All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

--C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Stand by me, my apprentice. Be brave. Clench fists.

Happy Christmas from my people, the Irish

And all the romance and violence that entails.

I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.

In hell, there are only two choices of games to play: Uno and, of course, Candy Land (the two games we offer to children to teach them hopelessness and their mechanistic place in a deterministic universe).

This is a strong argument against atheism. After all, what if I'm right?

I mean, Candy Land, for God's sake.

Something sweet, something inspiring

My wife says that Spring Breakers is the feminine version of A Clockwork Orange.

She is correct.

Best film of the year.

No hay banda.

Silencio.

Lamentablemente, probablemente es la verdad. Es la verded.

That kind of lux just ain't for us.

Having spent a fair amount of time with Lorde's Pure Heroine album, I'm no longer certain that I am hearing something from the millenial generation, as I am hearing something from the end of the millenials. This may be the voice of a new group altogether, one that understands want, loss, and pain.

In that sense, the album speaks in a voice of retrograde populism that is familiar to anyone growing up in the late 70s and early 80s (We of the generic products. We of the single mothers whose asshole ex-husbands rarely bothered to pay child support. We of the gas crisis. We of the layoff, the corporate buyout and sellout.). I find it interesting that those who grow up with want lean towards a more romantic philosophy (witness Stephen Crane's cruel but funny send up of the working poor's love of melodrama in Maggie, Girl of the Streets), while those that have been comfortable have this ugly tendency towards a dull, mechanical, and hopelessly inhuman realism.

Those with pain have hope. Those without pain, cry, pout, and act petulant.

Maybe we're post-millenial. Maybe its because she's from New Zealand. I haven't been there since the late 80s, so I don't know what the economy is like currently, though the more distinct and explicit class divide familiar in more Northern European culture was definitely present in the general mood of the people that I met at the time.

Whatever is the case, I hear the "fuck what you value" attitude of punk, the despairing, but desperately enduring romance of "Livin' on a Prayer" or Springsteen in Lorde, even if her style is so completely different.

There's a more pure image of and assumption of violence here in her imagery as well, one that is familiar and strangely comforting to me. I love the image of the shirtless boy grinning and laughing after having spit blood in the mirror in the "Royals" video. I've looked in that mirror before.

We mean it, but I promise we aren't mean.

Delicate in every way but one (the swordplay).
God knows we like archaic kinds of fun (the old way).
Chance is the only game I play with, baby,
We let our battles choose us.
--Lorde, "Glory and Gore"

Sometimes I almost feel just like a human being.

Pop beloved.

Punk beloved.

I'll fall apart. With all my heart.

I'll be the class clown.
You be the beauty queen
in tears. It's a new art form,
showing people how little we care.

We're so happy
even when we're smiling out of fear.

Don't you think that it's boring how people talk?

Lorde may be the wisest voice that I've heard from the millenial generation. The way she's looking at things is so refreshingly reasonable and thoughtful. "Team" pretty much describes the way that I've lived for the last two decades (maybe nearly four), and while I can't say that it has all been perfection, the priorities here are right, as is the world view.

"Tennis Court" is awfully good, too. Still listening to the full album, but I remain impressed by what she seems to be communicating.

Plus, her eye makeup is always amazing.

Gaming and Masturbating, Masturbating and Gaming

If you can't work the word sodomy into the title of an article, well, there's always masturbation.

Gaming and Masturbating, Masturbating and Gaming

If I had a gun for every ace I have thrown

Never mind.

This is actually how I feel about everything ever.

Oh, baby, look at you. Don't you look like Siouxsie Sioux?

I remember first hearing "Peek-a-Boo" when I was 14 or 15 years old and thinking that it sounded like nothing I'd ever heard. It still sounds like that to me.

I've seen her perform twice. Once with my beloved Wonderstuff, who are, of course, nothing like her at all.

Watching Siouxsie dance in "Kiss Them for Me" is a gorgeously horrific thing.

I miss you, Charlotte Devaux.

It is complete now. Two ends of time are neatly tied.

