The Life of Caseman

A few days ago my father offered to give me some money to help pay for my dental work. I initially declined, he's retired and has no way to replenish these funds. But after talking to him a bit, I indicated to him that it would be a welcome help.
This is what he said:
"Honestly I'm having 2nd thoughts about it. Your mention of going to so many movies each month, 14 Jack White concerts and who knows how many others including trips to Orlando, Atlanta and where else for concerts and video game activities all seem way out of balance. I'd like to see a reasonable breakdown of your spending vs income and essential expenses before withdrawing from my Joy rent money account. Not saying no son, just would like to see signs of more sensible budgeting on your part. Please think seriously about where you can cut back on what you spend. I think you are at an age where you must reevaluate how you manage your life."

All of these things he's talking about he knew BEFORE he ever made the initial offer. Elise and I have seen Jack White perform about a dozen times over a span of almost two decades. We often would go see both shows when he played the same venue on consecutive nights. He doesn't ever play with a setlist, picking songs on stage in the moment. It makes him an incredible live act, and seeing him together has been an excellent shared experience for my wife and I.
None of that shit matters though, because I shouldn't have to justify my life to him when he is the one that offered to give me money. So I wrote him this:
I worked hard to get myself to the job I have, and I'm not going to feel bad for giving myself a break or spending time with my wife. It costs me $30 a month to see a movie a week. I spend an extraordinary amount of time and energy finding the best deals for my wife and I to be able to take one trip a year to give ourselves a break. In a string of bad luck, we've had several thousand dollars of unexpected expenses over the course of a couple of months. It wiped out the savings we do have. Elise works full time as a nurse and part time teaching yoga. I work upwards of 60 hours a week to do what I do. I really don't appreciate your outside perspective on my life.

I could ask you why someone with no income is living in a two bedroom house by himself and going to concerts all the time? Why you would ever give away money when you have no ability to replenish it. You offered to help. If you want to hold that offer behind the exact judgemental behavior that drove my mother away and gave me psychological complexes I am spending more money on therapy to undo, then you can absolutely forget it. I will do as I have always done and deal with the challenges of adult life completely on my own.

Finally getting myself into therapy the last couple years has given me the tools to recognize the damage that happened to me as a kid, and begin to unpack how they drive my behavior as an adult, especially in relationships. I never got unconditional love and support from you. I'm still not getting it. Sure you like to pipe up that you're proud of my wins, but where have you been any time I've stumbled? Up on your high horse, with nothing but critique and judgement to offer to me. Those words, that behavior, were engraved into the very walls of my mind. It has caused me to be so unnecessarily hard on myself for every possible failure or shortcoming. It's destroyed my self esteem, completely robbed me of any belief in myself. It isolated me from everyone in my life because I obsessed over every interaction, trying to find out how everyone I knew secretly hated me as much as I hated myself.

I had the distinct displeasure of reading back through my journal from the time after I graduated high school recently. The time that I begged you to provide for me the support I would need to pursue a job in massage therapy. Something that I had real passion for, and was willing to do the work to learn. You wrote me one of your famously long letters detailing all the ways that I was stupid for even wanting it, how I wasn't good enough to succeed in it, how you could never support it. Then, as now, you made me feel like shit in the bottom of your shoes that needed to be scraped off. My only source of comfort was my mother, who told me then that she'd been through that experience many times with you, and knew exactly how that felt.

So no, I will not be explaining my finances to you or justifying anything about my lifestyle as a 40 year old married man with a steady job and a teenager to support. I'm doing better at 40 than you ever did. I do not need your help, I've made it this far without. I apologize for assuming that at 83 your offer of help might actually just be what it appeared to be on the surface, and not just another opportunity for you to pour more salt into wounds I've barely begun to recognize let alone heal.

A lot of that is stuff I have wanted to say to him for decades. He's always been an arrogant prick but I looked past it because he's my father. But he really did a fucking number on me. First by fucking around on my Mom and blowing up his marriage, his family, for some ass. Then again by acting exactly this same way for the entirety of my adolesence and young adulthood. I'm not going to be told that I don't have my priorities straight by a four-time-divorcee. When he was my age, he was on his second marriage after his first wife left his cheating lying ass in the dust and took his daughter with her. He dropped out of college multiple times, graduating after I was born and he was in his mid 40s. He didn't have a job for more than a couple years at a time until I was in high school and he was in his sixties. Yet he has the audacity to tell me that I shouldn't go to the fucking movies? That I shouldn't travel to the far off lands of fucking Atlanta when I have the means to do so? Get Absolutely Fucked, old man. Go fucking die alone you miserable old shit. You have no goddamn idea how much fucking damage you did to me. I deserved so much better than I got from you. My Mom deserved better. You don't get to dangle money in front of me just so you can snatch it away then tell me I'm a piece of shit. Fuck off.

Oh also, this is his reply:
" I knew my comments would not set well with you. Let's talk about it next year. FYI the shows I go to are all Free and at places where I can get something to eat."
No acknowledgement at all of anything I wrote, just a defensive remark about his new favorite hobby of going to bars to see local musicians that he thinks are his friends. I said:
"If you don't feel the need to engage with anything I said or how you've made me feel, I don't know that there's anything to talk about, ever."
And his snappy comeback:
"Your call. Correction: the shows I go to are 98% free. I did pay admission to see Pieniak & Buffalo Strange at St Pete Social and maybe one or two others. Not important."

