CosmoVitelli
15 reviews liked by CosmoVitelli
I think I've now found some of the words for talking about this game. So I’ll now make an effort to describe why Season: A Letter to the Future might actually be my absolute favorite video game concurrently. An effort I’ll probably return to sometime in the future.
As a person deeply interested in the topic of the archive, the base premise already resonates with me. I think the way a society preserves its history, memories and legacy is very indicative of how that society is structured and which values it upholds. History is not a given, it’s a process of writing and re-writing, at least loosely informed by the archives that hold traces of the past. But those traces aren’t a given either. Whose history does a society decide is worth recording and safeguarding? Whose history is neglected or even getting erased? The archive belongs to the ghosts - but we need it to know who we are and where we came from. There’s an intangible feeling of sadness and loss that comes with these questions, especially when talking from a queer perspective. I’m non-binary – and I do rarely find myself anywhere in what the west calls its history. Season: A Letter to the Future sits somewhere in this entangled mess of historiography, softly and calmly singing its own song.
You'd think that gamifying the process of writing about history would result in a game that you could "100%", in which you could collect all the collectibles and “win” at historiography. But Season isn't that. It's as much a game about what you do not or cannot record as it is one about what you end up recording. The tools you are given to do so are a camera, a microphone, and handwriting (or rather: handwritten prompts). What you record with them is stored in a notebook, which you can freely customize – one page per area or topic is all you are given. It’s way too little to store every information you find. The player is put in the position to center what parts are important to them and what aspects of the current season they want to preserve. They also have the power to assign moral judgements to some events, influencing if and how the next season will remember what happened. The game also adds a clever twist to its setting: It’s set in the context of already having happened. It starts with a person already reading the “finished” notebook. The parts of the game you play are narratively already in the past – this re-focuses who else might be reading the book in the future and what they are taking away from it.
Season is also about what can’t be recorded or written down, about a lot of small or big moments and their atmosphere. The roadtrip-setting of the game is one filled with endings without closure, fitting for a game about recording history. In that aspect, it’s not just about history, but also about living in it. About the people you meet and their right (not) to be remembered. But also about the people you can no longer meet, about the absences felt in this game’s world – which is brilliantly crafted. Through careful sound design, it manages to have a tangibility to it that few games will ever reach. A tangibility that makes you feel the absences even more intensely.
Season’s writing is also incredibly strong and poetic. It uses every inch of its dialogues and monologues to think about history, memory and the emotional depth that reside in those concepts. It’s beautiful. And I think that is the note I want to end on, for now. I don’t want to get into spoilers yet, as I think this game benefits from having no idea what happens next – it’s a roadtrip, after all. But I’ll return to this space, sometime in the future. Because I have so many more words to find and sentences to form about Season: A Letter to the Future.
As a person deeply interested in the topic of the archive, the base premise already resonates with me. I think the way a society preserves its history, memories and legacy is very indicative of how that society is structured and which values it upholds. History is not a given, it’s a process of writing and re-writing, at least loosely informed by the archives that hold traces of the past. But those traces aren’t a given either. Whose history does a society decide is worth recording and safeguarding? Whose history is neglected or even getting erased? The archive belongs to the ghosts - but we need it to know who we are and where we came from. There’s an intangible feeling of sadness and loss that comes with these questions, especially when talking from a queer perspective. I’m non-binary – and I do rarely find myself anywhere in what the west calls its history. Season: A Letter to the Future sits somewhere in this entangled mess of historiography, softly and calmly singing its own song.
You'd think that gamifying the process of writing about history would result in a game that you could "100%", in which you could collect all the collectibles and “win” at historiography. But Season isn't that. It's as much a game about what you do not or cannot record as it is one about what you end up recording. The tools you are given to do so are a camera, a microphone, and handwriting (or rather: handwritten prompts). What you record with them is stored in a notebook, which you can freely customize – one page per area or topic is all you are given. It’s way too little to store every information you find. The player is put in the position to center what parts are important to them and what aspects of the current season they want to preserve. They also have the power to assign moral judgements to some events, influencing if and how the next season will remember what happened. The game also adds a clever twist to its setting: It’s set in the context of already having happened. It starts with a person already reading the “finished” notebook. The parts of the game you play are narratively already in the past – this re-focuses who else might be reading the book in the future and what they are taking away from it.
Season is also about what can’t be recorded or written down, about a lot of small or big moments and their atmosphere. The roadtrip-setting of the game is one filled with endings without closure, fitting for a game about recording history. In that aspect, it’s not just about history, but also about living in it. About the people you meet and their right (not) to be remembered. But also about the people you can no longer meet, about the absences felt in this game’s world – which is brilliantly crafted. Through careful sound design, it manages to have a tangibility to it that few games will ever reach. A tangibility that makes you feel the absences even more intensely.
Season’s writing is also incredibly strong and poetic. It uses every inch of its dialogues and monologues to think about history, memory and the emotional depth that reside in those concepts. It’s beautiful. And I think that is the note I want to end on, for now. I don’t want to get into spoilers yet, as I think this game benefits from having no idea what happens next – it’s a roadtrip, after all. But I’ll return to this space, sometime in the future. Because I have so many more words to find and sentences to form about Season: A Letter to the Future.
