It is so weird to me that the Cities in Motion pair have been this blogās major stumbling block ā perhaps even its death knell ā because for the longest time I looked forward to them with anticipation, or as close to it as anything around here gets. Obviously, first off, it wasnāt *just* the games themselves that did it, so much as the final erosion of my own willingness to spend time with games that I wouldnāt enjoy, here in this year of years, when even though I - like most of us - have been measurably inside and available more than any other year of this silly little life, I simultaneously lost the sense of frivolity necessary to sustain this parade of pointlessness, wherein meaning would only ever be created by consistency itself, dedication to the task at hand. If I had my time over, perhaps I wouldāve placed less emphasis on the need to have *a thought* about each and every game, back there at the beginning, and do something more in the manner of Kris Ligmanās version of this sort of thing. Ā
But Fuck, the games themselves did not help. Cities in Motion 2 has ā I think it is fair to say ā one of the worst tutorials Iāve ever encountered. Itās so bad that I (a person who keep-in-mind has spent ten hours or so fumbling with this gameās predecessor) bounced off it repeatedly rather than straggle through the requisite minimum hour with it. Even as it meant letting this once-proud blog (lol) slide further into oblivion. Even as my city, alone amongst Australian cities, backslid into a hard second lockdown, complete with curfew, and for four months we were once again shorn of things to do outside the house. Even as I spent my time playing other games, good games, fun games, thoughtful games, or staring anxiously at the wall. Even with every reason to just grit my teeth and bear it so I can just move on with my life, move on with this list, feel like Iād done something measurable on a day that seemed indistinguishable from many of the one hundred plus days before it, make some reasonable record of the weird time I was living through, I could not.
This year has been awful, for so many people, in distinct and overlapping ways. I never did manage to play a full hour of Cities in Motion 2, public transport tycoon simulator, and perhaps in the wash-up of waiting I can admit that this project might be dead forever, TBC, and good riddance. I wanted this blog to follow me through life and perform an semi-accidental shadow memory of the real thing, but this year I found out that I wouldnāt always be willing to take it with me. In brighter news, last week, for the first time since March, I caught public transport ā a tram and a train ā to the west of the city, to meet friends for a pint or four on a Saturday afternoon, safe in the knowledge that after months of a hard lockdown, this city I live in had effectively eliminated the virus, for now at least, and that catching public transport was no longer the nauseating enclosed risk that it so recently seemed to have posed ā that it still does pose in most other places in the world. Everything changed and it changed and it changed again. Still, the sun rises every day, etc.
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Cities in Motion is a game about public transport, and so I wanted to write about public transport. I wanted to write about why (better) public transport is important for social equality and important for transitioning into a future where we use less, rely less on, oil, by which I mean a future of reduced private car use and ownership. I wanted to fit in my positive experience of now living in a city with (relatively) decent public transport and how that affects the feeling and makeup and structure of a place compared to a city I came from, a city where the public transport is (relatively) patchy, where cars more overtly dominate the planning decisions and the politics and the social fabric and entire lives, really. I wanted to tie these things into how Cities in Motion represents public transport as artificial and overly malleable but ultimately interesting systems, and how the movement and optimisation of movement of people across a space modelled in some way on these real, existing spaces, could be usefully figured to think about the underlying structures of cities and individual resource consumption and infrastructure and ideology.
These were ideas for the piece I was going to write, a piece which never happened, a not-happening which lead to another awkward silence between playing the last of my ten hours with Cities in Motion [sometime in February] and finally following up on many weeks worth of the same note in my to-do list, a reminder to write the damn piece so I could move on and write something else, a note which itself was then ignored and eventually forgotten until today when, deep in the midst of procrastination, I returned to the document.
The first reason, backed up by the dates suggested above, is that in March the novel coronavirus made a real splash over here in Australia, as it seems to have done pretty much everywhere, being, well, yāknow, a pandemic. The dampening effect on this piece in particular was twofold: this made it hard to write generally - an apparent contradiction because there was suddenly seemingly so much more time to write in, thanks to the sudden removal of almost all reasons to leave the house, but time which, thanks to the surging background anxiety of finding ourselves in a pandemic and everything that came with that, couldn't actually be used for much more than panic-refreshing twitter and staring glumly at a netflix home screen. The second reason was specific to the project: how to write a game-review-cum-personal-essay about public transport at the very time when public transport everywhere was becoming an enclosed nightmare of disease? An imagined conduit of DEFINITELY GETTING SICK OH GOD. I suddenly found that, for the first time since I was a teen still overcoming residual fears of trains and strangers instilled by repeated warnings from my parents throughout childhood, I didnāt want to get PT at all, anymore, ever ā that I was going to choose to walk and bike and drive places wherever possible, probably for the next long while, and that I counted my blessings and privilege that I could continue to live my life while ceasing to take the tram or bus.
But this surprising if paradigm-shifting situation was arguably still just a distraction from my real problem, which is that the more I played Cities in Motion, the less sure I became that I wanted to keep playing Cities in Motion, or that I was really enjoying Cities in Motion at all, or that this game about public transport systems really aligned with my hope to discuss public transport systems as an interesting and necessary social good, rather than it was interested in presenting them as a nostalgic relic. The game works like this: youāre put over a muted-colour map of various European cities in various times past (imagine a run-of-the-mill city builder except all the buildings and roads and people are already in place for you), beginning inauspiciously with Berlin in the 1920s. You're asked to connect up the tendrils of the city with buses and trams and, eventually, train lines, generally in the sense that an invisible population haunts the map and all of them are keen to get somewhere, and specifically in that to finish the level you need to complete a string of objectives which ask you to connect certain landmarks together using certain transport systems. My problem, the first several times I tried it, was that I only thought about the specifically asked objectives, not realising that all of these were loss-leaders, and so repeatedly I kept going bankrupt and having to restart the mission, wondering what was wrong with the way I'd laid out the lines, why everyone in Berlin hated me, why my trams were full no matter how many I put down, why the lines were all unprofitable if every carriage on it seemed constantly at capacity, and why the traffic was always banked up. It took a bunch of googling and reading different threads and multiple walkthroughs to realise that the scenarioās specific objectives, presented in the form of requests from Berlin's mayor, were always going to lose money, and that the way to make money was not to prioritise these but instead set up a bunch of more profitable lines of your own accord.
In short, it's one of those games that hides most of its important information and doesn't care to nudge you, so to speak, back on track. One might begrudgingly argue well, that's what it'd be like, planning public transport; you don't really know where people want to go and have to dig through complex population demographic statistical information in order to plan accordingly. But itās justā¦wilfully obtuse? And not fun? It puts its eggs into the realism basket but even there comes up with some wonky results, the counterargument being that like all sim games it is just that ā a game, a toy, a thing to play with and absorb a sense of broader systems at work, not actually learn what it is like to try and be a uh, in this case, public transport tycoon.
But then this obtuseness itself was distracting me from a more fundamental problem about how the game views the role of PT, or more specifically how success in Cities in Motion ā as with most sim-like games, it should be said - is centred around being able to get back more money than you spend. You try and make easy profits on some busy lines in order to build and maintain other lines. But I donāt think public transport should be about turning a profit or making money; arguably, such an insistence is what historically killed (nay, continues to kill) public transport systems in many places around the world, with flow on effects always including widening inequality and increased reliance on car ownership. And thatās kind of the rub here ā your goal isnāt to make the city more accessible for everyone, or to connect disparate areas up in the most efficient way possible, but to make enough money to complete a few select objectives, even though that probably means building a transport system to cater to just a few of your virtual citizens.
Itās an unfair comparison to make, maybe, but I canāt help but hold it up against Mini Metro, the one public transporty game that Iāve ever really loved. Sure, the practicalities slash ārealitiesā of having to fund transport lines and place them within a city that already exists in concrete and limiting ways are entirely absent from that minimalist puzzler, which instead is based on the abstraction of transport system maps over the vaguest ideas of cities existing only in relation to their scant topographical waterfeatures. Still, Mini Metro never asks you to make money - all it wants is for you to get the people where they want to go. As soon as someone appears on the map, itās your job to connect them up with PT, and if you canāt do it in time, youāve failed. Leave nobody behind, it suggests. This is more the kind of transport game design I can get behind, have gotten behind. As for Cities in Motionās insistence that we must become the devil in order to beat the devil, to that I say phooey.Ā
Friends, hello. A few things re: the current state of this project:
In the latter half of last year I attempted to put up a new post every week. You may have noticed that I havenāt been keeping up this schedule for the past couple of months, and Iāve decided that I wonāt be returning to it for the time being. As much as it felt āgoodā to be making tangible and quick progress through the list, it also felt that it was leading me to not giving as much time and thought to some games as I would have liked, which didnāt seem in keeping with LOās, uh, purpose.
Also, this dissertation isnāt going to write itself. It turns out.
So Iām going to informally revert to aiming at a new post every couple of weeks, acknowledging that some may take longer and others might be thrown up in quick succession. I will, again, adjust the rules to reflect this.
Iāve also been looking into a fix for the siteās longstanding RSS problems. Tumblr emailed to say theyāre working on it, but, uh, I dunno, something smells off. Itās just one in a long line of issues. If anyone has any suggestions as to where to go next, do let me know.
In the meantime, give the Cibele discussion a listen, if you havenāt already, and check out my work for the good people at Critical Distance.
Cibele is a game by Star Maid Games/ Nina Freeman [Ninaās website], and released in 2015. Feeling that my friends had more interesting things to say about Cibele than I did, I decided to get their thoughts on the record. Thus was born the first ever List Oriented podcast.
Sian Campbell edits Scum Mag and once baked a very good cake. Xanthea OāConnor [twitter] is a writer, performance-artist, audio tech person and a million other things.Ā
Xanthea also made the podcast theme song and helped with recording and EQ.Ā
Interlude music was excerpted from the Cibele soundtrack by Decky Coss [bandcamp].
Hit the "read more" button at the bottom there to see the transcript.
Some topics we discussed include:
- representations of early/online relationships
- is Ichi a creep?
- the framing of the ending
- to what extent claims to autobiography matter
Some other books and games mentioned:
- The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in AmericaĀ by Michelle Tea
- Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang
- Minor CharactersĀ by Joyce Johnson
- I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
- Emily is Away by Kyle Seeley
Finally, many interesting things have already been said about Cibele. Suriel Vasquez and Kate Grey both made arguments that Cibele is one of the few games to get sex right. Brendan Keogh notes how Cibele makes players aware that "both the players and creators of videogames never stop being fleshy, meaty bodies in actual space." Lena LeRay compared the depictions of online intimacy in Cibele and Emily is Away. G. Christopher Williams read the game's ending through the similarly cynical lens that we did.
next is Cities in Motion
Podcast transcript
Sian: There needs to be a theme song. [Singing] Welcome to List Oriented. *Finger Clicks*.
Xanthea: I think thatās great.
Sian: Nailed it. Hashtag, nailed it.
Xanthea: Weāll doodle a ukulele over it.
Connor: Can you put some beats in?
Xanthea: Yeah Iāll put some beats.
Connor: Maybe I should just make it so that just pops up automatically when the blog starts.
Sian: Nooooā¦haha. Like Myspace circa 2006ā¦
[Podcast theme plays]
Ā Connor: So Iād like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.
Hey!
Xanthea: Hi
Connor: Hi
Sian: Hello.
C: Welcome to the first and possibly only edition of the List Oriented podcast, which isā¦a decision I have made to do a podcast instead of a blogpost for this game, Cibele. Cibele was made by Star Maid Games, which is the vehicle of Nina Freeman. It came out in 2015. To discuss it with me today I have some friends and experts.