Not important, but important enough to remark upon TWICE while ignoring paragraphs of text about the deeply rooted psychological damage you're responsible for. The wound at the very core of my being that has shaped every single relationship I've had my entire life, romantic and otherwise.

I'm so fucked from this. I feel like I ripped open a wound, I'm an emotional raw nerve. Feel like I could cry at any moment.

And he's very concerned about how much he pays to go watch a bunch of shit dad rock idiots.

Not written in here much, I probably should try to keep doing so. Lots of thoughts swirling through my brain usually, but they won't stick around unless I actually write them down. Looking into the past a lot lately. I saw a meme recently that said something like nostalgia is something you indulge in when you're trying to avoid confronting the reality you're not getting any younger.

Maybe this is the mid-life crisis. To be stuck between an inescapable past and an inevitable future. Sitting on the precipice of a life half-lived. To look back is to marvel at everything that was, and wonder and what might have been. To look forward is to wonder at what is possible, and avoid staring into what is inevitable.

Nostalgia is bittersweet. I am so different, I am so much the same. Reading back the storybook of my life, wishing I could scream at myself to stop being so stupid, so self-centered, so introspective. So worried about everything going on in my head that I'm missing everything going on around me. Today I'm so worried about everything going on around me that I'm not paying attention to what's going on in my head.... until it's screaming at me, screaming through me. 40 years old, am I wiser now? What is it that the midlife crisis wants to reclaim? Is it not the nature of desire to be destroyed by satisfaction? Isn't wanting always better than having?

Writing in this journal doesn't have to make sense, these sentences don't have to form a coherent thesis. This is an expression of the subconcious mind through concious words. Are you still in there? Are you ok? How can I help? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I reached out every day. I sat alone in the quiet, tried to just breathe. Just. Breathe. I thought I saw you in there, saw me in there. Thought I felt a core of self-ness, but I also felt an ocean of sadness, a sadness that needs to be expressed, but is so overwhelming that any attempts at expression threate to completely overwhelm.

Why do I feel like this livejournal, this document of the history of my many relationships, is a riddle to be solved? Ashley, Jayme, Echo, Amanda, Lauren, Stephanie, Samantha, Elise. Love and loss, the fall and the collapse, the deep deep darkness of heart break. Of those eight, only two realy threatened to break me.
From this document, from another world:This is all a game, Sammy.

Up to this entry.  My brain did some real developing between 18 and 20, reading my entries is much less painful. That being said, the rut I describe in his entry feels more familiar. It reallly does seem like losing my faith carved a hole out of me that nothing else has been able to fill. The comments under it are just amazing, though. I really was just insanely lucky to have had the group of friends I did. I wish life hadn't gotten in the way and pushed us all apart, and I wish people didn't hold grudges so I could try to get everyone together in one place again. I had a weird thought a day or two ago: what if the next time the Bob's House Crew meet it's at someone's funeral? Wouldn't that be awful? I guess it was Elise's grandfather's funeral that stirred that thought. There were a lot of people in that room that loved him, which is awesome, but getting people together needs to happen outside of weddings and funerals more often.

Saw Devo and Chrissy yesterday. And their son Aiden, same age as Eisis. I missed their other kid Jay, who is apparently 20. Time fuckin flies.

Devo likes to say I'm the reason he knows Chrissy, maybe there's some truth to that but given how perfect those two are for eachother, I feel like cosimic forces would have conspired to bring them together no matter what. I do really appreciate the gesture, though. Being remembered for having a positive impact on someone's life is probably the best anyone can hope for. On a long enough timeline, most people won't remember exactly what you did or exactly what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel.

Time for a tangent with that I guess. I'm still reading back through this journal, about halfway through 2004 now. One of the reasons for doing this was to try and figure out what the role was my father played in constructing the various complexes and beliefs that make up my maladaptive psychological responses. There was a point in 2004 where I decided that I needed to go to school for massage therapy, and made a lot of effort in that direction. I practically begged my dad to move back in with me so I could pursue that dream, and he just took a giant shit all over the idea. Somewhere in this LJ there's an entry titled "My Father, Ladies and Gentlemen" that's a copy-paste of a hugely long email he wrote me basically just picking apart everything I said and did, telling me that anything short of a full college degree was a waste of time, etc etc. Reading that again over the weekend filled me with a lot of anger. So I think I found some of the stuff I need to unpack with THAT.

Other things that stuck out to me, one of which I was talking to Devo and Chrissy about yesterday. Christina was the only person who seemingly kept a level head while the rest of us were being absolute fucking children about everything for months and months. I feel like it's just part of the chemical formulation of being a teenager to be dramatic but good lord. The curious thing to me is how much of all that I had forgotten. I don't remember what people did, I don't remember what people said, but I remember how I felt in the end. I remembered only the good parts of being with Lauren, and rememebred that we were the only time I ever had a relationship end on good terms. From that perspective, it was really surprising reading through how on-again-off-again we were for months, how much I beat myself up for every little thing, how much I questioned and analyzed every single thing. More stuff for the "talk to my therapist about" list.

