Nintendo and Innovation

Nintendo has been (and arguably continues to be) the beacon for innovation since the inception of home console gaming.

Whether it be through revolutionary game design, three-pronged controllers, or modular consoles, Nintendo seems to be determined to be the people others will point to and say “they thought of it first.” This is obviously a pretty good business approach. The idea that you need to constantly reinvent yourself and adapt to changing times is still a prevailing one.

But as far as I can tell, this hasn’t always been Nintendo’s plan. And it’s gotten a bit crazy recently.

Plans for 2017

This is a first!

I actually have a strong idea of what I’m going to do with my creative projects in the coming year. Strong enough to talk about.

The kind of stuff I want to put out all comes back to my enthusiasm about games – things like game reviews, analyses, and discussions of game mechanics and design. To that end, here is a short list of the things I’m going to start devoting myself to:

Streaming and recording: It all starts with playing games, and while I’m playing games I also want to record footage of games to be used in videos and give me something to refer back to for writing. I can also do streams while recording and get my audience involved in my work, adding to the discussion. Internet permitting, I’ll do this fairly often – probably whenever I feel like it rather than at a scheduled time.

Writing: You know, that thing I say I do. I’ll be playing games so I can talk about them, and the main things I’ll be talking about in written pieces will be game reviews and smaller topics (asides, basically) that don’t really need a ton of production put into them. I’ll do my best to stick to a publishing schedule of once a week or so. I’ll also still write about non-game things as I get inspired, but my main topic will be games and gaming.

Video essays: This is the most ambitious thing on my list, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for a long time (at least a couple years). When tackling large topics – like breakdowns of far-reaching elements of game design and the like – I want to take the time to do a full demonstration in both audio and video. Recording game footage and what I want to talk about, writing the script, and editing all that together, will definitely be a huge undertaking – which is why these won’t come out very often, but I certainly hope they’ll be very worth it when they do.

Podcasts: This is an idea that was brought to me recently. I’m not sure how I’ll set these up, but getting a friend or two together and talking about recent events and otherwise shooting the shit sounds fun. The audio will probably get uploaded to my channel like a video would be.

The list above gives a bit of a look of what I want my life to be like in 2017. I want to be all over Twitter, I want to be spending time with friends, I want to be playing games and using my love of games to fuel discussion and think about what they really mean both to me and to others. I’m hoping I’ll be able to do at least one blog post every week, one video every month, and some podcasts and streams here or there to really connect with the people important to me – you all.

I’m gonna have a lot to show next year. It’s gonna be my year to really do what I’m passionate about. Look forward to it!

Alignments and What They Mean (and How They’re Used)

Alignment systems are one interesting way of adding player choice and consequence to a game, in addition to a bit of a role-playing factor.

The typical structure of an alignment system is a scale: “Good” on one extreme, “Evil” on the other, and “Neutral” resting in the middle. Your actions, good and evil, push you toward one end of the scale or the other. In this way, the sum of your actions end up defining who you are in the game’s world.

This also typically comes with quantifiable consequences – some factions in the game’s world may support your actions while others condemn them. Some perks and abilities are only available to a particular alignment, and sometimes the path the story itself takes can be dramatically altered by your actions.

How alignment shifts is also a variable – some games operate off a point system, where you gain “good points” and “evil points” and whichever is greater dictates your lean toward one alignment or the other. Some games operate purely off of choices, where performing a specific action (usually scripted into a significant scene) sends you down a particular path befitting that alignment. Others eschew the “good and evil” rhetoric in favour of a more clan-based system where your relationships with specific factions dictate how the world treats you, not the morality of your actions.

But where this admittedly simplistic framework for a player choice system gets interesting is when the implications of your actions are played with.

Pokémon Moon (and Sun) – First Impressions

“First impressions” might be a tiny bit misleading since I’ve put over 20 hours into the game thus far, but here we are.

Pokémon Moon is awesome and I can’t stress that enough. I love the new pokémon, the updates to how the game plays, feels, and so on, but there are some issues I do have with it and some observations I feel a need to make.

I could write about how pathetic the trainer battles seem to be, or the exciting new Totem Pokémon mechanic (and how it was totally my idea first, Game Freak!), or the bullshit new “call for help” mechanic, but that’s all for another day.

