Oh my.

“GoldenEye” by Alyse Knorr

I unabashedly enjoy every book and story that Boss Fight Books has ever published. Just that insight into someone’s mind and their reasons for being really interested in a single video game among the millions that have released into the world since the form developed in the seventies. Each voice, writing style, and intent is so varied that I always find something to appreciate, even when it’s someone just overexplaining a game I don’t especially care for.

(It probably doesn’t hurt that they number their books, turning the series into a collection.)

This video is from the author on her upcoming GoldenEye book and there’s also a great Q&A. Her comments on formulating a book pitch are especially interesting.

In the interest of spring

I signed up for four classes this semester, and dropped each one in sequence when the parameters of the class didn’t align with the way I wanted to learn from them.

Piano I was by far the class I was most excited to try, having taken Music Fundamentals last semester. I can now read sheet music on a basic level and play simple ditties and that alone was an incredibly exciting experience. It’s like learning the letters/symbols of a new language and then being able to read a menu at a restaurant. In this way, to learn musical notation and its arrangement on the piano is the means to playing a melody, like learning to read a restaurant menu is a means to selecting a meal. I cannot cook the meal, but I can understand its contents and relay that to a fellow diner. But the class was synchronous and I couldn’t/wouldn’t make time for the biweekly class meetings. But I did invest in the cheapest 88-key digital piano that I could find, so I will chip away at this as a hobby. I’ve always wanted to learn to play music and this is the cusp of that long-held dream.

Then came History of Video Games. This should have been a nice course in which to learn some new tidbits about a subject I know a great deal about, but my recent aversion to writing essays and the professor’s chaotic organization of the class materials put me off.

I’d taken a basics of computer science course some years ago, believing I should pivot to programming as the cornerstone of my career. I’ve been in video games for two decades now and it just feels like I need to make a change to maximize my earnings potential (blargh) because getting old in the United States is terrifying. So hey, why not try Intro to Python Programming? That would’ve been fine except the professor chose to utilize a terrifying quiz and exam security tool called Proctorio. I’ve never seen such bullshit in my many years as an online student. I have the privilege to opt out but I feel awful for students who need to take these classes and abide by this garbage. This monitoring software requires a complete view of the desk the student is using and then tracks their eyes during the test in an attempt to prevent cheating. This also assumes a student has the privilege of a private space in which to conduct this nonsense, which of course makes the experience that much worse for students who are likely living with family or must use a computer and connection out in a public space like a library. It’s like having the professor staring at you during the test. This fucking sucks and I’m still mad and disappointed that this is how colleges and universities have decided to tackle cheating for students who must learn online. Needless to say, I noped out.

And finally, I did find a friendlier programming course in Intro to C++, but realized today that I just don’t have it in me to learn this material seriously right now. I dropped it earlier today and now I’m just working on more videos about licensed video games. Our studio recently granted us 3-month paid sabbaticals (what a concept… and a miracle these days), so I’m thinking I’ll use the time when I get the time off in a few years to find a good programming bootcamp in which I can leverage my unhealthy binge-like productivity and come out of it a programming hopeful.

In the meantime, this will be a spring of reading about piano (I’m still hyped for David Sudnow’s takes on it), video games (Boss Fight books can’t release quickly enough), Deep Space Nine (natch), and going on long walks around the bay area.

In the interest of spring

I signed up for four classes this semester, and dropped each one in sequence when the parameters of the class didn’t align with the way I wanted to learn from them.

The symbolic level

I began the year 2020 with the intent to read all twenty-two of the books in the Boss Fight Books series. The anthology features a different author for each book, and each book is ostensibly about a specific video game. I have completed three of the books so far: EarthBound by Ken Baumann, Chrono Trigger by Michael P. Williams, and ZZT by Anna Anthropy. I am in the middle of Galaga by Michael Kimball. The authors’ names are important because as much as the books are about those video games (they are explained in detail), they are also about the authors themselves. The style of the writing in these books is what I came to know as confessional writing, the type of vulnerable and honest literature I once associated with my favorite authors here on Tumblr, and which I haphazardly engaged in. I saw many of those authors move on to write excellent essays focused on their personal experiences with film at Bright Wall/Dark Room, which still publishes issues to this day. There have also been projects by creators like Katie West that bring together writers who’ve come up on platforms such as this. It’s a thrill to see that the legacy is carried on and now proven to be a viable option for full-length book explorations that are focused on video games.

My career in video games has spanned fifteen years and dozens of projects. I’ve been dutifully invested in literature as a creative medium during that time, but I’ve always struggled to marry these two important aspects of my life. You know, to explain and expound upon video games in a way I thought would be meaningful, like the excellent writings from Patrick right here on our beloved Tumblr. I was always too scattered to make the effort but felt that there is something important to be written about video games in relation to who we are, who I am. It’s a prism through which I want to be broken into my constituent parts. I see now that I was right, that it is possible, but question whether I can make it happen. I’ve been working on some writings since last year but they’re dry and empty of the rich vulnerability I see in the books from Boss Fight. For now, I read and hope. At the very least, I am so fucking inspired. The authors are amazing.

One of the early book-length explorations of a single video game is 2013′s Killing is Harmless by Brendan Keogh. I just bought it and hope to read it later in the year. Addressing whether it’s worthwhile to look so deeply into video games that don’t necessarily lend themselves to such analysis, Keogh wrote, “now I look back at my whole ‘reading into’ of the game on a symbolic level and I just sort of cringe.” Sometimes I worry about the same thing. These creations are products, things to be sold for a profit and disposable after they’ve generated their revenue. Are they worth such scrutiny and critical investment? But then I see the hundreds of classes dedicated to analyzing Shakespeare and wonder if that’s any more worthwhile. I’m willing to gaze at my navel for a while, to really mine for that vein of vulnerability and find out.