This was an exercise of multiple types to me. One as an exercise in creative writing as I went through multiple styles of writing throughout the chapters. It is not to make it incoherent on purpose, but because that is the way I felt that day after the events played out. Most of the early chapters were written a week or two after the fact, collecting all memories and compiling them as I remembered, but as I got closer to the end, things started getting extremely serious for me, and that is when it became a therapeutic exercise to me. After the extremely stressful events of the day, I would come back home and express my raw emotions in writing, much of it were so raw that reading them afterwards, I feel like I would have edited a lot of it out. But I wanted to leave them there because I wanted to record what I actually felt, even if it was what I felt just for a moment, because of the things that I was made to go through. I was being true to my self of that moment. Even though in a more “cool” and “calm” state of mind, those thoughts might have sounded off. I went through the whole thing and corrected basic typos, and then some editing, but later, I felt like too much editing would make it feel manufactured, as this was less about being correct, more about being true.

At first I wanted to write this because felt that it would be educational for others who I know are like me, the thousands of Indians from India, coming here for MS in US, and then trying their luck as they ask themselves everyday the question of what is going to happen to their future. I feel that everyone asks themselves the question, if they are going to immigrate to U.S.A or go back home, a big life decision such as that is never known to people for certain until they have lived for many years. I wrote the story initially thinking it would be helpful for such people to understand the process of buying a house in U.S. But then it became more about asking yourself if you really want to settle in U.S permanently or not. What kind of questions come up about the future when you try to do things in U.S. Many might just fly past such events in their life, never worrying or thinking, but I somehow cannot ignore them, I need to acknowledge the inherent conditions of being a possible-immigrant and then make a conscious decision from knowledge.

I feel like not highlighting specific parts of what I have written because I feel everything had a meaning and purpose, I however, do not want to define what it was, I have a solid understanding of what I meant, but I feel that people will regardless find a meaning that they see in what I wrote. So it is vain to try and express my explicit intent unless requested.

I wrote the last parts of the story with the most amounts of passion, the middle part with the most of amount of detail. I want everyone to read everything, but I wrote it in such a way that they can avoid reading most of it, it was always a hard decision to give people the option to jump around. Writing thousands of words giving an option for them to not read is a unique feeling. The other part of me always wanted to just delete everything and never post it, as it felt it was the most personal writing I had ever written. It was a challenge, and I am writing this even before I have made the story public, only because I feel like automating everything so that I don’t feel like I am putting it out there myself.

It is very long, most people may not even reach the end, I loved each and every part of it, I feel the final parts have the most influential things for people like me, however, it is all hidden behind words, it will be a challenge for someone to get there. It is the part with extremely passionate writing; about the corporeal harassment my Lending Bank made me go through, because of their incompetence and my being. This was the part which was written each and every day after coming back home and dealing with the multiple trials that the bank put me through. Every day I felt like it was the final passage, ended it and saved, but every next day I had some new development, it was like the series of events was never ending, not leaving me, not even until the final day.

Internals of The Third Year

On the technical side of things, it was great fun for me as I got to play around with Twine and use my webdev knowledge to make it work like the way I wanted. I wanted to have many more technical features, things that would define the rate of heartbeat on the bg based on how “tense” I was, defined by the variable “tense” that would change dynamically based on the passage that was currently being read. Many more ideas like that, but I concentrated more on the actual writing than the code writing. I did find Twine documentation lacking and it’s javascript/macro system confusing in it’s implementation. There were multiple bugs with css3 compatibility in there too. Those were the things that consumed most of the time, for some things that used up a lot of time, I defined my own template (ReeJo a modified Jonah) and added stuff to that instead, much quicker and cleaner. I wanted my thoughts to be separated from the regular flow of text, and as I get multiple thoughts, they overlap. Making it difficult to read, making it as cloudy as my mind would be. Some thoughts go away after I go through them, some always stick to my head, hanging there, reminding me, I will always have those doubts.

