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This is going to sound fucky and dumb to a lot, but I have severely underdeveloped the ability to ALLOW myself to be impressed by a game. There was a time in my life where my unabashed enthusiasm for games became an issue when making even basic social interactions.
But in addition to clumsily navigating the real world trying to use games as a lens, the early days of the '00s web was - in the circles I ran around in - very caustic, incredibly insular, SUPER MEGA JUDGEMENTAL, and yes rude.
All this came together to bring me around to the (SUPER old, SUPER shitty) Angry Gamer persona, which was at least guarded against ridicule by being passionate, whether that was an act or not. And then it followed that I really thought that Video Games was a complete canon...
... that had your winners and losers and GOATs. And a callous hand at the pen festooning a diatribe with all manner of REALLY FUNNY cusses and insults would CERTAINLY turn some heads! Yeah! I play Super Mario, AND I drop a ten pound cuss when he dies. Forever lame.
And I know I do that shit on my blog. Less about specific games (that's what Twitter's for!) but more about Bad Shit in Gameworld. Would it surprise you that pointing out the inequities of the rich and powerful doesn't lead to explosive reader growth? I cussed really hard, too
And then that's just me admitting that I care about The Numbers. And if I care about The Numbers, then I must not really be in it for ZHE ARTE. I have to write like I have a million people watching me, or I'll never get it out. I wish I could make Twitter hide my follower count.
Because a Good Writer writes for the sake of writing, right? It shouldn't matter if anyone at all reads it; focus on the CRAFT, my boy! THE CRAFT, as we are now addressing it, has found me wanting. Or I found IT wanting. Maybe it can be both! Whatever. Next tweet.
I've been hard up and fucking bitter for years. Even before Trump. But I decided to be that way. I really wish I had held the line and just... kept liking video games. I really wish I kept thinking they were the greatest things in the world (they are! except when they're not).
The generation behind me seems to have gotten an advantage that I didn't when I was still forming the person I'm to become: radical kindness seems to be an Actual Thing with them. Take no shit but do no harm. Call out evil and praise humility. I happy I am seeing this.
They're not all perfect, fucking duh. But I never knew anyone around me who understood what it took, mentally and spiritually, to ALLOW oneself to be amazed, to be delighted. Hard, bitter mAScuLiNE shells lest our voices crack; that's what I've got.
I am out of place. I wish I was ten years older, like my gen x cousins who got all the big y2k web dollars and are now buying their 3rd homes, or ten years younger, so that I could more naturally hang with these kind, powerful voices
anyways i have The Immortal on my brain and i think i'm gonna try to actually play and finish it on NSO.
Oh! Wait! Epiphany! My frustrations with games as a whole is an inability to reconcile with the fact that I can never truly OWN Games As A Whole, and therefore can never truly KNOW them, and ergo can never become an AUTHORITY, and hey why do I want to be an authority? POWER.
Fragile white male bullshit, courtesy of me. I concede I am powerless but my animal brain has yet to do so. I have to embed myself with the new voices. The generation behind me is not the cure, for anything. But it beats calling the latest CoD a big bucket of fuck.
