This is a story that has been stuck in my head for the past few days. Years ago, I was reading a non-fiction book called 无缘社会 (Estranged from society). It is a book about the loneliness problem in Japan, the Kodokushi who die alone without anyone discovering that they are in fact dead. It felt really relatable, I always lived with my family members but with my personality and behaviors, I think I am going to become like a Kodokushi in the future (I feel somewhat neutral about it). Loneliness/state of living alone is a topic for someday else I think, but something else captured my attention. What I found interesting is how the police investigation of a Kodokushi illustrated how our brains work.
A police officer/detective was trying to find the family members of an “unclaimed” dead body. He knocked on the door of the deceased's neighbors and asked: “Do you know who their families might be?” The neighbor thought about it for a second and told the detective that they do not know.
The normal assumption would be that: “Well, the neighbor does not know, let’s look for someone else to see if they know the information about the deceased.” What the detective did is, they waited for a few days, and then revisited the neighbor to ask the same questions. The neighbor then gave a different answer as they remembered some details while they were doing laundry.
This got me thinking: Is what we think of games really what we think? Let’s say I play a game about a kid watching flowers. It was a really boring experience. The kid barely did anything and everything sucked. But then, while I was cooking some meals, I started thinking about how the sense of simple peace from our lives is completely lost in our modern-day life, replayed the game and found glimpses of how the game feels meaningful. Do I delete everything I wrote before and replace it with “how I truly think”?
I find that I disagree with myself a lot of the time. All it takes is one walk, one night of sleep, to reread my paper and disagree with my conclusions and approaches. If I edit my paper, would I be fixing thoughts and writing something that truly resembles what I think, or would I be fabricating a reality that simply isn’t true?
Decisions over whether to play a game or not, how is that decision made? There is the first impression based on the way it is marketed. Thumbnail is not catchy enough and it was ignored, the description doesn’t seem interesting or vice versa and you decide to give it a shot. Then there is the phase where the game takes too long to load, the tutorial was too boring, or something feels not “right” and the app gets deleted. In another world, one would keep on playing the game, get a great understanding of the game, but then “solve” it. Either that the single-player game has ended or that there is nothing more to explore. They appreciated the experience but they don’t see any point in continuing.
Recently, I played a game called Collective: The Community Created Card Game. During the first few single-player games, I was piloting a hero called Dhat. I felt that Dhat’s hero abilities were really stupid: I am playing a control deck, why does my ability allow me to deal face damage? Gaining 1 exp is so slow and boring… Thoughts like that.
After playing the game for ~142 hours, I would say that Dhat’s hero abilities are broken. The 1 damage ping is useful for combos/closing out games, and the exp gain allows Dhat to out tempo the other heroes. If I stopped playing the game after 5 hours, my opinion would be forever stuck at “his design is weird and doesn’t make much sense”.
If I was to write that Dhat is well designed and that 1exp gain is extremely useful, that would reflect my opinion. Is it true? Is it my opinion or is it my opinion after 142 hours of playtime? If the majority of people decide whether to buy a game or not based on a few seconds, minutes, hours of first impression. Then would reviews and analysis that only reflect the thoughts of people at the very end be out of touch with reality?
There is also an approach of writing about what we thought before and after, something along the lines of “I thought this was bad.” But would that be sufficient enough?
Sometimes I look at what I wrote previously, edit it out because I think it is wrong, and then replace it with what I perceive to be what I truly think. We are taught to hand in one final piece in school, write one essay, examine one piece of work. The merits of editing are obvious: fix the mistakes and replace it with the correct things. But I want to try a new approach to capture the reality of our experience.
Here is what I am thinking then: Instead of writing game analysis as if it is one single piece all the time, I think it would be healthy to format it like this:
[12-01-21] Why is the Earth boing boing instead of pettan?
*insert normal-looking essays paragraphs here*
*in conclusion, here is the proof on why the earth is round*
*talked to some flat earthers and got some fresh perspectives, cracks knuckle to begin writing these new thoughts below the conclusion of the original essay.*
[12-06-21] *Actually, I have some new thoughts about my initial essay. However, it doesn’t seem appropriate to edit it because it would be getting rid of an experience that is worthy of voice, it also happens that it doesn’t seem appropriate to start writing a new essay just because of this new information, so I will write these new thoughts down below that I think are relevant. While flat earthers are still wrong, my assumptions about the way their mind functioned were wrong. In their conventions, they preached the....*
[12-11-21] *Well… The 12-06-21 self is wrong because of X. After talking to A, here are some of the new insights I have gathered*
However, sometimes the research based on the old topic can spawn a new essay. Whether we edit the essay by writing at the bottom or write a new one depends on how one feels about it “deserving a new piece”, it will look like this:
[12-17-21] Inside the minds of flat earthers and its relations to World War II
The “writing new thoughts at the bottom” editing approach, I think it is maybe not the most practical or useful way for others to get information, which is another topic itself: Do we write only for the sake of communicating to others? And anything that makes communication inefficient should be completely erased and replaced by something more efficient? I don’t know the answer to that myself, but this approach of writing is something that I am willing to try and definitely relevant for how I thought about Collective: The Community Created Card Game. I think this approach might be more authentic and real than the normal “edit” approach.
But this type of authenticity and realness is greatly captured by the current streaming culture already. Anyone watching a person trying out a new game would be able to observe that “person X was really struggling at first, but X enjoyed the struggle.” If I want to know if a game is worth buying, good, or even get a better understanding of a game, it is probably better to just watch a video of someone else playing it instead of reading a review/analytical piece.
The advantage of writing? It takes less time to read and absorb all the information, although less engaging. Rather than spending 2 hours watching a stream, you get information in ten minutes of reading. Better yet, you could get that information with 10 seconds of glancing at the words “Mostly Positive” on Steam and “sexy hot steam buns” in the description.
In a sense, this approach to writing is perhaps getting the worse out of both worlds. It doesn’t feel as authentic as streaming/video reviews, not as efficient as written reviews.
However, I am cursed. I am Lovepon. It is my duty as a Lovepon to try this out. If you ever see some weird stuff at the bottom, this is where I was inspired from.