I wanted to put in multiple BGMs, especially a different one for the final part as the tone is drastically different, but chose not to because of the time constraints and priorities. The chosen BGM slightly speaks to that part too in a way, so I did not feel bad about leaving it the way it is. However, the BG pic transformed, an extremely neat and clean, clear, hi-res image when I first started writing, but a lossier image later. Only because when I started, everything looked hopeful for the better, but later clear-yet-not-as-clear-as-it-seems described the whole ordeal better for me. Also, it decreased the file size, as many people that I will be sharing this with would be Indians in India with slow Internet.

Many people trying it out will also be first time “game players” I wanted it to be as reader like as possible, as less confusing as possible. That’s why the first passage itself is meant to teach them that each link takes them to a different part and continues the story further.

There are many more conscious choices I made in writing everything that was written, the intermingling of my conscious and subconscious created a melodious mood within me that helped me write every day and get through the things that were happening. I contemplated every day if the purpose of me writing was complete after I had written it, as writing it was what provided me with comfort. I contemplated if I should post it to the world outside, now that it is complete, or just stow it away in my eternal digital draft desk. Somehow this had made it to the outside world (I hope) and I hope it is at least a little bit helpful to anyone who reads it, if not, I guess, it is as good as never publishing it, which I am fine with anyways.

I have so much more to say about this, but will only if requested, so if you have read it, and have something to say about it, please let me know.

http://reetesh.v3r.us/thethirdyear

2014 was very different from the other two years. There were fewer Ubiktune releases, fewer Game Music Bundles and seemed like most of the artists I usually follow were now busy in bigger, longer projects. So I found myself exploring more and more of Bandcamp and Soundcloud. As always, all these may not be music released in 2014, but these are the ones that this WEastFellow experienced in that year.

Most Influential – Calum Boen

By Most Influential, I mean the artist that influenced my music choices the most this year. If the universe were me, then pop music of the year 2014 was defined by this person’s taste. Came across him few years ago, via surasshu and others who would tweet about his music. Soon started following his two feeds, it’s like two personalities, one is the experimental pop music artist and the other is the videogame composer. He shares a lot of tracks on his @boenyeah feed. Many of them Japanese, most of them things that blend in with my tastes. After listening to his tracks multiple times, and then few other current artists, noticed that there seems to be a common style (not labeled yet) that is emerging. The style where the remixes or tracks contain very familiar sounds like winding toys, this “hey” cheer, spring squeaks, kids cheering/mumbling and what not, all of them usually bringing forward a cheerful and playful feel. I would definitely recommend checking out and following his two twitter feeds, and his discography. The latest album he did was for the Lovely Planet game (which BTW, was developed by a studio in India). So you could say Calum Boen could very well be a WEastFellow too, haha. Out of all the artists that I found out because of Calum Boen, I think tofubeats stood out the most. Especially this one track from them.

Trend (Fad?) of the Year – vaporwave

Much like many others, I totally got into, then grew out of vaporwave in the span of a year. Now vaporwave is not vaporware, unlike The Phantom or The Last Guardian, it is something that is out there, not something that no one knows if it exists. Just listening to more than one vaporwave track will immediately explain anyone what it is all about. It is old TV commercials, it is low-fi synthy tracks, it is abstract album arts and it is videos that look like they’re recorded off VHS. All remixed to give this dreamscape like feel. Most of the ones I found were Japan influenced, and all of them were pretty fun to listen to. Many times the vocals are super slowed down in an attempt to create a surreal feel. You can read many pages out there on the origins and meanings of vaporwave, but much like anything else, it is what you see it to be for you. It was good while it lasted, I think I might have overdosed on it a bit, nostalgia is gives such a good high so easily that it is basically like cheating. The album I liked the most of all was this video over here, and I would say the favorite track was the first vaporware track I listened to.

