Shadow of Mordor has a Photo Mode now, and our first question was along the lines of "how would an Uruk use Instagram." Until it occurred to us that they would use Instagram in precisely the same way everyone else does.
I used to ask if you had found a Final Game - specifically a videogame you could always return to, conceivably, a game-as-life-practice. I was going to posit that League of Legends ticks a few boxes I think might be crucial to the enterprise, but I am so angry at everything to do with that entire continuum that I don't want to relive its horrors. The lessons are still there, I guess, even if the game makes me want to eat my own lips.
It was that kinda night.
Whatever the game is, it almost certainly must reside on the PC. It's a realm that grants games a kind of immortality "in a world" where enforced annuality and the console arms race transform platforms into quicksand. It needs contemplative and immediate polarities of interaction. I am legitimately starting to wonder if the idea of a stable map - such as Summoner's Rift, in The Game That Shall Not Be Named - that allows for endlessly iterable gameplay isn't also necessary. Something that mirrors the "field" of a sport or the "board" of a game and constitutes a base of approach. I find algorithmic levels interesting for a time but, ironically I guess, I get bored of them must faster than I do a single thoughtfully made place. I like intention, I guess.
I don't think it can have a set story, but I'd love to be wrong about that; I read 1984 every year, and it's new every time. That rule may simply be an artifact of a specific period of games writing. For all the life human players can inflict on a system I think multiplayer is optional. I think ongoing content can simulate deep novelty but isn't required. Back in the day I thought World of Warcraft was the Ur-Game, or an Ur-Game, but I don't think it can have a subscription. I'm always going to like games that exist outside of this, but I'm not going to play The Witcher again when I'm sixty. But I'll still be playing XCOM.
We have once again issued our Penny Arcade Scholarship, which as I have stated in the past always feels kind of Bad-Good. I feel more like I un-chose everyone else when I select a winner, because having a few ounces of personal correspondence and assorted surveillance on these lives makes you feel it. I wasn't able to attend college at all on account of money, so when I read letters from people re: the debt load they're taking on it's something I hear with clarity. But we can help a little bit, right? We can return to them a couple moments each day which they can put toward their destiny. This time, we chose Anthony Scott. Go get 'em, man. And stay in touch.
(CW)TB out.
