Why Did We Stop Playing?

I remember the days; high rights, low lefts even-stevens and fades.

I had a very specific way I needed to play Until Dawn: with actual humans in the room, actual friends butts in chairs / on sofas, actually present. Horror movies are meant to be seen with people you can scream with, hide with and with whom you can share sage advice (don't go in there HE'S BEHIND THE DOOR!). The same holds true for me with Horror games.

But remember when all games were like that? Remember the days of a room filled with your folk and the circus of advice, support and ridicule you'd endured? Junk food being we forced into our growing guts, jones soda and jolt to keep us awake (we used lipton brisk ice tea because it was smooth enough to drink in under five seconds, one can, and had the caffeine count of two cups of coffee. Health).  

Gaming was a social thing, despite what the mid-late nineties PSA garbage would have you believe.

SIDE NOTE: I remember this ad. It was ridiculous for so many reasons, never mind the phallic demon head near the guys dick. Games make you not want your smokin' hot significant other? Have you met a gamer? Do you know how horny we are? What do you think we think about all day? Answer: sex and killin' goblins...Sometimes sex goblins (ps I googled sex-goblin. RIP search history).

I looked forward to Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7 with the boys more than damn near anything we would do. And it wasn't like those were all co-op games! Especially Final Fantasy 7! Its an epic RPG that made grown ass men cry, yet we shared that pain together. A band of brothers bonding over pixelated trauma (RIP Aeris...cause her name was NOT Aerith at the time). 

When and why did the switch happen?

I know it was a quiet change and was due to convenience. I know that more people own systems now than when I was but my early teens. I can see and experience the benefits of remote online play with your crew, but it is just not the same.

The switch happened because it's easy to pop on a system, see that Allen is online playing something you both like and drop in and out of the game as you see fit. There's far less responsibility to keep it going. You don't kill the game for Allen if you drop out at some point.

It comes down to the energy of the room for me. I can remember the times I've played online with friends who weren't physically present in the room. But I couldn't tell you specifics beyond what probably happened in-game. 

I've got a library of vivid memories of entire gaming days with the
crew. Lan parties and the carcinogenic smell of burning dust on monitors. The taste of taco-bell grande meals and entire cases of grape soda laid low in the span of a single day. Jokes and insults and high-fives and don't even get me started on the social experiment that was the arcade!

Both are good, but like any live activity, gaming is made better by sharing the experience with your folk. It's a story you now directly share with another person, thus creating a bond that could bridge some social gap, especially if one of you isn't necessarily a gamer (example: a couple where one is and one isn't said gamer. Cliches are great!). It opens a dialogue, usually of things not game related that were inspired by the content or even just the visceral experience of sharing a something with a someone.

I had to play this game with my best friend because it wouldn't have been as fun or memorable without her, and because I flat out wanted to.

A part of me craves those days of sitting and gaming with friends. It is what hooked me on games more than the games themselves.

I've mentioned dealing with depression. This helped me deal as a kid, teen and adult when it felt like I was alone in a room packed with people. It was an easy way to get close to others and stumble in to territory we would have otherwise not discussed. From sex to strength to human rights to advertising to violence and so on and so forth. Nothing was off limits because, in a way, we were experiencing these things via our chosen activity. And because video games cover such a broad spectrum of topics and genre and so on, we were never in short supply of conversational fuel.

It ends up being the same question that people ask about being physical: why did we stop playing?

I love technology and do almost everything on the internet because that's how the world is wired, for the most part. But I think I'm finally seeing the disconnect first-hand and I'm seeing it in video games, of all places! Don't get me wrong, I've watched it for some time in our general society, I'm not blind, I just thought that games were safe. It's ignorant, I know. It's flat out close minded and a tad stupid of me to think that. I admit it. I'm growing.

Story time: I didn't sleep but two hours last night. I had some severe anxiety and the ol gray matter wouldn't rest. It happens. When it happens I get lonely. My depression manifests as loneliness first, followed by self-worth usually with my eye judgmentally on my physical self. I went on to my various social media outlets to calm down and find connection, like a grand number of folk do, but I didn't feel connected by the end. Sure felt lonelier though. Imagine being a fisherman who casts their line, again and again, but no bounty is brought home. It starves you emotionally. Even when I get to talk to my folk in the late AM via messenger or text and so on, it doesn't feel the same as feeding on their energy, sharing the experience in the physical world.

