What will 2012 bring?

Since my earlier post (Christian Manga – the Good, the Bad and the Okay) seems to have risen to a high rank on Google, I’ve been getting a number of responses and queries about Christian Manga from various people interested in creating Christian media of various sorts, and wanting to hear what I thought about it. Therefore, I’ve decided to post a series of follow-up posts, dealing specifically with my thoughts about the creation of Christian manga.

One of the important things to note about the Japanese manga industry is that it is very targeted. The market is very clearly segmented by audience, and every manga magazine specialises in publishing stories for a select group of people. The most common demographic segments in manga (at least in the stories that are popularised overseas) are the ones targeted at shounen (young boys), shoujo (young girls), seinen (young men) and josei (young women) audiences. Each of these manga demographics has certain conventions in theme and style – derived from the psychological needs / state of its’ audience, and historical developments in the field.

This post will deal with the topic of audience and themes – specifically, with the shounen and shoujo demographics.

Shounen Manga

Shounen manga caters to young boys, typically around the age ranges of 10-18 years old. Examples of well-known shounen manga include Naruto and One Piece (action/adventure), Detective Conan/Case Closed (mystery), Eyeshield 21 (sports), School Rumble (comedy) and I’’s (romance). One of the biggest trends in shounen manga is the ‘battle manga’ style of storytelling, most commonly identified with the manga magazine Shonen Jump. It centres around the direct and personal resolution of conflict through individual combat / battles of skill. These can be combat skills (Naruto, Bleach, Rurouni Kenshin), or it could be brainpower and deductive skills (Conan, Death Note), or other skills in different areas (football skills in Eyeshield 21, spiritual powers in Shaman King, cooking skills in Yakitate Japan, etc.).

For creators, it is helpful to think of the themes that appeal to this audience of young boys. Shounen battle manga tends towards themes of ambition, camaraderie, competition and power – becoming the best at something, with the help of friends. And each character in shounen manga is known by a few characteristic skills – the ninja techniques of Naruto and his friends, the specializations of the sports players in Eyeshield 21 or Slam Dunk. At this stage of development, many boys are starting to deal with their adolescence, and issues of identity. And for boys, identity is constructed and determined by one’s abilities in competition with others. A boy is known by how well he does something – his abilities and skills – and how he compares to others in the ladder rankings of power and status… whether determined by rough games in the neighbourhood playground, exam rankings in the classroom, trophies on the sports field, or in the fantasy land of the manga world.

To engage young boys, then, your manga needs to touch on some of these themes: ambition – wanting to become the best at something, camaderie – finding friends and comrades to help you on your way and fight next to you, competition – facing and overcoming challenges, and power – when and how to use your strength to fight for your ideals. Boys follow the strong – strong of arm and strong of heart. How can you show the strength and heroism of Christianity to young boys? How can you create Christian role models in your stories that are kakkoii (“cool”)?

For the most part, those themes deal with the majority of shounen manga. Shounen and seinen romance and comedy manga have some different challenges, which I’ll talk about in another post. But for creating shounen battle / competition manga, those are the essentials.

Shoujo Manga

Shoujo manga caters to young girls, roughly 10 – 18 years of age. Unlike shounen manga, shoujo manga tends to be more diverse in terms of subject area, conventions and storytelling style. The major genres of shoujo manga are the magical girl genre (exemplified by Sailor Moon), historical/fantasy adventure (Inuyasha, Fushigi Yuugi), romance (Ouran High School Host Club, Hana Yori Dango), everyday life drama (Fruits Basket, Baby and Me), and what I like to call the ‘ambition’ genre – which is usually about a girl who has one particular talent that she pours her whole heart into (usually creative arts or sports), and her developmental progress in that talent (Glass Mask, Skip Beat, Yumeiro Patisserie).