X: [Laughs] Thatās us!
S: Donāt fact check that.
C: Uhā¦Sian Campbell, editor of Scum Magazine, researcher extraordinaireā¦
C: Aaaand in the other cornerā¦ Xanthea OāConnor. Writer, performerā¦
X: Sims video expertā¦
C: ā¦Connoisseur.
X: Mhm, mhm.
S: Youāve kind of made it sound like weāre gonna fight.
C: Yeah I meanā¦thatās probably not going to happen butā¦
S: Well we donāt know.
X: Weāve got the whiskey outā¦drinking coffee and whiskey at the same time.
C: Whiskey is a fighting drink. I have a friend who wonāt drink whiskey because he says it makes him too angry.
X: Thatās why I donāt drink tequila.
C: Oh! Cos it makes you too angry?
X: Mhm, yeah.
S: I donāt drink tequila because I end up with girls in bathrooms.
[All laugh]
C: So Cibeleā¦ or āSybilā depending on who you are, uhm, is a game, which, kind of, is a bit different from other games, it isā¦uh. It has you play as Nina, the main character, uhm, who you see introduced at the start of the game in a like, full motion video when she sits down at the computer. And then the next thing we have access to Ninaās desktop so we are - kind of - Nina but weāre kind of also not-Nina. Uhm, and we can rifle through her pictures and her archived blog posts, uhm, and then eventually we get to open up this game called Valtameri which is sort of a Final Fantasy parody type thing, and we play Valtameri with this guy called Ichi, or Blake, uhmā¦
X: Spoiler heās a creep.
C: Well. Arguably heās a creep. Uhm. And we just talk to him. Aaaandā¦ our other friends are messaging us while weāre playing but weāre not that interested, uhm. And we kind of have this cycle a few times where we play the game, and then we maybe send photos to Ichi orā¦maybeā¦I dunno what else happens but anyway thereās like three phases of the game and it takes place over a few months and thenā¦ thatās kind ofā¦ it. Thatās the end of the game. I dunno. Anything to add?
X: Should we give a spoiler that at the end he lives in another state and he comes to see her, at the endā¦
C: Or usā¦
X: Or usā¦ and thenā¦ they Have Sexxx. And then, the last bit of the game is him saying that it was a mistake, over the internet, and you see the last image of her at the computer looking very isolated and then itās just the end of the game. Is that alright to say? The spoiler?
C: Yeah weāre not going to be able to talk about the game without saying that, so.
X: Yeah we need to say thereās unresolved tension at the end. Uhmā¦yes. That thereās no way to resolve.
C: Uhmmm yeah so itās unusual, I mean, like I suppose some people at the time made a point about itās not being a game you āplayā so much as experience because you canāt really have any influence on it, itās more just about exploringā¦the life that is presented to you.
X: And whatever influence that you do have, doesnāt really affect the main narrative. So you can do small little actions, like you can choose text that you say to people, but it doesnāt actually change anything that happens.
C: Yeah. You canāt make meaningful choices.
S: I did like that you can engage with, or not engage with, the background media as much as you wanted to. Because itās got the interface of her desktop where you can look in her desktop folders, look at her selfies, pull up chatlogs all that kind of stuff. And you donāt have to in order to experience the game. And I liked that element of it because it was, I guess, immersive and, yeah. Again, it didnāt really influence the gameplay in any way. And you could safely assume that people would look at everything, because thatās kind of how most people play games. But, yeah, I thought that achieved the goal, which was to make it feel like you were her, on her computer.
X: Whereas for me I felt like, maybe as someone who doesnāt game quite as much ā calling myself out here - but, the idea of going through those things maybe wasnāt as exciting for me so maybe I did speed through the game a bit more occupying Myself rather than the character of Nina. Maybe because I found looking through photos that were similar to photos I would have taken in 2008 deeply frustrating uhm, yeah. But itās just different experiences I guess.
S: I found interesting in terms of, like, obviously this is a creative work that sheās made, so I came at it from the point of view of wondering about the inclusion of certain things. Like, why that photo as opposed to ā Iām sure she has hundreds of photos of that time ā like what does this photo or poem say about that time in her life that another photo taken in the same photo session didnāt? Or something like that, I mean, obviously everything that was included in the desktop interface was a deliberated choice and so I found that aspect interesting.
C: Hmm yeah, like someone else had made the point which wasnāt something that Iād picked up on but, that some of the photos were intentionally bad photos that were included, which I guess when weāre talking about the choice of presentation uhm. And her poetry and chatlogs and itās this idea of airing your dirty laundryā¦
X: Well itās still curated.
C: Yeah, very much so.
X: But, itās very clear that thereās the intention there that it is a little bit more vulnerable than what you might just put online itās like, yeah itās more the sort of stuff you might just keep in a file somewhere on desktop, I guess thereās that vulnerability that you donāt normally get on a blog or Instagram or something like that.
S: And I guess that by being vulnerable she signposts to us as player or consumer in some ways that we should trust this as a confessional work.
X: Mhm. It does feel very much like rifling through someoneās diary, orā¦yeah that feeling of youāre totally not meant to look at someoneās phone, but thereās occasionally that impulse to do so, and it definitely feels like youāre doing something thatāsā¦itās kind of not okay, but within the game contextā¦
S: Yeah. And so I find that interesting coz itās kind of her giving us the phone and wiping everything on the phone other than the things that are on it, but the things that are on it are kind of not necessarily things that make her look the best, so I, yeah. Itās interesting from a curatorial point of view.
X: Mhm. Yeah itās definitely curated from someone looking back at that self and being really honest. Which I find really interesting. And I havenāt reallyā¦ again, not a huge gamer but I havenāt seen that in a game before, that really confessional, like, autobiographicalā¦
C: Yeah. I mean it definitely comes from a place of there being not much autobiography in games and certainly not with this, uhm, mix of mediums that itās sort of used where youāve got this, like, video of the character which is played by the person who made the game whoās named the character after themselves and so itās likeā¦theyāre acting as themselves, and then using bits from their life, and thereās a game element to it, and a movie element to itā¦and all these things are sort of slipping over. Whereas I think other autobiographical games have been more text based or uhmā¦ traditional, in air quotesā¦
Ā [Music plays: excerpt from āturn onā by Decky Coss]
Ā X: So do you want to talk aboutā¦do we want to talk about what we did like and didnāt likeā¦now?
C: Yeah. I find it ā I guess I find it a really interesting game. And itās almost like, for me, because itās so unusual in so many ways it almost like ā¦avoids the question, for me, as to whether or not itās something āI likeā. I guess what I liked about it is itās something I havenāt really experienced elsewhere, uhm, itās a very novel game to me. Like I do think it has identifiable shortcomings which I guess weāll come to later, but, uhmā¦
X: So you like the experimentation of it?
C: Yeah. I do like the experimentation of it. I like the way it, uhm, mixes these things together and the way it plays with autobiography, which is another thing Iām sure weāll talk more about it. I like itās sound and visual kind ofā¦the desktop artwork, itās design. I have a basic appreciation of that I suppose.
X: Sheās got a really strong aesthetic. I think that can be fully agreed upon. Sian, what about you?
S: Iāve never played online collaborative gaming like the kind of gaming this game is about and referencing, and that the game-inside-the-game is meant to, I guess, be a play on or be an example of. Iā¦ I found the game kind of rudimentary and not that enjoyable to play. As in the game āValtameriā, uhm.
X: Also, I donāt think you even had to actually play it because Ichi was playing itā¦
S: Mhm, I couldnāt tell, I thought you did.
C: Yeah, I feel like if you did nothing it wouldnāt go forward at allā¦
S: Yeah I agree. But. I feel like it did what intended to do which was immerse you in the idea of being a person playing a game while listening to the audio of a story which is of people talking while playing a game, so it was effective in its aim in that sense, but it just wasnāt an enjoyable experience to actually play it. I found it boring and clunky.
X: I think I was beginning to dread having to go in there and do it, too.
S: Me too.
X: Itās almost like a meditative means to an end within the game. But the actual game itself is likeā¦ugh. Just like, clicking. Like Diablo butā¦with worse monsters.
C: Yeah.
X: Does that make me sound really stupid?
C: No. I mean thatās what it is.
X: I think ifā¦I think if there had been a little bit more, like, difference, so if it was a different kind of game, or if it was simple it was so simple it mirrored a game like Diablo or games like thatā¦if it didnāt mirror a game like that it might be more interesting but I found myself clicking and just āoh I donāt want to playā¦ I want to play an actual good gameā and uhmm yeah
S: Yeah. I found it tedious and I foundā¦ I donāt know if it was just my Mac I was playing it on but I found it soooo clunky and awkward and like, to actually navigate inside the game was just a nightmare and so I was the same, I was dreading it every time I had to do that part.
C: Yeah I wonder like, uhmā¦ if they had built Valtameri to be more interesting it would have detracted from the point of it which was I guess, uhm, the paying attention to the conversation orā¦
X: Well youāre forced to coz itās so monotonous.
C: Yeah.
S: I was thinking the same thing. And Iām wondering if there wasā¦I mean, there would be, there would be a way of having it simplistic in terms of goals and fighting and all that while alsoā¦ not being as boring and annoying. But, yeah. I was also thinking the same thing in that because it was so straightforward it did give you that space to absorb the story better.
C: Yeah.
X: Mhm.
S: In terms of, like, bigger picture, I just didnāt really like the framing at the end. Which was, kind of the game ends and it leaves you with this message thatā¦ this is an experience of what first love is which I felt was, uhm, again a bit clunky and didnāt feel honest to me. Which I thought was interesting because the game itself is quite a vulnerable, confessional, honest game.
X: Yeah, it was very good at interrogating Nina, and very good at doing a lot of showing not telling but still interrogating the character of Ichi, but thenā¦ interrogating the relationship itself felt, likeā¦yeah, when it said it was about first loveā¦ notā¦ I dunno. Was it?
S: Yeeeah, youāre talking about a relationship that never was with someone you were never really with. Uhm, it was very unclear, I guess. And it was interesting ā and I think most people have had relationships like this, online ā where youāre communicating with someone primarily online and forming this relationship and this bond but also but kind of on one levelā¦ I guess, unsure as to where that relationship fits outside the box that is your computer.
X: Yeah, and I found that, actually, the whole premise of the game for me ā as, like, someone who has left their early twenties, thankfully ā of knowing that environment and knowing those people and that sort of relationship that gets built online, and as soon as weāre introduced to Ichi the character I wanted to just shut it down.
S: Mhm.
X: It was like āeurgh I know whatās going to happen, Iā¦ donāt want to be there for thatā. And so there was thatā¦ again, I donāt know if itās something I necessarily liked or disliked, I just found it a very confronting part of the game, that, I wasnāt sureā¦ whether it was for me necessarily, or what the point of it would be for me to play.
C: Yeah, right. I feel like, that was really interesting for me actually, playing it this time, because I have played it once before back after it came outā¦I played it not long afterā¦ and I think my experience this time, it seemed a lot more likeā¦ obvious how, Ichi, the things he said seemed quiteā¦ bad. And I didnāt remember it being quite so bad. Like I felt like his actions were always questionable. But just the wholeā¦like all of his dialogueā¦is
X: Itās very well done.
C: Oh itās very well done. It seems very real.