Pathologic 2
2019
Note: This review contains no direct spoilers, but it does pull the curtain on how the game works in a general sense. If you're interested in the game, I recommend against reading it and just starting your playthrough.
Reacting to all of a player’s decisions is a common goal for games, but it simply isn’t possible. Doing so would require not only creating reactions for each choice, but for each set of combinations, leading to infinite complexity. The real question is how games that use decision making as a focal point are able to fake the reactivity in a way that still gives choices impact. Telltale games typically let choices affect the player’s relationship with other characters, but not the flow of the plot itself. Bioshock Infinite’s choices don’t end up mattering at all, with director Ken Levine’s philosophy being that the real impact of decisions happens in the player’s head, not in the game itself. These could be interpreted as lazy or misleading ways to sell a game, but as mentioned before, developers have limited resources and need to ensure their effort is used economically. It’s this principle that allows a game like Pathologic 2 to exist at all, promising a town full of radiant choice and consequence from an indie team on a relatively small budget. The player’s goal is to stay alive as a doctor in a steppe town overrun by plague, and save as many people as you can. There are about thirty named characters to keep track of, and generic townspeople you can trade with or heal to manage your supplies and increase your reputation. You have to survive for about ten days, making deals and compromises along the way to make it out as best you can.
So, with the aforementioned need to compromise, where does Pathologic 2 stand on the reactivity spectrum? Oddly enough, it falls closest to Bioshock Infinite, with the vast majority of choices having no discernible impact. The game emphasizes how the plague is random and how you can’t save everyone, so the cast mostly consists of disposable characters who could die and leave the story unaffected. Ironically, this also forces the few plot-critical characters to be totally immune until the plot says so. The endings suffer a similar irony, where a theme of nuanced decisions is filtered into a binary choice so the narrative can have structure. This recurring mismatch between a focus on player choice and the limitations of a set-narrative structure might be Pathologic’s fatal flaw, especially when the plot exists more as a framework for decisions than a narrative in its own right. If a game is about tough judgement calls, but as a result can’t present any real consequences, isn’t the design an inherent failure?
It might be tempting for me to answer that with a “yes”, and use it as an example of why most games with choices keep a tight leash on their narrative structure, there’s still the mental half of the decision making process to factor in. Players recognizing the pointlessness of their decisions at the end doesn’t matter when they felt real in the moment, and with media being inherently artificial, the real pointlessness would be in trying to convince people that their actions did have consequences. For most games, I would say this interpretation is giving way too much credit, but Pathologic has a recurring theatrical motif that fully acknowledges the artificiality of the drama. The truth is that the intention was never for players to have narrative agency, but to be like an actor in a play. The script may be unchanging, but the emotions and energy brought to a role can add a different life to the same material. The changing circumstances of the player’s survival helps shift this context in this way, creating a narrative arc that is tied to the process of decision making in itself.
I’ve fluctuated between these pessimistic and optimistic viewpoints of the game, and it’s been difficult to draw the line between flaws and intelligently acknowledged limitations. Analyzing the game’s structure in a vacuum makes it easy to be on the positive side, but the dryness and repetitiveness of the actual moment-to-moment interaction puts me on the negative side. Fans will counter that the game’s not exactly supposed to be fun, I might counter that it should at least be engaging, there’s never an easy answer. In everything from the minor details to the overall structure, the line will be drawn based on how much you’re willing to entertain the game’s artistic ideals, rather than them entertaining you. While I wasn't a fan, I still respect the game immensely for committing to an artistic vision that a lot of people would never have the patience to try. It’s a game I can’t exactly recommend, and can’t even really say I like, but trying something new and broadening your horizons will always be an excellent choice.
Reacting to all of a player’s decisions is a common goal for games, but it simply isn’t possible. Doing so would require not only creating reactions for each choice, but for each set of combinations, leading to infinite complexity. The real question is how games that use decision making as a focal point are able to fake the reactivity in a way that still gives choices impact. Telltale games typically let choices affect the player’s relationship with other characters, but not the flow of the plot itself. Bioshock Infinite’s choices don’t end up mattering at all, with director Ken Levine’s philosophy being that the real impact of decisions happens in the player’s head, not in the game itself. These could be interpreted as lazy or misleading ways to sell a game, but as mentioned before, developers have limited resources and need to ensure their effort is used economically. It’s this principle that allows a game like Pathologic 2 to exist at all, promising a town full of radiant choice and consequence from an indie team on a relatively small budget. The player’s goal is to stay alive as a doctor in a steppe town overrun by plague, and save as many people as you can. There are about thirty named characters to keep track of, and generic townspeople you can trade with or heal to manage your supplies and increase your reputation. You have to survive for about ten days, making deals and compromises along the way to make it out as best you can.
So, with the aforementioned need to compromise, where does Pathologic 2 stand on the reactivity spectrum? Oddly enough, it falls closest to Bioshock Infinite, with the vast majority of choices having no discernible impact. The game emphasizes how the plague is random and how you can’t save everyone, so the cast mostly consists of disposable characters who could die and leave the story unaffected. Ironically, this also forces the few plot-critical characters to be totally immune until the plot says so. The endings suffer a similar irony, where a theme of nuanced decisions is filtered into a binary choice so the narrative can have structure. This recurring mismatch between a focus on player choice and the limitations of a set-narrative structure might be Pathologic’s fatal flaw, especially when the plot exists more as a framework for decisions than a narrative in its own right. If a game is about tough judgement calls, but as a result can’t present any real consequences, isn’t the design an inherent failure?