Arbitrary signification, I know. A memento of sorts.

Be anxious over nothing.

Hard Boiled Combat: Enduring the Quick Time Event

I was never the biggest kid. I was never the strongest, the fastest, the best co-ordinated. The only physical aptitude that I possess is probably not all that physical in nature at all. It's more a matter of willfulness. I could endure.

Taking a beating builds character, I guess.

Persevere, persevere, persevere.

I can bleed. I totally know how.

Hard Boiled Combat: Enduring the Quick Time Event

I am whatever you say I am.

If I wasn't, why would I say I am?

You were so cool, you could've put out Vietnam.

The contrast both aurally and visually is so achingly beautiful. The grotesque and the gorgeous.

I love you so very, very much, Shane. Oh, and you're okay too, Sinead.

Mechanizing Terror: League of Legends and Character Design

Not the most unique of observations or the most profound of pieces, but I've been driven to distraction this week. I'm half in reality and half... somewhere.

I am in the mood to eat someone's heart, though. I haven't done that for awhile.

Mechanizing Terror: League of Legends and Character Design

Moving Pixels Podcast: Neon Noir Fairy Tales

Fables: The Game. Much like the comic book, meh...

While Nick and Eric might disagree, not up to the quality of The Walking Dead. I hope Telltale punches it up in future episodes.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Neon Noir Fairy Tales

It was gorgeousness and gorgeousity.

I was cured all right.

And finally we get to the whistling part.

Fatale

Bigby and Bitches: A Big Bad Wolf That Can't Bear Misogyny

More fun with parsing swear words, gendered terms for animals, and misogyny.

Unfortunately, I am merely a misanthrope. Not really all that controversial a position these days.

That's Faith up there. She's a prostitute.

Honestly, this essay is just ho hum. Kinda cutesy in my opinion, nothing more.

Bigby and Bitches: A Big Bad Wolf That Can't Bear Misogyny

Moving Pixels Podcast: Swords, Sex, and Suda51

That's Betty up there. She's a vampire.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Swords, Sex, and Suda51

To razorblade kisses

So sweet and so sour.

The Grand Theft Auto Rampage: The Violence of Cultural and Subcultural Politics

Trevor, Trevor, Trevor...

The Grand Theft Auto Rampage: The Violence of Cultural and Subcultural Politics

A Game of Chess: The Intimacy of Antagonism

What am I talking about here? I don't know. I'm just talking.

A Game of Chess: The Intimacy of Antagonism

Moving Pixels Podcast: More Mines, Maps, and Madness

If T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, and David Lynch made a game, well, first off I would play it. But it would also, of course, be Kentucky Route Zero.

Moving Pixels Podcast: More Mines, Maps, and Madness

Sodomy and the Prison of Multiplayer Gaming

Once in awhile you have to work the word sodomy into the title of an article.

Sodomy and the Prison of Multiplayer Gaming

Grand Theft Auto: The Game with Plenty to Say

I am so bored of game critics being embarrassed by and afraid of GTA. Get over it, guys. It might upset some apple carts, but we aren't fucking Puritans. Stop being so afraid of satire.

I swear if Swift published "A Modest Proposal" today, these kids would be horrified that he wants to eat all the Irish babies.

Stop being so tone deaf and so fucking delicate.

Grand Theft Auto: The Game with Plenty to Say

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Creatures of Impulse

Don't you know I'm an animal?
Don't you know I can't stand up straight?

--Elvis Costello, "Hand in Hand," This Year's Model

Trevor, Grand Theft Auto's Fictional Player Comes Alive

Ah, moral panic has become so blase.

Or at least this flavor of moral panic.

Trevor, Grand Theft Auto's Fictional Player Comes Alive

Moving Pixels Podcast: Haunted Homes and Gone Home

Of late, we've recorded a bunch of podcasts in a short span of time, so the details of this one are a little fuzzy in my mind. I seem to recall that I was pleased on the whole with this discussion, which is a good thing, right?

That is assuming I trust my own judgment these days, of course...

