4 posts tagged “neurosis”

I got realistic and changed the status of quite a few games in my Gamepedia database. It's sad, but with the limited amount of time I have anymore, I need to prioritize more dispassionately.

Since C4, I keep thinking about three guys. Together, they pretty well represent all of the things I find distasteful in the Mac software community. They also represent most of the things I admire in that community. I don’t know what to think of them, and I keep coming back to the problem in my mind. I keep worrying that not liking them is somehow a fault of mine.

• Young Hotshot Engineer Guy is the simplest case. He is brilliant at what he does, and his intentions are unimpeachable. But he’s incorrigibly arrogant and crass. This case is simple because it’s pretty obviously my own narrowmindedness and overdelicacy that keep me from letting myself admire him. He acknowledges his own rockstar attitude and eloquently defends it, leaving me with little choice but to respect him but abhor the way he expresses himself.
• Veteran Hotshot Engineer Guy infuriates me. He has an amplified version of the YHEG’s arrogant, crass attitude, and as a bonus is something of a lecher. The difference is that while he’s supposedly a good engineer, and he is almost universally lauded, I have found his work to be unpardonably flawed. I don’t feel much of a desire to try liking this person, but he keeps returning to my attention because of how prominent he is.
• Elite Pundit Guy would be pretty easy to figure out, if not for one thing I can’t let go. He is an esteemed writer whose words are widely read and agreed with. He is clever, creative, and connected. When I approached him at C4, he was gracious and helpful. But in my mind I keep returning to when he, with a handful of vicious words, disparaged and dismissed the product I’d spent the previous year building, the first major project I took real pride in helping to complete. He probably doesn’t even remember writing that offhanded opinion, but it’s indelible from my pride.

I fantasize that if I could call these guys out and make them answer for their words and actions, “Hey man, why you gotta be like that!?”, they’d see their failings and apologize. They’d change their behavior and act the way I think Mac software community guys should act. They’d let me sit at the cool kids’ table at conferences, and we could follow each other on Twitter.

But in actuality I’m just burningly, helplessly jealous. My work is not as cool, not as sophisticated, not as fashionable as theirs. This jealousy is actually a pretty strong motivator for me to show them how good of a job a nice guy can do. I wonder if that’s a healthy source of ambition, or not. I am a crazy person.

If I spend too long in Kinokuniya or at game sites, I actually get anxious about this stuff. Reminders to myself:

1. You don’t have to follow forever.

For a couple of years, I was actually pretty up to speed with Japanese console gaming (and comics, and popular music). I lived in Japan, I had lots of free time and curiosity and spendable money. So I walked around game shops all the time. I saw what was getting attention, I bought a lot of the stuff that interested me, and I participated in the culture: Sakura Taisen, Xenosaga, Shenmue, various shooting and fighting games, the post-death Dreamcast, and weird stuff like The Chikyuuboueigun. When I got back to the USA, I spent a lot of my time keeping up with what I’d left behind, and a lot of my income importing stuff I’d missed: visual novels (Kita e, some Yokota Mamoru games, even Sentimental Graffiti on Saturn), Cave games, Nippon Ichi games, and so much more. But not a lot of people can indefinitely prolong that phase of their life, where they’ve got the circumstances and resources available to sustain such hobbies at such an intense level.

So when I get worried that I’m not keeping up with all of the goings-on in the console gaming world, I need to remember that I already put a huge amount of attention and money into that system, and I got out a lot of enjoyment, memories, and hooks for future enjoyment. Now instead of voraciously seeking out everything new, I can branch out from what I already have. As new Sakura Taisen games come out, I play them. If a company or an individual I like works on a new project, I check it out. If something gets praise from people whose opinions I trust because of our gaming connections (like Sendai Tom or Julian), then I look into it. These things appear in front of me without very much effort on my part at all, and they are more than enough to fill all of my free time with gaming enjoyment. So I shouldn’t feel like I have to try so hard to keep up with everything that come out. Even if I’m missing some things, I wouldn’t be able to play it all anyway.

2. You don’t have to follow everything.

I am actually quite deeply absorbed in the game company Gust. I could probably pay attention to nothing but Gust games for the remainder of that company’s career, and never lack for gaming enjoyment. I buy everything they make, I am a member of their special online fan club, I read their newsletters, I participate in their intricate online promotions, and I’m ready to buy whichever next-generation system they decide to develop for. So in a way, I am still following the hobby very closely; it’s just a tiny subset of the whole hobby.