The three top themes to remember when creating shoujo manga are “relationships”, “dreams” and “drama”. Regardless of the setting, style or storytelling, all young teenage girls are interested in developing relationships between people (especially romantic ones), pursuit of their hearts’ desires, and how dramatic happenings in the plot impact their favourite characters. A large part of adolescence, for a teenage girl, is discovering the web of social relationships that underlie her world, and then figuring out or negotiating her own place in it. “Where do I belong?” and “How can I pursue my dreams, in spite of challenges?” are common questions that you need to deal with in the course of your story. There almost always is an internal conflict between the inner ‘true self’ of a girl, and the outward requirements of her societal position or situation. This is the basic engine that drives most girl-oriented storytelling across all mediums, from movies (Disney’s Mulan, High School Musical) to books (Anne of Green Gables, Sweet Valley High) to TV shows (Gossip Girl, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) to magazines and games.

When bringing themes of Christianity to young girls, again, the focus should be on relationships, drama and dreams. What is a relationship with Jesus Christ like, and how can she benefit from His influence in her life? How can Christianity help her overcome obstacles and challenges in life, especially in terms of finding/making her own place in the world? What kind of dreams does a Christian girl have, and why are they so important? Will Jesus / other Christians accept her for who she is, or place another burden of societal expectations and responsibilities that conflict with her identity? How will her relationships with other people grow, change or diminish with Christ?

Since I don’t belong to the demographic, I hesitate to say more. But one thing I’ve learned – a good cast of characters is essential. Since most of the story is driven by either internal conflict or societal relations, you need strong characters with clashing views. Preferably a strong male lead and a strong female lead in conflict (plus some unresolved romantic tension). And there are no perfect characters in manga. The good prince is a goofball or a gullible idiot. The dashing rogue has anger issues or a traumatic past hurt. The reliable friend is prone to jealousy or misunderstandings. Even the rival or enemy usually has a touch of goodness within him, to balance the overall evilness. It is the flaws in the character stereotypes that make interesting reading.

Thought #2: Most Christian games aim at imparting knowledge. That’s not my goal. My goal is to create games about Christian PRACTICE. Let the player feel what it’s like to be a Christian, by putting them into a shoes of a practising Christian. Not by telling them the theology or history or message of Christianity. Show, don’t tell. And it’s very possible that my game really will appeal a lot to the casual game crowd, who want to experience games which put them into familiar roles they see, with ordinary people in real-life settings doing their everyday activities.

I accepted Christ was I was 13-14, in my secondary school Christian Fellowship. We had a youth pastor who visited us every week from Calvary Church KL, and he would speak at our meetings. One of those meetings, he gave an altar call, and I accepted Christ then as my Lord and Saviour. The next year, the seniors who were leading our CF graduated, and I and a few other of the younger ones were left to form the  nucleus of the next generation of CF leaders. So I became a leader of the CF. There was a committee of about 4-5 of us, and we had a very good teacher advisor – Ms. Yap, who helped us organise meetings. I was a CF leader, but I didn’t really know much about what a life in Christ entailed. The CF was just an event – a weekly activity that we would organise. It became more of a social gathering than anything else. We ended up playing games most of the time.

Then when I got to college, out of sheer inertia, I sought out and joined my college CF. If I was a Christian, then I thought I should join and hang out with other Christians in college. That was my thinking at that time. Christianity was a social group identifier for me. So I joined the Taylor’s College CF, which was also known as the Mid-Week Service, and we were partnered and hosted by the Asian Youth Ambassadors, a Christian youth organization founded and led by Pastors Kenneth and Sandra Chin (they’ve now birthed a 700-member church out of the seeds they sowed during that college ministry).  After about a year, I was approached to be a leader of the CF… to be part of the committee. Eventually I became Secretary. While I did grow a lot in my own Christian walk during that time, my service in the CF wasn’t really about my service to God. It was just something I had to do. A list of tasks to do in order to keep an organization running… and I was comfortable with the organization, and I didn’t want to see it stop, and somebody had to do it… so I helped do it. That was my attitude. I didn’t want to see the CF stop, because that’s where all my friends were, so I took on the burden of helping to organize meetings, to keep things going. In the process, I learned the procedures of how to run a morning prayer meeting, the order of a typical service / cell meeting, and all the nitty-gritty that goes behind the scenes of running regular youth meetings.