What I want to talk about is breaking through the 2D ceiling and the effect its had on the game, because it’s remarkable.

“But X and Y, and Generation VI in general, were 3D!” you might say. “But the spin-off games for the GameCube were 3D!” you might also say.

Well… yes and no.

31/10/16 – Choices

Considering I’ve been sick for a week and haven’t put out pretty much anything in who knows how long, it’s as good a time as any to talk about what’s been tormenting me lately.

There are a lot of things I’ve wanted to do, a lot of things I want to do that I’m not doing, and things that I have been doing that I don’t really want to do anymore. The main issue right now is resolving all of these things and making choices about what I’m going to do with my life and where my life will go.

Antichamber – A Study of Perspective

Disclaimer: this analysis goes into detail about (and spoils many of) the gameplay mechanics of Antichamber, a puzzle game for PC. If you want the satisfaction of discovering and figuring out these mechanics on your own, you should finish this game before reading further.

I really like puzzle games. Portal. Q.U.B.E.. The Talos Principle. And other usual suspects. These games usually require the player to manipulate their environment to accomplish a goal.

Q.U.B.E. takes this very literally – the primary interactive element in the game is the environment, made out of blocks which sometimes extend and retract. Portal has the player use the titular portals to create pathways within the environment. The Talos Principle goes a step further by allowing the player to place objects which interact with each other throughout a level – and the trick becomes finding the winning combination.

Then comes Antichamber. Antichamber is not like those other games. (At least, not at first.)

29/09/16 – Inaction

I’ve learned (or perhaps more accurately been reminded of) a valuable lesson about taking action even if you’re uncertain of what to do.

A wise phrase I once heard is “the wrong thing to do is nothing,” and I think that’s actually very applicable. Inaction like that only results in positive change if you’re lucky, and no change or negative change more often.

I should clarify, however, that when I mean “doing nothing” I mean very specifically an absence of action, an absence of thought, an absence of much of anything at all. Essentially, I mean inaction brought on by the paralysis of fear or doubt.

Deciding very consciously to refrain from a specific course of action is, itself, a course of action. Conversely, when inaction is a product of negative emotions, we tend not to be completely conscious of it – or do not feel in control of it.

What I’ve learned is that I’ve spent a long time in this state of inaction. I’ve restrained myself for fear of causing negative results, I’ve sat lazily and lamented my apparent inability to get work done, I’ve done nothing and hoped for something to happen.

It doesn’t work out that way, generally.

27/09/16 – Comfortable Chaos

Today I remembered a time when I could handle large amounts of “chaos” – random things happening, unforeseen interference, and other problematic situations or people.

I remembered that specifically because I felt strangely calm, and even happy, while troubling things were happening all around me at work. And then I realised that this was something I’ve felt before… and that I’d apparently lost my tolerance for chaos without noticing it.

This actually wasn’t a very troubling thought on its own, most likely because I seem to be regaining that tolerance. There’s something to be said for being able to smile even when something could get to you and you might not be sure how else to handle it.

That’s something I would do all the time when I didn’t have any other way of coping. Just take a breath, close my eyes, and smile. Let the pressure and problems surrounding me go right around me and handle them all one at a time.

And doing this doesn’t necessarily require that I be completely stoic about the situation. I can react, say “well, fuck,” and might be frustrated at times. But I don’t let that impede me, that’s the key thing. I work through that and put my smile back on so I can handle whatever needs to be done.

You might be wondering if I’m just forcing myself to smile and whether or not that’s healthy, and while it is true that I’m forcing it, it’s for a good reason. The smile-happiness correlation seems to be a bit of a muddy subject in the scientific community, but the basic idea is that while happiness can lead to smiling, smiling can also lead to happiness.

Whether or not that has any grounding in reality, smiling definitely does feel good to me. I can usually stop myself from sinking into a bad mood if I catch myself and start smiling before I go too far. I can smile through trying times and feel safer as I push through them.

Most importantly, though, is being comfortable with the idea that chaotic stuff will happen. There will be confusion and disorder. It’s an inevitable part of any of our lives. And that’s okay.

More than even being comfortable with it, there’s actually a lot of comfort to be found in accepting and adapting to chaotic situations. Knowing that you could panic and be swept up by rising tide but just letting it go through you instead without flinching – that’s an empowering feeling.

