Before in this field there was a quotation from a song...Now it shall be this : Sometimes when you look back at your past, there is nothing left to do but smile...and wish you could go back in time and break your own nose...

петък, 26 ноември 2010 г.

Something, that might just be worth while

Well..Here is something I wrote a few days ago... First time I was writing something "fictional" in english. I might never finish it so I could as well post it here, if anyone reads it all comments are welcome...


Burning. The smoke was slowly scenting the room with the aroma of ashes and regrets.
-NO! – he screamed.
-No regrets… – he whispered.
“That was the whole point – this was about anything but regrets.”
The thoughts belonged to a man. The reddish glow of the fire that lid the room did not allow for his age to be recognized. The almost noble steadiness of his movements, however revealed someone who was way beyond the middle of his life, but was yet not familiar with the sorrows of old age.
The room was not modest, but calling it extravagant would be an insult to this man.
A massive fire place was the center piece of it .The black marble from it was made stood untouched.
The only sign of any ornamentation came from the letters carved on the part arching the opening.
“Cinerem cineri” – Ash to Ash.
The fireplace with its morbid epitaph was actually the only memory of the crematorium that the house used to be in a century long gone. Only a few old coals were covering the metal grid at the bottom. It was cold.
The fire was coming from a small ashtray on the desk.
It was throwing enough light to reveals the bookshelves, covering the walls on both sides of the fire place from top to bottom. The only 3 other pieces of furniture in the room were a wooden desk, a comftable seat and wooden cupboard with glass windows. Besides the desk lamp the chair was the only other “modern” object in the room. It and the desk were done in the same modest, yet solid colonial style as the bookshelves.
The cupboard was empty – It wasn’t a few hours ago. Its contents – a whole universe of memories, faces and stories were now burning in the ashtray. Only a few items remained on the desk – those that he could neither burn from the world or from his mind. He would take those with him.
The man looked around….He often mused why he chose this exact room for his cabinet. Was it his almost childish fascination with those aspects of life and death that people prefer to leave to priests and grave-diggers?
Or was the very idea of being so openly exposed to mortality another of his acts of defiance against God.
The man smiled. None of it mattered anymore. Believing or not he and those around him never managed to escape the world that the idea of god had lead into.
He thought he could – all those years he was so sure he had managed to avoid believing. And for a while he even managed to do it. Until today…Today he realized that everything he had done was polluted by fate. The very act of his defiance, of the things he put himself and others through in order to show their freedom from that omni-potent shadow-t just revealed how deep within that shadow they all were…
The others were in their rooms most likely –everyone and each one losing the battle with their own private hell of rationality…Or maybe in the common room – pretending that nothing had happened and it was all part of The Plan…
He wondered how Claudia was doing…The others would do fine, but she was different.
He no longer belonged here. He knew he was wrong. The Plan no longer served a purpose – It was just an excuse…And God – God existed – he just didn’t care…And him and the others – they just pretended they didn’t.

The man looked outside – the sunset was slowly turning into inky twilight…The branches of the autumn trees were raining their death leaves, making it seem like the sky was raining golden arrows on the black soil…

In the distance a church bell rang…Slowly the a memories came along…
Some 30 years ago – it had all started with a church bell….

It was a golden summer. The fields seemed to stretch eternally to the point where the horizon seemingly bent and joined them…A 10 year old boy with brownish hair was sitting on the grass and looking. The sky seemed so far – so blue, yet so distant. Same could be said about the boys eyes.
He was day dreaming of adventure – the average boyish dreams where a Jedi fights a pirate to save the kingdom…or something like that…
Behind him a church bell was heard. The boy sighted – he knew what that meant. Day dreaming had to stop and be followed by an hour long sermon. And what was worse he had to listen, so that he could answer The Questions.
His parents were not religious, but they understood religion as an important base for the young mind to have. “So that you know we got here” as his father said it. That was way after every sermon the kid’s father would ask him questions about what the minister was talking about, what it ment and even if it made sense or not and why ?
If the boy answered he got some nice small present…If not the father would just sign and say “Son – I am disappointed. How would you learn to think, if you don’t understand what it is to believe ?”
Saying this to a 10 year old made no sense, yet his father always did it.
Even though the kid was pretty smart for its age, the idea of what his father meant went only as far as “I am disappointed”. No one likes to disappoint their parents – at least not at first.
His mother’s motivation was a lot simpler. She just wanted to make sure her son and daughter knew the traditions and how to honor them as part of the community .Understanding why those traditions were for her was work of the church…
-Damien, Laura! Time to get inside. The sermon is starting.
Their mother was calling…Always the same words…Week after week. Even 30 years later he could still record that neutral, mannered yet caring voice his mother had when saying the words…

