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...

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

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

I enjoy your different takes on flowers, Stout and KnifeFight. For me, both are valid, at different points in time, in relation to different experiences/discourses. I can submerge myself in the reality of both emotions (flower as always dying, appreciation, and beauty as always there, thus to be appreciated must be circumcised, stripped away).

I think concerning the matter of Fukuyamas end of history and whatnot, postanarchism is important for my understanding:

"The prefix "post-" does not mean 'after anarchism', but refers to the challenging and disruption of typically accepted assumptions within frameworks that emerged during the Enlightenment era. This means a basic rejection of the epistemological foundations of classical anarchist theories, due to their tendency towards essentialist or reductionist notions – although post-anarchists are generally quick to point out the many outstanding exceptions, such as those noted above. Such an approach is considered to be important insofar as it widens the conception of what it means to have or to be produced rather than only repressed by power, thus encouraging those who act against power in the form of domination to become aware of how their resistance often becomes overdetermined by power-effects as well. It argues against earlier approaches that capitalism and the state are not the only sources of domination in the moment in which we live, and that new approaches need to be developed to combat the network-centric structures of domination that characterize late modernity."

Or as Ian Bogost has said concerning Persuasive Games: "Games like these undermine the very idea of "social change," if change implies solution and resolution. Instead of social change, we may end up with something more like "social churn"—situations in which people and things constantly negotiate with one another in order to struggle toward a tentative conclusion, one that will always be swooped up again into another foam of swirling sea."

Check out the game BUTTON:

"The game’s defining characteristic is the “incompleteness” of its underlying system, in the sense that it is so obviously up to the players themselves to interpret and enforce the rules."

http://gamestudies.org/1101/articles/wilson

And also this piece on Rules and enforcement:
http://killscreendaily.com/articles/brief-who-rules-rules/