It might be tempting for me to answer that with a “yes”, and use it as an example of why most games with choices keep a tight leash on their narrative structure, there’s still the mental half of the decision making process to factor in. Players recognizing the pointlessness of their decisions at the end doesn’t matter when they felt real in the moment, and with media being inherently artificial, the real pointlessness would be in trying to convince people that their actions did have consequences. For most games, I would say this interpretation is giving way too much credit, but Pathologic has a recurring theatrical motif that fully acknowledges the artificiality of the drama. The truth is that the intention was never for players to have narrative agency, but to be like an actor in a play. The script may be unchanging, but the emotions and energy brought to a role can add a different life to the same material. The changing circumstances of the player’s survival helps shift this context in this way, creating a narrative arc that is tied to the process of decision making in itself.
I’ve fluctuated between these pessimistic and optimistic viewpoints of the game, and it’s been difficult to draw the line between flaws and intelligently acknowledged limitations. Analyzing the game’s structure in a vacuum makes it easy to be on the positive side, but the dryness and repetitiveness of the actual moment-to-moment interaction puts me on the negative side. Fans will counter that the game’s not exactly supposed to be fun, I might counter that it should at least be engaging, there’s never an easy answer. In everything from the minor details to the overall structure, the line will be drawn based on how much you’re willing to entertain the game’s artistic ideals, rather than them entertaining you. While I wasn't a fan, I still respect the game immensely for committing to an artistic vision that a lot of people would never have the patience to try. It’s a game I can’t exactly recommend, and can’t even really say I like, but trying something new and broadening your horizons will always be an excellent choice.
Final Fantasy XVI
2023
im sure this game is good but they really named that mf clive. taxpayer ass name
Rain World
2017
"Destroy the darkness of delusion with the brightness of wisdom. The world is truly dangerous and unstable, without any durability. My present attainment of Nirvana is like being rid of a malignant sickness. The body is a false name, drowning in the great ocean of birth, sickness, old age and death. How can one who is wise not be happy when he gets rid of it?" - Gautama Buddha
Rain World is not a game about living. It's not a game about dying. It's about samsara.
Why do so many yearn for annihilation, for silence? Why are we caught between quiet and din? What are we tied to? How do we remember the past? How permanent is history? What is it made out of? Is it in objects? Is it in something spiritual? Is it in technology? What are the driving forces of technology? Can technology be spiritual? Why do we make machines? Why do we make them look like us? Why do we make them look so different from us? What do they do when we are gone? How different is technology and nature? What is nature in the first place? Is nature cruel? Is nature kind? What does it mean to be cruel, to be kind? Is there such a thing as morality in an ecosystem? What is nature made out of? What is an animal? What is the life of an animal? What is the life of two animals? What is the life of a thousand animals? What is life at all? What does it mean, really, to be living? Why is it so painful? Why do we go on? What do we need? What do we want?
"Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still. All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett
I am not, nor have I ever been, a spiritual person. I don't think I ever will be. But Rain World helps me understand why people become Buddhists. This game was a spiritual experience for me. I mean that. I hate it, I love it, I am endlessly fascinated by it. It is an utterly singular game. I don't think there has ever been or ever will be another game quite like Rain World.
One of the best games ever made. Beautiful, fascinating, haunting, terrifying. But it's hard to recommend. It's one of the hardest and most grueling games I've ever played. It's profoundly frustrating. But it's a masterpiece. Even without my unique connection to it, it is full of incredible ideas, beautiful art, and shocking design. It's a vast ecosystem full of wonder and terror. It's stunningly beautiful on almost every level. I feel it on a visceral level. It's constantly on my mind. I cannot escape it; it's inside me. It's one of the best games ever made.
Rain World is not a game about living. It's not a game about dying. It's about samsara.
Why do so many yearn for annihilation, for silence? Why are we caught between quiet and din? What are we tied to? How do we remember the past? How permanent is history? What is it made out of? Is it in objects? Is it in something spiritual? Is it in technology? What are the driving forces of technology? Can technology be spiritual? Why do we make machines? Why do we make them look like us? Why do we make them look so different from us? What do they do when we are gone? How different is technology and nature? What is nature in the first place? Is nature cruel? Is nature kind? What does it mean to be cruel, to be kind? Is there such a thing as morality in an ecosystem? What is nature made out of? What is an animal? What is the life of an animal? What is the life of two animals? What is the life of a thousand animals? What is life at all? What does it mean, really, to be living? Why is it so painful? Why do we go on? What do we need? What do we want?
"Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still. All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." - Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett
I am not, nor have I ever been, a spiritual person. I don't think I ever will be. But Rain World helps me understand why people become Buddhists. This game was a spiritual experience for me. I mean that. I hate it, I love it, I am endlessly fascinated by it. It is an utterly singular game. I don't think there has ever been or ever will be another game quite like Rain World.