The boy got up , brushed off the dusty powder from jeans and ran towards the voice.

The bell was ringing in a deep metallic voice…

"What is a man ? A miserable little pile of secrets!"



The quotation in the title of this entry is probably one of the most famous video game antagonist lines. And it is not there by chance, I assure you.
In this entry I planned to finally talk about a gaming related topic – the presentation of Evil in Games. More specifically “the evolution of presentation of negative and a-moral actions and antagonists in games. “
Video games have come a long way from Bowser (Super Mario) to Liquid Snake (Metal Gear Solid 4) and mentioning how this progress happened and why is sure worth making a note about.
Especially since titles like Grand Thief Auto, Red Dead Redemption and The Witcher managed to blur the line between moral “moral” and “amoral” Non- Player-Character so much that (exactly like in most modern works of media) there is no longer such categories as “good” and “bad” character.
Because of such titles game ethics is no longer about good or evil , but about characters with idealistic “moral” view on ethics against such with “practical” morality – ethics in direct relation to their current goals.
The differences are normally presented in how far and how complex the relation between amoral actions and positive motivation is. The case refers to the presentation of characters and their motivation, not to the player freedom of moral choice.

The change of the presentation and the motivation of the different characters in a story, is naturally related to the evolution and sophistication of game plots.
As gameplay grew more sophisticated, so did the need to motivate the player to “experience” and chose to invest their time and effort in the gaming segment itself. When lacking the competitive drive there is only one option left:
Other than creating a successful game mechanics that is creating a plot and story, that are both extensive enough to cover and justify all the gameplay elements, but also deep and intriguing enough to “charm” the player to finish the game.
Thisrequired characters capable of supporting a complex plot structure.
Of course simple, “one dimensional motivation” characters (and villains especially) had one crucial limitation. Bowser stealing the princes again and again could work for a simple(even if perfect) platformer(Super Mario series) , but could Dracula just being evil and waiting for you in the last room of his castle, provide enough motivation for the player to explore over 200 different rooms of the said castle, just to reach and defeat him(Castlevania Series)…
“Ad hoc evil characters” did not allow for the plot structure to be broken out of the standard narrative shape – a game that has a story based on one dimensional antagonist only had a limited “life span” that lasts as long as the villain and his direct goal are compromised. It could not intrigue the player ,which meant it only had a limited “novelty” value before it’s plot stopped being a motivation, no matter how well presented it was.
Thus for such a game to be successful a very strong game play core was needed, which is in fact a lot more expansive to create and realize.
On the other side, just like an intriguing story can maintain interest in a rather blandly written book, so an engaging story can perfectly motivate a player to experience an otherwise not so well distinguished game core. A perfect example for that would be Legacy of Kain :Blood Omen 2 , which was vastly criticized for how bland it’s gameplay was.
However due to its heavy emphasis on story AND EXACTLY because of the way the negative (evil) characters such as Kain, The Sarafan Lord and even the minor bosses are portrayed and developed with their motivations inside the plot was positively received both by critics and the audience of the series. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/bloodomen2/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary%3Bread-review

