See now, I remember back in 2013 I saw the trailer for The Lego Movie. I had seen Jump Street at that point, but not Cloudy and Lord and Miller weren’t really a directorial team that I was following. I didn’t know if the film was going to be any good, but I knew I had to see it on the big screen. There just wasn’t anything else ever made that looked like it. There was nothing that moved in the same way.
I started playing Fallout 3 again earlier this week. I guess the emphasis in that sentence would go on started playing. I’ve put in about five hours I think at this point and, similar to every last time I’ve ever tried, it’s started to weigh me down. Would you know that all those years ago a brought the Game of the Year edition, I’ve never interacted with any of that DLC content at all.
Just imagine being Rachel McAdams for a second.
There are like a bunch of really good movies that I don’t really have an interest in watching because of their proximity to dads. Like, I love a lot of Rob Reiner films but have little to no interest in watching Stand By Me because it amounts to the favourite film of like half of all boring white middle-aged men. That and Shawshank, I guess the non-scary King adaptations draw them in. In fact a good half of Bob Zemeckis’ filmography is a no go zone nowadays. I’m sure that Rocky is a good film, I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually, but for now age has given it proximity to the most boring parts of our society.
At university I wrote my dissertation on the similarities between postmodern theatre and video games. Sort of taking what Auslander wrote about in Liveness and reflecting it back; analysing how design is being increasingly influenced by the performative desire of players. As a part of that I looked at Alternate Reality Games, comparing their successes to the continued failure of the modernist design ideals inherent in virtual reality. In short, the gameplay of an ARG is only tangentially connected to the actual puzzle design work of its creator — the real play comes in the interaction between the community trying to solve it.
I went to the gym today for the first time this week and I ran. That’s basically all I do there, I get on the treadmill and run, do squats as well sometimes. I always forget the sense of relief that comes with finishing something. A run, a review, a workday, a play. My life is full of unfinished things that I’m not really even conscious of. It’s nice to get things done sometimes.
The useless binch (me) is back online.