One of the best games ever made. Beautiful, fascinating, haunting, terrifying. But it's hard to recommend. It's one of the hardest and most grueling games I've ever played. It's profoundly frustrating. But it's a masterpiece. Even without my unique connection to it, it is full of incredible ideas, beautiful art, and shocking design. It's a vast ecosystem full of wonder and terror. It's stunningly beautiful on almost every level. I feel it on a visceral level. It's constantly on my mind. I cannot escape it; it's inside me. It's one of the best games ever made.
Rain World
2017
I'll confess that I've only played about 20 minutes of this game, so I'm not really reviewing it for myself, but for my best friend who passed away in March. We lived together so we would hang out and talk about video games almost everyday and before he passed away THIS was his favorite game, full-stop.
It's hard to describe how much I miss chatting with him about Rain World, it made him passionate about game ideas he was programming and passionate about games in general, it was exciting to see him have that spark for making art again. It's cringey, but I wish I could message the developers and let them know how much it meant to my friend that this game even EXISTED, let alone that it was this amazing to him.
The last conversation I ever had with him he was telling me about the lore for Rain World, how he beat every piece of content in it just to learn more about the story, and to my surprise, I found in one of his journals pages of him deciphering the lore and studying it on his own for fun.
It'll be a long while before I'm able to play any of his favorite games again, but I'm going to rate this a 5 on his behalf anyway, as I have no doubt in my mind it's what he would have given it. I'll never know why he chose to leave, but I at least have this game that spoke to him in a way you wish all art could, and as much as I wish he was here to tell you why it's a 5-star game, you'll just have to take my word for it. This was a perfect game to him, and he had way better taste than me!
It's hard to describe how much I miss chatting with him about Rain World, it made him passionate about game ideas he was programming and passionate about games in general, it was exciting to see him have that spark for making art again. It's cringey, but I wish I could message the developers and let them know how much it meant to my friend that this game even EXISTED, let alone that it was this amazing to him.
The last conversation I ever had with him he was telling me about the lore for Rain World, how he beat every piece of content in it just to learn more about the story, and to my surprise, I found in one of his journals pages of him deciphering the lore and studying it on his own for fun.
It'll be a long while before I'm able to play any of his favorite games again, but I'm going to rate this a 5 on his behalf anyway, as I have no doubt in my mind it's what he would have given it. I'll never know why he chose to leave, but I at least have this game that spoke to him in a way you wish all art could, and as much as I wish he was here to tell you why it's a 5-star game, you'll just have to take my word for it. This was a perfect game to him, and he had way better taste than me!
Rain World
2017
Andrei Tarkovsky's PAC-MAN
Hypnospace Outlaw
2019
I don't have much to say about Hypnospace Outlaw itself beyond it being one of the funniest, most heart-warming, most endearing, most sincere, most ironic, most fun depictions of the Internet ever presented.
In my review-cum-memoir on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, I bemoaned the death of online spaces noted for their lack of thorough knowledge. It is perhaps fitting that WotLK's release came a mere five days before the launch of Jim Garvin and Ryan McGeary's 'Let Me Google That For You' website. Perhaps by divine providence too, WotLK's release coincided with the steady downward trend of Bill Dyess' then World of Warcraft database Thottbot and the first massive spike in traffic to Wowhead. The coincidence is staggering, but also points to a trend which has irreversibly altered the gaming landscape, and society at large. Much as WoW players sought user-data-verified hard statistics on their MMO of choice, tech savvy individuals' astonishment and contempt for being asked readily verifiable questions reached a tipping point in late 2008. Confirming and corroborating data on WoW would in time become something accomplished by every player. LMGTFY would in time become a site even your grandparents might send as a slight towards a query. The genuine question 'where is Mankrik's wife?' was less the object of ridicule, more a target for sarcasm and eye-rolling as the naive were directed to Wowhead. With ever increasing databases and wikis, games and media in general have become less about a sense of mystery, more one of minutiae. Players no longer revel in not knowing, they would rather examine the entirety of a game's mechanics and lore and history with a finetooth comb.
My point in bringing this up is two-fold. One: Games have genuinely not been the same since players expected to be able to understand them inside and out at whim. Two: The Internet has genuinely not been the same since users expected others to rely on a corporate search engine, largely constructed (especially now) to deliver advertising rather than substantive content, to remedy their perceived ignorance. As Embracer Group, Microsoft, Tencent, Sony, Epic, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and other megacorporations oligopolise the gaming space, so too do Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tencent, Joybuy, Alibaba, Twitter, Spotify, ByteDance, Baidu, Adobe, Block, and others reduce Internet diversity to a minimum. I can't act as if I knew the Internet of eld in its entirety, but a lifelong fascination with Internet obscura and history has me at least somewhat informed.
In my review of GeoGuessr, and corroborated by jobosno's review of Microsoft Flight Simulator, stressed was the importance of appreciating the non-place. So too does this apply to the Internet at large, and Hypnospace Outlaw itself if we wish. Not everything on the Internet is substantive or substantial, nor is every page on Hypnospace. We fall down rabbit holes of Wikipedia deep dives, we examine every page on Hypnospace regardless of its relevance to our duty. Duty and productivity and the confines of time and the constraints of life and gaming guide us towards Internet or Hypnospace use that is conducive to our end goals, but those detours persist as availabilities. In the real world, they dwindle as web diversity shrinks, as webhosts go offline, as swathes of the Internet go unarchives and unremember[ed/able]. In Hypnospace, their finite nature means we cannot search forever.