Anyway, back from the tangent, seeing Devo and Chrissy was nice. Need to find a way to see them more regularly. Need to find a way to reconnect with a lot of people, honestly. Americans spend so much more time alone now than then they did when I was young. It's the biggest difference in how my life was in high school vs adulthood: other people. Now kids in school barely see eachother outside of school. I feel pretty comfortable saying that, based on my own anecdotal evidence of everyone I know with kids in school and from some other article I read but can't find to link. It's been top of mind for a while, begun by a number of folks fleeing Florida for more progressive waters. I've got some kind of abandonment wound that was triggered by it, but at the same time I totally get it. I just look around and realize there's almost no one I see in real life anymore.

Another stream of conciousness gear shift, hold on. I see myself doing this a lot I guess it should be expected. I think my interest in recent years in going to CEO is in part due to a strong desire to feel like a part of a group again. Even though I get definite imposter syndrome because I don't really enjoy playing those games, I do so love watching the best in the world compete. The feeling of being part of a giant crowd reacting to every push and pull of a great match is one of the best feelings in the world. I guess it's not that strange, people have been watching others play sports at a high level for as long as there's been people. Video games are a bit more approachable at the low end, but no less demanding at the high end. So not that different, really. All that to say that going to CEO is simultaneously fun and lonely. I dunno how many people go to it alone, but based on observations after attending since 2019, I think it's a pretty low percentage. Folks are there with their friends, cheering eachother on, competing and learning. I'm just an outsider there by myself observing everything.

There's something there I've struggled to understand about myself, about being a jack of all trades master of none. I know intellectually that there's always a gap between taste and ability whenever you're new to any sort of skill. There are things I wish I knew how to do: play any number of videogames at anything close to a competitive level. Be it StarCraft or Street Fighter or DDR or IIDX. My skill development always seems to max out pretty early without dedicating a lot of time, and even then I progress very slowly beyond the inital curve. World of Warcraft, it's a struggle to finish Heroic raids or do M+ beyond the midrange. In DDR I never really progressed beyond an 8 in DDRMAX, whatever that number is in the new difficulty rating. I don't know if that's something to do with how my brain works or just not spending enough time on it, I dunno.

I believe one of the things I need to get out of therapy is learning to let things go. Forgiving myself and moving on without having to put everything under a microscope so I can analyze it to death. Rumination rarely leads to anything but guilt, which isn't a good motivator.

Been a long time, Livejournal. I am so grateful that this exists. I've spent the last couple of weeks reading back through my old entries. Almost through 2003, in the period after Loe and I finally actually broke up for real. In the time before I lost touch with almost all of my old circle of friends, the Bob's House Crew. I was so fucking lucky to have such an amazing group of friends all through high school. I don't have completely rose-tinted glasses about that time in my life, it was obvious re-reading this thing that I was a troubled, confused, emotional mess. Which is to say, a teenager.

If we're gonna go down memory lane, we're gonna do it right. Time to fire up winamp.

I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of feelings, more than twenty years removed from the time this journal was created. Two decades on from the time it saw the most use. I wrote a fucking lot in 2003. I guess it makes sense given how 2002 ended. Sitting down and writing out my thoughts did a lot to help me process things. Trauma, confusion, pain, joy, love. In a lot of ways, I was brilliant. In a lot of ways, I was a complete idiot. I think both of those things are still true.

Teenager me, 2003 me, would probably dread living in 2025. What a bad omen of a year. In some ways, he's right. It's overwhelming the darkness that exists in the world now, things we couldn't even begin to fathom in the heady days of the early aughts. 2003 is before the iPhone. In 2003, Netflix was a place you rented DVDs from and it was in the process of putting Blockbuster out of business. I rode a 50cc scooter for transportation and bagged groceries for a living. I hated myself sometimes, I loved myself. I think both of those things are still true.

But God if I could show the Bob of 2003 some of the incredible shit that awaits him in 2025.

Hey Bob, you remember English Girl? The smokin hot blonde that you used to give your cheesesticks to in class? The one you turned down a date from? Thought she was way out of your league? Yall are married. You have been for 5 years. She is still out of your league, but for some unknowable reason actually loves you.  You're still you though so of course you're still trying to execute the old playbook, still trying to fullfill your own fears, still don't really believe in love, don't believe that relationships are work. Still running from conflict, inner and outer. Still trying to fix it but finally now starting down the road of getting professional help to do so.

They're up to the PlayStation 5 now. Videogames, TV, movies, music are all still so utterly fascinating and wonderful. AMC has this thing where you can pay a flat fee to watch four movies a week in the theatre. And the chairs in theatres are big comfy recliners now. You've gone to at least a movie a week for almost two years, and it's still so great. Chasing the dragon of that feeling after watching the midnight showing of Matrix Reloaded still fuels you decades later. Sometimes you still get a hold of it.

You should have gone to SPC right after high school. College is so much better than high school academically. I'm not gonna tell you that every class will be as good as Dr. Eliason's class was, but they certainly trend a lot closer to that experience than the rest of the boring bullshit LHS had for you. LHS is still there, btw. Or I guess it would be more accuate to say that the auditorium is still there, the rest was torn down and rebuilt into a much more fancy-looking and modern campus. Your step-daughter goes there, starts her senior year in a few weeks. Yeah. That's a whole thing. Anyway: college. Straight A's at SPC, graduated with a 4.0. You know you have ADHD, you should REALLY get back on your meds. When you focus your mind you are capable of incredible shit. Graduated USF Summa Cum Laude, 3.8 GPA. Intellectually the most stimulating and incredible years of your life are in college. It's hard work sometimes but extremely fulfilling.

