Thursday, November 29, 2012

What It's Like Inside My Brain

Last night, we were playing Red Dead Redemption.  I had successfully steered the ponypony somewhere and M was shooting some guys.  They probably deserved it.  I made some offhand comment about the game.

"Well, it is a Western," he replied.

"Maybe in a sense, all games are kind of Westerns," I mused.

"There's an article," he quipped back.

***

If my thought process resembles anything, it's probably the Molydeux Twitter account.  I tilt my brain and stuff falls out.  Sometimes it's awesome.  Sometimes it's not.  When it manages to connect to something else that's rattling around in there, it's an article.

***

"The word 'yellow' wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.  Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path."

***

I'm not quite sure why I thought that all games were Westerns, but if I sat back to argue it, I bet I'd come up with a connection.  Something about the lone hero, probably, but then that would have me delving back into my film history books to define why the hero of the Western was the way he was.

***

In my self-image and self-perception, I still suck at consoles.  Despite having played a huge number of games on the PS3 this year for review and for fun.  Why was I so surprised that steering the ponypony around the not-entirely-wild-but-wild-enough-West of the turn of the last century wasn't hard for me?  After dozens or hundreds of hours of PS3 time, why am I still surprised at myself for, yes, knowing how to use the blasted machine?

***

When I came back to the blog this week, I discovered twenty-three (23!) abandoned drafts and half-drafts from over the years.  Some had their best paragraphs lifted and folded into other things; others just sit, as husks, with their careless author having long since forgotten why they were important to begin with.

***

There are notes on the whiteboard on my wall, on post-its all over my desk, jotted into the little notebook I keep tucked inside my purse.  "Kinect - class - space - McMansion - who games for" is one that makes sense.  I can remember that.  And it's written down twice, which means I thought it was important at least twice.

***

Maybe "Beyond the Girl Gamer" would be a good title for a weekly column, somewhere, that addresses topical gender issues in gaming.

***

I have a note that says "JUST LIKE Dark Souls," a game I have never, in fact, actually played.

***

This is the truest comic I have ever read.  Among many true comics.


***

I've got three separate notes on the nature of online multiplayer as the 21st century continues to unfold, two on Sherlock Holmes (the 2009 movie), and one full angry screed about over-reliance on the Cold War that, somwhere in the middle, morphed into a meditation on how the maturity of game narratives is attached to the maturity of the cinema it chose, unnecessarily, to ape.

That one about how combat is and isn't a useful mechanism for storytelling--that's one I keep promising myself to write.  I know a dozen other folks already have.  Someday, I'll have to do it anyway.


***

Today, I feel like I am out of ideas.  I am dwarfed, overawed, by the incredible things my colleagues and peers--my friends--have written.

I hate those people.

I love those people.

***

The thing is, if I wrote that column, I'd become, even more than I am, that "girl" writer.  Not that game writer.  Or that writer.

***

Until Tuesday night, I had the Omega review to hang onto.  I played it. I wrote about it.  And then it was done.  Two days, two measly days, without the anchor and already I am asking the cat if Communism really was just a red herring, and why Gandhi is always such an asshole in Civ games.

***

Everyone's wished me luck, asked where I'm going next.  I'm not being coy or teasing when I say that even I don't know; I  really don't know.  Aside from trying to convince the Commonwealth of Virginia that they are the ones who owe me unemployment, and that they can't fob me off on New York or Maryland, I really don't know what I'll be doing next week.

***

I'll be vacuuming my apartment like mad. Twice.  Each day. My cat-allergic parents are coming to town the week after.

***

I want my friends and colleagues and peers to be wildly successful, famous, rewarded with piles of cash.

I want to pay my rent.

I really hate competitive games.

***

I really, really want a Coke.  Or maybe a beer.  Maybe I can learn to like beer.

Maybe I can learn to like a lot of things.

I'd learned to like Kotaku.  A lot.  Really a lot.

***

I always said I hated BioWare-style RPGs and then 2010 and 2011 and 2012 and Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 came and went and now even the people who make those games have publicly noticed my rather excessive love for them.  I still have a paycheck, for another week.  Time to get the Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition and teach myself some history.

Then I can write about the experience.

That's an article.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Oh, my, it's quite dusty in here...

Oh, hello.  *blows the dust off the blog*  I, er, let things sit around here for rather a long time, didn't I.

So, I said back in February that I was going to try to do a monthly best-of link roundup to my work from Kotaku.  That promise very clearly fell by the wayside, and hard.  Sorry about that.  I just ran out of steam, most weeks.  But better late than never, right?

Anyway, a roundup is easier when you know where it ends.  It has been a privilege and a pleasure working with the team at Kotaku.  It certainly made 2012 interesting in a number of unexpected ways.  That particular adventure, though, has drawn to a conclusion; the site and I officially part ways on December 1.  It's time for a new adventure.

Meanwhile, I've got a veritable mountain of links after the jump.  It's not everything I posted at the site (most weekdays, I ran between 3 and 8 stories); just the ones I can remember as a best-of.  Criticism, impressions, and general essays are arranged by month, with all the full game reviews (all of 'em) afterward in alphabetical order.  Because I am nothing if not compulsively organized.