DISCLAIMER: I love the internet and tech and I'm not attacking it. If it works for you: you do you. This is about me. There. Ass official covered.

It was so important to me that I play this game with my people physically there because I can't keep being sad or lonely and finding a temporary bandage in my activities alone. I am a social creature, and while I don't believe in finding your full happiness solely in another person, emotional healing is made far easier by sharing, commiserating, laughing and so on with another human. So, Kindell (Jesus Feist), I love you and can't wait to play more of this. It was so much fun and meant so much to me.

ADVICE: Are you a gamer who wants to share gaming, a thing you love, with a friend, family member or Boo (a person you love)? Try presenting it as a movie like experience and discus it with them. They may or may not want to play, but they might want to learn or experience it all the same. Make it a social activity that can open up new dialogue between you. It doesn't need to be deep, it can just be about how pretty the game is, which leads you to talking about hiking perhaps, then a day doing something the other person might call their wheel house. Maybe they do find they want to play! Then you've got a homie to game with! Maybe you play something like Journey or The Last of Us and a dialogue about loss and the future opens. You've got options!

My point falls where it usually does: be passionate about your passions (best sentence ever), and share with another person not just the single aspect of said passion (killing it, sentence gods). Share with them everything, dig deeper and find meaning, find common ground, work to understand one another via your afore mentioned passions (mic drop, word smith, rap god).

Deep or shallow, the things we love will bring us all closer together. It's through curiosity and questioning that we can bridge gaps, through the sharing of and listening to our various passions that we can allow others to learn, and through learning about the people around us that the world gets smaller, more intimate, less scary and far more rich. Give yourself and your people the opportunity to understand you, and have the patience and love to help them understand where you're coming from.

Take the time to share, listen and learn.

Have the best day you've ever had.

BEHOLD, THE SOLUTION TO A PERFECT LIFE!

We will die. Death is certain, so far, and it's the only thing that truly scares me. It's the ultimate form of change, which might be why change can be so frightening.

Maybe that's what leads us to pursue the perfect life.

Question time:
Did you know that perfect is subjective and not the same for any two people?

When has your life felt perfect? I'd wager when you were happy, in the moment, and not when you were stressed, worrying about the past or future.

Stress is what makes life difficult and makes us unhappy. An unhappy life is difficult.

Life is easy.

Happiness is easy.

A life filled with happiness is easy to obtain. You simply have to admit and/or find what makes you happy and actually do those things.

So if you exist in a perfect life, a perfect moment, because you're happy, then wouldn't it stand to reason that being happy creates a perfect life?

BEHOLD, THE SOLUTION TO A PERFECT LIFE: HAPPINESS!

CHOOSE THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY, CHOOSE THE THINGS THAT FEED YOU! LET GO OF THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU UNHAPPY, LET GO OF THE THINGS THAT STARVE YOU!

NOURISH YOUR LIFE.

Also: the life that actually makes you happy, the one you really need, might not be the life you are told you want or conditioned to think you want - billionaire, famous, Kanye West (who's a broke as sombitch! He's $53 MILLION in debt! You are currently, at the absolute least, $53 MILLION more wealthy than Kanye west. So use that as some perspective.)

Old school advice that's still solid: The things we want might not be the things we need. Need vs Want. Marinate on that for now as we continue.

On to the advice:

Your job makes you mad? Stop doing it and find one that makes you happy or is filled with people who make you happy. You can weather a who cares profession if you've got a solid crew in the fight with you. If you can't get a fulfilling profession, make it a fulfilling at-work social experience. It's fun to talk over beers about how backassward those TPS reports are, am I right? (office space reference, but you probably knew that)

Unhappy relationships? End them. There are people out there who love you, even if you haven't met them yet. You sad with your spouse? Friends? Family? You don't need them. They bring you down? You don't need them.

You have people who bring you up and love and support you and are excited when you are successful? Those are your people. Those are the relationships that matter. They feed you (sometimes literally #lexi4dayz #teamheidi).

Want to be healthier and/or look gewd but hate the gym? Don't go. Find something else. If you want to get in shape or have a goal for your physical body, then go try a whole boat-load of shit. Try every activity you can get your hands on until you find one that makes you happy. There is most definitely something for you in the exercise vein. Most of the time we don't just fall in to this. You have to do the leg work, pun not intended but welcome, and find the exercise that is right for you, or find a crew you can get swoll with. Swoll crew? That sounds disgusting. I like it.