You have gigabit cable internet now. You actually have two desktop computers, one that runs a media server with 15 TERABYTES of hard drive space. The other one with three 27-inch flatscreen monitors that refresh at 120hz. Your cellphone has faster internet, cpu, gpu, ram, hard drive than the best computer that exists in 2003, in the palm of your hand, with all day battery. Part of the team that created Napster went legit and made something called Spotify and completely changed the music industry. You can listen to pretty much any album by any artist at any time for a monthly fee, and basically everyone pays it. You spend a lot of time watching other people play videogames, or listening to people talk about videogames. More than you spend actually PLAYING videogames. I know you have no idea what this means in 2003, but World of Warcraft is somehow still a game in 2025. That will make more sense next year.

You do eventually get a driver's license and a car. Out of college you've got a job making $35k/year, up to $50k within two years. The people you will work with at that job, the work you will do there, will be some of the most fun and most frustrating of your life. You will learn to hate venture capital. When that's over you go work where your uncle used to work: Pinellas County Government. It's a whole other flavor of frustrating, but it's work that actually matters. You've always looked up to the helpers, tried to be one sometimes. Government work is how you're a helper. You serve the citizens of the county, and when it's good it pours white-love directly on your heart.

I wish I could grab 2003 Bob, wrap him in he bear hugs he's so famous for with all of his friends. I know it's overwhelming, I know it's confusing, I know it's hard. They say you never know the good old days when you're in them, but you know well as I do, you recognized those days in high school. You knew you were living through summer days that would never come again. No matter how many times you stop and look around at the 5, 10, 15 people surrounding you just to marvel in how amazing it is to have so many friends, it's never enough. There was magic in those  years that will never, ever be recaptured.

None of which is to say that what's coming next for you is all bad. Far from it! There are experiences in 2004 and beyond that will literally blow your mind. Times you wouldn't trade for the world. Moving from high school into adulthood sucks. You have to give yourself time to mourn the life you left behind. You have got to, got to, GOT TO learn to cut yourself some fucking SLACK, man. Stop trying to analyze and understand every stupid fleeting thought or feeling that flutters through your mind. Not everything has to MEAN something. Sometimes shit just is, and it's okay. You are going to fuck up, oh GOD are you going to fuck up. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to hurt people. It cannot be avoided, and it doesn't mean it's okay to do it, but it is okay to forgive yourself. What does Neale say? Sometimes the best way to understand Who You Are is by experienceing Who You Are Not.

There is one regret you will have. One thing you will wish you could change. You need to tell someone what happened with Richard O Toole. Someone with authority, someone who will do something about it. The things he tried with you he actually did to other kids, and so so much worse. It's not your fault, he's a vicous predator that hurts a lot of people. The worst part is that First Unity knows and does nothing about it. That is the hardest thing still coming at you from the future in 2003. Learning what he did, and who enabled him. Nothing will ever be as heartbreaking, because nothing ever meant as much to you as Y.O.U. did.  I wish I could tell you that it didn't ruin church for you, but it does. I wish I could tell you that your faith will be as strong as it is now, but it won't be. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so fucking sorry.

Death is so much scarier now. Both of your parents are still alive in 2025, thank God. But they're both very old now, and struggling, and you have no time, no money to help them. Yeah you make more money now than you ever thought  you would, but holy shit everything is so much more expensive. You know how you're paying $600/mo for a 2-bedroom house back in 2003? Three bed, also off East Bay, Two Thousand Seven Hundred Fifty Goddamn Dollars every month. Just for rent. Plus, again, you have a kid. Entering her last year of high school. You have to pay for her health insurance, pay the bills for the house she lives in with you, eventually get her something like a car. It's still hard to make ends meet.

But I digress. Death is so much scarier now.  It's the inevitability of it that I think is the worst. No one really close to you has died yet in 2003. Twenty years later you will be sitting in a room with your father and his wife, watching her die. On Christmas Day. You are going to watch someone draw their final breath and pass away. On Christmas Day. I  have nothing for you about that, it's been a couple of years and I still don't think I've really processed that. Christmas Day 2002 you ran towards death, ran from life and pain to a mysterious end based on a shallow and selfish mindset. Christmas Day 2022, twnety years to the day death will look you in the eye, will be closer than it was even then.

Sorry to end on such a downer but it's nearly 1am and I am beat. 1am is a lot later when you're 40. 

So 2016 is here and I guess that officially means I cannot put off making my 2015 lists any longer. I wanted to get to so many games that I just didn’t have any time for. I still haven't dived into Sword Coast Legends and I feel bad for missing the biggest game made by my dear friends at n Space. If I haven't done so yet it’s just because I want to give that game the time it deserves. After listening to the Giant Bomb GOTY discussions I really want to play a number of games they discussed, like Soma, Cradle, Hacknet, and Elite: Dangerous. Some games I did play but are too small or one-note to make this list, like Regency Solitaire, Cibele, Emily is Away, Grow Home, or Tap Titans. A couple I played and really liked but they just didn’t make the cut like Guitar Hero Live or Battlefront. A number of games are on my “would really like to check out from this year” list like Fallout 4, Just Cause 3, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, and others. But I gotta stop giving shoutouts to games outside the list (Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate!) and get down to the meat of it. Here are my 10 favorite games from this year.

