develop your skills along with fellow Pipitea students – increase your self-confidence, become a better speaker, learn to run effective meetings, and add that spark to your CV. Find out more at our next meeting on Tuesday 22 July, RHMZ11, 5.45–7 pm. All welcome!

CALLING ALL VINYL LOVERS ‘A Vinyl Affair’ is happening next month! With FREE ENTRY to the public, DJs spinning vinyl all afternoon, spot prizes; not to mention, the chance to dig through the crates for the special gem of a record – this will be a great afternoon for music enthusiasts. The event will be held at the Southern Cross, 39 Abel Tasman St, Wellington, on Saturday 23 August from 12–4 pm. Anyone interested in selling records at the fair should contact Si White at si@dailyjam.co.nz for more information.

SUPPORT A GOOD CAUSE On 30 July, Peoples Coffee are donating 50c from every coffee sold at Vic Books Café to Wellington Rape Crisis.

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contributors editors: Duncan McLachlan & Cameron Price d e s i g n e r : I m o g e n Te m m news editor: Sophie Boot c r e at i v e e d i t o r : C h l o e Dav i e s c h i e f s u b - e d i t o r : N i c k Fa r g h e r distributor: Joe Morris f e at u r e w r i t e r : P h i l i p M c S w e e n e y ( c h i e f ) , P e n n y G a u lt , Alex Hollis w e b e d i t o r : D e x t e r E d wa r d s n e w s i n t e r n s : S i m o n D e n n i s , S t e p h Tr e n g r o v e arts editors: Nina Powles (Books), Charlotte Doyle (Film), H e n r y C o o k e ( M u s i c ) , R o s e C a n n ( Th e a t r e ) , S i m o n G e n n a r d ( Vi s u a l A r t s ) , E l i s e M u n d e n ( Fa s h i o n ) , M i c h a e l G r a h a m ( Te l e v i s i o n ) I l lu s t r at i o n s : P h o e b e M o r r i s general contributors: Jo n n y A b b ot t, S o n ya C l a r k , D e c l a n D o h e rt y - R a m s ay, M a d e l e i n e F o r e m a n , M a r n i e G r o o t , Te P o H a w a i k i r a n g i , J o n a t h a n H o b m a n , E v e K e n n e d y, E m m a M c Au l i f f e , M o l ly M c C a rt h y, Jo rd a n McCluskey, Eleanor Merton, Gus Mitchell, Sam Northcott, C r a i g Pa r k e r, S a m Pat c h e t t, A l i c e P e a c o c k , O l l i e R i t c h i e , S o f i a R o b e r t s , C a r l o S a l i z z o , F r a n c e s c a S h e p a r d , J a n n e S o n g , Wi l b u r To w n s e n d , S t e p h Tr e n g r o v e , J u l i a We l l s , D a v i d W i l l i a m s

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