"Anyone hoping for a level of fence-whitewashing or a trip through the graveyard will be sorely disappointed. Ultimately, Injun Joe appears, riding the neck of a giant green serpent, and Tom finally rescues Becky, who is imagined, as most women are in Nintendo-world, as a blonde princess in pink."
My old pal Adam: "I wanted to see release dates for video games in a less noisy, less hype-filled form so in keeping with my new mantra of ‘less complaining, more problem solving through extremely rapid prototyping’ I made my own video game release calendar thing."
Reading the MetaFilter thread—which took me at least a day, because I needed to read very carefully—clarified a lot of concepts. It was, indeed, the conversation no one expected. Measured and moderated in a neutral court, this dialogue did a lot of work for me that I never could have done on my own in any good time.
I know not everyone will be able to do all the necessary reading, or even make total linear sense of the back-and-forth there, because who has the time, and maybe that really has been the issue from the start.
I get angry, but not that often. Or maybe I am angry a lot. But in my adult life I have always stepped lightly around my own opinions. That timorousness has helped maintain a lot of friendships that might otherwise not have lasted. My best childhood friend and I, for instance, have completely opposite, rabidly passionate beliefs. We have carefully cultivated a friendly and loving political distance. She and I understand the stakes. We know that, if we begin those conversations, we won’t stop, our feelings will be hurt, and no one will win. That is why she is my best friend. I have the same relationship with, you know, my mother.
Maybe nobody needs to know everything I’m thinking at any given moment, or how I feel about health reform or gun laws or Larry Elder (it’s complicated). Maybe there are some fiercely held opinions I’d do just as well to keep under my hat, just as I’d do well not to march up to a friendly acquaintance and scream “I hate you and everything you stand for.” No, I tiptoe, genuinely working hard to not alienate my fellow humankind. There’s no reason, ordinarily, for me to take up arms and get in your face and go THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
“Graph paper is favored by all game designers, and this little gem was found at Global Game Jam 2011 in Vancouver. I love trying to figure out what this game is about, and how it plays.”
"Game developers love brainstorming: they use notepads, whiteboards, napkins, Photoshop… anything they can dump ideas onto! They make calculations, lay out interfaces, doodle character designs, and collect their thoughts. Unfortunately, these glorious scraps almost always get thrown away, and rarely get looked at again. This is a creative museum where I collect and share the best of these scraps, to both preserve them and let them inspire others." (via @Capy_Nathan)
I bet I’ll come to regret this, but I’m going to tell you a secret I’ve never been comfortable with sharing before this moment: I’m a huge asshole.
I mean, I’m the biggest asshole I know. That’s because I barely give a shit about hurt feelings, because I’m a narcissistic fuck who is the center of her own universe. Until now I’ve tried to keep my being an asshole under wraps, but the sheer effort takes a lot out of me. If I troll the Internet, I’m careful to use an anonymous name that won’t get traced back to me. I fight myself to not use slurs: for instance, I don’t call things “gay” anymore, because my gay friends all convinced me to stop. I’m really careful to not call anything “retarded” if I’m talking to someone who knows someone who is retarded, but sometimes it slips out anyway. I’m doing my very best to hide my interior asshole from the lot of you nice people.
But it’s time for me, finally, to trudge out of my flamboyantly asshole closet and come clean with you.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but all these properties have been terribly mishandled since like the late 1990s or whenever. Listen, you: we still really want to play these dumb old games. We consistently pay for the privilege. Sure, remakes and homages are a little squirrelly, but litigious smackdowns are some way to repay our love.
If the titles’ original developers had any complaint about any totally amazing project, that would be one thing, but honestly, we all know the franchise creators have been shorn away from their own work for at least a decade. It’s OK to wring the last drops of money out of whatever you have, but just don’t be obvious about it.
Oh my gosh, what am I trying to say? Just, like, try not to be dicks about stuff when we’re all looking directly at you, right? But yeah, thanks for the inch here, the inch there, OK, because we live for that. And oh, yeah! Sarien.net is coming back, sort of. Sorry I sound so annoyed about it; I’m really not.
"Hence, it is no coincidence that some (media) artists have begun working with computer games in recent years. The possibility of making modifications to computer games (‘mods’ for short) has inspired them to create their own versions of games that, in some cases, take the premises of the games further and think them through to their logical conclusion and, in others, explicitly contradict them. As such they differ from mods created by fans, as these generally make do with redecorating the existing game structures." (via dinosaurparty)
How did I miss this last week? Nicolai Troshinsky (of Loop Record, a game I liked very much) has designed Raccord Sniper, a FPS "memory game" ripped from the glossy pages of an Ikea catalogue. (download here)
The US Department of Defense launches its Virtual PTSD Experience! (Oh, dear.)
This sort of thing reads very silly, OK, but a substantial portion of my article for the next issue of Kill Screen Magazine centers on VRT ("virtual reality therapy") and how it has helped agoraphobics, aerophobics, and glossophobics. VRT is effective; it does work.
P.S. The Virtual PTSD Experience comes with a "relax button." (Via borderhouseblog.com)
"Sure—but the beauty (and fun) of games is that you don’t feel overwhelmed by your virtual defeats, because you know you can eventually advance, and mastering the skills to do it takes only hours or days. In reality, you get just one life, and by the time you’ve figured everything out, it’s game over." (via @betajames)
My copy of 999 recently arrived in the mail, but I haven’t been able to play it (my beloved DS Lite is in my apartment in Chicago, although it did eventually occur to me to just say fuck it and buy a DSi XL using a line of credit, but I haven’t).
I’ve also been careful to not read anything about 999 at all, at least up until now. Today I read this analysis with one eye open, very literally squinting and winking at it, trying to not accidentally read anything I won’t be able to scrub away. Phew! No secrets spilled, I don’t think.
Ooh, I just hate that Cassandra. (Full disclosure: I have never played Settlers of Catan because I don’t have three dorky friends or any patience, but this article is exactly why I bought TSURO: THE GAME OF THE PATH last week.)
What a cool list of, er, I think these are all browser games? Right now I’m hooked on ‘Neon Race.’ A little Enduro, a little Burnout, a little Tron, knowwhatImsayin.
Uhhhh. Last week I made my boyfriend watch that Famicom footage of the never-released Aliens game, and then this morning as I was stalking his Facebook page, I saw that someone had slapped up a link to 1UP on his wall.
Frank Cifaldi did some really nice legwork here. You know, he’s that guy. The guy who does all the nice legwork.