10. The Beginner’s Guide

I think this year is the year that proves that these small interactive storytelling games are here to stay. I have incredibly high hopes for this genre inside VR, but that’s next year’s list. This game and Cibele hold similar places in my heart for different reasons: they’re both intimate pictures of a part of someone’s life. Maybe the distance I have from The Beginner’s Guide edges it onto this list because Cibele made me really uncomfortable to look back on the person I was in that time in my life. But I digress. Davey crafted a very intimate and visceral look into the heart and mind of a game developer. Of a creative person. Of someone generating content for the Internet. Of so many of the things that I have always found so incredibly fascinating in others. I honestly feel like I could write a lot more on this game but I won’t do that here. This is all without talking about how this guy made The Stanley Parable and had a very intense experience following that game’s release. This is without talking about the larger questions of interactions in the digital age. This is a great game. You should play it. Talk to me when you do.

9. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

This game is such a testament to good QA and quest design and worldbuilding by a relatively small studio that it would probably be higher on this list if I had ever found the time to dive deeper into it. I think that a lot of what draws people to open world games, and open world RPGs in particular, is the feeling immersing yourself wholly into another world. I think that The Witcher did this better than any other game this year. The game is huge, but it’s huge in the right way. This isn’t Assassin’s Creed map full of icons pertaining to the same repeating activities over and over again, it’s a world that feels alive and real and full of possibility. I’ve heard a lot that the seams in that start to show, and that it does ultimately get fairly repetitive, but my time with the game left em superbly impressed with CD Projekt Red. Its also worth mentioning that it might be the first big game to launch on both of the new platforms that was actually stable and ran well.

8. Life is Strange

This is another game I have not finished yet but I can’t help putting on this list. Just enough interaction and fresh mechanics to not just feel like another adventure game in a post-Telltale world. Fantastic writing, acting, soundtrack. Great art direction. A lot of people don’t like the first episode but I think it does a fantastic job of setting up the narrative and getting you to give a shit about these characters while raising enough questions to propel you forward. I’ve been spoiled on things I haven't seen yet and it just makes me want to see it more. I think the way the narrative and the time rewind mechanic interweave is fantastic, and is exactly the kind of thing that works best in an interactive media. I look forward to finishing this (hopefully soon) and seeing where this story goes, but for now it sits nicely near the bottom of my list.

7. Everybody’s Gone to The Rapture

I don’t care if it’s a walking simulator. I don’t care if it had a run button in it that I didn’t know about until after I beat it. I don’t care if the ending was a bit wanky. This game is, by far, the best one of these interactive environmental storytelling games I have ever played. I very nearly went back to platinum this game after I beat it, but I didn’t want to ruin the world that I just explored by gamifying aspects of it. I didn’t want to turn this thing into a checklist after it had been such an incredible experience. This was the first game of 2015 that made me cry. This was the first game of 2015 that I sat down and played through in one sitting. It’s gorgeous, the soundtrack is incredible, and the story that it's telling is such a great meeting of small-town interpersonal dynamics and science fiction with some great love stories and just enough humor that it creates something larger than the sum of its parts. I went onto message boards and subreddits after this game came out and engaged in the fucking ARG. I spent hours trying to decrypt hidden messages in the game. It’s so easy to dismiss this as just another walking simulator, but beyond the simple mechanics lies a fascinating world beautifully presented.

Just wait until they port this shit to VR.

6. Destiny: The Taken King

The Improved Guy Hammer for Best Expansion Pack definitely goes to The Taken King. I know my old roommate has been hot on this game from the beginning, and I tried like hell to get into vanilla Destiny, but it just never took root for me. This expansion fixed almost every irritating thing about the game and added a ton of great content. I still think the game is either balanced towards group play or people who have spent way more time playing console shooters than I have, but I think Bungie’s recognition of how deeply they dropped the ball with Destiny at launch and this xpac’s movement towards fixing that deserves a spot on my list.

5. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void

StarCraft will always hold a special place in my heart. I still have banners hanging on my wall from the 2011 MLG Orlando tournament. There is simply nothing like it in gaming today. In a world full (FULL!) of MOBAs and shooters, Starcraft has kept the RTS space alive in spectacular fashion. Sure, the pro scene has kind of fallen to the wayside while pro LoL and Dota have taken the reigns, but there’s still nothing better than watching a close match finally fall to a single small choice or unit control. All that being said, this is all about the campaign and hoo boy what a campaign. It takes a lot of the best stuff from the previous campaigns: overarching progression, powers, and unit selection, branching paths, spectacular voice acting (holy shit John de Lancie. holy shit) and just turns the fucking anime up to eleven. The missions are varied enough that they never really feel repetitive, and they don’t ever seem to force you down a particular build path once they start opening up more units. It’s easy to see where they learned from previous installments in the series and really iterated on the mission types from those games. Of course, the mechanics are rock fuckng solid, as ever. But the story.

The fuckin story, y’all.