The Big Crunch theory postulates that at some point, the universe will cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null. We will not go to website, we will go to keywords. That which is unadvertisable, incompatible with commercialisation will in effect go dark. In due time fewer and fewer spaces will exist. In due time, all will be one, and one will be none.
The Big Freeze theory postulates that the universe will never cease expansion, and will drift into entropy until all is returned to absolute zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might expand infinitely to the point of unnavigability. In a web of infinitudes, all will be irrelevant and all will be lost as data becomes unable to be quantified on any scale. In due time, one will be all, and all will be none.
The unknowability of the universe renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
The unknowability of the Internet renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
Enjoy the Internet as it is now. Enjoy the Internet as it was then. Enjoy the Internet as it will be. Forever is it in flux, forever is it a stable constant. Forever does it all drift apart, forever does it all close in. Forever shall it be known and forever shall it be unknown.
We exist in a cosmic nothing of no import.
We exist in a digital nothing of no import.
Every atom in the universe is critical to its being.
Every byte of the Internet is critical to its being.
As a historian, I live on a periphery of data boundless yet intangible. I scour for that which does not exist, may never have existed.
At the end of Hypnospace Outlaw you are tasked with archiving a wasteland.
Archive our wasteland with the Wayback Machine extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/
We exist at a time where unfathomable amounts of human knowledge are being erased from existence every hour of every day. This is not a deliberate book burning. This is an incidental blaze.
Save what you can.
What a beautiful thing we are a part of.
Seek the obtuse, obfuscated, and obscure.
A selection of webzones I have found and I enjoy:
https://geocities.restorativland.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20021215085602/http://www.u-ga.com:80/jp/games/mobile.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070902163202/http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/
https://web.archive.org/web/20050222012115/http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/
https://prairieecologist.com/2020/01/13/finally-a-practical-guide-for-roadside-wildflower-viewing/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010118210000/http://www.l0pht.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030207171752/http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,50875,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060314162213/http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-man/Pac-Games/PacManVR/pac.htm
https://www.geo-grafia.jp/product/
http://erogereport.blog.jp/archives/cat_87375.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060515154050/http://users.stargate.net/~glshir/PLAY.HTM
https://dreamlogos.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Logos_Wiki
https://web.archive.org/web/20150222012855/http://quitesoulless.com/story.htm
https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=Oi1qbcz2m2SnwUeztGYcnQ
https://web.archive.org/web/20030407094755/http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/movies.html
http://www.poetpatriot.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229230522/http://symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kgame.hoax.html
https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/camping-in-a-u-haul-they-are-cheeper-than-an-rv-and-better-than-a-tent.53919/
https://web.archive.org/web/20140803164736/http://theodor.lauppert.ws/games/
https://tss.asenheim.org/
https://jimedwardsnrx.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20130812175052/http://csbruce.com/tv/clone_high/
https://xercesblau.com/
https://www.walgreens2.com/peach-ring/peach17.html?fbclid=IwAR0iWWPkq0qf2kkYIVmUgL2pPuE1023aImBPnYuwmQXAxtyXNiElOnSDlVs
http://www.secondlivestock.com/
https://origamisimulator.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180818104057/http://underlinestudio.com/linesbreakingnewspaper/
http://blueteethnovel.tilda.ws/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170207203428/http://pacificitysoundvisions.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120915100800/http://meryn.ru/portfolia/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130415230745/http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.woodswoods.com/new-gallery-5
https://web.archive.org/web/20120807153003/http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2010/11/minstrel-show-visual-art.html
https://glasstire.com/2012/11/23/the-ten-list-walk-as-art/
https://news.ourontario.ca/page.asp?ID=2910113&po=6&n=1
https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
http://1x-upon.com/~despens/teletext/
http://www.teletextart.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060411023755/http://www.gamengai.com/main.php
http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/
https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/
http://retroblues.sakura.ne.jp/regeokiba/index.htm
http://msx.jpn.org/tagoo/
https://fm-7.com/
https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/frame1.htm
http://p6ers.net/hashi/
http://furuiotoko.la.coocan.jp/
http://85data.world.coocan.jp/
http://ayachi0610.blog65.fc2.com/
https://datafruits.fm/
https://www.catsuka.com/player/binge/
http://myduckisdead.org/
https://historicfilms.com/search/?