It takes a lot of resolve to do, but I’ve found that I can do it. There were times when I did, times when I didn’t (boy, did those times suck), and I’m doing it again now.

My advice to you, then, is pretty simple: take a breath, close your eyes, and smile. Let troubling things go through you like you’re not even there. Handle what you have to. You can get through your issues without letting yourself be affected by them.

I think you’ll find yourself feeling stronger (and happier!) by doing this.

15/09/16 – Love

Love is a tricky subject for me. On one hand, it’s been a huge source (arguably the only source) of happiness in my life. I feel like that’s how love should be.

On the other hand, it’s been a source of pain in my life as well. Whenever I haven’t loved “the right person,” or loved “the right way,” it’s hurt me in some way or another. This painful kind of love, and how I feel about love in general, is what I’m writing about today.

When dealing with today’s society, there are people who will insist on love being done a certain way. One example of this is rigidity regarding opposite-sex couples; male and female only, not male and male, female and female, or anything else.

This would be an example of not loving “the right person” and it’s a form of pain anyone who has been shamed for being gay/bi/having other nonstandard sexual preferences has endured at some point in their lives.

Not loving “the right way” is more nebulous, but what this boils down to is that there are certain standard expectations for people in romantic relationships. “Be devoted to your partner.” “Be faithful to your partner.” These are the sorts of ideas that many people seem to have about “proper” (ideal) relationships.

These constructs are ingrained in our society. They’re a sort of thing that passes from one person to another because they’re just “the right way to do these things.” LGBT persons and relationships, at least, are being more accepted as today’s society (in the US at least) develops, but the more nebulous ideas are still not being fully considered.

For example, one expectation most people I’ve observed have when talking about relationships is monogamy – the idea that you will have one partner and your partner will have no other partner besides you.

Polygamy (or polyamory, multiple relationships, etc) is less socially acceptable right now (again, at least in the US) for several factors, mainly related to marriage (ideally done between only two people, even in homosexual/etc nonstandard relationships), but I think the issue runs deeper.

I’m going to digress for a bit to describe some personal events in my life.

My first romantic relationship had a few periods of being strained, and I personally feel like most of them were related to the concept of monogamy and polyamory. As I said, monogamous relationships have certain expectations and among those include security.

The idea of “security” is a very important one to monogamous relationships, since you’re pouring your heart and soul into one and only one person. You don’t want to lose that person, so you expect them to never want to be with another person the same way they’re with you.

I’m of the opinion that no person can be everything to you. It may be theoretically possible to find someone who shares all of your interests, supports you emotionally in a perfect way, appeases your intellectual and sexual appetites to whatever degree they need to be appeased, and so on… But even then, it’s incredibly unlikely.

What’s more likely is that you form a romantic relationship with someone who meets most of, but not all of your needs. For any other needs, you would need someone else to meet them. Friends, family, or even other loved ones.

This perspective I had led to me falling in love with someone else while already in a relationship. And I didn’t handle the implications of that very well at the time. I didn’t take care of the people I loved, and all of us suffered for it.

But I believe that it was mainly because of the negative feelings associated with our relationship(s) that it fell apart. Jealousy, possession, fear of loss. Our love wasn’t meant to be because we didn’t understand each other well enough to handle these issues.

If it wasn’t obvious, I’m not a monogamous person by any means, and I don’t see that changing even though I’ve been with Sylvie for over three years now and love her dearly. She does so much for me, more than I can easily list. But she’s not my everything.

I’m of the mind that love should be freely shared between people who experience it. It should be okay to express love for more than one person. It should likewise be okay to receive love from more than one person. It shouldn’t be exclusive.

I also feel that “love” makes a suitable blanket term to describe many kinds of affection and passionate gestures; pleasant conversation, flirting, physical closeness, sex – these are all acceptable expressions of love for another person.

I think that it’s natural for people to want to love, and want to share expressions of love, with multiple people. I think love itself, as a feeling we experience, is unrestrained and can strike anyone at any time. And it should be celebrated, not condemned.

And I think society, for all its attempting to teach us good morals, teaches us things which are contrary to our most basic nature as humans. Whether you agree or disagree with any statements I’ve made today, I still think the way I do and that makes me a deviant. It brands me as something abnormal in a society which still adheres to certain traditional values.