X: But thatās the thing. If youāve never been groomed online before. I dunno. Can I say he was grooming? I feel like it was kind ofā¦
S: It wasnāt *not* grooming, it wasā¦[sighs] itās hard to tell, I mean, I guess. And thatās part of whatās interesting is that itās her memories of how it happened and what their conversations were like, then portrayed by somebody else. So of course, we can only go on what we actually see but itās referencing something that happened and probably what weāre listening to is quite different from what actually was being said, so that line is quite murky and unclear. I found it hard to tell exactly to what extent he knew what he was doing or even if he was doing anything other than just enjoying playing a game with someone who was showing him that kind of positive attention, like, a girl who was showing him that kind of attention. It was kind of unclear to me where he wanted it to go or even if he wanted it to go anywhere. She was kind of the one pushing them meeting up and things like that. I felt like he was toying with her, very much so. I donāt know whether I would say he wasā¦.hmm, I would say he was grooming her but I donāt know whether it wasā¦
X: ā¦a premeditated sort of predatoryā¦
S: Yeah. Yeah.
X: Yeah, I think itās quite interesting, thinking about that and where you are upon reflection making this dialogue, I guess as the maker of the game, as Nina did, it reminds me ofā¦after weād played the game, uhm, and I opened up my laptop and I got all my 2007 emails spat at me and, heaps of emails from old friends, and lots of guy friends talking about girl stuff, like putting in, like copy-pasting msn messenger chat things theyād had with girls like āI donāt know what this means, can you help?ā And I was reading through, and it was very similar like baiting sort-of situations where someoneās like āwell Iām not very goodā and youāre like āno, youāre great!ā. And likeā¦ very similar dialogue, where Iām sure these friends of mine were not predatory they were just, like, trying to get some affection, just being like ā they must have been sixteen, seventeen at the time, like ā really trying to figure out how to broach a like a sexual or romantically intimate relationship with somebody, and thereās just a lot of like, neediness in those conversations, that I forgot was a thing, until I got all those emails being likeā¦ oh we were soā¦ like, if we now, in our late twenties to thirties messaged something like that, weād be likeā¦ āyouāre a freakā, like. You wouldnāt be able to say what we were saying back then. So yeah, I think itās kind of interestingā¦what youāre saying, is that we assume that itās predatory because as older people now, because thatās what it signifies butā¦ when youāre youngerā¦sometimes it can just be, likeā¦
S: Yeah, on one level I felt like he wasā¦just confused and out of his depth. Like this girl, that heās obviously attracted to, and very much enjoying having the attention of, is then suddenly starting to push the line of, āwell are we gonna meet upā, and heās kind of thinking āOh. She wants to meet up with me. I hadnāt actually thoughtā¦ā. Like, it seemed like heās just enjoying the online experience, and sheās the one who wanted to solidify things and meet up. From my memory I mean, I played it a couple of months ago. And then heās kind of, it seemed maybe, internally wrestling with the idea of ādo I want that? If I want that, itāll obviously be beneficial for me in those certain waysā, but itās obviouslyā¦ most people, or at least most girls who have been through that wringer at least would be able to tell going into it that he didnāt actuallyā¦that there was not going to be a relationship, that he uhmā¦ when he came to New York that wasnāt going to be a love story coming to fruition.
X: Yeah, totally.
S: But obviously she was engaging in these like fishing tactics too that we all did when youāre young and you try and feel out whatās actually happening: āDoes this person like me? Do they not like me? Oh Iām ugly, Iām sure, ohā¦ā you know, all that kind of bashfulā¦
X: And, that as well, because you can see how vulnerable she is on her desktop, like you can see all those photos, and you can see the development of her sexualisation as well within the game becauseā¦itās in three parts right? Where it goes, like, the first time, and then itās a few months later, a few months later. And you can see every time the desktop refreshes she is like more sexualised, you can see her search history of things sheās looking through, you can see where itās heading in her own mind. And there is those fishing tactics from both sides. Itād be really interesting to see, like, Ichiās desktop as well. Like, I would love the other side of, what heās looking at.
S: Yeah.
X: Because, for me, I can look at Ninaās desktop as long as I want ā like, I get it. But I would love to know what heās doing. And like, his intentions. Obviously, Nina doing that would be disingenuous. But it would be really interesting to have a game, of like, a 17-year-old boyās desktop, and understanding where that headspace is.
S: I thought there were some interesting context clues, in the game, that were interesting on a few different levels, hinting at the idea that this was something he did with girls, that he kind ofā¦played with them, that he was only interested in playing games with girls, obviously enjoying this attention. That was something that was I think said by at least one person she talked to, and possibly multiple people that she talked to was, oh. I kind of got the sense that she was new girl that he was āplaying withā, in multiple senses.
X: And those things like, burned out, sort of.
S: Yeah. I kind of thought that context was interesting. Because, if youāve been through this relationship, you have the ability to see whatās happening, which is why you and I both have a stronger feeling that this guy is in some waysā¦ not necessarily predatory, but, in some ways manipulative and, just bad news. Just notā¦ uncomfortable.
X: Weāre playing through a pattern of behaviour that isnāt going to be healthy for either themā¦
S: Yeah, uhm, and so we can recognise that, it feels like weāre meant to recognise that, it feels like those clues areā¦theyāre not even clues, itās part of the dialogue, we can hear it, we can interpret it. And those context clues of other people referencing the fact that this has happened with other girlsā¦ well it seemed like what those other people were referencing.
C: Mhm.
S: Ā Those were deliberate things put in the game by Nina, which is interesting when you think about the way that she then frames the game at the end as āthis is just a story about first love.ā
X: Mhm. Itāsā¦yeah, itās confusing, definitely, because itās kind of undermining like what you think sheās setting out to achieve, and almost likeā¦ is that just meant to beā¦a joke? How intentional is that? Did she not know how to wrap it up? Wrap up the story to resolve it allā¦
S: Yeah thatās what I was unclear of. It did almost feel like she felt it needed one final, like, āand this is what the game isā flagging. Whereas I thought it would be more powerful and interesting if she just left it the way it was but without that kind of final message.
X: Mhm.
S: And so in some ways I felt frustrated by that messaging because Iād interpreted it so differently, and I was then being told that my experiences were incorrect, I guess? That maybe Iād interpreted it wrong. It also made me sad for her that she was interpreting it in that first love sense. And it made me feel guilty for feeling sad for her [laughs] like it wasā¦it was an interesting choice for her to kind ofā¦.in such a cerebral, experimental game, where you have the power to experience it the way you want, for then for her to tell you how it should be read wasā¦ an interesting choice.
X: Mhm, yeah, totally. Coz it almost makes you second guess, like oh was she not upset? Did he not just do something that was, like, not loving?
C: Yeah, I though that wasā¦ uhm, like, a weird bit of the author coming to then tell you what the game is about. But at the same time it reminded me of ā I recently read a memoir by Michelle Tea, Passionate Mistakes ā and in it she talks aboutā¦ thereās a scene where she says one of her early boyfriends, she says, that telling him āI love youā was like, a code for āwe can have sex nowā. And I thought that like, in the context of this game being kind of, likeā¦ I think Nina does the same thing in Act 2, she says āI love youā, like, Ā āI think I love youā, and then itāsā¦ itās part of the development of the relationship and itās like heading towards having sex for the first time. Uhm, and that kind of being framed asā¦maybe thatās more of an American thing? Like, a code, I dunno.
X: Nooo, itās not.
[Laughter]
X: Itās not an American code. Unless I am American.
C: Or is it a teenage code?
X: Itās definitely, I dunno for me itās definitely a teenage code.
C: Sure.
X: I think it was, another book that I was reading recently, and talked about constantly while I was reading itā¦was it Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson? Yeah. Thatās the one.
C: I guess we can edit in the correct title later.
[Laughter]
X: And sheā¦itās like a beat memoir of a women during the beat era, and she dated Jack Kerouac, and itās saying thatā¦during that era, and I mean still it holds true, but like, women, or young girls are taught to safe guard their virginity, and boys are taught to safeguard themselves, and that idea of love beingā¦ like, giving, giving way to something that you can lose yourself to. And I think that it 100% feels like that, like when women say - when girls say - āI love youā, itās like, very much about that idea of safeguarding their bodies.
C: Right.
X: And, yeah, I donāt know where else to go from there. But itās veryā¦itās not just American, I think itās like, across the board. In like, early relationships.
C: Okay.
S: Mhm.
X: What do you think, Sian?
S: I dunno, it wasā¦ I donāt necessarily have any opinion about the sexual element to it. I guess I feel like I got the sense that she wanted to have sex, like that was something she wanted to do, she was ready for and thinking about, and thinking was kind of her way of accessing that, in some ways. Uhm. Mhm. I was sort ofā¦was very unclear of hisā¦ thinking, I guess, and what he was thinking about, where he was coming from, who he was as a character. Just, I didnāt get a sense specifically of who he was. Like I feel like Iāve probably met gamer guys like himā¦ itā¦ She gave us some ideas but I alsoā¦ I think what you were saying in wanting to see his desktop was interesting because we got such a clear idea of who she was but we didnāt get any of that from the actual audio, from the actual in-game experience of them chatting. They didnāt talk about their life, pretty much at all. So, everything we learnt of her we got from her desktop. So, we didnāt get that same chance to learn who this guy was. What he did outside this game. Where he lived, who he lived with, what he studied. We didnāt get any of that. And I think, hmm, I agree with you ā I donāt think she could have added that, I think it would have been disingenuous and it would have been against the point of what the game actually was as experimental memoir basically.
X: Hmm. But I also think with so many gamer guys as, uh, as a woman who has dated a lot of gamer guys, I think thatā¦especially during that time when youāre just going into university, you are like plumbing for depth, like emotional depth in people that youāre dating, and often itās just not developed yet, like, I dunno. From experience I think that, this guy I honestly just think ā like I know I said his behaviour felt like it was grooming, but ā he just, maybe, as well, had no idea what he was doing.
S: I kind of ā yeah, I got that sense as well. I mean, I think he knew what he was doing in terms of fostering her attention, but in the larger picture I donāt think he was a particularly deep or interesting person.
[Laughter]
X: I rememberā¦ I dated this guy ā anecdote! We can cut this out ā uhm, but I dated this guy when I was like 17, and it was my first year of uni, I met him in my maths class ā shoutout, you know who you are! Uhmā¦ and heā¦ I remember like in the first week of us dating he said that he missed his bus stop because he was thinking, and I was like āoh my god, heās so deep, he like missed his bus because he was Thinkingā and I, like, āI wonder what he was thinking about, probably me, how amazing I amā.
[Laughter]
X: And then maybe a month later or like two months later, he was like āoh yeah I missed my bus stop againā, and I was like āoh what were you thinking about?ā. And he was like āoh you know, just what everyone said during the dayā. [Laughs]. Like he was just, no further reflection. Just what everyone said in sequential order, and it was just that moment of like, ohā¦ you werenāt, it wasnātā¦ there was no depth to the thought, you were just daydreaming about the sequence of events during the day, uhm. And that moment of, like, disillusionment was quiteā¦ upsetting.
S: Mhm.
X: But yeah I feel like thatās what we could have done during this game, is that weāve turned him into this guy thatās likeā¦. well, for me, definitely Iāve like, in my head while I was playing it, I was like āwhat a piece of trashā, like. But he probably just logs off and twiddles his thumbs, and, I donāt knowā¦ plays Fortnite.
S: Yeah itās kind of like that, I donāt know. I was gonna say meme. I feel like thereās tik-toks about it where girls are like āurr I wonder what heās thinking or why heās not messaging me backā and heās literally just playing games or asleep or justā¦outside! And thereās no greater mystery to it, itās just that heās not currently texting you, coz heās a boy, and theyāre boring!
