The Patreon Letters - September 16, 2017

Hi friends, M here for another installment of the Patreon letters. I've been very deep in a Final Fantasy hole right now, as I try to get the jump on our October game club game (we're ahead for once and September's episode is already in the can!) and dig into Final Fantasy X. Because of that, I'm not really overflowing with things to talk about, so instead you get the Introspection Hour. I will try to keep it entertaining.

We're coming up on the fourth year of doing Abnormal Mapping. We've covered a ton of games, which you can find on our games page, and we're not even close to scratching the surface of things we're interested in covering. From the jump, I wanted to create a site where we could compress time into our experience with a thing in the now without losing context. I think we've done that well sometimes, and other times we've really whiffed it. But looking at things here, nearing our anniversary, I think we've really reached a good place with that goal. We're doing it. We're going to kill nostalgia.

Without losing context is what's important here. Very early, in episode 2 or 3 or something, we played Link to the Past. Jackson had never really touched Zelda. I wasn't quite as sharp with my critiques of things as I am now. That's a very Core Childhood game for me, something I know back to front and used to replay regularly when I was young and games were more scarce. Because of these two things, it's not a great episode.

In the intervening four years, I've played a lot more games, and my tastes have moved kind of outside the scope of old Nintendo games. Jackson's gone back and played the old Zeldas, and replayed LttP with the context of the two games before it and the underdog portable title that released shortly after it. We could have that conversation about Link to the Past now, and it'd probably look much different. I would still love it, but I'd be more receptive to critique. Jackson would undoubtedly like it more, though I know for a fact they'd be mad if I didn't let you all know they vastly prefer Link's Awakening. And hey, who doesn't? It's a much cooler game. 

What happened isn't that we've radically changed as people (I don't personally feel that's super relevant, though arguments could be made), but that we've constructed a framework where we have so much more context for games we've played and discussed and explored. I went into Abnormal Mapping the JRPG, shooter-hating, Nintendo otaku person. Jackson went in with the experience of Xbox and some indie games under their belt. We had the same willingness to put up with things that were wildly outside our comfort zone to tackle doing this show right. 

We've played so many games I thought I'd hate. I was so scared Planescape: Torment would baffle me with its intricacies and new sensibilities. Instead it opened whole new worlds for me. I played DOOM and suddenly understood the appeal of shooters, a playground I can dabble in more and more and find worth and value in where once I'd just see nothing. I went from having trouble with WASD to gleefully playing Wolfenstein 3D and FEAR within the past year, and enjoying both on their own terms, because I understood the framework of shooters as they evolved design wise, past my prior experience with enjoying GoldenEye and then not touching a gun game until Bioshock a decade later. 

Jackson threw themselves into suffering for fun by playing Mario a continue at a time for months, starting from SMB1. That was years ago now. Just yesterday, they finished Super Mario 64, and because they'd played that, and because we'd struggled through Crash Bandicoot, and because they'd dabbled with games of the 90s they were literally too young to live through, they got it. Not that Mario 64 is good, because it is, but how strange and incredible it was to have these vast 3D playgrounds as Nintendo took their first actual swing at 3D games and literally defined a genre overnight. They will never have the memory I had of tracking down a demo kiosk in early 96 to see the game in motion, marvelling at how it could possibly be real, but they can appreciate its place in context as well as anyone because of the framework.

There is infinite games coverage, and we lament loudly and often how new release focused it is for a lot of reasons. It sucks because it assumes finances most of us don't have. It encourages constant consumption and hot takes. It drives everyone into the most popular chutes to feed player bases that line the pockets of corporations first and—if an indie game pops out along the way that catches enough notice—independent creators a distant second. But even more than that, it deprives games of a history and this framework in favor of whatever the PR talking point is at any given time. It's why every games outlet on earth can render an incredibly nuanced opinion on this year's call of duty but casts the latest Yakuza game off to the novelty bin, or assigns the latest CRPG to the freelancer who specializes in 'those' sorts of games. Without the understanding of games as a wide ecosystem that you can just float between with a working knowledge of the general landscape, people become used to their self-prescribed borders and blinded to anything outside of their narrowing definition of home.

Nostalgia is the trap of defining that home based on what you've played before. The framework I speak of can be driven by the same novelty that allows gamers to pick up a new game every two weeks from a store, but you can use that compulsion to travel down the roads you've never noticed before, or head into the neighborhoods you've only heard about, and visit the restaurants you pick almost at random, content that you'll be fine because you know yourself and you know how to learn and experience. Revisit the games of your childhood if you want, but do so to grapple with them with the experience of an adult, to put to bed the things you loved and use the things you gain to apply them to newer, unexplored spaces you might not have otherwise considered.

That sort of self-assuredness with games is actually very easy to come by, and cheaply too, and can free you from the tyranny of FOMO and PR cycles if you allow it to be the motivating factor in your gaming life. You'll grow. You'll become smarter about playing and thinking about games, and if you miss most of the Assassin's Creeds and Far's Cry because you're just done with that style of game in favor of the new things, maybe your life will just be better for it?