Been meaning to respond to Enrique’s comments on what appeals to us in games for awhile. Finally found a moment to breathe and decided to post this up rather than, you know, breathing.
It’s a breakdown of what I see as the four core tasks that constitute most gaming experiences. I’ll leave a link to the full article, but for a tease, here’s the Cartesian graph that finally let me start wrapping my mind around where I was going.
Look forward to any comments.
I know, controversial title, right?
So, today is a very geeky day. It’s Star Wars Day #2, because Star Wars was released 33 years ago today. It got overshadowed by Empire day, but…. It’s also Towel Day, because DNA (Douglas Noel Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and other books author) died two weeks ago, and today is the day to remember his death, and to carry your towel.  It’s also the Glorious 25th of May, which for Pratchett fans, means you can wear the lilca if you were there.
Because of this, it’s also also also Geek Pride day. Apparently this is a newish holiday – it’s maybe 5 years old. In principle, I’m all for this. Celebrate Geekiness. Hell, that’s kinda the point of this blog. In practice, I hate it.
Deep Thoughts by Boba Trice
I realized late tonight that April was the 5th anniversary of the one short story I ever sold for cash. Frankly, there’s been few stories I’ve sold for even magazine copies, let alone for a real honest to goodness check. Much of my lack of fiction publishing is honestly a straight up lack of trying and commitment. I tend to assume my analytical style lends itself to nonfiction, and I’ve had plenty of success in those venues. While I’ve never had the romantic attachment to nonfiction that I have for creative storytelling, I’ve always been easily seduced into writing what gets me recognition over what I love. When a talent comes naturally and generates quick praise, too easily we can think of it as our fated partner and grow to love the ease of the gift more than the gift itself. To some degree that’s true for me and nonfiction, though I do love many apsects of my research. It’s just a different kind of love. Nonfiction is a safe, reliable love. Fiction offers anything but that.
Sometime this year, my first chapter in an academic book will go to the presses at McFarland. It likely won’t sell much, but it’ll almost certainly be my most read piece of writing to-date beyond a few articles in Dragon Magazine and the Daily Texan. And the ScreenBurn blog. I tend to forget the ScreenBurn blog because it was mostly silly fun.
Of course, Grammy was silly fun as well. I wrote the first draft in three hours and spent about a two weeks editing it, with few significant changes before submitting the story to Anotherealm. It was later published, and I’ve spent the last five years tinkering with it every time I got frustrated with whatever story festered within my brain at that moment. Grammy became a safety blanket for me. I could pluck at its story and characters while working, going back to school, and writing everything under the sun except fiction. So long as I had Grammy, I could feel okay about writing only one or two stories a year. Not that I would ever complete most of them–let alone send them out. When I wanted to feel rewarded for writing fiction, I’d workshop Grammy or send it out to some minor contest in a revised fashion: Grammy the novel, Grammy the play, Grammy the flamethrower! Hell, the Writers’ League of Texas actually gave me an award for this heroin of the mind back in 2006.
And while this behavior has undoubtedly inhibited my growth as a storyteller and writer of fiction, the same choices nurtured a handful of successes in game writing and many in scholarship by feeding my passion for storytelling just enough to allow my productivity to flow elsewhere. In an admittedly convoluted way, my addiction to Grammy earned me a Fulbright every bit as much as it stagnated my creative growth.
Now I’ve started writing a bit more fiction this summer. Thanks in no small part to a flash fiction contest I did at the end of last year that forced me to finish several stories, no matter how small. I’ve even returned to a novel inspired by Grammy where the first order of business was stripping out all the elements based on the old Grammy short story. I doubt Grammy’s dead since I have to get through a ton of research articles this year. Still, maybe after five years I’ve found a way to nurture that creative side with a bit more productivity reserved just for it.
We’ll see.
I hate when national reporters smooth a quote for print. SI.com and ESPN.com both used the sanitized AP version of San Antonio Spur’s coach Gregg Popovich’s quote about the beatdown they received from the Mavs last night. Not the Statesman, however. The Statesman went with full verbal honestyin printing this from Popovich:
“They kicked our ass every which way but loose,” Popovich said. “Their energy and aggressiveness was great.”
Not bum, rear, butts–or whatever other safety word would pop to mind. And frankly, asses is what Popovich meant, and it’s the word that most exactly fits the Spurs miserable showing. Kudos to the Statesman for sticking to the truth of the matter. That’s some honest reporting.
Hey, I’m Sam. Something to be aware of about this site:
Of the people who have ability to post updates to the site, none of us have exactly the same interests; though many of them do overlap. This is common with any group of people and you should be aware that we won’t all share the same opinions on various topics.
For example, I hate D&D. I loves me some good role playing, but over the last 10 years, that hasn’t been something I could get from Wizards of the Coast. I do love other things, though. I’m all about cheesy horror movies, picking on people for poor grammar, comic books that don’t involve douche bags flying around in their underwear, and politics.
Politics, you ask? Yes. I’m a political junkie. I’ve turned the full power of my geeky obsessiveness onto politics. Don’t worry, I’ll be gentle; it won’t hurt much.
The point of this post is to illustrate that geeks don’t just sit in in their own filth in dank, musty rooms, whistling through their retainers, and rolling dice. Some of us even get laid. We don’t always think the same thing about given topics, and you’ll probably get several posts that conflict one another. Don’t worry, that’s normal. We’re out of the basement and acting like real people with complex interests, desires, and dislikes.
Of course, there are geeks like that out there, and they should be avoided until you have proof that they have bathed in the last week and are capable of carrying on a conversation that doesn’t involve establishing the role playing stats for the female cast of the Star Trek franchise.