Month: August 2014

This is the end, my only friend

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Today we celebrate the end of Blaugust. At first I figured I would try it because it was a great way to challenge myself to blog some more, but over the course of it the thing I feel most appreciative for is the amount I learned about writing. I tend to overwork whatever I’m writing and never get anything done. This month made me get something out there, even if it was raw and emotional and maybe not what I wanted to write.

But often it was what I needed to write.

Thanks for all the fish

First, thanks to Belghast, for organizing this whole crazy thing. We’d never have gotten started if it weren’t for him.

Second, thanks to Ashgar, who kept riffing with me on a number of posts.

Big thanks to both Cannot Be Tamed and Alternative Chat for their questionnaires which gave me some structure to post my thoughts into. It was a huge help and I had a blast with both of those questions.

Finally thanks to everyone who commented on posts, retweeted me, and all my new friends on Twitter. The new social circle is the prize that is most valuable to me out of this whole exercise.

Moving Forward

I’m probably going to start blogging on a twice a week basis, with probably more cogent blog posts. I will be trying to keep up writing in general, but I have enough things I need to sit down and work on that I am not short of projects.

I’m sure there will be something going up for the end of Blaugust, so should definitely check out the Nook.

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Feels

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Today I’m falling back on one of Belghast’s writing prompts.  “What was the first game that made you ‘feel’ something”.  I think it’s interesting that Bel says we’ve all had a human emotional response to a game; it wasn’t all that many years ago that the idea that games could provoke a response in the way that other media does was widely dismissed.  As the new form of media, gaming was experiencing the same sort of disdain that comic books, television, movies previously had.  Looking back now, after experiencing games like Bioshock or Brothers, it seems silly to think that people thought like that.  I was disagreeing with them way back in the 80s though, because the first game that provoked an emotional reponse in me was a text adventure.

Infocom made a massive number of text adventures back in the early days of personal computing.  The one that first really hit me in the feels was Planetfall.  In Planetfall you played the part of a Stellar Patrol member (basically the United Federation of Planets) who is stranded on an apparently depopulated planet and must figure out what happened there and how to contact help and escape.

Early on the course of the adventure, you come across a ‘helpful’ robot named Floyd.  Floyd has the personality of a small child, and mostly tags along with you making comments on the areas you enter and the like.  Looking at it dispassionately he’s really not that complicated, but he’s very endearing.

Late in the game, you reach a point where you need to activate a machine to continue.  The activation card, however, is locked in a room with a number of deadly mutants.  Trying to enter the room yourself results in your quick and bloody demise.  Once Floyd becomes aware of the card, however…  well, I’ll quote the game here.

“Looks dangerous in there,” says Floyd. “I don’t think you should go inside.” He peers in again. “We’ll need card there to fix computer. Hmmm… I know! Floyd will get card. Robots are tough. Nothing can hurt robots. You open the door, then Floyd will rush in. Then you close door. When Floyd knocks, open door again. Okay? Go!” Floyd’s voice trembles slightly as he waits for you to open the door.
> OPEN THE DOOR
“The door opens and Floyd, pausing only for the briefest moment, plunges into the Bio Lab. Immediately, he is set upon by hideous, mutated monsters! More are heading straight toward the open door! Floyd shrieks and yells to you to close the door.”
> CLOSE THE DOOR
From within the lab you hear ferocious growlings, the sounds of a skirmish, and then a high-pitched metallic scream!
> WAIT
Time passes…

You hear, slightly muffled by the door, three fast knocks, followed by the distinctive sound of tearing metal.
> OPEN THE DOOR
Floyd stumbles out of the Bio Lab, clutching the mini-booth card. The mutations rush toward the open doorway!
> CLOSE THE DOOR
And not a moment too soon! You hear a pounding from the door as the monsters within vent their frustration at losing their prey.

Floyd staggers to the ground, dropping the mini card. He is badly torn apart, with loose wires and broken circuits everywhere. Oil flows from his lubrication system. He obviously has only moments to live.

You drop to your knees and cradle Floyd’s head in your lap. Floyd looks up at his friend with half-open eyes. “Floyd did it … got card. Floyd a good friend, huh?” Quietly, you sing Floyd’s favorite song, the Ballad of the Starcrossed Miner: ….

As you finish the last verse, Floyd smiles with contentment, and then his eyes close as his head rolls to one side. You sit in silence for a moment, in memory of a brave friend who gave his life so that you might live.”