[Laughter]
X: Mhm, yeah.
S: But yeah I totally agree that uhmā¦of having had so many times that experience of having had so many times that experience of just assuming people must be thinking these larger internalised thoughts like thereās this whole world of them weāre not accessing and that feltā¦I felt like that as well while playing this game. Or I felt her feeling that, while playing this game.
X: Totally, coz thereās so much of her planning in there. So much of her planning flights and looking at prices of flights and things like that. And itās like, sheās putting so much energy into, and like Iām sure he had not even googled a flight untilā¦
S: I donāt even think he was thinking about them meeting up really until she kind ofā¦started, felt like she wasā¦not pushing it butā¦
X: She was giving ultimatums kind ofā¦
S: Yeah.
C: Which I mean, fair enough.
X: Yeah.
Ā [Music interlude: excerpt from āwhat would happen if we metā by Decky Coss]
Ā C: Soā¦uhm, we sort of touched on it before but like, āwho is this game for?ā is a question that Xanthea you suggested we should talk about.
X: Yep.
C: Possibly because you didnāt think ā not to put words in your mouth ā
X: Put āem in.
C: - but you werenāt sure, like, you werenāt sure if this game had a target, or that if there was a particular set of people that should be playing this, or like. I dunno, what were your thoughts?
X: Yeah I dunno, I just felt like, especially by the end of it when it wasā¦or even as I started it, and hearing the dialogue, I knew what was going to happen. And I felt thatā¦like sitting and playing ā I wouldnāt have finished playing if I wasnāt playing with you, Connor, becauseā¦I was like āI know whatās going to happenā¦ā
C: Yeah.
X: āand itās going to be annoyingāā¦like āitās going to irritate meā. Soā¦yeah. I think that itāsā¦ you donāt go into playing this game for like, excellent gameplay, or likeā¦I, I dunno. I think itās an experiment, and itās a worthy and valid experiment of a game, uhm. But as a standalone, Iām not sureā¦ if Iām like ācool I feel entirely satisfied, as a, as a consumer of this gameā. Like I want thereā¦coz it is that experiment, now I want something else to come out thatās inspired by itā¦
S: Mhm.
X: Does that make sense?
S: I sort of felt likeā¦ uh, I guess as wanky as it might sound, I sort of felt that itās just a piece of art, and it didnāt need or even have a specific target audience, it was just created for artās sake. And I guess if I had to say who it was for, I guess, people who enjoy immersive, experimental gameplay butā¦ yeah Iām kind of the same mind in that Iām excited by it as a starting off point, in terms of gaming.
X: Unless we sell it to the government and they lock teenage boys in rooms and make them play it.
C: Do you think thereās like an educational element where teenage boys should play it and understand, that likeā¦?
X: I dunno that girls are real people? Maybe.
[Laughter]
X: Thatās another ā okay, another boyfriend that i had, once, two months into dating the next boyfriend - everyone goes to take a drink - he said, uhh, āI didnāt realise that girls had feelings until I started dating youā, which was, like, the most ā
S: Did you break up with him immediately?
X: No, we dated for a year and a half.
S: But he didnāt know women wereā¦he didnāt know girls were people.
X: I know!
S: Thatās scary!
X: And he dated a lot of women before me. Uhmā¦and yeah! But maybe Iām coming at it from a radicalised point of view, given my dating history.
[Laughter]
X: But yeah, I think that this game for like, Sian and I ā and Connor as well I guess ā is like, preaching to the converted that these relationships, these early relationships being fraught and problematic and, likeā¦ very difficult to navigate. Yeah, so, as you said, it does feel more as a piece of artwork acknowledging all those issues. But at the same time, I think it does have a message that feelsā¦interesting. I just donāt think a young boy would pick it up and be like āI canāt wait to play this game!ā
S: Mhm. I think I would love to have a conversation with a bunch of girls at different points in their life, like a fifteen-year-old girl and a seventeen-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old girl. Like find out what someone thinks when theyāre in the middle of these kind of relationships, playing this game, likeā¦do they recognise it? Do they have thoughts about as being manipulative, or uhm, that kind of fishing idea that theyāre both doing, engaging in that kind of fishing behaviourā¦ Iād be really interested to know what I would have said about the game, when I was eighteen.
X: Yeah. I think if I was playing it at eighteen I would have a lot more internalised misogyny, of just being like āoh she was just super needy andāā¦
S: Mhm. And I thinkā¦ itās so hard to say, like, wouldā¦would I have felt more impacted by it? Would I have felt more called out by it? Would I have felt more seen, orā¦would I have wanted toā¦ I think I probably would have read it the same way that Nina is now telling us to read it, which is as a love story, becauseā¦thatās kind ofā¦I would have been closer to Ninaās, I guess, idea of who she was when she wasā¦when we are Nina in this game. I think thatās what I would haveā¦would have been my experience as an eighteen-year-old.
X: Hmmā¦
S: So itās kind of interesting, I think I would haveā¦ shipped them. As it were.
X: Totally.
C: Yeah right?
X: And would have focussed a lot more on him being like, heās so likeā¦heās so cute, or likeā¦ kind of getting really into that idea thatās like oh yeahā¦ and like, actively shipping, as you say.
S: Mhm, picking up on things he said that indicated he was interested, as opposed to now, when your bullshit meter is just going Off The Charts.
X: Totally! Every, every bitā¦like literally the first game you play itās like āew, go away.ā
[Laughter]
X: āWhere is the option to never play with this guy ever again? Oh wait, it doesnāt exist. Itās the whole game. How horrible for you Ninaā.
C: Yeah I remember you saying that you felt almost like a bit trapped by it, by the fact that you canāt get out of it, like you have to experience thisā¦not, not that itās necessarily trauma, but like-
X: Yeah itās traumatic! And youā¦I mean, every line that he was saying was like ugh, it felt so close toā¦thingsā¦Iāve heard online because I was quite a vulnerable teenager, who was constantly fishing for things online ā call myself out, hundred percent. And yeah, itās very challenging to go back and look at somebody doing that and not being able to, within gameplay, do anything about that.
S: Mhm.
X: Like sit her down and be like. āNina. We need to have a talk about this. Youāre fine. Chill out. Go for a walk. This guyāsā¦not good.ā Like, yeah, I dunno I think, uhmā¦coz you yeah I dunno I think I very muchā¦ immediately saw that and it frustrated me.
C: Yeah. Thatās fair.
X: But, I mean, if itās a work of art thatās okay! Itās allowed to frustrate.
S: I think that feeling of being trapped is interesting coz I had that same sense of being locked in, uhm, but at the same time I think that feeling is an effective one in making you feel immersed in this personās life. Like it reallyā¦because I guess, you are locked in and because of the desktop element and because of the kind of immersing gameplay it really felt like you were experiencing this personās life in a way thatā¦Iām not sure whether it would have been as effective if you could kind of pause and click out and stop.
Ā [music interlude: ācibeleā by Decky Coss]
Ā C: Uhm, I guess one final thing we can talk about is, this idea of it being autobiographical or not? Or where it kind of sits on that spectrum ā I suppose because this isnāt something thatās been done so much in games uhmā¦ we were kind of looking at the idea of it being āautofictionalā because itās taking the idea of, the intentional blending of something that happened in the life of the creator so itās sort of like memoir, but itās also an intentional, uhm, saying that it is not totally autobiographical because itās not using certain elements, or itās recreating certain elements. Uhm, so I dunno ā Sian, because you are the autofiction expert in the room, what was your kind of idea about how it was positioning itself?
S: Uhm, I would sayā¦on one level I would be inclined to say it didnāt read as autofiction to me because it just felt like it was a retelling of something that happened, it didnāt feel like we were meant to suspend our disbelief or that we were meant to uhm, assume that anything that happened didnāt happen exactly as it happened ā I got the sense that it was almost in some ways quite literal. I dunno. I think I would have to think a lot harder about this. I think autofictionās interesting because a lot of the time it relies on what you already know about the creatorā¦
C: Yeah right.
S: ā¦which is an interesting kind of thing to have to consider as a reader, and also as a writer of autofiction isā¦when youāre flagging something as inherently false, how is your reader or player or consumer meant to pick up that it is inherently false, if they donāt happen to know you? If they donāt know what actually happened, how do they know that this is you playing with the truth? Will they assume this is true? Iām not sure she put anything in there that we were meant to assume didnāt happen. Iām not sure she was playing with the truth ā I think she was trying to get at the truth. But without knowing more about her I suppose itās really hard to make that call.
X: Was it ever acknowledged to be based on true events at the beginning?
S: I think it was.
C: Yeah I think so and maybe not in the game specifically except for that authorās note at the end where itās kind of like, suddenly not Nina the character speaking to you, itās Nina who made the game ā I think thatās the only time in the game where it acknowledges that the game was based on true events. But uhm, like, outside the game there have been interviews and articles that have been āthis is a game about my first experience of like, hooking up with someone from the internet.ā
X: Yeah coz it kind of feels like ā whoās that author who wrote Sour Heart?
S: Oh, Jenny Zhang?
X: Yeah, Jenny Zhang, when she came to Australia and did an interview at Wheeler Centre she was talking about how frustrated she is that all of her fiction ā even though itās definitely fiction ā is always assumed to be autobiographicalā¦
S: Mhm.
X: Just coz sheās writing about, like, a demographic of her own experience itās just assumedā¦ and I think itās like, kind of similar here. Itās like, does it matter if itās autobiographical? Does it matter how much is true and how much itās not? This is kind of more a universal truth of internet, uhm, intimacy. And like, I think that is enough to be a valid ā frustrating, uhm, but valid, stillā¦
S: If I was gonna think of where I would position it from a literature perspective ā because thatās what I know, and thatās what I do ā is, it is quite reminiscent of I Love Dick in some ways. Itās very confessional, itās telling the story of someoneās relationship with someone else who doesnāt get a chance toā¦weigh in, I guess, and it is a retelling. Itās using real artefacts, I guess, with reimagined, and in some cases hyper-realisticā¦mmm
X: Re-enactments.
S: Yeah. So I think, thatās where I would position it. In terms of when thinking about literature which is what I do.
C: Yeah. Yeah, I guess, Xanthea youāre more of a memoir fan? Uhm..
X: Yeah. I love a good memoir.
C: You prefer it toā¦you prefer things that are passing things off as fully truthful? Or some version ofā¦the truth?
X: Yeah āfully truthfulāā¦whatever that is. Uhm. I like things that aim to be truthful. And I like things that interrogate themselves enough to feel likeā¦anything thatās passed off as āthis is entirely what happened, the truthā, I donāt believeā¦ but uhm. Yeah. I think at this point it doesnāt matter who made it ā for me, this has a larger truth to it, in some ways.
C: The universal experienceā¦
X: I think it is getting at a universal experience of like, internet intimacy.
C: So you donātā¦ so it doesnāt matter if like, that experience, is making a claim to like, āthis was my experienceā? Like this isā¦ orā¦
X: Honestly, I donāt think it matters. Like, uhm. I think itās kind of beyond the point. And I think itās why Iām more interested in stuff thatās made because of this work. Itās just kind of opening up to more conversations.
C: Yeah, sure.