So when I get worried that I’m not keeping up with all of the goings-on in the console gaming world, I need to remember that I still put a large amount of attention and money into a small part of that system, and I’m still getting out a lot of enjoyment, memories, and hooks for future enjoyment. Even if I were to keep up with everything that comes out, and find another place to put this amount of devotion, I’d have to give up my devotion to Gust in order to afford it in time and money. I should be glad that I have Gust, and lots of side dishes from other companies, to keep me satisfied.

3. You aren’t the only one following.

I actually get a vague worry that if I don’t seek out and support all the great stuff that suits my taste, nobody will. As if I’m the key member of these creators’ target audience (even though I’m not even from the right country!) and their success and happiness depend on my commitment. Of course, that’s preposterous. As I said in items 1 and 2, I can’t follow everything forever. I paid tribute to lots of creators in the past, and I’m still paying tribute to a few creators now. Right now there are millions of people at the stage of life I was at in 2002 in Japan, and they are keeping up with everything, and supporting lots of creators. When their discovery phase is over, they’ll probably settle on a few creators (different from the ones I’ve settled on) and continue to offer their support like I’m doing now. Oh yeah, and there are also millions of people (most of them actually born and raised in the country where all of this is going on) who never do leave that stage. The whole system isn’t resting on my shoulders. I have done, and am still doing, my part. I have a steady stream of new things to try from my friends and my connections and my news sources, and I can continue to enjoy this hobby indefinitely. It’s even okay to go back and play old, old games that I missed when they were the hot new thing, even years after the game’s inital gambit in the market, when my support is not going to be apparent to the people who created it anymore, and my posting about the game on the web isn’t going to help it succeed.

This is all so obvious, but I have to remind myself of it sometimes.

I have reached a time in my life when I need to buy video games that I will play, and play the video games that I buy.

Traditionally, I have gotten worked up about games and I have buzzed with excitement until I could somehow get my hands on them. The procurement of the game often superseded the enjoyment of the game. If a game was part of a series I considered myself a fan of, or had a particularly attractive package, or showed up at a Shinjuku used-game shop for cheap, I couldn't be satisfied until I had it on my shelf. Sometimes these games became lastingly memorable life experiences. Sometimes they became nothing.

Now I'm not in charge of my own budget anymore. I need to feed, clothe, and shelter two adult human beings. The lady controls our money because she knows better than to let me spend $200 on a Limited Edition game that might end up as a disappointment, or $75 on a game I might not play for more than five hours, or $30 on a game that might never find its way onto the disc tray at all.

Yesterday I was freaking out a bit about how my hobby is kind of passing me by. If I finally get around to playing a game, it's often well after everyone else has already discovered it, chattered about it online, drawn their fanart, and moved on to the next thing. Part of the fun of games for me is participating in the culture and exploring the game along with hundreds of other people around the world. Recently there was a Dengeki poll asking gamers about the best game they played in 2007; it kind of spooked me to think that some games I'm still meaning to pick up and play (particularly Etrian Odyssey and Fate/stay night [Realta Nua]) are now officially last year's news. Of course, that's because I spent the last five months playing Ar tonelico 2, which is also on the list. (Not to mention that I still mean to play their all-time favorite #9, Gensousuikoden II, but haven't partially because I was busy playing #4, Xenogears, at the time.) But I'd like to keep up better than I am.

I mentioned to the lady that I worried when I'd even be able to buy another video game. She hit me with the eminently sensible notion that it's fine to buy a new game if I have finished the ones I already own. This is a completely alien concept to me, but it's clear that with our current resources it's the only reasonable way to proceed. Of course, this means I can't employ my old shotgun method of game collection and then sort through the loot when it's time to start a new game. I'll have to carefully weigh which of the games on my wishlist I really want to play next, then buy it and play it. I won't be playing fewer games, I'll just be spending less money on games that are bound to become shelf decorations... Though I am proud of my shelf decorations.

Of course, the first stage of this discipline will be finishing (or rejecting) the 20 or so games in my queue. To that end, I dove back into Ar tonelico 2 last night and finished Croche's path this morning before work. Next I'll go back and finish the secret character's path. Then I'll choose a game I already own and get through that. When I truly own no video games that I still want to get through, then I'll take a look around at the landscape and see which game I truly want to play next.