https://www.fontsupply.com/fonts/
https://contactjuggling.org/
http://www.t0.or.at/scl/agents.htm
https://archive.org/details/TheVistaGroup-TheAndersenTiltWashWindowStory1990s
https://cursed-commercials.fandom.com/wiki/Square_Butts
https://www.yygarchive.org/
https://news.nestia.com/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%AD%A2%E6%9B%B9%E4%B8%95%EF%BC%9A%E8%BF%99%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E6%AE%B5%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E6%97%A5%E5%BC%8F%E6%88%90%E4%BA%BA%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F%E7%9A%84%E7%AE%80%E5%8F%B2/6267619
https://www.jacketsjunction.com/product/wikipedia-editor-jacket/
https://opendirsearch.abifog.com/
https://vimeo.com/729784691
https://ubuweb.com/
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/2902/3D%20Images.iso/bmp/a
http://web.archive.org/web/20040405155729/http://www.mbnet.fi:80/apaja/alueet/
https://carta.archive-it.org/
In my review-cum-memoir on World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, I bemoaned the death of online spaces noted for their lack of thorough knowledge. It is perhaps fitting that WotLK's release came a mere five days before the launch of Jim Garvin and Ryan McGeary's 'Let Me Google That For You' website. Perhaps by divine providence too, WotLK's release coincided with the steady downward trend of Bill Dyess' then World of Warcraft database Thottbot and the first massive spike in traffic to Wowhead. The coincidence is staggering, but also points to a trend which has irreversibly altered the gaming landscape, and society at large. Much as WoW players sought user-data-verified hard statistics on their MMO of choice, tech savvy individuals' astonishment and contempt for being asked readily verifiable questions reached a tipping point in late 2008. Confirming and corroborating data on WoW would in time become something accomplished by every player. LMGTFY would in time become a site even your grandparents might send as a slight towards a query. The genuine question 'where is Mankrik's wife?' was less the object of ridicule, more a target for sarcasm and eye-rolling as the naive were directed to Wowhead. With ever increasing databases and wikis, games and media in general have become less about a sense of mystery, more one of minutiae. Players no longer revel in not knowing, they would rather examine the entirety of a game's mechanics and lore and history with a finetooth comb.
My point in bringing this up is two-fold. One: Games have genuinely not been the same since players expected to be able to understand them inside and out at whim. Two: The Internet has genuinely not been the same since users expected others to rely on a corporate search engine, largely constructed (especially now) to deliver advertising rather than substantive content, to remedy their perceived ignorance. As Embracer Group, Microsoft, Tencent, Sony, Epic, Valve, Ubisoft, EA, and other megacorporations oligopolise the gaming space, so too do Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tencent, Joybuy, Alibaba, Twitter, Spotify, ByteDance, Baidu, Adobe, Block, and others reduce Internet diversity to a minimum. I can't act as if I knew the Internet of eld in its entirety, but a lifelong fascination with Internet obscura and history has me at least somewhat informed.
In my review of GeoGuessr, and corroborated by jobosno's review of Microsoft Flight Simulator, stressed was the importance of appreciating the non-place. So too does this apply to the Internet at large, and Hypnospace Outlaw itself if we wish. Not everything on the Internet is substantive or substantial, nor is every page on Hypnospace. We fall down rabbit holes of Wikipedia deep dives, we examine every page on Hypnospace regardless of its relevance to our duty. Duty and productivity and the confines of time and the constraints of life and gaming guide us towards Internet or Hypnospace use that is conducive to our end goals, but those detours persist as availabilities. In the real world, they dwindle as web diversity shrinks, as webhosts go offline, as swathes of the Internet go unarchives and unremember[ed/able]. In Hypnospace, their finite nature means we cannot search forever.
The Big Crunch theory postulates that at some point, the universe will cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might cease expansion, and will recollapse unto itself as all is returned to zero. To null. We will not go to website, we will go to keywords. That which is unadvertisable, incompatible with commercialisation will in effect go dark. In due time fewer and fewer spaces will exist. In due time, all will be one, and one will be none.
The Big Freeze theory postulates that the universe will never cease expansion, and will drift into entropy until all is returned to absolute zero. To null.
At some point, the Internet might expand infinitely to the point of unnavigability. In a web of infinitudes, all will be irrelevant and all will be lost as data becomes unable to be quantified on any scale. In due time, one will be all, and all will be none.
The unknowability of the universe renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
The unknowability of the Internet renders any theory pointless. We do not know what will happen. We cannot know what will happen.
Enjoy the Internet as it is now. Enjoy the Internet as it was then. Enjoy the Internet as it will be. Forever is it in flux, forever is it a stable constant. Forever does it all drift apart, forever does it all close in. Forever shall it be known and forever shall it be unknown.
We exist in a cosmic nothing of no import.
We exist in a digital nothing of no import.
Every atom in the universe is critical to its being.
Every byte of the Internet is critical to its being.
As a historian, I live on a periphery of data boundless yet intangible. I scour for that which does not exist, may never have existed.
At the end of Hypnospace Outlaw you are tasked with archiving a wasteland.
Archive our wasteland with the Wayback Machine extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/wayback-machine_new/
We exist at a time where unfathomable amounts of human knowledge are being erased from existence every hour of every day. This is not a deliberate book burning. This is an incidental blaze.
Save what you can.
What a beautiful thing we are a part of.
Seek the obtuse, obfuscated, and obscure.