Worried about money because rent sucks? Find a cheaper place and/or move in with people you actually like and/or get more roommates! Easy as pie.

Worried about money because you're worried about money? That's dumb! It is. I'm not sorry. Money will buy you plenty of things that can lead to your happiness, but money itself won't make you happy. The act of obtaining said cash can most definitely make you happy, but that is more having the job that can make you happy than it is the search for money! (see above)

Money is simply exchanged for goods and services, a means to assist in survival in modern culture. The saying money can't buy you happiness should be taken as literally as possible. Repeat then see above: Get a job that makes you happy or a crew at work who makes you happy so you can make the money to eat and be sheltered. Moving on.

Stress will kill you. Take two, Player. Stress will kill you. We suck as a species because of our stress, which is something that we create. We don't have the threat of being eaten, and a large portion of us have dwellings that keep us safe from the elements, as well as some form of food to keep us alive. On the average, our natural needs are met: FOOD, SHELTER and SAFETY. There's no need to stress about those things.

Community is harder, but not much if we allow ourselves to surround ourselves with people who hold us up and whom we hold up as well (see above).

We're beautiful because of our work and love and minds and hearts and diligence and general way of improving the things we are and working toward the things we wish to be.

We are social creatures who want and need to be with like-minded humans. Find those humans who make you happy and whom you make happy (see above).

We suck because of our stress. Our lives are cut short because, almost as a rule, we focus on things that we are told we need. (see above) House, money, even love. We are told we need these things and more, and in a very specific way, but we are not told that it's not the same for everyone!

I remember the feeling when I finally saw the training that goes on through media and general education. The training that tells us who we are supposed to be.

Spoiler alert: that training, those commercials, they don't know who the fuck you are even a little bit!

You know the commercials, the speech the blah blah that we are eating, feeding and generally forcing in to the lives of ours and others all the live long day and night. You know what it looks like, you pin it, retweet it, repeat it, repost it and share it. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know it. It doesn't know you. At all! At all at all!

You know it. You know you know it. It tastes like asphalt, prescriptions, condos, cars, clothes and a very specific version of love and happyness (the Y is there on purpose to be both poignant and pretentious).

If you've ever looked at your life and wondered what was missing than you're probably focusing on the things that aren't that important to you.

There's nothing wrong with the pursuit of that "why." But if you feel like you've never obtained an answer to that "why," then I would suggest looking for a different cue to your answer. (see above)

You're beautiful. You are good and you have the ability to be happy if you don't mind changing the things that make you unhappy. (see above)

Change is scary. But change can lead to the best you, whomever that might be.

There's a whole thing I've got on open mindedness and acceptance. That's another post. It'll help you in your search for the things that make you happy, but again, that's for another time. If you need a refresher then do yourself a favor and see above.

Have the best day you've ever had.

Project Podcast

I've wanted to do a serialized story for a while. Jeff suggested I do a podcast. I like Jeff. I listen to Jeff. Jeff knows how to life correctly. So I'm going to do a podcast.

I now need a name for the podcast. More on that in a minute.

The purpose of said cast-pod is to do a serialized fiction story, one chapter a week. Easy to do. Guest writers would contribute a chapter and be promoted through the cast. Swag would most likely be involved because I love swag. Love it.

This really comes down to producing.

VOW - I will assist in the creation / coming to fruition of the dreams of my compatriots. Producing the work of artists and celebrating their talent and fabulous, delicious brains.

PS. I'm sitting across from a local writer who I went to college with who is amazing. Forgetting her name, but I am always elated when I see her on a website/promo. I usually catch her at Back Fence PDX. Probably should learn her name. She dated a friend of mine a while back. Not the point.

I have this tendency (because I'm fucking human and have a brain that is determined to explode of its own free will and obsession), this tendency to complicate my projects for myself -  think too hard. You know! You've been there. I think it's funny that when I think of simple projects like recording my voice and reading / giving opinion I make it seem like a state of the union address.
- SIDE NOTE: Can you imagine if I gave the state of the union address? Oh man. You think this country is ready for that many dick jokes and references to video games? I do!

Back to the naming. I need a name for this thing. Welcome to Night Vale pretty much wins.

I want something like that. Something iconic that sort of starts as a whisper of geeeeeeek and then morphs into a bellowing call GEEK! But still sounds legit. Help would be appreciated here. I've never been good at titling things. Not my strength. Just check youtube. I fail. Content good. Title bad. Single tear.

