Friday: I had another late start. Productive workday, but I didn't manage to finish as many groups as I wanted; spent most of my breaks just listening to music. Caught a little bit of the Summer Games Fest stream on Pat Stares At. After work, I talked with David, and we did our usual Friday routine. Finally ate the leftover vegetable pasta, and I watched a little tiktok before Carl's game. I was able to play for more than an hour, but once John started getting antsy about the fact that I still hadn't treated the cats, I stepped away to feed them and give him the attention he needed, and I fell asleep.
Thursday: finally feel again like I'm catching up at work, just in time for the first unambiguously hot day of the season. Julie's bocce league has ended for the spring, so she stayed home, but she encouraged me to continue playing whichever game in the living room I'd like. As such, once I finished eating my leftover frittata, I went out to the living room to try to get closer to finishing Tears of the Kingdom. It was a very productive play session; I finished the stuff I was doing at Hyrule Castle, the Kakariko research, and the Faron region events, and I left off in the depths nearby. After I finished playing, I came into the office long enough to unlock the Underground ladder for Arena in Hearthstone, and then I posted this update.
Wednesday: took a couple of calls before switching over to do more project work. After my shift, I'd depleted my groceries, so I drove up to Acme and walked the rest of the way to Casablanca Mediterranean Restaurant. While I enjoyed the food alright, there was more than I could deal with, and in my confusion I couldn't figure out how drinks were provided, so I just... didn't order one. It was a pretty disappointing meal. I picked up more cat treats at Acme before coming back home. I did a little more FFXIV before lounging with John on the floor. Tomorrow, my efforts need to focus on cleaning up the apartment before Julie's return on Friday.
Monday: call volume was pretty high, but at least the calls weren't that rough, if that makes sense. Julie's trivia match went well, and I had a late start on my salad for dinner. I've been watching a lot of board game reviews while I eat lately. Afterwards, I stayed up super late working on an interactive fiction mini-project.
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Tuesday: posted some photos on facebook of our new apartment for my parents. The place was a little too small, but I think it might have been my favorite place we've lived.
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Sunday: went to the Palace and watched a matinee of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
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@familyjules727 on twitter:
I have been so spoiled by Jason's mouse with the super convenient forward/back side buttons that the one at work drives me crazy!
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A friend from Select Button invited me to write for the game criticism site he wanted to launch. I think I only ever wrote one entry, which I am reluctantly including here:
Much has been made of the fact that games are not the same as movies. Despite any apparent similarities, they have different goals; they work different ways. They cannot be evaluated using the same criteria.
(Thus the indignation over Roger Ebert's game-related comments. Electronic gaming's would-be defenders somehow combine smug disdain with a curious undercurrent of desperation in their rejection of Ebert's scorn. Yeah, sure, Ebert doesn't "know" games. Nor need he: the guy's job is to know movies, and he's spectacular at it, a necessary consequence of which is that he'll never see gaming except in terms of how it fails to live up to the standards of cinema. Stop wasting his time and ours with litanies of refutations and counter-examples.)
Regardless of the ubiquity of Let's Play clips on YouTube or the occasional cutscene theater bonus disc, the experience of playing a game cannot even be approximated by watching a recording of gameplay footage. At best, watching such footage can call up the memories of play in that game's former players. Or, for audiences familiar with other games of similar structure, such videos can help them imagine what playing that game is like.
Likewise, videogames are not books, nor plays, nor dance. The distinction's more obvious in these latter cases, and therefore maybe less necessary. My point being here just that the experience of interacting cannot meaningfully be synopsized into another medium without fundamental alteration to the nature of the experience.
So: games ain't movies, or music, or prose. Fair enough. Yet let me propose that, despite all the distinctions between these different media, useful parallels may be drawn between them. Parallels which can inform the acts of criticism and creation.
Braid may not be a poem, but I don't think it's invalid to compare it to poetry.
(Although actually, I think Super Mario Bros. has the superior claim, with its 4-stage levels forming 8 "stanzas" and its rhythmic patterns of obstacles and enemies, never really seen elsewhere in the series. If Braid suggests free verse, SMB suggests a sonnet cycle.)
For an even closer comparison, consider the tabletop roleplaying game. Tabletop RPGs have been around a little longer than the modern video game, but their success has been more limited. Their existence stands more immediately in Video Gaming's shadow. Roleplaying enthusiasts have put forth dozens of theories about the ways players interact with each other and the framework of rules and behaviors the game embodies. Among these ideas is a concept (first articulated in these terms by Ron Edwards) that puts forth that most people roleplay to satisfy three connected (yet competing!) drives:
Gamism is the desire for competition, for triumph over adversity, and for the successful realization of one's goals within the framework of the rules;
Narrativism concerns the process of using the framework of the game to tell your story and create dramatically interesting scenarios;
Simulationism follows the desire for realism, verisimilitude, and a rejection of concessions to Game or Story that would breach those ideals.
What intrigues me about GNS perspectives (as they're collectively known) is that, while many videogames attempt to satisfy all three goals, it's easy to pick out games which emphasize just one or two. Pure gamism: Tetris. Pure narrativism: Storyteller. Pure simulationism: World of Sand. Gamism plus narrativism: Shadow of Destiny. Gamism plus simulationism: Off-Road Raptor Safari. Narrativism plus simulationism: ...Facade, maybe?
That's just the beginning. Next time, we'll start cross-pollinating our adaptations to generate hardy hybrid theoretical models.
(Thus concludes my ill-considered engagement with video game discourse.)
@jsnlxndrlv on twitter:
07:37 I think the medical term for this condition is "way too early to be awake".
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