S: I think I reallyā¦probably the reason I like autofiction as a literary genre, is because it interrogates that idea that you were saying ofā¦does it matter or not matter if itās true or not? I like work that plays with that idea, and I think this work is probably important because it does feel true, it feels like her version of events. And I think, I would definitely love to see more games that interrogate that idea of truth versus untruth. And I thinkā¦I havenāt played a lot of games like this, but Iām not super across all the games. I donāt know a lot of things. I play Animal Crossing, and the Sims, and Stardew Valley. And I donāt have, yāknow, a large library, but when I do find experimental games like this I do seek them out, and I would be very interested to see what builds off this. I think in terms of that idea of does it matter if this is really her experience, Iām thinking of games like Emily is Away -
C: Yeah for sure.
S: Where, itās very similar in some ways of, like, that experience of being on the desktop, being in the chatlog, having these conversationsā¦ And it is a different experience in terms of how, what you get out of playing that game versus playing Cibele.
X: Yeah and I think as well, uhm, making games around experiences that are, I guess popularly more marginalised, having that ability to play with truth and how much we know about things is kind of important. Iām just thinking back to a few months ago when I was really obsessed with Ned Kelly and there was lots of ābased on truthā sort of, fictionalised accounts of Ned Kelly, but also, there are fictionalised accounts of like, the women in his life as well, so thereās novels around that. And how, I found, all of those novels coming together, all of those fictionalised entities coming together, it didnāt even matter at the end whether it was true or not, I just got a really interesting viewpoint of someone who has created so much drama and intensity and how that had affected other people. And I find that really, like, just as valid in terms of storytelling as someone claiming this to be the whole truth of like, a biography of Ned Kelly, which, Iāve never really gained much from. But, like, a fictionalised account of sister, I found really really interesting coz it was like, looking at, howā¦now Iām just talking about Ned Kelly. Iām gonna stop. Iām sorry. Uhm.
[Laughter]
S: What I liked about this game was that it felt aggressively female. And I mean, it is, itās aggressively female, itās aggressively confessional, and I think the gaming world needs more of that and I think it does, in some ways, carve out a little patch of internet or game, as it was, and opens a door. It starts a dialogue about what games can be ā or continues a dialogue I suppose, I wouldnāt necessarily say it starts a dialogue butā¦ I think the more people who understand that games can be for them, and games can be kind of art and games can be whatever they want and games can tell a story and games can be for women who have been made to feel that games werenāt for them by men, the better. Not that thatās what was happening here, but I can see that this game would make someone who had been made to feel that way feel that āoh games can be femaleā and thatās great and fun and cool.
X: I think thatās a good place to start, I mean finish, not start, finish.
C: Alright, soā¦
S: Letās do it all over again!
C: Yeah, I think so too.
X: Any more final words?
S: Mmm, this has made me wanna follow Nina Freeman more and see what her other games are like. I havenāt played her other games, I feel likeā¦ it might be worthā¦
C: Oh yeah!
X: The date one is sick. [Laughs] I love the date one.
C: The date one, yeah, we played that? We Met in May, the recent one.
S: Oh wait, I have actuallyā¦
X: Itās absurd, I love it. You make a boy do weird things with his arms.
C: Yeah! Thereās like a game where you grab his nipplesā¦
X: Yeeeah, my dream.
S: Ohhh, I think Iāve played one of her other games which is basically just a very, very simple one.
C: How Do You Do It?
S: Yeah yeah Iāve played How Do You Do It, that was fun.
X: Thatās funny actually, because, when we were playing it, I was like, āletās make a game, this is likeā¦Iāll play this game! Iāll play this game forever. Like. Give me a nipple-grabbing game.ā Uhmā¦yay!
C: Yay!
S: Woo.
X: Thanks Ninaā¦sorry we were so critical of your game.
[Laughter]
C: Yeah, uhhh, thankyou Sian, for doing this, and also thankyou Xanthea, for doing this.
S: Iāll see you when you get up to āEā for Emily is Away.
Happy New Year friends, followers, list-presents and list-absents, misclicks and acquaintances. Having hit a point of burnout, or something like it, I've been on a self-directed break since January 1. I've been trying to write and think as little as possible, play through a few games, get outside (when the air-contaminant level isnāt rated as hazardous, anyway), see a movie or two, generally decompress, not dissolve into a pool of anger and despair re: so much of Australia being very much on fire. So, while it might be another week or so before we resume āthe scheduleā, in the haphazard tradition of this blog let me present a 2018 wrap-up that I wrote but, for reasons now as forgotten and irrelevant as most of the content to follow, never got around to posting during a time when 2018 was still something that people talked about.Ā
2018 was a pretty disappointing year for this blog, if we (meaning me, author, and you, reader) can pretend for a second that this blog is a separate entity from myself. Which I suppose it is. The blog marker moved incrementally from 'Br' to 'Bu'. We (meaning I) got through twelve games, which is eight less than the year before, which was itself down three from the year before that. Of these I 'completed' just five. Then again, I moved interstate twice, went through a break-up and a family tragedy, and started a PhD, so, at least my excuses are fairly good.
To recap: The (list) year began in March, with Braid, and ended with Bulletstorm in December. Joy was scarce, though the sample size was small. Bulletstorm and Brigador were good (albeit mindless) fun, my surprise finds of the year. I also mostly enjoyed my run through Broken Sword 1. Writing wise, I'll acknowledge that most of my posts probably reflected some despondency/antipathy towards games, particularly later in the year. Broken Age made me the most sad, though Breach & Clear was objectively the worst. Although I wasn't happy with it at the time, annoyed at my inability to focus down my thoughts into a single thesis, upon re-reading my Braid essay Iād shrug that it does (mostly) effectively communicate my overall feelings about the game, even if it does try to cover too much ground. At present, I can't quite bring myself to look over the Critical Compilation I collated on the same game for Critical Distance, though that certainly exists too. Nor can I bear to watch or even listen to the Bramblelash videoĀ that I made with the help of Camden, though it's probably notable enough to warrant this mention in that it's the first time such a deviation of mediums occurred, here, in this imaginary realm where we favour written text, for some reason. Try everything once, they say.
If it was a bad year for list-games, at least it was an unusually (by my standards) good year for enjoying games that were freshly released. Earlier in the year I went through a bit of a strategy phase, as happens from time to time, having another go at the snowy maps of Cities: Skyline for a couple of weeks and playing through most of the campaign of slow and wintery and slightly apocalyptic RTS Northgard, before reviewing the even colder, more apocalyptic city-builder/survival hybrid Frostpunk and the wonderfully replayable, futuro-apocalyptic Into The Breach.
For a month or two of Canberra's autumn I also made weekly day-long forays into Destiny 2 with DT and K, and while I found it an effective time-passer during a period of escalating post-move angst and loneliness, I'm struggling to remember much of the feel of it with any clarity, beyond the vaguely pleasant grind and the constant bewilderment with regards to the gameās writing. I uninstalled it when I moved to Melbourne, and even now that the whole machine has moved to Steam I have no particular desire to go back to it, especially as other friends seem to feel similarly.
I bought Celeste for the Switch, and it ended up seeing me through a period of travelling to Melbourne to look for a place to live in May, sleeping in lounge rooms and studies, and then a return to Perth in July where I began to feel more pronounced internal lows. Something about the simple motions of fluid timing through space with the game's own uplifting mental health narrative made it the right game for this time. Back in Melbourne in August, I bought Rocket League for the Switch, meaning I no longer had to get out of bed to play it, which became a bit of a problem in and of itself.
What else? I quite enjoyed Unforeseen Incidents, a point & click I probably wouldn't have known about had it not turned up in Gamecloud's inbox. I bought Hollow Knight on Switch for my second go at it and got a decent few dreamy hours before abandoning it, accidentally. I reviewed Dark Souls Remastered (also on Switch) and had a blast, before getting somewhat stuck in a pitch-black warren of massive skeletons and abandoning that, too. I finished off the year clattering through Katamari Demacy - also new to the Switch - bumbling along to its wonderful soundtrack, in a much better headspace than I had been a few months prior.
In summary: games in 2018 (for me) were dominated by review assignments for Gamecloud, re-releases of older games on the Nintendo Switch, and a fair bit of overlap between the two. But it was productive, in a sense, even if it was a turbulent year in other ways. The sense memory of it is largely positive, despite what I was writing at the time.
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I reviewed CHUCHEL for Gamecloud when it came out in April last year. Arguably I already wrote more than necessary on it then.Ā
This week Iāve played some of it - but not much of it - through again and my feelings are largely the same. Itās funny and cute and nice. I love the sounds. The visual creativity is still endlessly surprising. Though Iām finding now that how I respond to it in any given moment seems to reflect, mainly, my mood at the time, which has been real up and down of late. The only difference is that the hairball is orange with a black cap now, instead of black with an orange cap, as was originally the case. But I probably wouldnāt have realised/remembered this had I not checked the old review and seen the screenshots.Ā
The game is good. I really like Amanita. Sorry, I should have done something more interesting for this replay. But itās been one of those weeks.
In better news, Iāve got a regular gig over at Critical Distance writing about videos about videogames. Come say hi, donate to the Patreon etc.
Otherwise, well, seasons greetings. Yesterday I ate some cherries and they were delicious.Ā
Sometimes (often) I idly wish I could go back to when I was say, eighteen, and make a bunch of different decisions that would presumably lead me to making more out of my twenties. Chronology is a 2D puzzle platformer thatās sort of about this, except instead of āplaying less dotaā itās āsaving the worldā.
The backstory is that thereās been some sort of cataclysm and everything is ruined. Your main guy is an old scientist, or alchemist, or, I dunno, someone, who works out a way to travel back and forth in time to a moment pre-cataclysm. He determines to use his time travelling powers to go back and prevent the apocalypse by hunting down his former mentor, who happened (through some not-very-well explained thing that actually doesnāt seem to have much to do with your ability to time travel??) to have caused the whole disaster. Alas, a lot of the pathway is blocked, so, as you go about your platformy business, you need to shift between the two points in time, sometimes getting an item from one to bring to the other, sometimes changing something in the Before time so the environment will be different in the After time, sometimes just using a platform that exists in one but not the other, in any case solving a series of puzzles that eventually let you move your way from the left of screen to the right, from one level to the next.
This initial gambit is complicated slightly by the introduction of a secondary character, a large snail who happens to be able to pause time. The snail can slide around platforms but not jump, so you often end up traversing the level as the old man and continually calling the snail to teleport to you as you go. As well as being able to pause time, the snail is an extra paper-weight for levers, and a moveable platform from which to reach extra heights. You combine these possibilities with the two versions of each level and thereās quite a bit to consider, sometimes, if the answer isnāt immediately apparent.Ā
To that end, most of the puzzles are...fun? I mean, I quite enjoyed this. And I donāt even think it was just will to procrastinate.Ā
The story is fine, take it or leave it. The characters arenāt great. The old man is kind of a dick ā he seems to hate the snail at first even though progress would literally be impossible without it. To be fair, though, the snail is also super annoying, voiced in overly-earnest childlike squeaks. The platforming can be a bit imprecise, but at least death by obstacle or gap result in no punishment. More tedious is when completing a puzzle that involves multiple steps of repositioning both the snail and the old man, and slipping off a platform can lead to having to do the whole thing again, which, because the process involves a lot of shifting between both characters and time-periods, it is never an instinctive task and always feels annoying to repeat. A couple of puzzles toward the end felt a bit esoteric in what they were asking me to do (read: I feel bad about having to look up a walkthrough), though perhaps thatās forgivable given the number of possible elements to each one.
Still, itās a decent little game. A successful encounter for the list, you might even say. I liked the way it went about introducing and teaching its elements. It gets extra credit for knowing when to not overstaying its welcome, for letting me finish a game in a few sweet hours.