I like the splash image at least. Cheesy, simple, but I understand black nail polish.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Haunted Homes and Gone Home

I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.

They fall on their asses.
It takes lots of practice.

--Too Much Joy, "Clowns," Son of Sam I Am

I can relate.

Moving Pixels Podcast: A Game of Mines, Maps, and Madness

I'm glad we got in the Way Back Machine (way back being merely the beginning of the year) to discuss Kentucky Route Zero. Firstly, because on this my third playthrough, I yet again discovered things I hadn't seen or realized were present in the game before. Secondly, because I wrote a little bit about it earlier in the year, but probably not as much as the game deserves.

The game is so very smart, so very fun, and so very challenging (from an intellectual perspective, not a ludic one). The kind of game I truly love, the puzzle, the labyrinth, the joke of attempting to unweave the inscrutable (that joke that has defined three decades or so of whatever I am).

Moving Pixels Podcast: A Game of Mines, Maps, and Madness

Grand Theft HBO

An extremely ugly lime sherbet colored San Andreas | Federal Reserves System t-shirt, a bunch of GTA V stickers, and a copy of GTA V arrived on my doorstep on Tuesday morning.

...and all is right with the world.

Grand Theft HBO

Moving Pixels Podcast: Inheriting Work in Rogue Legacy

Forgot to note that we posted a podcast on Rogue Legacy last week. Taking a look at the end of the game led me to even further developing some of my ideas about the game and its economic implications, which I did touch on in a recent column but maybe even more so here.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Inheriting Work in Rogue Legacy

No More Mirrors: Reflecting the Reality of Unreal Lives

Upon entering the second bathroom in the house that comprises the totality of Gone Home's game world, I was struck by the fact that there are no mirrors in this house or this game, a game very much about recognizing others and exploring the self. So, this post is about the implications of having no mirrors, no seemingly direct access to seeing someone's face, and how often, as we do in Gone Home, we only have the ability to interpret via the things and imagery that a person has constructed about themselves.

No More Mirrors: Reflecting the Reality of Unreal Lives

The End of Friendship: The Current State of the MMO

Some thoughts on social bonds and the problems with creating them in current gen MMORPGs.

Just offhandish thoughts more than anything else.

The End of Friendship: The Current State of the MMO

Discovering the Familiar in Gone Home

The thing that I admire most about Gone Home is its craftsmanship. It's a tremendous example of detail-driven world building.

The theme is home, and the world clearly conveys that theme because the world is home.

Discovering the Familiar in Gone Home

Fountains of Youth and the Undying Baby Boomers

This is a more traditional PopMatters column, crosscutting a medium's interests with cultural critique. My wife says it is good. I'm less sure of that.

Fountains of Youth and the Undying Baby Boomers

Saints Row IV: I Want to Be All the Clones

Saints Row the Third was stupid. Saints Row IV is often smart in its stupidity. It's also joyously obnoxious.

Play it.

Saints Row IV: I Want to Be All the Clones

Moving Pixels Podcast: 400 Days of Moral Quandries, Hungry Zombies, and Terrible Humans

Scads of thoughts on The Walking Dead: 400 Days and the value of taking on multiple personas.

This one is a long one.

Moving Pixels Podcast: 400 Days of Moral Quandries, Hungry Zombies, and Terrible Humans

Cheating Well (and Helping Others to Cheat Well, Too)

This post may just be a bit arch.

Oh well.

Cheating Well (and Helping Others to Cheat Well, Too)

From the Tabletop to the Screen, Shadowrun Returns

Shadowrun Returns is good, evoking a strange nostalgia for me for a game world that I forgot I knew pretty well back in the day.

That being said, I really want to talk about a tabletop board game right now, Elder Sign. I want to talk about the benefits of editing something down from the tedious and unwieldy to simpler interactions and simple decisions. Probably next week.

From the Tabletop to the Screen, Shadowrun Returns

Creatures of Appetite: The Virtues of Covetousness in Video Games

It reminds me of the time I fell.

It's time for sin and Catholic guilt.

