This is a game
released on Apr 26, 2022
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Convulsive Companion
There are parallels to be drawn between hunting game and the proliferation of achievement hunting. As a trend achievement hunting started to pick up steam and become a social resource on the Xbox, a console whose american lineup franchise was military shooters. Over time, this achievement acquisition would become overabundant and doled out in every game as much as possible. Thus the connection between these two modes of 'gaming' began to merge, the 'gaming' of slaughtering a deer to make as a trophy on your wall and the 'gaming' of getting an achievement which dropped 40 gamer points into your xbox live account. Fast forward 15 years and now this has extended to steam achievement percentages breakdowns. How to get 999 armor on slay the spire that only 7 percent of other people have, these obsessions with tracking down 'big game'. Literally 'achievement hunting'.
The killing of animals for sport has always been done as a social activity, after the animal is dead, its customary to take a picture of you next to it or turn it into a 'trophy', display what you gained and then post that gore to all your similarly excited friends. It's important to start by building it up in this way, catch a few fish, then some venison, etc. Then those are really obsessed with gaming might begin to poach for the 'exotic' game. To find and display their experience of stuff nobody else has caught yet, its always an unfair relationship because the gamer has a weapon that the game can't defend against. In this case the game sits there and the artillery is my words. You might be wondering why I'm so adament in this parallel, I think over time database websites and the obsession with 'completion' and 'display' has become analogous, not in morality but in modal relations. This game This is a game sits here innocently and I come by and tear into it noting that I've finished the experience and now I'm going to tell you why it's the downfall of man or instill my own social desires over the 'carcass' of it. Here the carcass is finishing it and telling you about it. Regardless of how good or bad it is I can at best dissect it excitedly for everyone else to see or just broadly smile next to it and give callous words. The result is similar, I'm promoting the concept that its for my use as a persona, that I wield my power over it.
There's a sadistic tendency here I think in this sense, one that is ultimately inescapable and in actual fact even promoted by these platforms. To launder these experiences as a grand concept of selfhood, to enclose the work in your own image. Then this snowballs into developers themselves having to be excited about also taxidermying their projects. Get as much feedback and warp it continuously for their excited audiences. Grafting and patching might as well be one in the same at that point, nothing in place, everything is the alpha production in this sense.
This may seem like a rather pessimistic and extreme way to talk about this 19 year olds rudimentary mario clone, I have no indictments toward them or this work on principle. I cant help but think though that I've continuously been seeing these sorts of freeware projects on Steam instead of Itchio and Gamejolt, wherein Steam asks for a 100$ surcharge with a very poor dynamic for displaying your work on your own terms. Games as commerce become taxidermied more 'cleanly' on steam, the achievements are embbed in, theres these stupid stickers you sell for like 5 cents. I've mentioned this all in my Horny Spell post, the fetid economic dynamics of that shit platform. I've felt this resentment spread though beyond that point. I resent that this work sits here with the same potential to be 'assessed' as everything else here. I resent the fact I'm 'gaming'. I resent gamers. I abhor the destructive impulse that comes with 'analyzing' the obscure. This should probably not even be on here to be 'shot at' in the same way everything else is because this is a prototype, when we shoot snide comments at shit like this it endangers the work through discouragement, which we only feel comfortable doing because we 'completed' it. It feels like I'm killing an exotic being with my words. I resent the fact that even talking about this work opens the possibility that now other people will seek it out and poke fun at it. I don't want any more trophies in my collection. This fundamental shame is hard to move past, to the point that I wrote 6 different versions of this script before giving up. On top of that, it feels also that now I've moved out of the realm of my trophies being endearing and enjoyable, now they seem to disturb people and for good reason. It gets more nuanced than that, but I think this more than anything else is the best vector I can describe this through. It's fundamentally why I need to make my own blog, my own exit. Create a reservation of good 'game' and not a resort for the slaughter of art. There's a better way than this, there has to be.
There are parallels to be drawn between hunting game and the proliferation of achievement hunting. As a trend achievement hunting started to pick up steam and become a social resource on the Xbox, a console whose american lineup franchise was military shooters. Over time, this achievement acquisition would become overabundant and doled out in every game as much as possible. Thus the connection between these two modes of 'gaming' began to merge, the 'gaming' of slaughtering a deer to make as a trophy on your wall and the 'gaming' of getting an achievement which dropped 40 gamer points into your xbox live account. Fast forward 15 years and now this has extended to steam achievement percentages breakdowns. How to get 999 armor on slay the spire that only 7 percent of other people have, these obsessions with tracking down 'big game'. Literally 'achievement hunting'.
The killing of animals for sport has always been done as a social activity, after the animal is dead, its customary to take a picture of you next to it or turn it into a 'trophy', display what you gained and then post that gore to all your similarly excited friends. It's important to start by building it up in this way, catch a few fish, then some venison, etc. Then those are really obsessed with gaming might begin to poach for the 'exotic' game. To find and display their experience of stuff nobody else has caught yet, its always an unfair relationship because the gamer has a weapon that the game can't defend against. In this case the game sits there and the artillery is my words. You might be wondering why I'm so adament in this parallel, I think over time database websites and the obsession with 'completion' and 'display' has become analogous, not in morality but in modal relations. This game This is a game sits here innocently and I come by and tear into it noting that I've finished the experience and now I'm going to tell you why it's the downfall of man or instill my own social desires over the 'carcass' of it. Here the carcass is finishing it and telling you about it. Regardless of how good or bad it is I can at best dissect it excitedly for everyone else to see or just broadly smile next to it and give callous words. The result is similar, I'm promoting the concept that its for my use as a persona, that I wield my power over it.
There's a sadistic tendency here I think in this sense, one that is ultimately inescapable and in actual fact even promoted by these platforms. To launder these experiences as a grand concept of selfhood, to enclose the work in your own image. Then this snowballs into developers themselves having to be excited about also taxidermying their projects. Get as much feedback and warp it continuously for their excited audiences. Grafting and patching might as well be one in the same at that point, nothing in place, everything is the alpha production in this sense.
This may seem like a rather pessimistic and extreme way to talk about this 19 year olds rudimentary mario clone, I have no indictments toward them or this work on principle. I cant help but think though that I've continuously been seeing these sorts of freeware projects on Steam instead of Itchio and Gamejolt, wherein Steam asks for a 100$ surcharge with a very poor dynamic for displaying your work on your own terms. Games as commerce become taxidermied more 'cleanly' on steam, the achievements are embbed in, theres these stupid stickers you sell for like 5 cents. I've mentioned this all in my Horny Spell post, the fetid economic dynamics of that shit platform. I've felt this resentment spread though beyond that point. I resent that this work sits here with the same potential to be 'assessed' as everything else here. I resent the fact I'm 'gaming'. I resent gamers. I abhor the destructive impulse that comes with 'analyzing' the obscure. This should probably not even be on here to be 'shot at' in the same way everything else is because this is a prototype, when we shoot snide comments at shit like this it endangers the work through discouragement, which we only feel comfortable doing because we 'completed' it. It feels like I'm killing an exotic being with my words. I resent the fact that even talking about this work opens the possibility that now other people will seek it out and poke fun at it. I don't want any more trophies in my collection. This fundamental shame is hard to move past, to the point that I wrote 6 different versions of this script before giving up. On top of that, it feels also that now I've moved out of the realm of my trophies being endearing and enjoyable, now they seem to disturb people and for good reason. It gets more nuanced than that, but I think this more than anything else is the best vector I can describe this through. It's fundamentally why I need to make my own blog, my own exit. Create a reservation of good 'game' and not a resort for the slaughter of art. There's a better way than this, there has to be.