But still, what I was interested in was running the meetings. People were only incidental to me. I had friends, of course, but they took a back seat compared to the desire in me that “the show must go on”. The program was important. If you stick to the program, and people got blessed by it… well, good for them. The program has fulfilled its’ purpose. If people didn’t get blessed, then it’s okay. Just keep trying with the program, and things will work out eventually. At that time, I also had a very vague conception of what “being blessed” meant.

As I look back now, I wonder if I really touched anyone’s life at all while I was in college. I think I impacted only one or two people significantly… my friend and classmate Chuan Shern, who I invited to a camp where he got saved and whom I helped to serve as an example and give advice on the Christian perspective on things sometimes after that, and my junior Vivien, who had just recently accepted Christ, but didn’t know how to do quiet time. I explained what that involved – “a mini-church service by yourself” – and lent her the bible study book that I had found very useful in my own formative Christian growth. She thanked me for it later, and told me that my explanation and the book had really helped her grow. But other than that, I don’t think I really made much of a difference in people’s lives. In fact, I’m pretty sure I made a few horrible or embarrassing mistakes along the way. (I can still remember my first time as an MC for the service. Ouch.)

This carried on into university. Being the good Christian boy that I was, I visited all three Christian organizations on campus, and half a dozen churches before settling down in Community of Praise Baptist Church and Varsity Christian Fellowship. I joined the dedicated Bible study group on Mondays (Swordfighters), as well as three cells – on Wednesday (Science CF), Thursday (PGP hostel CF) and Friday nights (DNA church cell) respectively. Tuesday was the CF-wide Sunset Prayer meeting. After about a year of that, I had burned out. I left the church, got into video game addiction, and only joined PGP CF (the VCF branch that had meetings in my student hostel) once a week. Because of my background, I was asked to help co-lead Bible studies and cell meetings for PGP CF in my second year of university, and I did so… again, it was more of a “keep things running” mentality. I tried to organize daily devotions and prayer meetings, because I thought that’s what a CF leader should do. But my heart wasn’t really in it, and the efforts died out eventually. Thank God, I wasn’t the PGP CF chair… each year I was serving, I found someone else who could be the chairperson representing our branch to VCF. I was always the number two. Maybe God was gracious, because frankly… I don’t think I would have made a really good cell leader at that time.

However, what PGP CF taught me was the close-ness and the bond that can grow up between people who meet up regularly every week. Even until today, several years from when we’ve all graduated, we still try to gather at least once a year to catch up. And I learned how to prepare and lead small group Bible studies and worship during my 3 years at PGP CF. And I polished my eloquence in praying out loud for other people too.

So there I was. I had all of this experience. I had all the skills to effectively lead a small group, honed through years and years of Christian meetings… nearly 8 years in leadership of various Christian organizations and cells. I could run a cell group meeting all by myself from start to finish without any problems… and I often still do so. Frankly, looking back at it now… I honestly wonder whether I made any difference at all to the people I’ve met and the lives that I had the privilege to care for. I believe the last 1-2 years have made me grow more than anything else in terms of my understanding of people and God’s heart for them.

When I accepted a leadership role in Branches – the young adults cell I’m leading now in church – I had a lot of reservations. I had already learned from experience that if God didn’t call you to a ministry, don’t bother stepping in. It’s a waste of time, because it won’t grow. During my years as a leader in all of the other ministries, they didn’t grow. I didn’t want to repeat the same experience here. I spent three months in prayer (off-and-on) about it, and needed a lot of encouragement from Sylvia (the previous Branches cell leader), plus the prospect of co-leadership with Huiting before I agreed. And even then, it was partially a responsibility angle again – Huiting didn’t want to lead by herself, and if she wouldn’t, then Branches would have no leader. So I filled in the other half necessary for Huiting to lead. I ran the meetings, and she took care of the members.