Chronology was one of the many games that landed in the 2016 Yogcast Jingle Jam. Merry xmas to myself from three years ago, I guess? Itās still the only Yogcast Iāve gone in on, though. This yearās one started with too much that I already had so, I dunno. I forget that the point of all this was charity.
Released in 2014, it was the first game made by Bedtime Digital Games, a Danish studio who have since put out Back to Bed and Figment.
Okay, yes, I could look it up. I could work out which Humble Bundle or Humble Monthly it came in, then I could take a stab at why I āboughtā that particular grouping of games.
I think, when I started this thing, this exercise, this project, that it seemed like it would be worthwhile to narrativise these things. To make concrete these choices of consumption in the age of game glut.
Or that if it was a game Iād brought with intention, Iād be able to recall exactly why I was prompted to get it. Why Iād wanted to play it.
Or that thereād be more variety as to where the games came from.
But most of the time I donāt think all that long on why Iām going to spend money on what I do. Humble Monthly slides into the background like Netflix, Spotify. Things I am continually forgetting to cancel, even when I canāt afford to forget to cancel them.
Today it is hot. Max 38 C in Melbourne. The last couple of weeks it has remained cold here while large chunks of Australia has gone through a heatwave, but now we have it too. There have been so many fires, so many homes have been destroyed, but like many things the extremity of it has become normal, expected, something that passes into the haze of the increasingly bizarre news cycle, the unaccountable governance of this country. Sydney and Brisbane and lots of places in between have been shrouded in smoke for weeks. I have seen pictures.
I am coming down with a cold. My throat burns every time I swallow. Getting a cold while it is very hot is quite unpleasant, possibly more unpleasant than getting a cold while it is cold. Ā
I have so much work to do.
Where did the year go?
Chroma Squad is a turn-based combat RPG. I am not very into it. Possibly because I do not feel like playing a turn-based combat RPG right now. But then, I canāt ever imagine being into Chroma Squad.
Maybe I have a bad attitude.
I donāt know if itās the gameās fault, or mine, or how I would go about clarifying this. I donāt know why I have enjoyed some similar turn-based grid combat games, like Into The Breach or The Banner Saga, but I canāt ever imagine enjoying Chroma Squadās, and I donāt know why. Though figuring out would probably be the point of this blog post, if I was feeling more lucid. The lesson to be illuminated.
Chroma Squad is about a group of stuntpeople who work on a Power Rangers-like show. Disgruntled with their director, the group break off to make their own show like the Power Rangers-like show they were just working on. They call it Chroma Squad. Each episode brings a different fight scene that youāre ostensibly filming for TV.
I like this framing narrative. It is my favourite part of the game. Itās cute and sometimes funny. But it doesnāt make me want to keep playing it.
When I was six or seven years old, I was very in to Power Rangers. I would watch it most days after school. At lunchtimes, my friends and I would play powerrangers in the bushland of our school yard. Sometimes there would be too many of us for each of us to be one of the established canonical rangers, so we would have to invent new rangers with different coloured suits. I wore a red-ranger costume to a birthday party once, even though the red ranger wasnāt my favourite.
I once wore a Power Rangers shirt to hockey training. One of the older kids pointed it out and laughed. I felt ashamed, because like all my school friends I was no longer watching the show, had probably already begun to think it particularly stupid and childish. I donāt know why I was wearing the shirt. An overseas aunt had sent it to me, not knowing my obsession with the show had ended. Kids move on fast.
In Chroma Squad your TV show earns money, depending on your audience numbers. More people watch if you tick extra objectives on the way, like performing acrobatics or killing the enemies in a certain order before the boss. The money you earn can be used to upgrade your studio, or buy equipment for your characters. You can boost hitpoints and audience percentages and skills and stats. But I couldnāt get enthusiastic about any of this.
Thereās also crafting. Bleh.
Crafting.
The older kid at hockey started calling me āPower Rangersā, though I never wore the shirt again. And then he continued to call me Power Rangers whenever Iād see him around Perth in the years after. I never knew his name or recognised him first before he called out āPower Rangers!ā from across the shopping centre, from the tennis club I was walking past, from wherever. But this continued well into my late teenage years. Power Rangers!
At first it was bullying ā thereās nothing quite like being reminded of your love for a childrenās TV show once you know that show to be the most uncool thing there is. It made me feel ashamed. Later on, Iām less sure. It was weird that he remembered me at all. Maybe it was even endearment.
I wonder who he was. What his deal was. What heās up to now.
Iāve been trying to play Chroma Squad. But Iām not that into it; I canāt stick with it. Iām getting a cold. I need to go buy some tissues. I need to walk to the shops in the thirty-eight-degree C heat. I have so much to do that Iām not doing.
Chroma Squad came in the Humble Gems Bundle in November 2016. The day the bad thing happened. Iāve played it for 70 minutes.
It also came in the Humble Freedom Bundle that was made in response to the bad thing, the following February. I have the spare key if anyone would like it.
Choplifter (1982) had the player fly a wobbly helicopter across a lurid purple landscape, looking for blobby white humanoids to pick up and rescue while trying to evade and gun down enemy planes and tanks. The Choplifter page on TV TropesĀ quotes the gameās framing narrative:
āIn an international incident, the militaristic Bungeling Empire has kidnapped the 64 delegates to theĀ United NationsĀ Conference on Peace and Child Rearing. Exploiting an ancient treaty with the United States, you have disguised a helicopter as a sorting machine and smuggled it to a mail distribution center near the border where the hostages are being kept. An opportunity comes when one of the Bungeling's barracks suddenly catches fire, and the hostages run about frantically. As Bungeling planes and tanks approach, you rush to your chopper, seizing this brief opportunity for heroism...ā
It was rather fantastical, a little ridiculous. Thereās the gag of the set-up, the strange made-up place name. The gameās 8-bit visuals give you the sense that itās maybe set on another planet. Sure, the game was made the year after the 1980 Iranian hostage fiasco ā something the developer, Dan Gorlin, claimed not to have been conscious of when conceiving Choplifterās premiseĀ ā but (and perhaps this is easier to say with the distortion of time and distance) the otherworldliness of it makes it hard to now immediately connect the game with the idea that itās commenting on, responding to or really in any way promoting the US military project.
So itās interesting, I suppose, to consider the choices InXile ā apparently in collaboration with Gorlin ā made when remaking the game as Choplifter HD (2011). Thereās the choice to set a lot of the scenarios in real places, having you respond to events that sound like remixes of, well, real contemporary events and lots of other contemporary military games. The first mission is prompted by: āA repressive Middle East regime has imprisoned all foreigners. As part of a UN force your mission is to fly into the chaos and rescue as many multinationals as possible. Fortunately, most of the military forces are engaged in controlling the population, so resistance should be light.ā The second has you rescuing āstranded victimsā from a village overrun by warlords in Indonesia, the seventh has you respond to āterrorists have taken over several buildings on our home soil.ā There is, in other words, an intention to give the game an element of real-life simulatory fantasy, one that isnāt destabilised enough by, say, the surprise appearance of zombies in mission four, or the silly wink-and-nod bonus objective of having to rescue the same war reporter, āScoop Sandersonā, over and over again, or the various missions which lack specific place-name details in their flavour text.
Additionally, weāre now accompanied by the voices of our helicopter pilot and co-pilot, who constantly cycle through a bunch of quips in full American-accented machismo trope-jargon to alert the player to the presence of enemies, such as:
āAnother idiot who needs a lessonā
āoooh what a Big Gun he hasā
āTruck, about to go BOOMā
āBad guy with a bad-ass toy!ā
āJeep about to be scrap metalā
āBig-ass gun heās obviously compensating for somethingā
āBoo-yaā
āWatch that jeep become junkā
āWhoās that woman I saw you with last night?ā āYou only saw the one?ā
Thereās also the look, a little jagged sure, but something approaching realism, 3D environments with details backgrounds drawn to evoke the various mission settings. You add all this up and itās a clear intentional shift into positioning the player in the hot-seat of a contemporary American heroic power fantasy in such a way thatās meant to be cross-read into real-world events. This is the nexus of a narrative that the US and allies already sell to themselves about themselves ā that theyāre a global peacekeeper just stepping in to help others in times of crisis caused nebulously from nowhere, in far off places that just happen, for reasons unknown, to be tragically unstable. Given that itās presented uncritically here and (barring some late-game injunction I never made it to) without any reference to the roles various components of western imperialism play in instigating these kinds of conflicts in the first place (CIA-backed coups, geocorporate-backed military governance and so on), itās hard to get past the gross feeling that Choplifter HD is basically a playable propaganda leaflet.
Whatās doubly weird is that, given how overt it is, none of the reviews of the game from 2011 seem to make note of this shift at all. Sure, many complain that the ācomedicā pilot and co-pilot banter gets annoying quickly (agreed), or that the realist-leaning Unreal 3 engine assets donāt look that good (also agreed), or that the game is often difficult in a way that tends more toward unfairness and janky design than simply being mechanically challenging (definitely). But thereās little to say about how this remake is dressed in a tone-deaf, unselfconscious veneer of status quo American imperialism thatās much more pronounced than it ever was, ever could have been, in the 1982 Apple II original. Perhaps there was an acceptance of inevitability here about the games industry in 2011, that if youāre making a military-ish shooting game then OF COURSE itās going to evoke these ideas of distinctly American heroism and righteousness, itās hardly even a choice, no questions asked. Or perhaps thereās a feeling that this choice of presentation doesnāt matter, given itās a sidescrolling arcade game, something youāre gonna play in fifteen-minute bursts, where the flavour-text for each mission makes little functional difference to the game-play.
But this was a set of choices that InXile made, regardless of whether these choices came about from a passive parroting of the hegemonic narrative, or whether they were made with certain conscious political and/or marketing intentions. Each of these choices might, in hindsight, seem like a sacrifice, given that theyāve all made the game worse ā the gung-ho copter bros are unbearably irritating, the realist-aesthetic leads to a lot of visual clutter and indistinctness, and much of the flavour text is half-hearted and dull. Perhaps a more creative remake of Choplifter could have revived the originalās interesting arcade concept without making it into a bland and problematic power fantasy. I guess weāll never know.
Youāll Never Believe What I, Not-a-Streamer, Think of this Game Designed for Streaming !
Choice Chamber is a game designed for streamers! The player/streamer enjoys a rudimentary action-platformer, and the viewers get to vote in chat on things that happen throughout the game, such as what weapon the player/streamer should use, and what powers the enemies should have, and how the player should be rewarded/punished as they go. It was released in 2015, perhaps as the first game with in-built Twitch.tv integration (and indeed, Twitch partially funded its development).
But alas. In this timeline, List Oriented is just a blog, not a streaming dynasty. What itās like to play this game to a large contingent of chat-willing fans is not something I can document or accurately comment upon.
What I can say is that my experience of Choice Chamber in offline mode was pretty miserable. Without the interactive chaos generator of a live audience, the modifiers the game progressively heaped on me were exposed for their lack of inherent variability and purpose. The gameās enemies were sluggish but arbitrarily difficult in a tedious way, rather than a āthis is a fun exerciseā way or even a āha-haā way. The boxy room designs did little for the imaginative adventure or the platforming challenge ā it rarely seemed to want to make use of vertical space, for instance, so a lot of rooms just required me to move around a flat plane, poking or shooting a blob a couple of times, backing away, repeating until all were dead and I could move on to the next room, much the same. I never got that far in it ā the low health meter and random modifiers do make it a challenging game ā but I also think thatās because it was hard for me to sustain enough interest, or to care when I died enough to avoid it. Getting through an hour of playtime was challenge enough.
