Month: July 2015

Horrible Events

Yesterday was a phenomenally bad day, but not for any of the normal reasons.  My wrist is doing mostly better, and my knee while swelling a lot more is also starting still progressively healing.  My day was horrible for a bit of news I received.  When I got out of a meeting yesterday morning I had two missed  calls from friends in the Little Rock area.  My mind immediately jumped to something having happened to a third friend and member of our AggroChat podcast Thalen.  It turns out Thalen is fine, but the news I received was so much worse.  I don’t want to go into a lot of detail but one of my friends and sometimes guild members took her own life.  I don’t know the specifics, but having had a suicide in my life before…  you never really do know the specifics.  All we really do know is that she is gone.

She struggled with a lot of things, a toxic work environment, a family that was largely unsupportive… and the lack of a support network in her area.  I talked over the years with her about these things and more, as I tried to just be someone who would listen.  The problem with gaming friends however is that if you don’t happen to be playing the same game…  it is extremely easy to fall out of touch with each other.  It had been at least six months since I last talked to her, and now I am kicking myself for not reaching out and making more of an effort.  I saw her pop on steam a few weeks ago, but I myself was going through a “speak when spoken to” only mode…  but now I am agonizing over not saying anything.  This is the problem with a suicide, there are so many unanswered questions… and the ones that get left behind feel guilty for not doing more.

My Own Struggles

This morning I am going to be far more candid than I normally am.  I have struggled with these suicidal  thoughts my entire life.  Right now I am taking something that helps, for pretty much the first time in my life.  I’ve always been afraid to seek help, and even now I am largely self medicating with a holistic remedy instead of actually seeking treatment.  There is something terrifying about talking to someone and unpacking your soul.  I know personally I just keep ramming things down on this pile of frustration and shame until it overwhelms me.  I was actually scaring myself a lot lately… which is why I am trying to do something about it.  There are moments where I catch myself running down these scenarios in my head about how I would do it… and what planning would need to go into it.  The fact that my brain can run down those pathways terrifies me.

The thing is…  I know these are not “right” thoughts, and as a result I have always been able to bring myself back from that line of thinking.  I’ve always had a friend to talk to, or someone to cheer me up.  Last night a few moments in Free Company chat and watching the friendly green text wash over me…  erased so much of the days frustrations.  On top of that the remedy that I am taking really does seem to be working for me.  I’ve felt so much more balanced over the last few weeks since I started taking it.  I can get “bummed” but it never really reaches the point of turning into that crippling morass of depression that just paralyzes you.  I guess my problem has always been that I never really even know how to start a conversation with a medical professional about my inclinations.  Here in the bible belt, we are taught to keep up a good appearance no matter how fucked up your own life is…  that folks want you to smile and nod and be sociable… and I am absolutely a product of my upbringing.  I could be dying inside… but I would still try my damnedest to be kind and courteous to the people around me.

Be Stronger Than Me

Basically this morning I am unpacking my soul, because I am begging you to be stronger than me.  If the world is threatening to take you down with it… please go find some help.  I don’t care if that is a professional that can prescribe some good drugs, or just someone you can talk out your problems with.  You are never as alone as you might feel because there is always someone who cares… even if that someone is a person you have not even met yet.  I had a really bad experience with a psychiatrist in college, and it has kept me from ever trying to find another one.  Please be less proud than I am and go find some help.  There is literally nothing in the world worse than a suicide.  In 2004 my nephew committed suicide and even a decade later there are still times where it all comes back to me and I keep grasping for the answer “why”. I’ve had so many deaths in my own family, but nothing is worse than a suicide because at least when cancer takes a life you understand it.  You know what lead to the chain of events that caused you to lose someone you love…  suicide makes no sense.

I realize that might come as counter intuitive for m to say that, considering that my brain naturally keeps trying to end itself…  but in part it is because I have lived through it…  that I am steadfastly pulling myself down from the brink.  I know just how truly devastating it is to anyone who ever cared about you.  Every one of you out there reading this matters, and more so than that… you are important to someone.  There is no life that can leave this world that does not cause a hollow void to form.  So please if you are struggling reach out to someone.  I’ve not met a single person who struggled with this that was not also uniquely beautiful in some way.  This curse, often times comes with its own blessings.  I care deeply about the pain others, even when it is really not healthy for me to try and take that sort of thing upon myself.  So while you may not be able to see it yourself… there is something special about you that would be a travesty to destroy.  So please…  if you are struggling find someone to help you through it.