However, it was only after Huiting got married and left me with the sole responsibility of leading Branches that I really started to grow as a cell leader, I think. Many things have changed since I first took up leadership. In fact, of the original Branches group from Sylvia’s time, only Natasha, myself, Li Ping and Darren remain. All the rest has changed. I’m really grateful and thankful for God’s grace upon our cell, and for each of our new members. And somehow, this last year has been a year of great growth for me, I think. With no one else to share responsibility with, I now had to be the one to start caring for the members spiritually. I had to listen to them, pray with them, share my life stories with them and disciple them and help them grow in each of their personal, individual walks with God.

And I have never been more blessed.

This is what cell leadership is all about. It’s not about how to run meetings, or lead Bible studies. It’s about the day-to-day, spiritual watchfulness and care over the people whose growth God has asked you to be a part of. It’s about discipling them, watching them grow into spiritual maturity. It’s about listening to their problems, and helping them find answers and solace in His words, as well as in practical matters. In a weird way, I thank God for each and every problem that my cell members bring to me, because it gives me an opportunity to grow in love for them, and to learn the limits of my own abilities and why I need to depend on God. This is real. This is meaningful. This work touches and changes people’s lives. It’s not about running meetings, or planning programs. It’s about changing lives. About finding ways to help people grow.

There’s still a lot I have left to learn. But this past one year has taught me so much. And by the grace of God, I will continue to grow to accommodate more of his love shining through my life.

Power is the ability to exert your will on the surroundings – to make the environment, people, places, things, respond to your bidding. The ability to control part of the world around you. Most games are about power. Some people have claimed that many hardcore games are all about fulfilling the “male power fantasy”… the ability to dominate and master the world around them, by proving they are bigger, badder and more powerful than anything the game can bring against them. It primarily exists in two forms in games. The first form is the ability to take direct action that becomes increasingly more powerful as you progress through the game (eg. more powerful weapons in first-person shooters, higher-leveled characters in role-playing games, faster cars in racing games, etc.). The second form is the ability to control more and more things as you progress through the game (eg. more soldiers and resources in strategy games, more objects and tools in simulation games, or even something as simple as more tables in Diner Dash).

It seems to me that most games fall into one or both of these paradigms – either make your actions affect the world more and more as you progress, or give you a wider and wider array of possible actions as you progress. All of this is predicated on direct control – you command, they obey. Often instantly. That’s what feedback mechanisms are for, after all. They let you as they player know that You Are In Control – that you have agency, that You Can Change The World with the push of a button.

I think this view may be limited.

I think the enormous popularity of social games are showing why it is limited.

Think about it. Just how powerful or how much in control do you feel in a social game? Heck, not just the ones on Facebook. Even real-life games based around social interaction, like Charades or Taboo. The point of the game isn’t about power or control. It’s about interaction… it’s about making connections – between people, between ideas and words, between perception and action.

It’s about influence.

Which led me to start thinking… what would an influence-based hardcore game be like? What would the mature form of social gaming turn out to be, ten, twenty years from now? So here’s what I know about influence:

• Influence is not direct. It is usually indirect in pursuit of its goals. I don’t tell you what to do. I persuade you that it’s worth doing.
• Influence is based on connections. It’s not about what you can do. It’s about who you know.
• Influence requires that the other party have wills of their own, that are distinct from yours. We control robots. We influence people.
• Influence often is closely linked to several other societal phenomena. Morality, social norms, public perception, ties of friendship, emotions, traditions, ideas. We make appeals to God, to tradition, to principles and laws, to the things that touch people’s hearts when we want to influence them.
• Influence requires that you care about something – either the agent you want to influence, or the result you are influencing them towards. It requires meaning to be created for an action to be taken.

Where do we find systems of influence working in real life?

We see systems of power operating in the military, science and technology, and in feudal governments (which perhaps explains why those themes are so common in hardcore games today). Command, control, conquer. Beat the game. Beat it HARD.

Systems of influence are built to connect, to persuade, to relate. You find them in religion, in politics, in the media, in the ordinary everyday relationships between family and friends.

