I wasn’t aware a freakish cult of personality had been formed around me. / facepalms.
So, what’s up?
I appreciate the concern but it’s time for me to go. Somewhere else. Not in a blaze of muted glory like Richey Edwards (not a bad idea per se but I’m short on Vauxhall Cavaliers and eating disorders), but as a way to move forward. I really don’t have much to say since I don’t want to turn my personal life and decisions into a circus, nor do I want to expose them and sound like Rex on one of his “rate my Feng Shui” binges.
Am I forsaking videogames forever? Can’t say. Right now the flame is gone. In fact, I don’t have much of an interest in anything at this point except getting on with my life. I may get back to them, get back to writing about them, and even doing it all blood and sweat and sarcasm on the Codex’s front page but that’s not something I can do right now. As Serge (VD) mentioned, I also gave up on an invitation to join another gaming site. I’m burned out, reluctant to even talk about games. Bethesda? They aren’t really much of a reason (a direct one, anyways). I’m sure they’ll put out the best Fallout game they can. Which isn’t the same as putting out a good Fallout game. To be blunt, I don’t really care about that right now. The state of videogaming, as Morbus put it, isn’t so much a state as it is a self-perpetuating circlejerk of developers and journalists necromacing the same gameplay models and attitudes concerning them.
I don’t care that little Billy never played System Shock 2 and feels that Bioshock is making sweet, tender love with his nutsack, or that he feels like a mean bitch everytime he calls someone a n00b over a Halo match. I’ve already played all of this and I can’t, for the life of me, see anything new or exciting. When you see journalists and the industry at large slobbering over a talentless hack like Molyneux, or see the industry coming up with the most unbelievably retarded copyright protections that always harm the consumer and never the pirates... Fallout 3, frankly, should be the least of our concerns right now. If I had one concern about videogames, and the drive to fight for it, that would be to empower developers and make the medium take more creative risks. Ditch the suits deciding content by sales rather than quality. Screw publishers and focus on other means of distribution. Stop it with the hallucinating and frantic race for graphical prowess – we’ve gone way beyond an incredibly comfortable level of that and gone quite over the edge with nonsense fidelity that, ironically, sticks out like a sore thumb when considered on a whole. In a recent clip from Soldier of Fortune 3, a rocket fired at some terrorist exploded the model in detailed chunks of meaty gibs – but left the wall behind him intact. Seriously, does it get any more ridiculous than this?
And this race isn’t just hurting gamers anymore, it’s also starting to get to modding enthusiasts. Earlier in the scene, any content creator could whip up a mod and even with average resources anyone could create a mod everyone would enjoy. Right now, the bar of graphical fidelity and production values has become so high that anyone trying to mod either a ) has to wait until a more accomplished modder releases good content so he can do all kinds of copy’n’paste-fu, b ) inevitably release a derivative work or c ) stop right now and get back to masturbation. It’s so out of the scale that even if you can trade some poor graphics for good gameplay, the experience will likely fail to engage on the same level as the retail game. Creating content from scratch that lives up to the expectations of the original experience just isn’t working as it used to, and it’s getting harder to achieve. And since the bar has been set so high to impress gamers, most of them will reluctantly touch anything that emerges from the mod scene that doesn’t sport the same kind of graphical quality anyway.
Assholes.
As Serge told me, Mask of the Betrayer and The Witcher sound pretty interesting but I’m pretty dead on that front. They sound awesome, play awesome (except the Witcher, which seems to have some problems even with a few redeeming qualities – sex cards? come on) and, really, how much more awesome would you want? But it’s like being an old man at some retirement home, drenched in so many pills I only remember I have a dick when I have to take an enema. I expected more from gaming at this point. I’m certain that given the time and encouragement Obsidian can bring back some of that Black Isle magic we used to love, but that’s my problem – I don’t have any love to spare right now.
And that’s all I have to say about games right now.
So, what happened on a personal level? Everything kind of led to this point. I had already worked enough to save some money, I was already on a downward spiral of disenchantment with myself and recently moved away from where I was born and away from everything I was used to. It all ended up in the here and now. I’ve also put an end to a two year and seven month relationship recently but however badly things with her ended, it’s not affecting me. I think I deserved more support, trust and friendship than I got, and the dedication I put into the relationship turned out to be a waste of my time, talents and (let’s not be as stupid as Homer was when he giggled everytime he heard the word ‘titties’) love, but there are other things in life. And that’s where I’m going – after them. I want to finish my design course, get my driver’s license (starting January), maybe do some bit of travelling, writing, photography and if all goes well, maybe get a literature degree. I used to love videogames and in a way I’m sure I’ll miss playing and writing about them, but that’s not where my heart is at the moment. It’s bad enough most of us die without getting our dreams fulfilled or not even being able to chase them – no point in living that way, too.
And Volourn’s right. I’m just a guy who made a few posts on videogames at best, some random schmoe on the internet at worst. Nothing more, nothing less. I hold many of you in high regard but seriously, my life is out there waiting to be lived and I’m not going to be a spectator to it anymore. I can only hope people will understand my need of doing this.
Cheerios.
~Diogo.