The conceit alone seems interesting and good in the way that a joke can be good just by virtue of a lot of people being in on it, the comfort of shared experience etc. But having watched a few videos of actual/popular streamers playing it back when it launched, I think the parameters of this kind of thing are pretty limited on their own, that it relies on a performance of, like, being fucked over and pretending to be surprised by it. Sure, the dynamic of an audience fucking over their host is good for a laugh or two, but itās hard to buy into it for any length of time when the game underneath it lacks substance. But if we look at this as a prototype then, well, sure, do what you will. Since Choice Chamberās release, more games have integrated elements of stream-participation ā I can see the merit of this when itās done as an extra asset rather than the gameās whole reason for existing. Ā
Info: Choice Chamber was made by Studio Bean [webplace] and released in 2015. I got it in mid-2016 in the Humble Revelmode Bundle. Revelmode was apparently a youtube network formed by youtube person Pe*D*ePi* in partnership with Disneyās Maker Studios, and was apparently āshut downā in 2017 after P*wDi*Pi* made some anti-Semitic jokes. I think at the time of getting this bundle I was somehow blissfully ignorant of who PDP even was, a state of being I kind of wish I could get back to. Studio Bean more recently released the curious rhythm game, Overpass.
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I went into Chivalry half-expecting it to be a total war-esque strategy game. Instead, I found a first-person multiplayer hackānāslash. Apparently It was pretty popular for a while after it was kickstarted and launched back in 2012. Even as recently as 2018, RPS put it 7th on their list of best multiplayer games on PC. Forgive my abundant ignorance and forgetfulness here, as always. I canāt even work out which Humble Bundle it came in, or why else I would have it.Ā
I had a sunny day (twenty minutes) out at the training field AKA the only offline component of this game - partially because this was a new thing, for me, and partially because I didnāt really expect to find much of anything to do online. There I learned the basics of combat ā a slash bound to left click, a poke and a carve both bound strangely to the mouse wheel, a block/parry to right click ā and the point of each of the four class options. I shot some bows, I launched a catapault, I tried to discern the supposed backstory for between the two factions of this multiplayer venture, a conceit that was in no way further pushed by the game thereafter.
Eventually I headed to the server list, where I found a few middling to full options, confirming that as of November 2019, Chivalry (the game, anyway) is not dead.
And after a couple of hours of that, I feel comfortable in saying it is actually (still) silly, irreverent and enjoyable, even beyond its vaguely serious medieval veneer. Most of the games I joined would either be Team Objective or Free For All ā in either case I would get out-poked and out-positioned and then watch my character buckle to the ground, blood spraying, head or arm rolling elsewhere. I was killed by cookie-cutter men with big axes and small daggers, men with spears, men with bows who pulled out knives after I ran up to them and whiffed a stab from behind. Despite my terrible stats, no-one seemed interested in flaming me. The FFAās especially felt like an absurd festival of inconsequential blade-swishing - I left every game with a vague gnawing to keep playing and a horrendous K/D ratio. Iām almost sorry I didnāt round to it sooner.
I have three of the four Deponia games somewhere in my library. Due to the way theyāve been titled theyāre all under different letters, and the second in the series, Chaos in Deponia, happens to be the first that Iāve hit upon. Iāve spent eighty minutes with it. Here are my thoughts, divided helpfully into two sections to avoid any confusion.
What I liked: The colourful artwork, the detailed scene backgrounds, and the notion of a setting an adventure game on a floating landfill city.
What I didnāt like: It stakes everything on being funny, but it is not funny. The dialogue chains and puzzles alike are 95% gags, often overly long gags, almost none of which land. Sometimes this is because the gag takes several sentences to play out when the punchline is obvious from the first. Sometimes it is because the gag involves a larger-than-reasonable suspension of disbelief, such as in the opening scene when Rufus commits a series of disastrous blunders (including murdering a pet bird), while two old people carry out a conversation about him in the same room, somehow not noticing that heās set the kitchen on fire. More often (though sometimes it can be difficult to untangle this from the timing-related problems) it is because the gag has nothing funny about it in the first place, such as how the only recurring female character is predictably given a damsel role and, at the point I decided I had seen enough, was being set up for an extended unpredictable/split-personality joke, because, supposedly, WOMEN, who knows what they want, arenāt they just? YKNOW. etc. Elsewhere, some jokes try for a self-conscious/meta āthis is an adventure game tropeā thing, though these largely come off as insecure, cheap and lazy, probably because they never feel like theyāre trying to say anything about the process of making games so much as theyāre trying to fill space where the writer couldnāt think of something better. This is how it seems, anyway.
The main character ā Rufus ā is terrible company, clumsily stupid in the vein of, say, Fry from Futurama but with none of the endearing self-depreciation, or signs of caring for other people or, like, anything at all that makes him in anyway redeemable. Presumably Rufusās obnoxious stupidity is meant to be something weāre in on, laughing at rather than with, but having to be with Rufus all the time, in combination with the perpetually unfunny dialogue and puzzles, begins to feel like the joke is indeed on the player, and it feels just kind of sad and mean, not to mention very tiring. Rufus is possibly even more unlikable than Samuel Gordon from Black Mirror ā the last protagonist I truly hated, for those playing along at home ā but I canāt bring myself to be angry at Rufus in the same way, because I donāt feel like I really even understand what his function is, here.
An aside, no matter how I tweaked the settings, I couldnāt get it to run full-screen, it just remained in its weird pseudo-full screen window. Probably this is something that could be fixed with some internet help, if I wanted to play more of this game.Ā
Which I donāt. Hard pass on this.
About: Chaos on Deponia came out in November 2012, the same year of release as the original Deponia game. It was developed and published by prolific German studio Daedalic Entertainment, who we last encountered in 2017 via the Blackguards games. Surely, itās only a matter of time before I find something of theirs to like.
The first three Deponia games were in the Humble Indie Bundle 15, back in October 2015, which Iād say I mainly got for Gang Beasts, but which - I also realise now - was a purchase I made the same day I began this very silly project. Was this it? Was this the bundle that tipped me over the edge? Did I look at these games and think to myself āfuck Iāll never get round to playing all these Deponia gamesā¦ unlessā¦ā. Thereās probably a lesson here somewhere.
For ten weeks straight I kept to my promise of posting every Tuesday. But yesterday, you may or may not have realised, a full Tuesday went by without a List Oriented post. My streak is broken, oh woe, reset the counter.
The truth is, here at Excuse Oriented, that Iāve been back in Western Australia for the week. Two friends married each other. Iāve had beers and gone to dinner and caught up with some friends and family. Iāve patted the dog and sat on the couch and drank coffee and idly scanned the TV options at my parentās house, which are much like the ones I have at home yet somehow much more enticing, here in this place where all my other obligations feel somehow less immediate. I made calls to Melbourne. I stood in the sun and now Iām watching it pour from the study window. But I havenāt finished Cave Story like Iād promised I would. I havenāt finished the book I brought with me. Iāve hardly done any of the non-trivial pile of looming deadline work, work that I was sure I would find plenty of time to do. And I havenāt played more than a couple of hours of Caveblazers, this game about which I have a blog post now overdue.
This is rather a shame, because Caveblazers seems like a fun time. In different circumstances we might have been good together.
Caveblazers is a 2D platforming game where the player explores a sequence of randomly generated caves filled with monsters. The player is armed with a sword and a bow. Along the way there are items to pick up, including gold (for buying stuff), runes (which provide passive stats and timed abilities), improved swords and bows (for killing monsters better), food (for health), bombs (for blowing things up) and random potions that sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad.
Health is easily lost and scarcely found. Death is frequent, with most of my runs ending within two or three minutes. Death sends you back to the start and takes away your items and money. For these reasons it might be called a Rogue-like game, owing to it echoing conditions that occurred in the classic RPG Rogue, though itās more specifically reminiscent of Spelunky, so perhaps it might also be called a Spelunky-like game. This previous sentence will look ridiculous regardless of whether you are someone who āknows aboutā roguelikes or not, I am sorry to say, because it occurs to me that perhaps calling something a ā_-likeā is unique to videogame parlance. Am I wrong? I suddenly feel quite interested in this, this thing we always do slightly tongue in cheek until it becomes embedded in the discussion and we are doing it without thinking. Look, I am quite tired. Iām just ā having being asked about this a few times again recently by people who are less invested in games - conscious of being caught between the problem of using language which is only useful for people who already know how to read about games, and using language which is general enough for everyone to understand but which therefore requires an extra few steps of explanatory language which makes it less interesting for people who already know the things that I suddenly feel need explaining. Possibly this is an issue that I am having because I am a Bad Writer, and a good writer would know how to describe things in the simplest terms while doing this in an interesting way. Ā
So far in Caveblazers Iāve made it to the third level say six or seven times. The third level is a boss fight, though all but once Iāve encountered a different huge arch-monster every time Iāve reached it, each with an array of different attacks to dodge and different ways to chip at their extensive health bar. Iām yet to beat any of them, or really even come that close. So I donāt know what happens after the third level. Presumably more levels like the first two. But possibly not.
When I think of my favourite roguelike games (or, games with reset-at-death elements), I think of turn-based RPGs like Nethack, or Shirin the Wanderer, or I think the longer campaign lengths of FTL or Into The Breach, or I think of the more elaborate world of Dead Cells. I donāt think of Spelunky, which despite often seeing at the top of various Best Of lists, is something I tell myself Iāll get into in The Future, never now. And Caveblazers really is quite a lot like Spelunky.
Maybe itās my fault for not bringing a controller with me to Perth, despite the gameās opening-screen insistence that this is the best way to play. Maybe itās my suspicions at having a customisable avatar/character who remains in all permutations distinctly masculine. Maybe itās the mood and the time and the place and maybe, if I was at home diving into Caveblazers runs while trying to procrastinate an assignment or something or other, or perhaps if I just felt a whole lot less lazy at the moment, Iād have a different attitude towards it. In the meantime police in Victoria are beating up people for protesting a mining convention, important (I believe) sites Kotaku and Deadspin are both in trouble from the people who bought them, Iām half-watching Kate McKinnon and David Chang do Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner in Phnom Penh, and odd memories of mine are bubbling up into nothing in particular.
About: Caveblazers was developed by Rupeck Games, who are now Deadpan Games [wob address], who in either case seems to be the development handle of Will Lewis, from Bristol, who made most of Caveblazers by himself, it seems, which is pretty impressive, all things considered. It was released to Steam in May, 2017. I received it in Humble Jumbo Bundle 9 in August, 2017. This was essentially my first time playing it. 3 out of 21 achievements achieved by your author.
The apparent existence of a multiplayer mod, along with the thought that yes, I should try this with a controller too, gives me reason to try it again sometime in the future.
normal programming to resume next Tuesday with Chaos on Deponia
Cave Story is one of those games Iād always had intentions to get back to. When it turned up Humble Indie Bundle 4 in 2011, one friend reported that it was good, but I quickly abandoned it after dying a few too many times in the very beginning. A year or two later a different friend later reported that it was meant to be one of the best games ever, and though this was communicated (if I recall correctly) as hearsay rather than personal opinion, and with undefined criteria as to why, at the time it seemed plausible enough at that I gave it a couple of hours before again sliding into the sort of temporary pause that accidentally becomes indefinite abandonment. Thereafter it kept turning up in lists of the best metroidvanias, lists I would read because I thought I identified as a fan of metroidvanias, but I could never reconcile such a pronouncement on this game with my brief, not-all-that memorable experience of it.