Awesomest Album Art – El Huervo

.​.​. Where You Must Rest Your Weary Bones

I was listening to my old collection from the first nubuwo (now, The Ongaku) bundle and one day I noticed the tracks from El Huervo in the Instrumental Pack. I started liking them a lot and then went to their bandcamp profile, and was surprised to see their art style! El Huervo, Niklas Åkerblad, from Sweden has a knack for both music and art. Their style and colors are really good, the album title and album art go hand in hand too.

Most Completely Cool Album –  Samurai Champloo OST

In 2014 I finally started watching a lot of stuff from my long Anime backlog. One of those shows I got to was Samurai Champloo. The title suits the show in every way. The story with a mix of cultures, Samurais and Hip-Hop, supported extremely well with an equally good soundtrack. This blend, champuru if you will, of West+East really went well with this WEastFellow. The story elements and everything were very memorable, and then came the soundtrack. Even after I finished watching the show, I kept listening to it for the longest time. Giving me a nice rhythm to whatever I was working on or doing at that point of time, also setting the mood right with flashbacks to the moments of the show when a certain track played. The range of emotions in the album varies from really mellow to very upbeat, with a little bit of playfulness in between. Tsutchie, fat jon and Nujabes and others did a really good collab with this soundtrack. Worth Checking out, totally.

Mixiest Mixtape – Drive Slow, Homie

After listening to a lot of Samurai Champloo OST, I went on to look for more stuff by the artists, I found many tacks by nujabes (and about his early demise ) and then thanks to YouTube’s algorithms also found out about Ta-Ku. Ta-Ku did a set of 25 songs, one song every night in memory of nujabes, a very honorable way of paying respects. Soon I started listening to more of Ta-Ku and the tracks that stuck to me the most were his “Drive Slow, Homie” mixtapes. I cannot count how many times I have listened to Part II and III of these mixtapes. I’m very close to having the whole order of tracks imprinted in my mind like the mixtapes I used to listen to back in the days. The mixtape contains few remixes which are of the similar Squeaky-Spring Hey style as boenyeah and others. It’s like next to vaporwave, that style was the most common one that I  came across as I browsed through the internet, scraping for bits for my ears last year.

Blast From the Past – Amiga Days

Last year, elmobo, The Artist Formerly Known as Moby, released an album with remastered tracks (and original .mod files!) from his Amiga days. Amiga Style music, created “back in the day” with a style current to then. Which in thought does feel different when you consider that many people look at current chiptunes as a “throwback”. Slowly people are moving away from the notion that chiptunes are “8bit music” or basically meant to be something for people who remember playing Mario. People make sounds using chips that are older than them now, some make excellent tunes with no baseline references to older stuff. It’s a really interesting thought to ponder upon, so referring to albums like these is a really good way to compare, contrast and come to your own conclusions of the evolution of chiptunes. There are many artists on bandcamp now, who are uploading their back-catalog of old game OSTs and creating fresh new music. It’s nice to see original artists are also finally finding new motivation thanks to the rise in popularity and commercial viability of the kind of music they know and love to make.

In addition to elmobo’s album, recently there was a nice article at NestHQ showcasing some of the old Keygen tracks. If you were in the Eastern Hemisphere in the 90s-00s and were using computers, you most probably have a good idea what I am talking about. NestHQ got help from my favorite internet label person C-Jeff (Dmitry Zhemkov) of Ubiktune in tracking down some of the tracks and covering some first hand history of keygen and demoscene hay-days.  Check out the complete article & setlist at NestHQ!

THE Song – Man On The Earth

I found this one from Calum Boen’s twitter feed. Difficult to explain why or how it stuck with me so much, it’s all like all variables had the right coefficients with this one. I heard this track right before I was leaving for my Japan trip #ReePan (a 2week backpacking trip, something I’ve dreamed of doing since I was kid), and it pumped me up for the upcoming trip. I was planning on visiting countryside hilly areas and roaming around in the morning mist and the setting of the track looked exactly like what I had in mind. I then went on to actually go to places like the one in the track and had the track playing in my head as I roamed. Now after the trip, whenever I listen to the track, it is instant teleportation. The track by itself is pretty playful and innocent. So innocent that it is a bit cheesy if you look at it with a different mindset, but hey, I’m not looking at it like that Hmm, watching the video right now… it sure fills me up with cheer, the feeling that I was actually able to do that thing that I always wanted to do and I actually did it and it was not a dream.