A selection of webzones I have found and I enjoy:
https://geocities.restorativland.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20021215085602/http://www.u-ga.com:80/jp/games/mobile.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20070902163202/http://www.cbs.com/primetime/kid_nation/
https://web.archive.org/web/20050222012115/http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza/
https://prairieecologist.com/2020/01/13/finally-a-practical-guide-for-roadside-wildflower-viewing/
https://web.archive.org/web/20010118210000/http://www.l0pht.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20030207171752/http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,50875,00.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060314162213/http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-man/Pac-Games/PacManVR/pac.htm
https://www.geo-grafia.jp/product/
http://erogereport.blog.jp/archives/cat_87375.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20060515154050/http://users.stargate.net/~glshir/PLAY.HTM
https://dreamlogos.fandom.com/wiki/Dream_Logos_Wiki
https://web.archive.org/web/20150222012855/http://quitesoulless.com/story.htm
https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=Oi1qbcz2m2SnwUeztGYcnQ
https://web.archive.org/web/20030407094755/http://www.vernonjohns.org/snuffy1186/movies.html
http://www.poetpatriot.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229230522/http://symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/y2kgame.hoax.html
https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/camping-in-a-u-haul-they-are-cheeper-than-an-rv-and-better-than-a-tent.53919/
https://web.archive.org/web/20140803164736/http://theodor.lauppert.ws/games/
https://tss.asenheim.org/
https://jimedwardsnrx.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/pepsi_gravitational_field.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20130812175052/http://csbruce.com/tv/clone_high/
https://xercesblau.com/
https://www.walgreens2.com/peach-ring/peach17.html?fbclid=IwAR0iWWPkq0qf2kkYIVmUgL2pPuE1023aImBPnYuwmQXAxtyXNiElOnSDlVs
http://www.secondlivestock.com/
https://origamisimulator.org/
https://web.archive.org/web/20180818104057/http://underlinestudio.com/linesbreakingnewspaper/
http://blueteethnovel.tilda.ws/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170207203428/http://pacificitysoundvisions.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20120915100800/http://meryn.ru/portfolia/
https://web.archive.org/web/20130415230745/http://www.reddit.com/
http://www.woodswoods.com/new-gallery-5
https://web.archive.org/web/20120807153003/http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2010/11/minstrel-show-visual-art.html
https://glasstire.com/2012/11/23/the-ten-list-walk-as-art/
https://news.ourontario.ca/page.asp?ID=2910113&po=6&n=1
https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
http://1x-upon.com/~despens/teletext/
http://www.teletextart.com/
https://web.archive.org/web/20060411023755/http://www.gamengai.com/main.php
http://fullmotionvideo.free.fr/
https://www.amusement-center.com/project/egg/
http://retroblues.sakura.ne.jp/regeokiba/index.htm
http://msx.jpn.org/tagoo/
https://fm-7.com/
https://www.gamepres.org/pc88/library/frame1.htm
http://p6ers.net/hashi/
http://furuiotoko.la.coocan.jp/
http://85data.world.coocan.jp/
http://ayachi0610.blog65.fc2.com/
https://datafruits.fm/
https://www.catsuka.com/player/binge/
http://myduckisdead.org/
https://historicfilms.com/search/?
https://www.fontsupply.com/fonts/
https://contactjuggling.org/
http://www.t0.or.at/scl/agents.htm
https://archive.org/details/TheVistaGroup-TheAndersenTiltWashWindowStory1990s
https://cursed-commercials.fandom.com/wiki/Square_Butts
https://www.yygarchive.org/
https://news.nestia.com/detail/%E4%B8%8D%E6%AD%A2%E6%9B%B9%E4%B8%95%EF%BC%9A%E8%BF%99%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%80%E6%AE%B5%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E6%97%A5%E5%BC%8F%E6%88%90%E4%BA%BA%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F%E7%9A%84%E7%AE%80%E5%8F%B2/6267619
https://www.jacketsjunction.com/product/wikipedia-editor-jacket/
https://opendirsearch.abifog.com/
https://vimeo.com/729784691
https://ubuweb.com/
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/browse/2902/3D%20Images.iso/bmp/a
http://web.archive.org/web/20040405155729/http://www.mbnet.fi:80/apaja/alueet/
https://carta.archive-it.org/
Hypnospace Outlaw
2019
i had some mixed expectations going into this. on one hand it seemed not to my taste; i looked at the flashy geocities/angelfire era it was going for and was worried it would just feel like a kind of nostalgia pandering to me, seeming too over-the-top ironic with its cheesy autoplaying midis and brain-melting scrolls thru choppy 3d gifs. on the other hand i saw a great deal of sincerity and consideration in dropsy, a game jay tholen made before this, so i felt like i needed to look past my weird hangups towards its aesthetics, and a couple years later i felt like i could.
turns out i was way wrong and it easily surpassed the positive expectations i had from his previous game. not only does hypnospace greatly amplify the subtle worldbuilding and christian faith of dropsy, it sets that up with a more critical take on irony poisoning seeping thru the cracks as not representative of the whole, and this allows its own sincerity to shine through even more strongly. truly affectionate depictions of the most innocent cringe are interspersed with people's real flaws and sins put on full display: children's digital growing pains causing them to express themselves violently and angelically in ways we all recognize, old people's sweet prayers and sorrowful mourning are taken with their absolute inability to take in what the net throws at them with any nuance, creatives both humble and full of themselves do their best against the corporate sanitization that threatens their spaces. tholen and co's love for people and how they interact with the virtual world, combined with a frankly staggering attention to detail with those numerous interactions among many characters, is really something to behold. they made a character out of hot dad and gave him pathos.