Creatures of Appetite: The Virtues of Covetousness in Video Games

Moving Pixels Podcast: There's a Little Killer in All of Us

An awfully long podcast about Killer 7.

As always, I believe I got lost in talking about how Suda's games are about games. Not sure I articulated it as well as I have in some past articles. I dunno.

Moving Pixels Podcast: There's a Little Killer in All of Us

Rogue Legacy: Old Money and Better Living through Dungeon Delving

A review of the very nicely designed Rogue Legacy:

Rogue Legacy: Old Money and Better Living through Dungeon Delving

Creatures of Appetite

I often say that I prefer dogs to cats. Cats are self indulgent, self absorbed creatures. They remind me too much of people. They remind me too much of myself.

The dog, on the other hand, is a noble creature. Seemingly selfless, ever loyal, ever faithful, and capable of unconditional love.

My basset hound puppy, of course, escaped again, bolting outside (as she loves to do) to run roughshod over the neighborhood. I took a small piece of boneless chicken and a leash as my implements of entrapment. She made me chase her two blocks, but as always, she was trapped by her stomach, a creature of appetite, a creature of impulse. Once again, I was reminded of people and once again too much (unfortunately) of myself.

Smoking while cooking bacon

The only act of defiance left.

Pathetic.

"First World Problems"

I swear if I hear this phrase one more time...

Yeah, I get what people are trying to suggest with it, but it's usually used by middle to upper class white kids that don't know that poverty exists everywhere.

Come to Detroit some time, and I'll show you houses that my sister and her husband insulated because people had their heat shut off and had ice building up on the interior of their walls (and, yes, helping out with paying the heating bill was also part of the solution, but they were looking for something that might serve as some longer term help since it was likely to happen again). Or come to my Salvation Army, and I'll introduce you to some guys I know that live in their cars. Now, I suppose you think these guys are "privileged" because they own a shitty '84 Buick Skylark, but I assure you that the overall picture isn't a portrait of an ideal society, nor is the car itself a particularly ideal place to eat and sleep in.

The phrase "First World Problems" is clever. I admire cleverness, but in this case, stop being so very clever, open your eyes, and help someone out that might need it. They're probably closer at hand than you think.

Trolling the Player: Punk Aesthetics and the "Anti-Fun" of Suda 51's Games

Doesn't anyone listen to punk anymore?

I may sound condescending, but I often feel like I need to explain what punk is to just about everyone around me. That punk wants to provoke discomfort, regardless of how offensively that provocation might be to liberals, conservatives, your mom, or your dog, is something I feel like no one "gets" anymore.

In a culture so worried about words and who is going to be offended by what, we sure don't seem interested in intentionality. We just indict, indict, indict. It's the New Puritanism, and I can't bear it.

That isn't exactly what this article is about, though, just my own vague tangental musings.

This is about Suda 51 and how he tells me to "fuck off" whenever I play his games and how I kind of love him for it.

Trolling the Player: Punk Aesthetics and the "Anti-Fun" of Suda 51's Games

I don't sleep

Not much and only intermittently.

Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded: Antique Raunch

This is probably the best review that I've written in a long while, and it's for a freaking Leisure Suit Larry game. Go figure.

Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded: Antique Raunch

The Moving Pixels Podcast Celebrates HUDs, Health Bars, and Start Screens

Having recently written about the HUD and its relationship to how we experience game worlds and the drama of game plots, I wanted to talk with someone else about how they view these seemingly "meta" elements of games. The following conversation with Nick Dinicola is the result:

The Moving Pixels Podcast Celebrates HUDs, Health Bars, and Start Screens

Remember Me: Come for the Combat, Check Out for the "Subtle" Profundity of the Amnesiac

Some thoughts on the interesting but frequently stupid Remember Me.

Remember Me: Come for the Combat, Check Out for the "Subtle" Profundity of the Amnesiac

The Pace of the Game

Some brief thoughts on pacing, time commitment, and video games, as opposed to other media.