I was pretty sure that Metzen had used up the last creative bone in his body around the time he was writing the trainwreck that was Diablo III but now I’m totally certain that they need to put that man out to pasture and find some fresh blood because hoo boy is this shit flat and derivative. If you’ve played a Blizzard game in the last decade, you’ve probably already seen this story so you’re not really missing much. They don’t even have the courage to commit to the end of the game, retconning something really important in one of the most cliche after-credits sequences I’ve ever seen. Brad talked a lot about this game in the GOTY podcasts and I can’t help but agree with every word he said. But despite all of this sillyness, I had a lot of fun playing this game this year. I’m happy to see StarCraft 2 wrapped in a ncie bow and sent on its way. Bring on the next Blizzard RTS.

4. Undertale

The most recent addition to this list and probably the most surprising for me. I, like everyone, saw the hype for this game when it dropped and just turned my nose up at it. Yeah, it was made by Toby Fox, a guy most notable to me for Homestuck. Yeah, it had a pretty cool oldschool RPG aesthetic. But it just couldn’t possibly be the masterpiece that everyone was calling it, right? For the first hour or so, it’s not. I can’t help but feel now that this is on purpose. Not just so the later parts are surprising, but also so it’s certain that you’re committed to the game and whatever it throws at you. This game is fucking hilarious at points. It’s honestly pretty terrifying a couple times. It’s incredibly sad and deeply thought-provoking. It’s so many things while still being an EarthBound-style JRPG. It’s only a few hours long. It has what might be my favorite soundtrack of the year. It’s so many things that I don’t feel like I can talk about without spoiling them.

It’s got Napstablook and you laying on the floor feeling like shit and floating through space while listening to music. There are a number of moments where I just sat there staring at the screen trying to really comprehend what was happening and what was being asked of me. It does absolutely everything that a great game should do: great story, great presentation, plays with expectations, and does things only an interactive medium could do. The hype is real, you should play this game.

3. Batman: Arkham Knight

Okay. Right. I know. This game was a broken mess on release. This game set the bar for how broken a game could be at release. But between the fact that it came free with my video card, ran well on my machine, and was the first of these Batman games that I completed, it totally won me over. This is a subjective list and my experience with this game was fan-fucking-tastic. I loved the Batmobile. I loved the story. I spent a lot of time with my jaw on the fucking floor looking at the environments in this game. It is such a tremendous shame that all most people saw when they looked at this game were all the flaws, because at the core of it you are the NIGHT, people. The Arkham series set the standard for open world combat, and this one is no different. Fights feel better in this one than any of the other ones I’ve played. Fluid and crunchy and responsive, if a bit repetitive in the end. The flexibility you have in how you approach those combat encounters is also fantastic, second only to my #1 game. Mark Hammil fucking crushes it as the Joker. The last couple hours of this game are probably my favorite ending to any game this year, and I just talked about Undertale.

I see its flaws. I understand people’s problems with this game. But Goddammit, I fell in love with it and saw it through to the end. In a year that I was hard pressed to find time for videogames, that says a lot.

2. Rocket League

This game is perfect. It’s a 10/10. It’s fresh and original while somehow being dead simple: It’s football with cars. It’s so incredibly easy to pick up and play that you can invite a buttload of people over to your house that have never played it before, set up a bunch of displays and consoles, and have some of the most fun you’ve ever had playing a videogame. Blocking a pass and scoring a goal at the last second is just pure joy. Getting deeper and deeper into overtime is intense and stressful in all the right ways. The controls are tight and responsive, the gameplay is balanced and polished to perfection. Rocket League is the best multiplayer experience I have had in a long, long time. I look forward to having it again.

2015’s Game of the Year:



Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

I lost sleep over this game. More times than I would like to admit I looked at the clock to notice that it was almost 5 am and I absolutely HAD to go to sleep. It’s been said by many but this game set a new standard for open world game design and mechanics. Not to mention enemy AI and character animations. Anything feels possible in this game. I can’t tell you how many times my back was against a wall and I felt like there was no way out, only to throw some weird Hail Mary and find that the game could totally deal with it and in fact had a whole set of mechanics built around it.

I’m not blind to the story problems in this game, though I really had zero problem with the twist that everyone seems to hate. It’s a freakin Metal Gear game, after all. I recognize that there are a ton of real problems with Quiet, but I loved her arc enough that I ignored Kojima’s weird pervy bullshit. I totally recognize that Konami totally wrecked shit with this game, both behind the scenes and with all the post-release shenanigans. Like so many others have said, despite ALL of this, this game is just one of the most incredible ever made. I put more time into the campaign of this game than anything else on my list, and I don’t regret a single moment of it. This is my favorite game to come out this year, and the game by which I will measure every open-world action game to come. Kojima’s magnum opus is a game befitting the legacy of a crazy, weird, ambitious creator’s last game with a dying studio. I can’t wait to see what he does next.

So my dad sent me this book:

and it's pretty great. I'm not done with it yet, but I have had a lot of thoughts about it, especially as it relates to my last entry. The first half of the book is all about how technology has evolved over the last 20-30 years, and what impact it has had on the workforce. Mostly that computing power has changed what skills are valuable, and how that change has evolved as information technology has gotten more and more powerful. It's really fascinating stuff to think about, especially looking forward(!AI!). The second half of the book, which I've only just started, explores the skills which computers are going to have a very difficult time replicating in the near future, the first of which is Empathy.