So back on track , the need for more complicated plots was born from the inability of every title to posses the innovative creativity capable of supporting itself(Blood Omen 2 is for example the basic action adventure with no innovative mechanics or twists whats ever) ,and the attempt to still win the player over in the context of what has already been created.
In laymen’s terms a “complicated plot” means only one thing – “Plot twists” For those to happen a very simple thing was needed to justify their presence – motivation on the side of the perpetrator of the twist.
Naturally for this twist to sound reasonable, a set of qualities for the character needed to be set and shown. His emotions to be explained through his “story”, that would hint of such a possibility actually making sense to the player.
So simply put – for the antagonist to surprise the player, and for character interaction to change while the plot developed the game needed to explain “Why?”…And thus the motivated, “active” villain was born.
First as simple explanations before the final boss battles (Dracula in Castlevania), than with several appearances and confrontations during the game itself(Gannon – The Zelda Series) and finally as fully developed NPC characters along the main cast.(Sephirot in Final Fantasy 7) The villain no longer was a simple beacon that marked the end of the game – he/she was an active agent to make the game happen for the player –of explaining and motivating the actions the player had to take, in an environment where the game was no longer a simple “kill’em all” routine.

To be continued with the 90’s ,the role of horror games ,the role of violence and player actions judgment and GlaDOS…


Music of this entry:

Covenant - We Stand Alone

Ashbury Heights - Ashes in her Breath

Yade - Hunter

Qntl - Ludus

неделя, 17 октомври 2010 г.

On (not) writing....


I found it impossibly hard to chose a title for this entry, simply becouse I am still not quite sure what I want to write in it...
Actualy the idea behind it is just that - writing...

As I was sitting in front of my monitor right now I experienced another one of those moments that in the past used to provoke a rather uncontrollable urge to open a .doc file..
In that file I would normally start creating cruel language constructs, that if I was some one pretentious enough to wear a scarf and always make sure my coffee was "100% organic" would have most likely called "my art". Most of the time those things turned out horrible, sometimes - decent , and once , you might be surprised to hear - even good (But SRSLY that only happened once).
I used to indulge myself into creating set pieces of stories or surreal depictions of purely psychological phenomenon. Strangely enough those were normally related to conditions or states of mind that I had never experienced myself, but which apparently I felt secure enough and thought I knew well enough to write about...
What is more interesting is actually the endless philosophical question "Why" - and not the "Why the hell was I writing those abominable THINGS ?" that so many innocent victims of my attempts of creative prose would like to ask.
Instead the question is "Why the hell am I not writing them anymore?" which I find myself asking every time one of this "provocations of my mind" happens and I manage to successfully counter this time around...
There is no doubt that I was most certainly enjoying the process of putting fictional characters, stories and places in words and giving them a solid static depiction in a physical(ok - semantic) body...
I also have a solid proof that I was emotionally invested it the process of creation itself, as apparently (as I now find) I would write while being only half aware of what exactly it was about. It seems more like a subconscious therapy to purify my thought, than an attempt to create a solid narrative or an action-consequence chain, or even to simply make sense at all. Honesty demands that I admit that such a "therapy" would still be welcomed once in a while.
It seems too that being the egocentric(or should I even say , egomaniacal) person that I am I also enjoyed being self-important with what I wrote and present it to others, no matter at what stage of creation, or more importantly - quality it was...
As I look in the old files now it also seems there was a certain level of progress between the beginning and the end of this period (which lasted roughly 4 years) and knowing that I still find achievement and the visible aspect of progress the best motivation, it really seems highly unlikely I would just suddenly lose interest in it.

The easiest explanation would be of course the fact that as I went to Finland for my exchange, I found myself in a context that demanded that I change my main language of communication, and this influenced my thought processes and perception on the socio-cultural factors, that originally lead to me writing.
This explanation would be quite satisfactionary....NOT! - As satisfactionary as this would be from the point of view of philosophy of communication, semiotics of language and socio-linguistics, it is simply too easy of an answer...Not to mention that I was perfectly capable and was apparently writing in English when it would express the idea better.
Another possible explanation would relate to the fact that even before going to Finland I had entered a state of personal metamorphosis. One that centered more around extrovert social interaction then passive introvert rational (and ergo - artistically emotional) reflection on myself. As this state of mine progressed and I apparently attained the same "piece of mind" through it that writing was providing, the latter became unnecessary as a tool....
This answer is a lot more sound in my own mind than the first, but it still lacks a point of reference to the simple fact, that apparently at one point some little part of the machinery in my head was ticking in the rhythm "it is fun!".
So I find myself having to look for a third answer that would combine both the social and psycho-semiothical reasoning of the first two and provide a satisfactionary answer to the "So why did I stop if it was fun?"
For this I would have to also considered the fact that this "event" occurred at the same time as when my gaming habit became more centered around the concept behind games , than playing itself.
A sudden twist from a pro-active to a pro-analytical position in opposite of what happened to my social experience.

