My intuitive guide to going pro

I was at a gathering of friends the other week; quiet in keeping with my persona, it look place under a bridge. That’s not a bad opening line, shame i ruined it with this needless comment immediately after.

So, at said gathering we were, as one imagines, sitting in total morose silence while the spiders ate our legs, or maybe we were having a chat, not exactly groundbreaking. Someone, not to name names but they were a plebeian, decided that video games weren’t a valid hobby. Well not exactly they said: “Being very skilled at a video game is nothing to be proud of and shouldn’t be sought,” which got me wondering. What about video games, is being very skilled at a video game nothing to be proud of and something that shouldn’t be sought? If only i had a format with which to express thoughts on the top.

Back, whenever; some kids, science kids decided to take this here mouse and jam a bunch of electrodes into its skull. Sounds funky right? But it gets weirder: they gave the mouse a button, two in fact; one gave the mouse a snack the other gave the mouse a F’ed up mind blowing orgasm by directly stimulating the region of the brain that dealt with it , thereby dispelling any notion of extraphysical existence, I.E the soul, and killing god like a stoned bird in midflight. All the while leaving the mouse's face twisted up and tongue out like some deprived hentai.

Well, scientists being scientists, the way they rigged it up every hour the mouse had to choose which one to press, the mouse died, never once choosing food over a good long hard hentai face; but that’s not the point here. There’s a find of moral intuition about artificial pleasure being wrong or less worthwhile, when asked if you’d prefer to be hooked up with the pleasure electrodes or just go on living most choose the latter. I’ve seen the look on those little white mouse faces and knew what i’d choose.

That’s an extreme case but the shades of it colour our discussion around games. Because the conditions are arbitrary it feels less real. Give me a standard football any day, along with a regulation size pitch, with clearly designated markers, roles, timers, movement rules, technicalities, restrictions… leagues, preconditions, referees and equipment and i’ll show you how to have fun.

I know this sounds like a lot of thought just to justify being a fucking cretin who would have continued being a cretin regardless but you’know. You’re right, that is a perfectly valid criticism. There was no substantive outcome for the task i set myself which i took to be a challenge of learnt skills and decision making ability from which i might derive a sense of validation from, just as you will have by forming any opinion on the above text.

That is how you deal with criticism: Bullshittery.

So should i hook myself up to the pseudo orgasm hole of becoming a pro gamer? Is there anything to be said for its emerging role as an entertainer like on twitch? Well i’ve not looked at twitch hardly, character flaw i know, but i might have some musing on becoming pro.

LOL YOUR SHIT M8: most people (me) aren't very good at games, of those that are only fraction of which are suited to competitive play. We all like a good kick around but just because you’re a pretty good kicker of balls doesn’t mean you should go pro or let it take up time from your otherwise pitiful mess of a life. I don’t need to make your hobby less valid to make you less of a cretin, you’re a cretin regardless. I hate your dreams, everything you do will turn to ash, achievements will spoil like rotting fruit in your mouth as you savour your feeble pyrrhic victories over a vast uncaring world… i baked a cherry crumble.

From all this you might think i’m fairly content with people gaming and feeling fairly good about it, but if the tone of the above paragraph is any indication then y’all know that ain’t hapn’in. Valid, yes; practice, less so. The mouse died after all, in a monotone existence. You’re more than just a joystick smasher, doing a variety of different things, that engage different sense and styles of thought… is something i’d recommend if i was a self help book, i’m not; clearly i’m a cretin so let me scream into the cosmos while clapping my hands “WHERE’S MY DEADLY BRAIN ORGASMS”

Alan wake me up inside.

There is a pigeon singing gutturally outside my window, the loud fucker isn’t getting their bread handout for a week, to the squirrels go my toasty crusts.

Horror, it takes many forms, like when you misjudged the gaseous quality a fart, forget someone's name or come face to face the entities whose existence renders your own meaningless and more fragile that the flame of a candle as the last droplets of wax flow away. I myself am trapped in the horror of my own fickle memories, i could have sworn i’ve done a review of Alan wake before but apparently not, it could have just been that i intently focused on doing so, maybe one afternoon during a thought shower, i’m not adopting modern terminology there, quite literally showers are great places to mull things over because nowhere else i am free to cup my lathered scrotum in peace, it’s a kind of freedom that promotes free thinking.

The Game: could you make a game out of a stephen king book? Is the premise of this game, not the narrative premise but the actual intent. For those struggling with the difference, the narrative premise would be me going to the shower to think, while the intent would be to cup my lathered scrotum in peace: a sentence one ought never have to read twice.

Set in a sleepy new england town with a terrible monster living in the lake, a writer; with writer's block and presumably a twitter account that see’s the lion share of their typing efforts, goes to get their mojo back, by living in a cabin on the lake side; so they can get over their twitter addiction and actually write something... but WHOOPS, he accidentally writes the creature in the lake into existence and the pages of his new book starts playing out around him. Can he spoiler himself by finding the pages in order to stop what is going down… Maybe.

In terms of metafiction mindfuck the game is fun enough to float through the narrative beats of a pulp novel, which is aware that it’s a pulp novel, also a game; and takes some measure of glee in being a touch on the cheesy side while retaining that capacity to drive genuine fear into the player. Like when someone knocks on the door of the bathroom to ask about your thought shower when really…

The monster is your evil shadow eldritch kind of thingey and so you can only kill an enemy after shining a torch at then, naturally the game plays up the contrast between light and dark more heavily than a silhouette portrait. Upon rereading this i realise silhouette portraits are really out of favour in a world when you can snap chat your lathered scrotum to just about anyone, using a glass of wine and flew clicks. Fortunately i don’t phone.

On top of that the enemies are just townsfolk that have been possessed by the shadow which makes you real monster? Both ammo and batteries are sparse, the classic trick to making everything all the tenser and on top of that the safe points, under street lamps, occasionally cut out just to stop you recovering too much from the intensity of the shadow shit show floating around you.

If memory serves there are some pretty good bits of storytelling going on here and the action is never truly overwhelming if not a touch repetitive, if anything one gets a bit worn out from being so tense all the time.

I didn’t finish the game, not because it was bad or anything just didn’t manage to find the time when i played it a few year ago, which is maybe why i held of on a review for so long but if they’re truly aping stephen king, in the true and time honoured fashion, then the ending wouldn’t have been that good anyway. It would just sort of peter out, tired, kind of predictable. Limping on to a, belated, slow… finish.