I realized that a lot of what I was talking about, that sense of alienation, comes from a lack of a sense of empathy in the Internet today. Honestly a lot of what I've been thinking about since The Incident and my subsequent feminist revelations, has been empathy (or a lack thereof). For a long time I was fascinated (in a horrific car accident kind of way) with the actions of Internet movements like GamerGate and the Men's Rights Activists. Namely the unspeakable harassment and violence carried out on women around the world based solely on something they said or did that wound up in the spotlight of those groups. It struck me as completely unfathomable that these people could cross a line into doing these things to another living soul. So I thought that maybe if I could understand how such movements formed, I could understand how people got to the point where they felt justified in committing these horrible acts. I think the parallels to the current national sense of fear re: Islam and terrorism are obvious. Carry out certain symbolic acts of aggression upon highlighted targets and other individuals in those groups will think twice before sticking their head up and saying something. But one of the things that this book talks about is that not only is empathy a deeply human skill, but one that has been measurably in decline over the past few decades. Geoff cites a lot of studies about the rise of text messaging and email as the sole means of communication between individuals, and how those methods of communication stifle any sense of empathy between the individuals communicating. I believe this is the kind of thing that could probably be debated, I know a lot of people who think otherwise, but I think presupposing he's correct leads down some interesting roads.

For starters, it's interesting to look at the demographics of the groups I mentioned earlier. It's my demographic. Late twenties to early thirties white males. The same people who grew along side the digital revolution. One of the things that Mr. Colvin mentioned that keeps ringing in my head is that people are increasingly avoiding using telephones to make calls. I know I for one hate calling people. I think that this probably has a lot to do with growing up in a way that nurtured a text-based communication skill set in me. I know that the way that Elise and I talk in person lacks the depth of how we talk in text or chat. This is something we have to work on as a couple, so that's all I'll say of it here. But based on the habits and upbringing of the people I'm talking about here, it's not too outside the realm of possibility to think that there might be some correlation between growing up a gamer and having a severely diminished skill in empathy.

That's another thing that Geoff Colvin says repeatedly in his book: empathy (and other social skills) while inherit to the human experience, are not just some innate thing that you either have or your don't, they're skills that must be cultivated and practiced. It's here that I think the burgeoning field of Virtual Reality comes into play.  It's here that I think of this demo created for the Playstation VR experience: Summer Lesson. It's easy to look at that game and just dismiss it as being a creepy anime-girl-leering simulator. But I remember something someone (sorry for lack of citation here) said in a podcast: Sitting in proximity to this woman in a virtual space felt almost too intimate. It made them feel uncomfortable to have a (completely virtual) person trying to initiate eye contact and intimate conversation with them. I think this is a key example of what makes VR experiences different, and why they will play an important role in how we relate to each other in the coming years. Something about the immersion and level of realism in this new VR tech conveys a sense of presence that no other tech before it has been able to do. There's one other demo to consider here, and I promise I will get to a point eventually. The Oculus Toybox Demo is an incredible glimpse into what VR offers for social interaction. I think watching that might give you some idea as to why Mark Zuckerberg immediately bought Oculus, because he knows that this tech will be key to the future of social interactions online. Even without any sort of facial expression and very limited hand gestures, two people are able to interact with each other within a virtual space in a way that has never been seen before. It's important to note that 2d video representations don't do a very good job of relaying that sense of presence that I mentioned before. Those two people feel like they are IN that space, as it takes up the majority of their vision, and their physical bodies are portrayed there within that space via the Oculus Touch controllers.

The implications of this are something I haven't been able to stop thinking about for months. It relates to my earlier questions about the nature of social interaction online in a profound way, though I don't yet know to what level. The lack of real facial expression in the virtual models certainly hurts their relate-ability as a human avatar, but I think the choice to have the model be wearing the goggles as well is an incredibly smart one, as it's much better than a vacant, hollow-eyed face. Regardless of the lack of a facial component to their communication, I think body language goes a long way to relaying a lot of social information between the two individuals. Even better is the ways in which those interactions can be played with, as demonstrated by the scaling down of one of the participants in the later part of the video. Removing the avenue of facial expression and being able to control individual scale are things not easily done in the real world ( or laboratory) setting. I am completely fascinated by the idea that this virtual space might allow for generating entirely new avenues of social communication between people. I want to measure, in a controlled setting, the level of empathy generated by communication in this virtual space as opposed to face-to-face, or audio-only and visual-only communication. My theory is that this technology is going to bring us closer than ever to the intimacy of face-to-face contact than we have ever been in the realm of cyberspace.

So to tie this all together, an idea I've been kicking around in my head for the past couple hours is trying to game-ify empathy. A VR developer could create some kind of game wherein you have to glean the emotion state of a virtual person in order to progress. This could take the form of the interrogation sequences of LA Noir, or maybe some sort of party member mechanic in an RPG or something. I don't know, game design isn't really my thing. I do think, however, that we have to data to create virtual companions that could relay, with a high level of detail and accuracy, how humans relay their emotional state. The research into the details of the human face and how it portrays the emotional state of the individual has already been done. Geoff goes on for a bit about the concept of micro-expressions. These are ways in which the many individual muscles in our face move when we are feeling a certain way, even without our knowing it. I think the tech is probably a long way from being able to relay actual human facial muscle movements, but I think the modeling and animation could be done on virtual character models, or perhaps motion-captured to the same end.