From the podcast I'd want... Starting this sentence over. I want to do a storytellers festival. The podcast can easily feed into this. Good. Better way to say what I wanted to say. Feeding one project into another. Good. That's what we call professional adulting.

I have no dismount for this post. I'm going to go work on the podcast.

Have the best day you've ever had!

PS. The girl, the writer from Back Fence that I am unashamedly eavesdropping on, is having a rather in-depth conversation about and analysis of Magic Mike XXL. No one has ever struggled so hard not to laugh and draw attention to their dropping of eaves as I am at this moment. Out.

PPS. I love Magic Mike. Proudly.

UGLY PROBLEMS, BEAUTIFUL NATURE | Firewatch

The title sucks but the video and especially the game is great! Seriously, I need to get my hands on some proper titles once in a while. Not what this is about.

I've waited for Firewatch for some time. A while, let's call it. And it's beautiful. And I identify with it.

I don't want to spoil the story, even the opening bits, but I highly suggest you watch the video. Even if you don't want my brand of commentary or the amazing voice acting or highly skilled storytelling, you can mute the damned thing and gawk at the gorgeous scenery. Gorgeous! I say again: Gorgeous!

A man runs from his problems, which are devastating. He finds himself as a member of the park ranger firewatch service, and then finds himself tangled in a mystery. 

I was going to go on and on about the merits of the game, of which there are many, but what this comes down to is a simple, well told story set in a stunning environment with characters who could actually exist. It's real.

Have the best day you've ever had.

FLYING VAGINA MONSTER | Kingdom EP 3

I like being thrown for a loop. I like challenges and the opportunity to overcome them. I like testing my limits with the inevitable uncertainties. 

I do not like airborne phantoms who resemble Satan's battered pussy swooping from the sky and snatching (pun intended) my villagers from my fiefdom.

Kingdom is a hell of a game. It's fair and tough and dickish and beautiful and frustrating and basically everything I like in a story. Yet it's a simple, very simple, game. Left. Right. Make it rain. That's it! And I love that.

The simple controls allow you to get lost in the beauty of the graphics and the soundtrack, which then let's you forget that you have to defend your people each and every night against a pick your flavor of demons. Imps? Not really sure what they are. The beauty of this game is that it's aesthetics, in a way, work against you! That's incredible! I don't remember another game like that!

I have no idea if this is intentional, nor do I care. I care a little. Wouldn't that be cool if that were the case? That Raw Fury intentionally made the game pretty for the specific purpose of you getting lost and screwing up your managerial tactics? Gold! Solid gold!

Episode 3 is posted above. Check it out and then go and thank Raw Fury for putting their game out there.

Have the best day you've ever had!

BASICALLY RICK GRIMES | Deadlight

This game opens up a great chance to write about how back-asswards silly it can be to port a game from console to PC...that's pretty much it. 

The controls are jacked when playing with a keyboard, even when you remap the keys. It's just flat jacked and caddywompus.

The game itself is basically The Walking Dead circa 1986. 

To be clear: I like it and it's fun. It's not an original story and is a pretty standard platformer with a darker feel. It's still good! It's just not original. But fun is the key here so a big fat who cares that I've seen, heard and played this game before when it's been other games, movies and comics and so forth.

All I got.

Have the best day you've ever had!

MISUNDERSTOOD | Dropsy

I'm a dick, according to the snap judgement that I made not seconds after starting this game. Full truth: I've been very against, not reluctant, to playing this at all, let alone doing a let's play of it. Why? Because I'm scared of clowns and generally hate them on the standard level. Not classic clowning, mind you, but big top annoying, dick-bag lemme get in your personal space and embarrass you while giving you everlasting blackened shit-dreams from the middle-distance of your childhood traumas. Hate em.

That is what we like to call a personal bias or good old fashioned prejudice, which is a something that I am vocally against. Thus I become the hypocrite for refusing to play this game.

I have a friend, Jenny (aka Kimchica), who has raved about this game as a positive (which it is), uplifting (which it is) and high-quality (yup, that too) experience. Even with her word, it took me an age to load Dropsy. I'm so glad I did.

Watch the video. It almost immediately hooks me (save for the opening bit and nightmare sequence which...well, see above for my thoughts on clowns). 

At the risk of sounding further preachy: Don't judge folk based on a previous experience. They may, and most likely will, surprise you. 

Have the best day you've ever had.