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Author Topic: Unraveling Ava Avane Dawn  (Read 27085 times)
AADA7A

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« on: March 08, 2012, 12:27:14 PM »

Not here for the beer, but for the sweet, intoxicating ambrosia. So to speak. Wink

I like many different types of games, but have a standing interest in innovation, combined with a growing sense of getting old and needing to find things that are more suitable to my increased craving for meaning and understanding. Sadly, playing video games for me often amounts to being in an abusive relationship having roots in childhood trauma (perhaps illustrated all too well by Lavelles Oíche Mhaith), where I approach my harsh mistress with a desire to be accepted and forgiven, yet once more get cruelly beaten down. Whatever function video games had for me as a kid, they certainly have changed and I've been conditioned to try to regain my childhood through video games, yet even the old school aesthetic amounts to no more than a skeuomorphic shadow of what has been. I do not hope for a return by means of repetition -- although my inner child may yearn it -- but hope instead to reach for the future. Often have I even thought to myself that I should leave video games aside for maybe 5-10 years and explore my issues of becoming my own person through other means, yet the mistress has a strangle hold, and so I persuade myself instead that the only feasible approach is the direct: confrontation.

I've always had the best ideas concerning video games when playing them and imagining what instead the game could be, how differently it could behave, and how much more joyful I could feel when having finished playing it, or less neurotic ticks when actually playing it, since I'm aware I could invest my time in something better. Now, for the first time, I'm actually prepared to set out and make a complete document of a video game, instead of just thinking bits and pieces here and there, and a lot of ideas are now stumbling around in my head. Ideas very much connected to issues within video gaming as such, and their lacks, but also ideas concerning spirituality, philosophy, art, which I have been working on for quite some time in written form, and in my noggin. Perhaps I will voice some of these ideas here eventually.

Until then, perhaps I should link to a letter I sent to Obsidian and Avellone after they asked what I would like from a kickstarter project of theirs. I think this was a deciding point for me, since I'm been lurking round the brainysphere and have seen game criticism explode since 2007 on the net, yet haven't been a part of that community myself, and now wish to perhaps be, and also create.

http://mindinggames.blogspot.com/2012/03/opinions-presented-to-avellone.html
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AADA7A

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« Reply #1 on: March 08, 2012, 01:20:48 PM »

And it's not that the video games of my childhood haven't given me anything, or changed me in any significant way, as for example books and movies might have, which is a story perpetuated by "serious gamers/art gamers". They have. It's just that most of the time, what video games have given me is a lack, a longing for something, a longing to return, of a return, a gaping hole of nostalgia which I'm afraid cannot be filled. Strangely (since games are systems with potential for exploration), what games have given me often is not then an illumination, but a mystery. As such, they have come to represent something which I can't quite put my finger on it, the void just beyond reach, ineffable. To put it into words would perhaps be to reduce it (as with anything), and perhaps then to commit to the original sin, or to recreate the founding trauma, to express in art, in a video game, that longing, will perhaps be a way to make amends.

And then there's the story of newer video games too, which I have experienced in relation to this lost innocence, yet have given me experiences more similar to those of other mediums, experiences which I can look back on with a sense of mastery or more clearer sense of understanding...
« Last Edit: March 08, 2012, 01:27:24 PM by AADA7A » Logged
God at play

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« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2012, 06:04:17 AM »

Welcome Smiley

Quote
I do not hope for a return by means of repetition -- although my inner child may yearn it -- but hope instead to reach for the future. Often have I even thought to myself that I should leave video games aside for maybe 5-10 years and explore my issues of becoming my own person through other means, yet the mistress has a strangle hold, and so I persuade myself instead that the only feasible approach is the direct: confrontation.

To the tumblr!
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Michaël Samyn

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« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2012, 12:17:14 PM »

Welcome!
Could you upload a photo of yourself as your avatar? We find that this enhances the atmosphere on the forum.  Smiley
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AADA7A

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« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2012, 07:32:47 AM »

Done, and done! Oh, well, actually, tumblr is not done. Right now I'm comfortable with my activity here and facebook.
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Michaël Samyn

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« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2012, 10:17:20 AM »

Done, and done!

Thank you. Much better! Smiley
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