Colvin's whole thesis seems to be based around the idea that computers will be able to do a great deal of the menial work of our lives in the not too distant future, and this means that we will be forced to cultivate the skills that computers will NOT be able to do, at least not within the next couple human generations. I think our best bets for doing so are by using that same technology to help ourselves along towards that goal. What exactly that will look like, I'm not entirely sure yet. What I do know is that I would like to be involved in doing the research that is necessary in making it a reality, and pushing the technology forward.

 So I recently mentioned on twitter that one of the tracks from the new CHVRCHES album was "pure nostalgia." It brings me back to a time in my life so wholly different from now, a time when I wrote here. A time before twitter. A younger Internet. it really seems sometimes like the more powerful part of nostalgia these days is the bitter and not the sweet. I miss so much about my highschool days, but the more I think about it the more I realize that what I miss is the people. The sense of belonging, of having a circle of friends that cared about me, that I loved more than anything. We experienced so many moments as a group, we all leaned on eachother and celebrated with eachother. We were TOGETHER. Our social network was so much smaller than the ones we have now, but they meant so much more.

Maybe it's too easy to blame the technology and the social change its brought about. I feel like people still do all just hang out in person, have giant groups of friends that actually, for real, no kidding, care what the others feel and experience. My fear is always that it's me. That I'm not cool enough for the group. I used to be the guy surrounded by friends, now I'm the guy that barely spends any time with another human being outside of those I work and live with. High school was the time that I was free to devote all of my energies to cultivating those kinds of friendships, and all the people I wanted to be around did too. We got out of school at 2 fucking PM. I don't even wake up until noon anymore. We had the whole damn day to get up to no good. Now I'm up at 2 AM, alone in my living room, typing words at a glowing screen that no one will ever see.

Even the online experience back then felt like it had more of an audience than it does now. I type things on twitter ALL. DAY. that I never get any feedback on. I used to have conversations with people in the comment sections of these entries. Christ, I used to have Real Conversations with people. I never talk about anything I really care about with anyone anymore. The things I prefer to consume now are things like Giant Bomb because so much of what they do is just people who are passionate about something sitting around and just shooting the shit about it. That's the whole site, that's why they're considered the best. Listening to other people have real conversations has replaced having any of my own.

Life now is just an exercise in floating through the majority of my day to get to the moments I care about. Burning time, always looking for something off in the future that will make me feel anything real. Human beings are social animals, but all I ever feel in social situations anymore is awkard and afraid. Self concious as hell. I mean, I guess I always have to an extent but, I had enough evidence that people actually gave a shit about me to believe it. I'm always so goddamn worried now that I'm bothering people. That I'm being to friendly, or too aloof. It probably doesn't help that I really don't like anyone I work with. I'm on a much smaller team, and everyone on it is really damn strange. Also we're the red-headed stepchild of the company, so no one gives a flying fuck about us unless something goes terribly wrong. So I'm alienated at my shitty, meaningless cubicle job. Not the first person in the world to ever express that notion.

I find moments that make me feel things in videogames and television shows. Songs, podcasts, books on flipping tape. I have to experience emotion by proxy, because I don't have the mirrors of other people in my own life to feel anything real for myself.

This is supposed to be the social age. It's not the information age, everything is about social now.
And I am so lonely.

Can it be that this is really the consequence of social networking? Computers & the Internet were supposed to make things easier so we could spend more time connecting with eachother, but then we moved those connections onto those same computers. Tiny injections of dopamine from likes and retweets and faves have replaced face-to-face contact. Social Networking has removed the humanity from the social animal. The way that people treat eachother online is such a weird, twisted, alien version of how we treat eachother in real life. The cruelest, most vile, hateful shit gets flung around like it is fucking nothing. It's all I can do to become cynical, because the alternative was just utter despair.

I want to believe that maybe VR is going to make a dent in that. Maybe re-introducing some humanity back into how we communicate will bring us back to eachother. If people can enter a virtual space as themselves, realized avatars that can relay the nuances of human communication, maybe we can start to feel a connection with those we communicate with online. Maybe it's a pipedream, but I think it could be a wonderful consequence of an emerging technology.

Because I don't want to abandon technology. For all of this, I wouldn't take back any of it. I still think that instantaneous global communication can help to erase the borders between us, but we must take care that it doesn't replace our humanity, our social needs, with clicks. Because I know how wonderful it can be to feel like you had the eye, for an instant, of someone you really admire. When some celebrity (I don't even know what that word means anymore, but I digress) likes or (hallelugiah) replies to some dumb thing I tweet at them, it feels amazing. The moments we used to wait outside of concerts for, they can happen in a much easier way. But that access  is a double-edged sword. Putting aside the online harassment I mentioned earlier, even in an environment where everyone is behaving, it's impossible for so many people to have a real connection with one individual. I'm sure that the people that have 'won' the social networking game feel a different kind of lonliness, but I can't help wishing for an audience.

Because all it ever feels like now is shouting into a void. I always feel like I have so much to say, but no one is ever listening. It's like the party is too crowded and everyone is shouting over eachother, trying to be heard. The things you have to do to stand out on the Internet now require making it a full-time job. The only way to really connect in a sea of people is to build yourself a soapbox out of toothpicks. Newsroom talks a lot about this, and maybe the creator's attitudes towards the Internet rubbed off on me, because it seems like I feel this way more often than not.