This goes all the way back to that “issue” I mentioned when I mentioned polygamy/polyamory as a less socially acceptable idea. Very wholesome bonds which involve more than two people each caring for each other on some romantic level do exist (I’m living in one such network), and yet they won’t be accepted by the average person if they’re continually branded as “abnormal.”

Whether or not such relationships are unusual, nonstandard, etc, is not actually the issue – just by the way. If polyamory is always less common than monogamy (monoamory?), that shouldn’t ever be a problem. The problem is the social stigma which can come with it. And, unfortunately, not everyone in the world is so rational that they realise “unusual,” “nonstandard,” and similar terms aren’t insults.

I believe more people should understand that relationships like this are perfectly acceptable. What I do in my life isn’t really anyone else’s business in an ultimate sense, anyway. But it might still feel strange until more social acceptance is reached.

But, stepping down from my soapbox just so I can close this entry, all I really want to express is that I feel love itself should be considered a very natural and unrestrained thing. Many of us live with a lot of self-imposed constraints – too many, in my opinion, and who we love and how we love them is definitely one of them.

But love really doesn’t care, you know? Someday you’re going to meet someone (if you haven’t already) and some chemicals in your brain are going to explode and you’re going to think “holy shit, I’m in love with you.” And that’s totally fine!

Since it happened once, though, you can safely assume it can happen again. And I’d love to live in a society where people don’t consider that second chemical reaction strange.

04/09/16 – Empathy

It’s been a while since I’ve written something like this. There’s a lot weighing on my mind right now and I feel like it’s time to talk about it.

Between my mental developments (see my post about DID last month if you want to know more about that), struggles at my day job, taking care of my girlfriend… there’s something that has gotten lost in the cracks: myself.

Something I don’t think I’ve talked about often (I know I’ve mentioned it to a few people but I don’t think I’ve said it publicly) is that I am actually an extremely empathetic person, in a way I can’t really control. I crave being around people, but even more than that, I crave the positive feelings I can gain from those people.

I often work hard to ensure the people close to me are happy, to the best of my ability, because those happy feelings help me feel happier. And when I don’t think I can handle someone, for whatever reason, I shut myself away from them because I don’t want to be exposed to negative feelings (which have a similar, opposite, effect on me).

If you feel like you’re in the latter category, I deeply apologise… It’s nothing about you. I just can’t turn off my feelings or stop myself from being so sensitive.

And if you feel like you’re in the former category and like I’m using you to some degree… well, I am, and for that I also deeply apologise. I do genuinely want you to be happy, but the unfortunate truth is I depend on that more than I let on.

Do you see where my struggle comes from? I feel like an emotional parasite, never really satisfied with myself to be happy on my own because I’m so dependant on good feelings I leech off of other people.

I would buy people gifts and food, comfort them when they’re sad, encourage them when they’re hard at work, so on and so on, all because I want their good feelings for myself. Does this motivate me to do good things? Yes, absolutely. But sometimes I don’t feel like it’s for the right reasons…

This is also a big part of why I’ve been letting Mercy and Lydie out more often, because they don’t depend on others like I do. Lydie only really depends on me, but she’s gotten better at just putting herself out there and enjoying her time with other people. And Mercy, as should be obvious if you’ve interacted with her, is incredibly independent and has no problem enjoying herself on her own.

I don’t feel like I have that… I feel like I’m always clinging to someone because I need it to keep myself going. And admitting this has been incredibly difficult. I’ve already cried so much today after my failed attempt at streaming and I’m crying again now.

I hope now you understand me better, though, regardless of how you might feel about this. The reason I want to provide so much for others, and take it so hard when I can’t… it’s all because this really does keep me going. And I’m scared that without it, I’m not going to be able to maintain myself.

I’ve been trying to find things I can enjoy on my own… but it’s difficult. Since the last time I talked about anything coding-related (which had to have been weeks ago now), I’ve done absolutely nothing to pursue what I started to learn… because it’s not for anyone’s sake but my own that I’d be doing it, and that’s hard for me to do.

To be honest, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I don’t know why I’m even writing this, besides wanting to get it out there and wanting to convince myself I’m providing something of value to the people I care about.

I’m sorry if this makes me sound like a desperate, attention-seeking mess. I don’t want to feel like I am that, either. But I do. I really do. And I’m sorry.