The Pace of the Game

Danger, Romance, Adventure and the Health Bar, or How I Learned to Love the HUD

The double bind of the HUD: it seems artificial, yet its existence in many games represents information necessary to believe in the drama of the game.

Danger, Romance, Adventure and the Health Bar, or How I Learned to Love the HUD

In Marvel Heroes, All the Adventure Is in the Cutscenes

Zap, zap, pow.

Yawn.

In Marvel Heroes, All the Adventure Is in the Cutscenes

Why Superman Fails as a Video Game Character

So, I saw Man of Steel. It's so-so. The main problem, I think, is that Superman and Lois Lane just don't have enough personality to care too much about. The female Phantom Zone villain is pretty fun at times, though.

Supes hasn't had much luck in video games either, and today I considered a few reasons why, which mostly have to do, of course, with his omnipotence and omnibenevolence. I consider whether or not either of them leads to mechanics that can make a game that might actually be fun to play. Superman might just be "anti-fun."

Why Superman Fails as a Video Game Character

Driven to the Grind, Driven through the Grind

My girls and I have been playing Tera Online lately -- separately, since we only have one computer that can run it well. It got me thinking about why I'm playing this multiplayer game as a single player experience, which I think has much to do with the way that the grind has changed in modern RPGs.

Driven to the Grind, Driven through the Grind

Moving Pixels Podcast: Monaco, Neon Noir Heists and the Pleasures of Making Mistakes

The indie scene continues to be where it's at these days. I want my games faster, more challenging, and different. Monaco's aesthetics are cool, and it's gameplay grows on you nearly as quickly, especially the multiplayer.

While I have become more and more a glutton for punishment over the years, enjoying games that make me play more and more perfectly in order to survive, the interesting thing about Monaco is how mistakes become the best parts of the game.

Bad situations in this game and silly mistakes turn into events that are a pleasure to solve. Your or another player's error redefines the objectives of any given level as you have to figure out how to improvise to make that well planned heist -- that just fell apart somehow -- get back on track again.

Moving Pixels Podcast: Monaco, Neon Noir Heists and the Pleasures of Making Mistakes

no one has to die Tells the Story of Death in Video Games

Death, sex, and video games. Okay, maybe just death.

no one has to die Tells the Story of Death in Video Games

The Moving Pixels Podcast Explores Minimalism in Video Games

Oh, Nick and I did a podcast on minimalism and games a week or so ago.

The Moving Pixels Podcast Explores Minimalism in Video Games

A Cleaner, More Hygienic Apocalypse

What do you want in your representation of reality? Authenticity or that which meets your expectations?

Filthy toilets or a well scrubbed head?

A Cleaner, More Hygienic Apocalypse

Putting My Girl Back Together Again

Tying shoelaces, zipping zippers, pressing X...

Putting My Girl Back Together Again

There's always a lighthouse. There's always a man. There's always a city.

I kind of threw this together at the last moment. It's a piece based on some thoughts I already chatted about on the last podcast that concern how Infinite, like the original Bioshock, approaches its concept of game worlds, player choice, and scripting. Of course, these questions also, perhaps, reflect how the series presents its sense of the real world itself, free will, and determinism.

There's always a lighthouse. There's always a man. There's always a city.

The Moving Pixels Podcast Explores the Infinite... Bioshock Infinite

This week Nick and I were joined by a former student of mine, Charlie Hoffman, for a really, really extended discussion of Bioshock Infinite. (One might call the conversation... infinite. Ha! Did you see what I did there?!?).

It was a really good discussion I think, though, and well worth the investment of so much time.

Among other topics, like Disney princesses and exceptionally violent men, we discuss choice, determinism, and guilt. Themes that I think that I know all too well.

Am was.

The Moving Pixels Podcast Explores the Infinite... Bioshock Infinite

Playing to Suffer, Suffering to Play

Suffering to write, writing to suffer.

Thinking and pacing, as always. Pacing and thinking.

This piece is probably too personal. Probably too scatter shot.

Like most of my head.

Ah, well, somebody will read it. Somebody already has.

Playing to Suffer, Suffering to Play