JetFable’s Gamer Writer’s Block

Isn’t that a cool title? Anyway, its a month since I watched Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, and I realized I’ve also had my Nightmare Before Xmas: Boogie’s Revenge game sitting on top of my PS2 without being touched. I popped it in yesterday and started playing, it’s truely a great game that managed to capture the artistic ambience the movie has generated. Inside Halloween Town there’s a character that acts as a “save game spot” for you, his name escapes me, but the weird character has a huge hat and theres another mini-version inside, and another one. And the dialogue goes like this: “Jack, I’m here to record your story.” He opens his hat, and the mini-me inside says, “Save now,” opens his mini hat, and the micro-mini-mi says “Or risk doing it again!” I gigled when I saw that for the first time, it just cracked me up. But what’s the point of talking about this, you probably wonder? Well it leads to a discussion on email with my best friend about video games in general, as a literary medium. But before I get into that, there’s verisimilitude, which is the quality of something appearing to be real, and that is the key to escapist fiction. Games are a form of escapist fiction, it lets us escape into the world the developers created for us, and it only succeeds when it convinces us the game world is real. I quoted something from Final Fantasy 7, the game that revolutionalized the american market for japanese role playing games, it was a good game which told a pretty good story, and it tried to take itself seriously, but to me, it failed at verisimilitude, because it treated itself as a game and not a created world, because inside the game, you will meet people that tells you actively how to interact with your game menu, how to save your game. The game character should never be aware of the existence of the menu, and neither should any in-game characters interact with the player directly, telling you to press the “X” button to do something. Its like watching a TV show and suddenly the actors on screen acknowledge the audience and realize that it’s a TV show and not real life (providing its not a parody), it detracts from story-telling. Many games do it nowadays, having a in-game tutorial thats a real character inside the game, and then telling you to press the “O” butrton on the joypad, and that bugs me everytime. That is why I was impressed with Nightmare Before Xmas, because it managed to weaved the excellent writing into something that makes a parody of itself, but yet make sense that doesnt detract from the verisimilitude of the fictional world. My friend doesn’t agree with me, obviously, and thinks that having a character tells you what to press in the menu doesnt detract from the experience, and it flow more naturally than another screen or menu that’s seperate from the game. In any case, we all have different opinions, thats why they are, opinions. To me, if games are to take itself seriously as a literary medium, they should pay attenttion to this magical force called the Verisimilitude.

Been a month since I blogged. After I moved in to my new office I find more time to do my own thing, and less time to actually do constructive things (not sure if thats good or not). And my mind, occupied by recent activites (the stressful tournament come to mind), and seems like now things have slowed down a bit and I can take a break, and write a blog.

At a recent potluck dinner we got onto this conversation about listening to old songs. And I thought it interesting to write about. Why older people will always listen to oldies, and think that is is better than the popular stuff out there. New songs are too comercialized, new songs dont speak to us the same way. I’m sure every generation of parents say that to their kids. They dont listen to what their kids listen to. Are old songs in fact better than new songs, probably not from a technical or artistic standpoint. I didn’t realize this until the fact that I got older. What kind of messages old songs give us that new songs lack? Its memories. We associate our childhood, even our college dorm life with what kinda music we listen to. We hear a song and instantly recall that time period, who my roomate was, who I hung out with, who I loved. Those were the power of the oldies. And then we graduated and started working, we grew old, we worried about life, anxiety ruled us sometimes, and repetition. We forgot what we did last year because it was the exact same thing I was doing now. New songs become meaningless, they become less of a part of our lives, and they don’t bring us fond memories. Now I understand, when my mom listen to this song from her youth, claiming that all new songs suck, she is in fact not listening to the song, but reliving her memories. While we forever will reminiscent about our youth, perhaps if we make our life more interesting, we may start to appreciate new things more than the old. Life is short, but it is already the longest thing you will ever come to know.