Results of Ruminations

Because my baby is cute, and he'll soon be a big brother, I thought I'd do as a reader suggested and post some more pictures of the family. And... And... He's so cute. And probably insane.

I don't really use this blog as a chance to sound off on my political views. They are independent, mercurial, and complex. I'd rather save my blog for my video game thoughts, which are independent, mercurial, and complex—but a bit more apolitical. Still, as an educator in this fine Red State (not communist, mind you, despite what those within the state might think) of Utah, I have to sound off on the absolute absurdity that is being perpetuated as parents myopically threaten to pull their students from schools if said schools allow the President's speech to students on education to be broadcast during the school day. As one blogger noted: "Make this a Stay Home Tuesday, for the sake of Education. Talk about ironic." So that's irony number one: In order to educate children on how to be civil, understanding, well-rounded students—in short, to learn about others—some students will be denied an opportunity to learn what their current President has to say about edu...

There is great difficulty when approaching the Everyman that is supposed to be Solid Snake. His appearance in subsequent games--most canonical, some not ( Super Smash Brothers Melee and the Ac!d games come to mind)--has slowly, almost reluctantly revealed the explosive past and personality of a character who was originally designed to be more transparent. Hideo Kojima explains in an interview: "When I created the main character [Snake], I knew he is essentially the player...I wanted the character to be vague. That way, players will project their own personalities onto the character, and form a stronger connection with Snake." This technique is not unique to games, yet the tropes of transparent characters rarely see such success. Few narratives can readily rely on a blank Everyman, though some do ( Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest example). The result is perhaps crucial to Snake as an avatar. That isn't to say the character doesn't have personality or a past. The tr...

NOTE: As always, there's a standing spoiler alert for any game I discuss on this blog. Here, I will be talking about Metal Gear Solid for the first PlayStation. Most of the discussion will focus on and spoil only that storyline, but because the five games that comprise the saga (as of this writing, with MGS: Portable Ops taking a necessary place) are linked, it's important to know that some things may get spoiled if you haven't played everything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Liquid In a certain sense, Metal Gear Solid is Liquid's game. Ever one to want to emulate the Patriots--albeit a type of radical, hate-twisted emulation, similar to the one that he has for Big Boss--Liquid takes it upon himself to manipulate, control, and twist Snake's progress. If anyone controls Snake, it should be Liquid, not the gamer. The controller in the hands of the audience is happenstance, for the entire ballet of Shadow Moses is...

A full week earlier than my revised deadline allowed for, I met my goal of 100k words in Tales ! Cue the happy dance. The official word count is 102,709, which again is just the raw stuff. I have some chapters and scenes that I've written that count toward that goal, but ultimately I have or will delete them from the first edit copy that I will print out. Things are finally moving in a positive way, in terms of what I want to have happen, so it's possible that I'll be able to knock this thing out in the next seven to ten writing days. I don't know if that's realistic or not; the total word count would probably only be 120k-ish if I finished it that soon, but it seems like what I wanted all along from this book is right around the corner. It's exciting to be close to a feasible end, though the rewrite on this would/will be brutal. Whole swaths of the story need to be omitted, with new content created. But, as I learned with Words of the Silenced , it's much e...

Update time: Press Start has been getting fewer comments on my blog, which is only significant in that there are so few comments in the first place, so the disparity seems bigger than it actually is. I've been exploring Kotaku to get a bit of a pulse on what other gamers think, and though the site does a good job of making most of the comments worthwhile (instead of typical fanboy flame), it doesn't explore things the way I'm trying to do in the essays. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it's something I've noticed. In terms of actual content, I've broken the 20k mark on the essays. Currently, the grand total for it is 21,382 words. I haven't received much feedback on my writing style for the essays, which is kind of a surprise. I thought that the language was a little more obtuse than I generally write. This stems from an attempt to be theoretical (so the verbiage is natural in that form), but also in trying to imbue more significance to what I...

NOTE: This one is best read as a follow up to the one about violence and the one about the next level of gaming. I am, admittedly, rather disappointed in this particular essay, but I want to see what others think before I scrap it entirely. Particularly the end—it smacks of being too preachy. You tell me. Also, there is a footnote. Just FYI. Death of the Avatar Roland Barthes in 'Death of the Author': “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Image, Music, Text, 1977). Replace 'writing' with 'gaming', and we have a new instance of death within video games--indeed, may very well be the only death within video games that matters. “[Gaming] is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body [gaming].” Much has been said about t...