In Conclusion

Artists I’ve talked about in the previous years kept being productive this year too. coda continued his RSS feed with the same dedication as always, Aivi & Surasshu are working on Steven Universe full time (and got engaged!!). Yoann Turpin had some really good albums and WMD kept making more moody and nice stuff. Overall 2014 had been a very varied year, with lots of fishing around for different types of tracks. Looking forward to another music filled year! You can keep tracking what I share at my This Is My Jam, Last.fm and bandcamp profiles. Maybe, from the next year, I can just make a mixtape as an end of year roundup. Sounds like it could be fun! There are so many more tracks I’d have loved to mention.

EPROM

In the next entry, I get reminded of how much I liked using smileys back in the day, Haha (well, some habits do not go away I guess xD ) I always thought that smileys help in conveying emotion whenever typing in conversational tone. No matter how well written, interpretations can be many; the smiley helps in cutting down on those a little bit. Now that smileys and emoji are so much more common, they are reaching that point where even they can be ambiguous or cause misinterpretations. Well, whatever it is, EMBRACE THE SIMLEY!

This post recollects my fun times playing co-op 8-bit games with my brother, our quibbles and such. I also mention Felix The Cat, which I think gave me one of my first meditative experiences playing a game, just relaxing and enjoying, not chasing scores.

Me, My Bro, in those Glorious days.

Well , we meet again. In this entry I would like to describe the special moments that I had while gaming in 8 Bit.

 I was actually very little (2nd grade) when my NES came to me, I and my bro always played together, as he had to set it up for me, and mostly when one played, the other watched and commented. My bro was a very good COMMENT-ator (if know u what I mean;)). He always would say “go this way, that way” and such things when he was watching, kinda like a back seat driver We instantly started with our 64 in 1 and enjoyed all games in it. Mario, as what u would expect, we liked very much and played a lot of; discovering all the secrets from the climbing bean stalks to the legendary one up tortoise

Awesomest Football game till date!

We would always play all the games with 2p, in 2p and CONTRA was what we mostly played in 2p (initially). The musics and SFXs are still stuck in our minds, even all the boss fights. We used to fight when one would die and immediately the other would take up the others Medal for an extra chance (usually me, afterwards saying, “ah I forgot”) I can say we played almost all the Contras ever made and completed all the NES ones. The thrill of finishing a game in one sitting is gone now a days. Other 2p player games that we enjoyed very much was TMNT3 which even now as I type I can recollect the sound effect of hitting BeBop continuously till he blinked red. We would fight together, one facing in each direction and clearing every one, but again fighting for the PIZZAs. River City Ransom and Double Dragon are also unforgettables. We also played Street Fighter, Twin Bee, WWF Steel Cage Challenge in 2p. Ah not to forget GOAL3! We saw that game somewhere and we were able to find it after many years when I was in 9th standard and we played it a lot. It’s a good Football Game with all those River City Ransom (type) characters with all fire kicks and such things, which was quite exciting! (no football game has matched such fun factor since then, all are Super REALISTIC now a days)

We fought over in many 1-Vs-1 fighting games, Co-Operatively planned and played Co-Op games. To mention all the 6-7 years of it is almost impossible.

Now onto my Single player ventures, I usually played NON-Horror games as they spook-ED me out those days, and I asked me bro to play games like Ghouls and Ghosts (I don’t remember the name), the one where the guys armor came off when he got hit and he had to save his girlfriend. The music was also very creepy. Not to forget JURRASIC PARK where in the intro the dinosaur opened its jaws and would salivate It’s music is one of my favs.

Such relaxing music and setting here.

