{"id":2304,"date":"2017-04-28T16:32:45","date_gmt":"2017-04-28T16:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=2304"},"modified":"2017-04-28T16:32:45","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T16:32:45","slug":"cant-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2017\/04\/cant-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Cant care"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been interesting. First, Ian Bogost article on how video games are better without stories<\/a>. Which I agree with, without denying the attraction for people to play games FOR the story. It\u2019s a matter of taste but also as Ian says, it\u2019s not where games are the strongest, I don\u2019t think we can argue against that. Video games were about gameplay before anything else. The article talks about narrative in games with a new story-heavy game that just came out, What Remains of Edith Finch.<\/p>\n

Watching a playthrough my immediate reactions are:<\/p>\n

– Make it a movie.<\/p>\n

– Cool assets. That\u2019s a lot of work to cram in some interactivity that is not that central to the game: it\u2019s about the story, not mechanics or fancy way to advance the plot through game scripts. Thus back to my first point.<\/p>\n

It made me think about why I have such a hard time connecting with stories in games \u2013and everywhere else- and it\u2019s because writers always think they\u2019re slick to talk about family because that\u2019s universal right?<\/p>\n

Wrong. Family is a vague concept to my adopted ass. The all genealogy thing and what happened to uncle Bob, I just can\u2019t give a fuck. And it\u2019s not because it\u2019s not compelling, but it\u2019s really not to me. It\u2019s bland. It\u2019s washed out. It\u2019s the past that isn\u2019t really what\u2019s going on today.<\/p>\n

It made me think. What kind of stories do I like? The ones that are vague. The ones that leave room for interpretation. The ones where relationships are absolutely not about that ultra classic view of family. I\u2019m starting to think that if I loved Akira, it wasn\u2019t so much because of the amazing sci-fi and paranormal stuff going on but because it\u2019s just a bunch of kids with no family. They are their own family. I connect with that. Same with Mr. White and Jesse in Breaking Bad. It\u2019s like emergent families. That\u2019s a lot more interesting to me because that\u2019s how my life has been: many families, none with which I share anything biological. <\/p>\n

In short I connect with stories where family is a concept but not that hard, body-wired thing. And it\u2019s not just because I\u2019ve been adopted that I don\u2019t connect with that, I think I\u2019ve seen enough toxic biological families to know that traditional family is not something that you should put on a pedestal or imagine as being universal.<\/p>\n

I see narrative design \u2013right, writing- as more interesting when you add mystery in the relationship itself, not when you add mystery around a classic family tale.<\/p>\n

Anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been interesting. First, Ian Bogost article on how video games are better without stories. Which I agree with, without denying the attraction for people to play games FOR the story. It\u2019s a matter of taste but also as Ian says, it\u2019s not where games are the strongest, I don\u2019t think we can argue against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2305,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions\/2305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}