In other words, everything that hasn’t really been addressed fully by (Western) games as yet. There has been, even to this day a decade later, exactly ONE successful implementation of a commercial game wholly based around interactions between family and friends. (I exaggerate slightly for effect… The Sims series certainly contains many more iterations than just one game. Nevertheless.) There are no decent games about religious or political influence – the ones that aren’t backed up by guns and assassins, that is. There have been many that have tried to incorporate sub-themes or minigames of influence into games about power (the Fable series comes to mind, as do many MMORPGs). But they sometimes feel like they’re trying to shoehorn influence in as an afterthought, rather than as a core mechanic. Or they’re trying to mix and match with power games, instead of strictly focusing on mechanisms for influence, and that dumbs it down. (Dragon Age, I’m looking at you.)

I wonder what would happen if a developer tried focusing on nothing except influence. A game entirely focused on persuading people or NPCs to do things, a game about understanding people’s motivations, a game about making the right connections between peoples, desires and ideas. A game about building relationships and meaning with agents that have a mind of their own – that you can’t overtly control, but you can influence. It would be a remarkably interesting game to play, I think. Any suggestions?

Just recently, I read two manga series one after another – both dealing with Christian themes, but vastly different from each other. The first was Little House with an Orange Roof (a.k.a. Orange Yane no Chiisana Ie), and the second was Let’s Bible. The contrast between the two serves to illustrate an important point.

There is a difference between using Christian themes as a variation of a medium’s standard tropes, and using the standard tropes of a medium to explain Christian themes. One applies the Form of Christianity, but leaves the underlying structure and content unchanged. The other leaves the forms of the medium unchanged, but applies Christianity to change the structure and content. In simpler terms, Let’s Bible just uses Christian names and symbolism as a thin layer for what is in all essence a shounen action-comedy series. On the other hand, Orange Roof starts with a typical seinen romantic comedy setting, but gradually introduces Christian themes and messages through the behaviour of its characters. You can easily tell the difference once you read them. The creator of Orange Roof is a practising Christian – he himself gives testimony in his author comments at the back of every chapter (chapter 10′s comments are translated, for an example). Let’s Bible, on the other hand, is drawn by a pair of Korean artists, who seem like they absorbed the surface knowledge of what the Gospel means and the major characters of the New Testament (probably from cultural acquaintance), but are not actually practising Christians themselves. Or perhaps they are practising Christians, but have not found a way to integrate their faith into their works.

To really create a good Christian manga, you need to have a strong background in the techniques of the medium, an understanding of its tropes and how to use them to tell a good story. And then beyond that, you must really think about the message, and how to best encapsulate it in a way that FITS with both the properties of the message, and the properties of the medium you are using. Orange Roof did it well. Let’s Bible did it terribly, because it fit the medium, but didn’t fit the message. A third manga, created by Americans, called Serenity, also tried it… that one fit the message, but didn’t really fit the medium. It was okay, but because it was targeted at American teens, there were certain stylistic choices that moved it away from pure manga and into a different sort of comic. It fit THAT comic medium very well, and I think it thus was a success on that level (as also proven by sales), but the medium was no longer that of manga.

In order to really create good Christian media content, you need to find a common ground where both the medium and message can meet and synergise properly to create something unique. The themes of Christianity must go deeper than surface level – in fact, sometimes they can be buried under the guise of what seems to be typical fare for the medium, but become more explicit as you delve deeper or further into it.

This is the problem that I also see in the Christian games industry. The reason why so many Christian games are bad is because the creators either lack a deep enough understanding of the medium they are working with (Christian educators who are trying to make games because they think the people they want to reach out to would be interested in anything if it comes in a “game” package), or they do not have a deep understanding of the message they want to bring (gamers who want to enjoy the same sort of games they’ve always played, but slap “Christian” labels on it so that they can feel justified in front of their non-gamer Christian family).

AND IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK.

You can’t slap on a “Christian” label to a standard hardcore game and expect that it would be good. Likewise, you can’t just package a “game” around what is essentially a bunch of Sunday school material and expect that it would be appealing to the audience. What is needed is a fundamental approach to the problem of designing Christian games – you need a deep understanding of the properties of the medium and the properties of the message before you can truly design a good (and fun) Christian game. The current games out there enjoy some limited success because of the sheer hunger of people for such games. But it’s limited. I believe that when we can see the real thing, we’ll appreciate what the difference is between a slapdash approach and a fundamental design approach. Unfortunately, that time may be a long time in coming.