Short, Linear and Lacks Replayability

Yesterday I stumbled across a good video from Jasyla of Cannot be Tamed.  In it she questioned exactly when the terms “Short”, “Linear” and “Lacks Replaybility” became negative monikers for games.  It all stems back to her looking up a review of Parasite Eve from when the game was actually released and expands out from there.  She makes the point that games that have a tight and direct narrative are often preferable to long messy open world games for her.  She makes some really excellent points, but the main point  I was reminded of is the fact that “game reviews” are only really useful if it is a person very much like yourself that is reviewing the game.  There are no objective measurements for a video game, or quite frankly any other piece of entertainment.  What is a negative to one person is a positive to another person.  When I review something I try and touch on a bunch of the points because I realize not everyone is wired quite the same way I am.

Personally I tend to favor those long rambly open world games, and do pretty much everything I can do to avoid actually progressing the storyline.  In the video she mentioned Witcher 3 which turns out is a game very much in my wheelhouse, in that it has allowed me to pretty effectively ignore the narrative of the game and revert back to my base state of wandering around aimlessly and enjoying the world.  I’ve put in around twenty hours and I just now moved to the next zone.  I prefer games that I can lose myself in the random bits of neatness that the game has to offer, and if you allow me to jump off the path…  chances are I am going to do it as soon as possible.  My first playing of Skyrim for example…  I had to back track later to find the stones that allowed you to choose your “path” because from the moment I got control of my mouse I was off on my own ignoring what the NPCs were telling me to do.

Steam Devaluation

All of this said I am coming to appreciate more narrative “ride” games that present a clear concise “movie like” experience.  It is not the sort of thing I want to play on a regular basis, but if a game is elevated to a point where everyone seems to be playing it I will give it a go.  The irony is one of my biggest praises of Final Fantasy XIV is for its clear and concise storytelling.  The difference there is that this main storyline is a “feature” of the game and not the entirety of the game itself.  There are absolutely times I want to sit back and be told a story, but there are other times when I want to be out in the world making my own… and I guess in part I expect a game to give me both experiences, at the very least if they are going to earn my $60.  So while “short”, “linear” and “lacks replayability” seems like an odd admonishment … I do find myself paying attention to it, simply because it helps me file a game into one of several bins.

I have talked about this in the past, but for me to be willing to plunk down $60 and pre-order a title when it comes out… it has to be offering pretty much the total package.  Jasyla has this great series of videos called “Short Games for Busy People” but they also all have one thing in common other than the duration.  They are all relatively cheap titles, and I am more than willing to spend $5 for a four hour game experience, but I may not be willing to pay $60 or even $30 for that same experience.  One of the biggest disappointments over the last several years was in the ID Software game Rage… not because the game did not provide me a very interesting experience, but instead that it was too short of one.  Granted I went into the game mostly expecting “Fallout” by ID, so that was strike one… but the game itself provided this really interesting game world that I wanted to roam around in…  but trapped me in a super short story arc that felt abruptly ended.  Had I spent even $10 on that game… I would have been completely happy with my experience, but I was frustrated that I spent that $60 preorder on it.

Value Proposal

In order for me to be happy with spending full price on a game I need to be able to milk at least  30 hours out of it, and that is actual content…  not just chasing achievements.  This means I tend to lean towards big open world “exploration porn” type game experiences.  My favorite “modern” games are those of the Fallout Series because they let me wander around aimlessly and explore the world at my own pace.  While I am getting used to the narrative train ride, I still have this instinctual frustration anytime I am locked into a length intro story cut scene.  I remember the first time I played God of War III I kept thinking to myself “why won’t they just let me play the damned game?”.  There are times I need to temper this instinct, when I know if I allow myself the time I will enjoy the story.  For example I am trying to go back and play the modern Batman games because I think I will ultimately like the story arc.  Similarly I really want to play the Uncharted games, but I struggle with their “on rails” sequence of event based game play.

Ultimately all of this said… I will never damn a game and treat it as worthless just because it does not align to my personal preferences.  This is why I guess I struggle with writing “game reviews” because really I tend to focus on the positive aspects of most games because I know going into it… that my particular preference in gaming, does not necessarily represent anyone other than myself.  In truth the fact that I surround myself with a group of fairly diverse gaming tastes in the form of AggroChat on a weekly basis drives this home regularly.  All of this said I still do find reviews like this valuable in that they help me decide if I am willing to plunk down my dollar at release, or instead wait until the first, second or third steam sale to offer the game.  The Steam Devaluation is a real thing, in part because at this point we all have such a back log of games that we are NOT playing.  Then again the ability to actually “beat” a game has never ranked very hire on my meters.  What I look for is a bit of escapism and the ability to wallow around in a world that is not my own for awhile.  For me personally nothing beats an experience that lets me explore new places while harmlessly venting my bloodlust.