What about Gaming?

I'm comfortable talking about movies and shows. I suppose I wouldn't be, if I hadn't learned it from the mormons. I mean, given my background, it was a positive thing. And back when I was still active, and they got a Wii for the Institute, I was actually kind of excited. But ... equally disappointed to learn what kinds of games they'd be interested in.

I mean, I get it.
I think.
I mean ... I suppose ... I come to the same conclusions.

I tried to look away, searching for different answers - but now I'm like the Old Man in the Neverending Story. Reading in a forbidden book. Like ... Elden Ring. How would I ... explain what's good about it? Or whatever. I'd start by saying ... it's a holliday. Two Weeks ... EASY! And that's assuming that you're already familiar with the games concepts (Dark Souls).


And it might seem like I'm blinded by an evil spell or posessed by a demon if I were to just ... praise those games to high heavens. Like some ... real life Midra.
What can I say. "It's different for me!"?

Well - I sure consider myself privileged. So privileged in fact, it sometimes feels like a slap in my face. But that I think goes against the spirit of those games and people like me that just ... well. "Fell in Love" with those games, though an inaccurate phrasing that may be.
I'm sure that the expression has lost meaning over time. But, those games have helped me through some dark times.


Those games are drenched in darkness. Whatever might have an appearance of Glory, is yet far from it. And still there is light. Let it be hope, let it be ambition, let it be curiosity or just the experience. Not the one encoded in the window-dressing, but the one that unfolds within.

The story doesn't matter. Like Miyazaki offered like, what was it? 10.000 USD? if anyone figured out the story of Dark Souls ... we might as well act like there is none.

Well, you Ring two Bells and then ... if you made it that far ... you don't need a story to keep you going! You're just glad it didn't end there!

Maybe.


And I guess that ... uhm. I mean, these games look awefully violent for sure. And I grew up in a household that was sensitive to that. Street Fighter? Nah! We weren't allowed to play that. I once played Doom - 1 or 2 - and had the speakers turned up loud enough to attract my dad with a "What the Fuck is going on here?" attitude to my room as I was caught in one of those Demon Ambush arenas - so, no Doom either.
And in a sense ... yea. But it isn't the violence I'd be concerned about. It's the commitment. I mean, I'm ... "decent"~ish at Street Fighter 6. I made it to Platinum 2 with Chun Li - though I guess my actual skills are more on a Gold level. But that's - I'd argue - far far beyond what a casual player could hope to achieve!

But that's also ... kind of my poison. Something to sink my teeth into. Not for what waits at the end ... but for the time where there is no end in sight.


[...] - The next day:


But what's the point now?

Usually ... I resort to making a case about Art; Mostly because I don't want to make any statements about whether it's good or not. Art is important. Art is an expression of human freedom; The freedom of the individual making it and of the individuals enjoying it. Art is useless from a practical standpoint, but who would want to live in a world without it?

And there it is ... the cue to get into an anti-capitalist rant. And there's plenty of that. Talking positively about the Souls games is like ... sooner or later BOUND to go down there.
But here, there is that word: Productivity. It's not exclusively a term of enslavement, to borrow some rhetoric from the Communist Playbook, but if we put concerns of Productivity over anything else we're like ... "serving Mammon".
But productivity is important. Keeping busy, as to not get rusty or as to stay sharp, that's one of the more important things in life. But the downturn since Covid hit tells a different story. It's like ... people realized just ... how heavy of a burden we've gotten used to carry. We've also seen how much even just a week or two of doing nothing could do for our environment. I mean - thinking of ... what was it? Fish returning to Venice?

So, the light is there, we might say. We're just polluting our lines of sight.

And what is all that productivity for? I mean ... we don't have to build anything anymore. What's the deficit that we try to shrink with it? The "poverty" of the Billionaires? Our lack of not having fun?
Our yet too high birth-rates?
I mean, don't we have way too much of everything already? While people elsewhere have way too little outside of the trash we dump on them?


Conservatives when Personal Responsibility: ~nothing~


Art however just exists. The art that is made these days, is made in the world as it is. However one might have the time for it - however one might create space for making it - it has to happen therein. And that teams of hundreds of people can spend years working on one single game, is a part of it. And so there are people who can buy those games once released; And spend hours upon hours playing them.

And there are two sides to that. There's the consumer and the resources they have; And there's "the industry" and the resources it has. If the world changes, the art changes. And so will the circumstances of the consumer have changed. So, it's an easy way to circumvent the "quality judgment" angle of the conversation.

My favorite example of a game here would be Dwarf Fortress. The game has been in the making for ... around two decades now; And it only got a 'commercial release' just recently. Up until then, the devs have kept themselves afloat via donations. And only God knows when, if ever, the game will be finished. It's so unlike any other game out there. It is, at the end of the day, just a silly fun project two brothers cooked up "in their basement" (or whatever) - and as such, the game is just weird. Just ... totally not like a "normal" ... commercial product. It even still is available for free. But ... I'm not sure how well the current version compares to the "old school" version. I suppose it's a case of "having broken eggs to make an omelet".
And it's another example of a kind of high commitment game.

What "high commitment" means to me here is, that if you just have a few minutes to an hour to 'try out' - you'll spend most of that time confused over what the fuck is going on or asked of you. Maybe though that's enough for a part of you to have been ... somewhat intrigued by it - and then 6 hours later you look at the clock and you're like "Oh oh!".

And some of those games are even relatively short. So, within those 6 hours you might even have already gotten most of the fun you'll ever have with it. And that may even include games I'd categorically sort into that "For public humiliation" box, like Titanfall 2. Amazing game!
I mean, games that fit the description of what I'd call "bad games" if I'm overly general. But I don't really want to fuel any feuds here - so, I try not to dig into that.


When talking "quality judgments" however, the issue is that any "high commitment" game is at first glance a bad game. They aren't easy fun, especially not in a social setting. Like, it might sound funny to try and beat the first boss in Dark Souls 1 or 3; And yea, maybe it is. Watching other people make mistakes is also a way of learning, though when it comes to Elden Ring the situation is much different I guess, because the path forward isn't straight. So, where to go, what to explore, how to level up, what weapons to invest resources in - all that comes prior to even facing the first boss.

But yea. There are ways. And that's also kind of a direction I thought to take this into. So, if you feel burned out or curious ... taking a week or two to play Elden Ring ... out of the many many weeks of lifetime available to you ... might actually be worth it.


So I prefer to talk about Art. Life itself is a little bit like Art. We might try to sort everything into boxes, proper outlines, structures - but if your Capitalistic overlord realizes they can squeeze more out of you in the process ... we might want to rethink the whole "optimization" thing.
But so I think that sometimes it's best to just let things go.

I mean, listening to the damage control and defense squad of Capitalists it's easy to think that our civilization is this super sensitive webbing where everyone has to diligently hold on to their thread so that the whole thing doesn't fall apart. And then there's all the other threads one has to hold on to. I'd call that "freedom tax". Like ... all the things you actually need, but you also have to finance it yourself. Telephone, Internet, House, Transportation, Electricity ... and what have you. And in all of that luxury I suppose we tend to forget that there's a world around us. Like, how often does one really need a new Car, a new Smart Phone, new Clothes and all that? Well "who wants to drive around in an old run-down car?". And how much is really wasted on pushing new products to the market "because capitalism" instead of investing it into profound upgrades that are actually worth it?

And how much work is actually done just so that this whole idea of "employment = productive = value for society" nonsense is maintained?


But uhm, yea ... that's in about it.