there's a lot said about this game as replicating 90s internet and yearning for a time of more wild and unrepressed expression, before more entrenched social stigma and algorithms, but what drew me in to hypnospace was the feeling of how little things changed at their core. it understands that pining for "the good old days" can be blinding, and goes to great pains to make clear that it wasn't all that pure in many ways; what's mourned is that its problems were only superficially cleaned up rather than compassionately solved most of the time. the cliquey conflicts and cruel mockery and cynical capitalist machinations in the background in hypnospace just felt like blunter versions of whats still here, well after 2000. yet there's some resemblances of naivete and sincerity and love that still exist in the net too, no matter how small it must feel, and the game wants you to understand your own self and others in the here and now through those moments. try to forgive the faults of all of us as individuals on the web if you find it in you, including yourself, because it's y2k that let us down.
turns out i was way wrong and it easily surpassed the positive expectations i had from his previous game. not only does hypnospace greatly amplify the subtle worldbuilding and christian faith of dropsy, it sets that up with a more critical take on irony poisoning seeping thru the cracks as not representative of the whole, and this allows its own sincerity to shine through even more strongly. truly affectionate depictions of the most innocent cringe are interspersed with people's real flaws and sins put on full display: children's digital growing pains causing them to express themselves violently and angelically in ways we all recognize, old people's sweet prayers and sorrowful mourning are taken with their absolute inability to take in what the net throws at them with any nuance, creatives both humble and full of themselves do their best against the corporate sanitization that threatens their spaces. tholen and co's love for people and how they interact with the virtual world, combined with a frankly staggering attention to detail with those numerous interactions among many characters, is really something to behold. they made a character out of hot dad and gave him pathos.
there's a lot said about this game as replicating 90s internet and yearning for a time of more wild and unrepressed expression, before more entrenched social stigma and algorithms, but what drew me in to hypnospace was the feeling of how little things changed at their core. it understands that pining for "the good old days" can be blinding, and goes to great pains to make clear that it wasn't all that pure in many ways; what's mourned is that its problems were only superficially cleaned up rather than compassionately solved most of the time. the cliquey conflicts and cruel mockery and cynical capitalist machinations in the background in hypnospace just felt like blunter versions of whats still here, well after 2000. yet there's some resemblances of naivete and sincerity and love that still exist in the net too, no matter how small it must feel, and the game wants you to understand your own self and others in the here and now through those moments. try to forgive the faults of all of us as individuals on the web if you find it in you, including yourself, because it's y2k that let us down.
Second Life
2003
I took a college course titled "Creative Writing: Virtual Worlds" expecting to have a hyper-focused class dedicated to writing about augmented reality and shit like The Matrix. Turns out, it was a class where the students carried out assignments in Second Life.
The first rule of the class was that Second Life was not a video game—it was just as real as your "first life." Upon my birth in this virtual world, I was lost and confused. I entered the nearest building to my initial spawn. My eyes were assaulted by a collage of genitalia. Mirroring the myriad *** before me, the walls were closing in. I felt myself gasping for air. Luckily, I carried over an attribute from my first life into my Second Life—the power of flight. Clipping through the ceiling, I narrowly escaped my **** riddled demise. I was late to meet with my class at my professor's estate.
As I sat in my chair sideways, legs out through the hole in the arm, my professor called upon me. "BongoMan27, are you paying attention?" My friend from outside the class I had snuck into her domain, presently standing six meters tall with his face in the window behind her, staring ominously into the farthest reaches of my soul or lack thereof. From this point forward, she told the class about her hobbies. The most noteworthy hobby came in the form of rescuing animals. The professor then asked my friend and fellow classmate if he owned any pets. He went on to discuss his two dogs and cat that his family had. As he concluded sharing, the professor told us that she, too, had dogs. "Here comes one now."
A virtual dog model spawned into the room.
The first rule of the class was that Second Life was not a video game—it was just as real as your "first life." Upon my birth in this virtual world, I was lost and confused. I entered the nearest building to my initial spawn. My eyes were assaulted by a collage of genitalia. Mirroring the myriad *** before me, the walls were closing in. I felt myself gasping for air. Luckily, I carried over an attribute from my first life into my Second Life—the power of flight. Clipping through the ceiling, I narrowly escaped my **** riddled demise. I was late to meet with my class at my professor's estate.
As I sat in my chair sideways, legs out through the hole in the arm, my professor called upon me. "BongoMan27, are you paying attention?" My friend from outside the class I had snuck into her domain, presently standing six meters tall with his face in the window behind her, staring ominously into the farthest reaches of my soul or lack thereof. From this point forward, she told the class about her hobbies. The most noteworthy hobby came in the form of rescuing animals. The professor then asked my friend and fellow classmate if he owned any pets. He went on to discuss his two dogs and cat that his family had. As he concluded sharing, the professor told us that she, too, had dogs. "Here comes one now."
A virtual dog model spawned into the room.
System Shock
1994
Playing this for the first hour is like using Donkey Kong bongos to beat Dark Souls until the end when you've become a literal transhuman cyborg both inside and outside the game.