It would be fair to assume that these "creative outbursts" were providing me with the same form of emotional and empathic sustenance that games did - a form of creative escapism, that allowed me to engage in situations and settings that I found more satisfactionary and "fun" to deal with then what my Real Life interaction allowed me to.

In writing I would engage mostly in narratives of the same "dark, tragic, yet dramatically idealized and heroically stimulating" that I mostly associate with my preferred game genres (RPG and Survival Horror).
More importantly - I was apparently capable of(in difference of virtuality, or of course - reality) AESTHETICLY adapting it to my own preferences and tastes and filling it with visual styles , city and landscapes and characters that LOOKED the way my own imagination would find pleasing for a reality, fitting for my perception to look.
Weird enough, it turned out that Finland (as an environment and as people I came to be in contact with) in a very specific way filled those gaps in my perception of reality - purely audio-visually that before those disjointed stories and fragments served to fill. In other words - writing became less of a necessity as soon as my persona started discovering in reality , that which before I had already established as appealing to me in writing. And of course the more engaged I found myself in my social and material experience, the less appealing did the written one become.
In a way the profanity of my own creative reasoning put an end to the creative processes it once inspired....

Which can only lead me to think - Did I set my own borderline too low, or are there just too many people more narcissistic than me trying to escape into their own little worlds and letting everyone know about it ?

Music at the time of this entry:
Grendel - B.A.A.L (Deliver me)
Akira Yamaoka - Dance with The Night Wind
Depeche Mode - Fly on The Windscreen
As|P - Ich Will Brennen
Alice in Videoland - Going Down

сряда, 25 август 2010 г.

One year later (Reboot)


It's been a year since I last wrote in this little side project of mine...Let’s just get some things out of the way quick - for all the 5 people that used to at one point read this - From now on this blog will be mostly in English.
Reason? I plan to use it in combination with my Facebook profile - who knows, maybe this time - if I am persistent enough and have the will to write more than 4 entries - I will actually keep writing it...

To anyone new who might look at this - Welcome - Don't worry you haven't missed anything - just some pretentious rant "games are art" style from this depressed cyclophrenic who I reassure you is long dead...He died a year ago - I swear - I was there...
And this would exactly be a nice entry topic for today's entry...You'd be surprised how many things can happen in a year..
Hell - if I knew about them a year ago , I probably would tell the person telling me to shut his lying mouth up...For example...Seriously:
Who would have thought that Blizzard would actually mess up with the story of Starcraft 2?
Or that Justin Bieber would happen?
Or that I would dye part of my hair blond, decide philosophy was boring, and learn to dance? Ok...Maybe that last thing was not of the importance of the first two, but it could still bring about the end of mankind...

So, what's been happening around the author of this small piece of virtual chaos ? Well...went to Finland - came back. Result? Reads and plays a bit less - drinks and goes out a bit more...That is about it...

Philosophy slowly gave way to its more practical offspring - Semiotics...And just as my interest was slowly transformed from theoretical mechanics of knowledge to the practical dimensions of the symbols and meanings in active social communication (surprise, surprise)- So did my own behavior...Or maybe it was just the fact that I discovered a place where it was actually FUN for me to go out...Oh damn...I said FUN...Did things really change that much?

WAIT...OMG!!!WORMS RELOADED IS OUT...OK this post is over.(Sorry for that..)
And I was just about to start ranting about me discovering gothic subculture-Now is that providence or what?

I might just write something (this time It will be game related, I promise!) soon, so while you are here, how about some music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbOOqV9atHw
Ayria - Red Shift
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eDkFlVSwnk
Covenant - Call The Ships to Port
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo83GkaNFiA
God Module - Still so Strange
PS: Did I also mention my music tastes changed quite a lot ?