Six years on and I was looking forward to making a proper go of Cave Story this week, but then (of course) it happened to turn up on another week of deadlines and travel. Stressing about a presentation and strapped for time, I thought the inevitable result of this would be yet another deferral, another proclamation that yes, I will play this one day, just not today, sorry.
What happened instead was an almost fevered couple of days last week in which I ended up cramming slivers of the actual work I was meant to be doing around increasingly emotionally-fraught bouts of playing Cave Story, as the game slowly and then all at once took over my psyche in some perfect storm of my unfortunate underlying tendencies to seek procrastination from tasks that I find difficult even as deadlines loom, combining with the almost materially emergent realisation that Cave Story is, it turns out, actually, truly, one of the ābestā games ever, to the extent that saying this even feels like a true thing and not just the hyperbolic reporting of emotion/opinion as fact. Holy shit, my friends.
The hows and whys of this might be more difficult to describe. The story, yes, meshed with the blocky subterranean setting, the way these are slowly realised through events and dialogue and characters and snippets. The way neither story nor setting seems very promising for the first two hours or so (perhaps why it didnāt stick the last time round?) but then dang, youāre entrenched. That particular mix of futurism and fantasy. The music, which is wonderful beyond words. All the guns, and the upgrade system, and the health upgrade system, and the key hunting, and the jumping? Yes, even the jumping, eventually. Though all these things are very boring to say like this. Youāll just to believe me.
This despite two different boss fights that gave me moments of such intense frustration I wondered seriously for a moment if I shouldnāt just give up all gaming all together forever. This even though I still havenāt properly finished the game (by Friday night it really did get to the point where I had to stop playing it to write my paper. I did get to the fake/bad ending, though I have every intention of finishing the rest when I next get a chance ā surely it canāt be far.
Anyway. Cave Story. Everyone was right. Itās great. Iām so pleased to agree, after all these years.
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Cat Quest is a light and fluffy ARPG, set in a sprawling land of cartoony cat-people. Itās centered around a flatpack captured damsel/save-the-kingdom story, in which also there are suddenly dragons around and youāre the only cat around who can kill them, maybe, making you Dragonborn Dragonblood. Skyrim Cat Quest has cheery and straightforward dialogue filled to bursting with cat wordplay, wherein every suitable syllable is replaced with āpawā or āmeowā or āpurrā or ānyanā orĀ āfurā or you get the idea. It is funny, not funny, then funny again.Ā
The core loop is mindlessly absorbing. Do quests. Kill enemies. Collect colourfall dopamine globules of gold and experience. Buy weapons, upgrade your spells, watch your stats rise with your levels. Do harder quests. Repeat. Slowly move through the main quest.
For an RPG, thereās very little specialisation or character complexity. The loot system is neat and simple, with upgraded versions of older weapons automatically replacing old ones in your inventory, so you donāt end up with twenty redundant copies of the same shitty halberd. The combat system, too, is diablo-lite. Hit enemies, cast spells, roll away before they hit/cast on you. Repeat. Hack attacks auto-target and spells are all area of effect. Itās enough that combat is just something Iām happy to do as part of the loop, but ā much like the rest of the game ā not mechanically all that engaging or rewarding, with limited strategic variation seemingly available.
The cartoon graphics are bright, clean and pleasant. The chirpy orchestral soundtrack seems good in the sense that I seem to have been listening to the same theme on loop without getting irritated. The dialogue is all short, snappy and to the point.
Still, there are signs everywhere of limited resources stretched to fit a large space. The same few faces and character models for every peasant of every town. The single tileset for every flat dungeon. The way nearly most sidequests, no matter the set-up, ends up asking the player to clear a particular dungeon of every creep. The limited terrain variation to be found in this big, green land of cats. The absence of developed NPCs.
Itās these limitations which kept tickling my self-awareness as to the loop I was in. It felt like if the game wasnāt going to bother justifying, to me, why I should be doing the things in it beyond the barest of apparent motivations, why should I be justifying it to myself? I found Cat Quest absorbing enough for the few half-hour bursts I played it in, but never in a way that I felt particularly anything about after the fact. Itās a game for playing while waiting for something else, a game for commutes or lunchbreaks, and in those terms itās been well designed and I think of it rather fondly. But I donāt regret not finding more than a couple of hours for it this past week.
About: Cat Quest came out in August 2017 but appeared in my library just a month ago (September 2019), riding in on the back of a Humble RPG bundle that I mainly bought for Tyranny. Cat Quest was made by The Gentlebros [site], a small Singapore-based team of ex-Koei Tecmo devs. I enjoyed reading the couple of Cat Quest dev pieces on their website ā one a post-mortem about the kinds of design compromises they made to create an ARPG suitable for phones, consoles and PCs, the other about how the feline theme and characters were adapted from a very different ādancing gameā theyād ended up scrapping. Apparently thereās a sequel, Cat Quest 2, which launched just last month, and looks much like the first but with co-op.
The Cat Lady is a sidescrolling horror-adventure game. It contains: long sections of dialogue, item-based puzzles, jump scares, slow-moving character animations. It was released in 2012. It was made by Harvester Games, an independent studio from Poland. Apparently a sequel, Lorelai, was released earlier this year. Curiously, three out of the last five games now have been made by different Polish studios.
The protagonist/Cat Lady in question is Susan Ashworth. Susan is a forty-year-old woman who lives in an apartment, more or less fully alone aside from the occasional company of stray neighbourhood cats. Susan is suffering from severe depression ā the game begins with her attempting suicide. She ends up in a limbo realm where the French-accented āQueen of Maggotsā tells her to go back to the living realm and kill five psychopaths (āparasitesā). So she does, kind of, but the subsequent quest to do this is very mixed in with Susanās own path to recovery.
The Cat Lady is a perplexing, frustrating, interesting patchwork mess of a game. I donāt know what I think of it. I donāt know whether to celebrate its relatively (to most other games) thoughtful depiction of mental illness or discuss how this is still overly enmeshed in problematic depictions of violence. I donāt know whether to commend the gameās partial unwinding of the lonely cat lady trope or to reflect on how it reaffirms this idea of depression as something that makes someone act like an arsehole to everyone around them.
The whole game is kind of like this. It uses surrealism and unreliable narration to imply discursive thinking into the altered states of perception produced by mental illness, but then it seems to narratively validate these altered states because the plot of the game involves murdering, and getting murdered by, serial killers and psychopaths. It has lots of overbearing, superfluous dialogue, mixed in with some genuinely thoughtful and insightful moments ā which it then undercuts, again, with ridiculous violence. For example! The first time The Cat Lady made me think, oh, maybe this game is actually going to take this subject seriously, was in the second chapter when Susan talks to a psychiatrist and it gave you these dialogue options of, like, talking seriously about your past, yay, the game is making the implicative link between trauma and illness, maybe there is hope! And thenā¦.. and then the psychiatrist MURDERS YOU because he is A SERIAL KILLER.
And itās just like. What?
I think, in a vacuum, this sort of tonal rollercoaster would be fine, if this was one game among many that explored different depictions of different kinds of experiences of mental illness ā sure, that would be totally valid. The Cat Lady has one of the more interesting explorations of mental illness Iāve seen in games. But this is both a medium that is very prone to violence, and one in which mental illness has largely been tied with the motivations of evil boss characters, in much the same way that we often look for it as the motivation for crimes without necessarily trying to understand the social underpinnings that go into it. Video games have been more likely to stigmatise mental illness rather than engender understanding. Working with this background, continuing to tie violence to mental illness poses an associative problem that, through its spectral depiction of surrealism, it never really shakes itself of ā it doesnāt work hard enough against the pre-existing tropes, basically. But that isnāt to say itās wrong, only that I donāt know if it can be categorically declared āa successā. Like, sure, I get that maybe itās meant to be read as allegory, or maybe weāre meant to appreciate that not knowing what is real is indeed one of the gameās core points about depicting mental illness ā but then, the logical leaps it makes are so large, it frequently undermines so much of the sensitivity in its world-building. Itās hard to find much to hold onto, or know where to orient ourselves to parse what these depictions of these themes are saying.
Itās all over the place in so many ways. It starts poorly ā the first two chapters are the weakest ā but I liked it better the more I played of it. Some of puzzles are a little infuriating, though I ended up enjoying how they played out more often than not, particularly once Iād picked up the rhythm of the gameās thinking. The voice-acting is extensive though not always convincing. The penultimate chapter has a neat sleuthing layout that really slinks into a cool, elaborate whodunnit puzzle. After the chaos of the first two chapters, I liked the way the game built up through the middle, reorienting around depictions of Susanās apartment and the warmness of the little moments like having coffee and a cigarette on the balcony. I appreciated the morose, mostly monochrome pallet with sparing and smart interjections of colour. I liked the way the art feels cut together, lo-fi but intricate. Some of the jump scares are pretty good.
Itāsā¦I donāt know. I feel like Iāve mostly read positive things about it, but I canāt get totally on board, nor do I really have the time/energy to more coherently unpack why I think it doesnāt always deal with its heavy subject matter that well. Maybe itās an angle thing. If youāre asking ādoes it have a good depiction of depression for a schlocky horror game?ā then yes. But remove the genre requirement, then no. Everything is relative.
update 9/10/2019**Ā Some people have already discussed The Cat Lady with regards to representing mental illness with a bit more clarity and nuance than I have. Sarah Stang (2018) at First Person Scholar discusses The Cat Lady alongside Fran Bow and Hellblade: Senuaās Sacrifice, acknowledging that while these depictions have shortcomings, they represent a comparative step forward for games:Ā
The particular strength of all three games discussed above is that they feature female protagonists with mental illnesses and emphasize healing rather than curing. InĀ Fran BowĀ andĀ The Cat Lady, the clear message is that people with mental illnesses can help others and themselves, can overcome adversity and live with trauma, and can form meaningful relationships.
Stang links to a couple of other articles that give a reasonable background on the problematic relationship games have with mental illness. Sarah Nixon in 2013 gave a concise rendering of how horror games particularly tend to use and stigmatise mental illness. Aaron Souppouris (2015) looks at particular mechanics more extensively in discussion with a clinical psychologist.Ā
I also liked Eric Swainās short and sweet take in 2015 (from ~5 minutes in), on a critical distance confab postcast in discussion with Austin Walker in 2015. Swain described the game as Freudian studies āthrough a 2000s nu-metal aestheticā, noting how interesting the game looked and also the nice balcony scenes, but mentioning that it was hard to know what the gameās creator wanted to say about certain sensitive topics. **
Duration: Eight hours.
When/Why: A few years ago I was friends with a guy named John. We were in a book club with a bunch of other ex-classmates from uni. John also liked playing Dota, during the period of my life where I, too, was on that horse. I played Dota with John and his friend a few times, and was shocked at how angry and rude he was in game, this everyday fairly polite and thoughtful guy. Anyway, at some point John mentioned or recommended The Cat Lady in the context of a discussion at book club, which is, I think, how I came to buy it in a steam sale in early 2015. I played it for a bit but found the physical slowness of the game too patience-testing at the time, given that at the time I was, as mentioned, addicted to the dopamine gambit of Dota. When I later mentioned this ā my inability to get through the first chapter of the game heād recommended - to John, he agreed that it was āa bad gameā, further confusing me as to why it was brought up in the first place, and indeed Iām not sure if John has actually played it, seeing as it doesnāt come up as something that exists in his steam library, or at least, on the steam account of his that Iām friends with. So, thatās the long story as to how this game came to be here. But why else do you read this blog?
