My work

 I believe that there is some important sense in which despair, loneliness, emptiness, meaninglessness, or whatever is part of the human condition. I am an optimist in the sense that I believe humans can find answers to this problem. But I believe this problem is really tricky.

I think a lot of answers have been proposed for this problem. But I feel like the way this problem works is that you can take a lot of value out of other people's answers, and that is why books, movies, games etc have value, but at the same time the problem is tricky because there is no right universal answer, and even what works for a particular person on a given day often won't work on the next day, at least it won't work in quite the same way. I think this is the problem with organized religion and a lot of things that bill themselves as an answer. They might have been in some original sense, but it is all too easy for people to abuse these notions and their claims to being the one true answer and for people to fall into dogmatic obsessions.

So what I mean when I say that games are spiritual, or that they are art, is that I believe that games can be an authentic answer to this problem.

But there are some important caveats or like issues that come up. 

The first is the idea of distraction. Distraction is a negative reaction to this problem. It might work short term but that will only make the problem worse. So when games operate as distraction, they are worse than nothing because they just act as a papering over the problem which only makes it worse.

 So there is some important sense in which what is needed is someone who can talk about the difference between distraction and real answers to the problem.

 Another issue is that in some ways I don't really think games can be a pure answer to this problem in the sense of the only thing that works. What I mean is that games can be an authentic reaction to despair but that we also need other things in our lives like love, whether that be for family, or friends, or partners. I feel like it is dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket whatever that may be and that the real answers to this problem are like a network of related things like love in its various forms, different kinds of community, satisfying work, etc.

And in some ways I don't feel any answer can be given that is universally valid. What I mean by this is that there is no sense in which I am saying "everyone should be a gamer"... basically I feel like people have to find their own way and there is no such thing as a universal answer that works for everyone. Like I mentioned above, even what works for one person on Day A may not work on Day B so it can be tough to talk about this stuff.

 So what I am saying is that I think games can be deep and valuable in this important sense of being a reaction to the human condition in the same sense that like religion, philosophy, or art are. But there are also pitfalls.

So I guess what I am saying is that I feel like my calling is to talk about games in this deep sense of being a solution to despair rather than just being a distraction. But to talk about the pitfalls and the ways in which games or gaming can fail to live up to this notion.

So given all of this, why are games attractive to me... I have studied, science, literature, and philosophy. So why am I attracted to games most of all. And I think it has to do with the idea of fun. There is something really interesting to me about games being totally nonsensical in some ways but also that people care deeply about them. Although I have learned a lot from the different subjects I have studied, at some level I found a lot of them confusing and depressing. Part of me is really attracted to the idea of fun as the solution. I think I have a strong streak in me that takes things too seriously. And there is some feeling that games offer some corrective to that because in some sense they are the opposite of serious. That being said there is definitely part of me that is really attracted to "serious" games like chess or go. And in some ways, the path I have sketched out in the post is kind of a "serious" approach to games. But I think in some ways I would like to try to steer more towards the "fun" end of the spectrum. 

 

 

 

Video Game haul

 Well, like I mentioned, I have been busy with my new job. So that has been fairly demanding in that there has been a lot to learn and I have been having to do a significant amount of problem solving on a daily basis. It can also be physically demanding because although on 3rd shift I am allowed to sit, during day shifts we have to stand and standing for 8 hours is more taxing than I realized. There has also been some issues with sleep schedule stuff and having to be awake during the day for some stuff. So overall I feel like I have been working pretty hard these last few weeks. So I decided to splurge and buy a haul of video games even though there is no big sale going on Steam. (There is a big sale going on Epic but I have a strong preference for buying on steam). In my haul I bought one game that had just released which is also unusual for me (Forza 6). So overall I spent significantly more than I have in the past. But part of that is that I had to switch my store back to the US store and prices are higher in the US. (This is the reason they have a lot of restrictions on region switching.) So, all told ,I got planescape torment, Ghost of Tsushima, the alters, blue prince, forza 6, indiana jones and the great circle, anno 117 pax romana, atomfall, tainted grail: the fall of avalon, memoriapolis.

So a couple of those are more action oriented games, particularly Ghost and Indiana Jones. I have a strong tendency to lean toward cerebral games. But sometimes I feel that I really like action games. I played all three of the most recent Tomb Raider games and enjoyed them. And sometimes I feel like cerebral video games feel like a bit of a paradox because in some ways with a lot these strategy games that I am attracted to I just feel really mixed about investing the time to actually learn how to play properly and stuff.  That being said, playing Ghost of Tsushima has reminded me that I am not very good at these kind of action games where you have to have some actual physical skills like remembering how to do things under pressure and quick reflexes and stuff like that. I generally tend to play games on medium difficulty when I have a choice. A lot of times playing on easy feels silly and I am nowhere near good enough to play on hard. So I don't know. At my age I will probably never be a champion video game swordsman, but I definitely feel like I can improve if I put some effort in.

But that is kind of the trick. Finding games that I am willing to invest the effort in. For some reason I tend to feel like Go and Chess, and to some extent Magic are worth investing effort in. But a lot of times with video games I just feel I hit the limit a lot sooner of questioning "why am I doing this?" or "I don't really want to be bothered" instead of just plowing ahead. 

 But anyways... I also bought a cool blue controller to play the action games with. So we will just have to see. I was reading one of my gaming notebooks from earlier this year or the end of last year and it was saying my priority would be go but I would like video games to be the option to take a break from that. Hard to say. I have a fairly large collection of video games but I haven't really sunk all that much time into actually playing those games. Only time will tell if that changes or if I continue to collect without playing much.