EDIT (9 June 2011): Since I’ve been receiving numerous comments about the contents of this post from people interested in Christian manga, I’ve decided to post a series of thoughts about how manga intersects with Christianity. You can read the first of the follow-up posts here: Creating Christian Manga – Audience and Themes (Part 1)

I completely and thoroughly approve of this couple, and I’m very happy for both of them. During the wedding ceremony, something went “click” inside of me, and I felt myself saying internally, “Ah, this is just RIGHT. They are meant for each other.” It’s a very special and rare feeling that I’ve only experienced at one other wedding (Bee’s one), and so I’m sure that this marriage will be special.

The wedding ceremony itself I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it was impressive and unique – Jason sang her down the aisle during the wedding ceremony, and they had written their own wedding vows, tacking on about four or five paragraphs to the traditional script – but on the other hand, it was almost TOO showy, and I didn’t know many people there. Still. I managed to have a good time, and despite the showiness of the atmosphere, the speeches that were made were all warm and down-to-earth homey. Maybe that’s what happens when the boy-next-door marries the girl-next-door. The families have known each other for a long time now, and there’s a special bond between old friends.

In any case, I’m very very happy for them, and I hope to find something like that for my marriage as well, someday.

Big Bang’s MVs are always so interesting.

The Stars Like Dust was the first Asimov book I read, back in Garden International School, when I was about 14 years old. I remember coming across it in the secondary school library, and read it a few times throughout my school year. But ever since I left school, I’ve been unable to buy, borrow or steal a copy for 10 years… until now. I saw it being a released in a new edition at Borders bookstore and snapped it up immediately. It’s basically a simple space-adventure story, with an ending that is a little propangandic for the United States / democracy. Isaac Asimov himself had remarked that it was the book that he least liked among all 100+ stories that he had written. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to find a reprint of the book anywhere until now, 17 years after he died. It even says in the flyleaf that it was published with permission from the Estate of Isaac Asimov, so I’m guessing his relatives must have finally agreed to it.

But I don’t care… even if Asimov himself hated the book, I loved it, and still do, despite its’ flaws. No one can hate the first book that introduced them to an author they love. The Stars Like Dust was that for me.

1. Sometimes trying to arrange for a competitive advantage backfires on you. There was this one team which was hastily formed one week later than the rest due to scheduling and grouping problems, so I tried to pick the best members from other groups to compensate for the 1-week loss. The group ended up having three technical people, which was supposed to give them an edge in the second, computer game project. It didn’t really work too well, since they all wanted to do the same job, and it produced an imbalanced game at the end (high technical polish, low design values). Interdisciplinary variety is still best.
2. I need to improve my turnaround time on grading assignments. This semester was terrible in terms of keeping to deadlines for me. Admittedly, my workload tripled since I got assigned a second module to help teach, plus started my Master’s course. But not being able to get feedback and marks back to the students on time resulted in them not performing as well as they could have for the subsequent assignments. I have to improve my marking-turnaround time to three days or less.
3. Need to spend more time contacting students and using email to leave a paper trail. I was a bit slack in following up on students this semester if they missed classes. Partly it was because I was just too distracted and busy with other things, but still… it’s part of doing due diligence that I need to improve. Professionalism, and all that.

What to teach if there was an Advanced Game Design course:

• Player types, play styles and demographics (Bartle’s test)
• Emotions of play (Lazarro’s Four Keys)
• Difficulty curves – how to balance them across levels (Rule of 3? Mario’s 4 stages). Difference between hardcore and casual difficulty curves. Games should be forgiving of errors, but not easy to perfect.
• Choices – How to weight them properly. Not every choice should be equally important. How to manage cognitive load of player. Grokking. (Raph Koster’s Theory of Fun)
• Dynamics of play – types of interactions between different players, playing styles, how different player power configurations (asymmetric, zero-sum, etc.) lead to different dynamics.