Reading that just now, I teared up a little.  I was no older than 10 when I played Planetfall and got to that point.  It was heartbreaking.  Floyd had been my companion through the whole game, and now he had sacrificed himself for me.  That’s the first time I remember feeling real emotion in response to a game.  Planetfall came out in 1983, over 30 years ago.  It had no graphics, no sound, nothing but plain text, and yet it had more heart than some games I see come out in modern times.

Source: Thalen Speaks
Feels

Games I have been playing

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So, I’ve been playing a crazy amount of Final Fantasy XIV. Enough that I haven’t had much to really talk about on this blog on the topic of games, because I’ve been mostly just doing the grinding elements of the end game to get geared up. I am now geared up.

STUPID FRIGGING BELLY WINDOW
Pictured: Me geared up

I’ve been playing this game for a solid two weeks, and I’ve still got content to work through, but between Hunts and Roulettes it’s felt kinda grindy. I’ll probably dial down my play over the next week just in time for me to have my life consumed by Destiny. That said, in an attempt to get some other games in, I purchased last weeks Humble Bundle and started to play through some of those games.

Ready, Fight

One Finger Death Punch was the game in the bundle I was the most interested in. It looked very pretty, and is ultimately a pattern matching game. I like the rhythm games it shares it’s DNA with so I tried it out.

That’s a video of me completing on of the standard levels. All I do is press X or B on my controller when an enemy or object is in my reach. This actually has more game to it than you might realize as some mobs will dodge attacks and require specific patterns to fight, and some weapons work in different ways. In the middle you will see me kicking a ball at enemies that instakills them and keeps coming back so long as my timing is good.

It’s a great game and makes for a hell of a spectacle.

Enemy Mind

I loaded this game up and played through the first level. It feels like an old arcade style shooter, but with the gimmick of constantly changing your ship for an enemies.

Tyrian is the only one of this genre I ever really got into, and enemy mind doesn’t really sway me either. I had some fun, but the short duration I could keep any given ship meant I kept ending up back in ships I didn’t want. I’ll give it another try, but this one didn’t work for me on my initial playthrough.

Home stretch

One more day of Blaugust to go. I’ll probably post some sort of wrap-up on this whole thing tomorrow. Thanks for reading throughout this month, and once again, check out the Nook for related posts.

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Loss of identity

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So, this week has been really really weird.  We entered it in the middle of a twitter shit storm over Zoe Quinn, and then Feminist Frequency released her newest video, women as background decoration, part 2.

(Warning for anyone who might watch that, it’s full of graphic depictions of violence against women.)

Anyways, that sparked off yet another tidal wave of internet bile, leading to her staying with friends after a particularly credible rape/death threat, and then something really interesting started to happen.  Big names in video games started standing up against this trash.  The counter push was on, but the overwhelming narrative I got was that “this is what gamers are.”

That made me sad.  I’ve said a couple times on this blog in the past month that I identify as a gamer, to the point that I feel trapped by that identification.  Heck, I just realized I put the stupid label in my brand.  And I’ve been kicking around what that means for me and my identity.

Growing up

Yesterday I went on Omegle to chat with strangers about video games.  It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, but I like the random chats that sometime sprout up in that environment.  I would typically ask what games they played.  I kept getting responses of Call of Duty: Ghosts, or GTA 5.  I haven’t played a Call of Duty game since modern warfare 2, and I haven’t enjoyed a GTA game ever.  It got me thinking, maybe I’m less of a gamer than I think.

This led me to look at other media.  There may have been at one point a universal culture that existed around movie goers, but that is not the case now.  All of my friends have at least some movie they like, and some of my friends like movies enough that they want to be more invested, but those movie buffs tend to have genres, or subcultures within movies they subscribe to.

Maybe that’s the way we’re going with video games.  Gamer is too ubiquitous to be valuable now.  Heck, just today Destiny announced a newsweek magazine for the game.

newsweek

 

We’ve seen figures from the mainstream insert themselves into the gaming conversation.  Games are growing and they are becoming accepted and that’s what we should be so happy for.  But as I watch, I have to prepare my identity for the new shifts that this will bring.

Belghast talked about this in his blog today, but our identities are going to be diverging.  I might wear the label of “Games Blogger”, or “MMO Gamer”, or more likely “Indie Gamer”.  I’m probably going to find myself looking for the arthouse style games, trolling the humble bundle sites for those great little morsels.  This thought gives me new life, as I watch the old label consumed in a fire of hate, knowing that there is at least a path forward.