I, of course, completed Mario that was most proly the first one that I completed and then there was FELIX The Cat which I like very much. The concept of the game itself was nice and all the characters were also very nice. Even years later, all  of it’s musics are completely stuck in my brain. The stages in that all were very unique, sometimes I played only to get to some 7th or some stage where there was a boat stage which bounced very nicely and the next stage with snow. Now that’s called re-playability.

I liked Terminator2 game also very much (it’s the movie that I have seen the most times and NEVER got bored) The first stage was all exciting with jumping in synchronization to the Music, neither me nor my Bro could ever get past the third stage where the truck followed Terminator and we had to run in a bike, the truck always crushed us near a point.

I just looked at my collection to see what to say about next, each game reminded me some moments of fun and joy. But Its hard to recollect almost everything in one sitting. I will jump to the later stages of my 8-bit gaming and conclude it in the next entry which will surely come soon (not like the previous ones).

Kudos till then and have a nice time

CD-ROM

 Well, one thing did change, I now put a space before starting a smiley! For some reason, never gave a space between the previous word and start of a smiley. Also, I think I mean  Adios, not Kudos in there, haha. We always called the Koopas in Mario as “Tortoise” as they were more common than Turtles in India. That Ghouls and Ghosts game is Ghosts ‘n Goblins in case you were wondering. Next to smileys, I really liked abbreviating You to U.

EPROM (Editor’s Prologue to ROM)

Editing this time was a bit more hands on. It is really difficult to decide what to change and what to not. I both want to archive my exact writing style, so that it records how I progressed over the years, but also want the first read of the post to convey the message clearly. Even though the edits are still minimal, I feel it’s good that there is a link attached to the original post too, for “unadulterated childhood”, hah. I use Shift key for capitalization and there are so many stray and unnoticed shift presses in this post. I guess it was because the speed I would type at was faster than my thought. It’s an interesting exercise, editing things I myself wrote.

This post is about how I and my brother got our first glance at 8-Bit video games in 1994-95.

Ooh.. 8-bit Video Games!!!

Now I will tell U all about how I came to know of the 8-Bit video games and how much I enjoyed them.

Note: cassettes= cartridges.

When we first moved to Haryana (a state in northern India) I and my bro were 6 and 10 years respectively and we made two new friends (they were brother and sister). On the first day after we moved there, they invited us to their home for dinner. Before the dinner started, the parents were talking and we got to know each other. They showed us this THING. It was a VIDEO GAME (even though we had an Atari, we used to call 8-bit video games as Video Games and nothing else), and to add to that, the one they showed us was a SPECIAL one, the very first video game we saw was special, their TV could play Video Games!!!. They had to insert the game into the back side slot of the TV and there was a Wireless Game controller!!!! Since there is no such thing as Nintendo here in India, everything that we get are custom made variations of the original things. The first game that they showed was “KUNG-FU”, it was that game in which there was one-on-one fighting and we were the character with the red pants and we could jump and punch and kick. Whenever we punched the character would say something like “ku-Ku” and it was very catchy. Then they showed us MARIO and other games, because of which we immediately fell in love with it.

The “Ku-KU” game.

After we left them, at home we were saying “Ku-KU” again and again and then we decided to buy a Video game. We were first on a search for something just like the one we saw at our friends’ place, their TV name was CROWN TV, but after many days of searching it was not found. One night when our father was returning from a business trip, we saw him coming with some big box in his hand and it was a VIDEO GAME!!! The one he bought was a console model and the company was the Official video game maker of the nation “Media” company. (we did not know all these then)

That day we set up the video game and started playing the whole day, every console used to come with its own free cassette with 99999999 (no kidding) games (actually it’s just around ten and their multiple variations), but since ours was some special packing, we got the official Media 64 in 1 (separately purchased but only available in that place) which is like a LEGENDARY cassette in INDIA, there are many other 64 in 1s, but none as good as this.

I will fill u all in some details first. In India the 8-bit games are the standard and everyone who owns a video game owns only these, a video game cassette costs more than a PS2 game (last time I checked, Ps2 DVD=Rs.65 Video Game cassette= RS.150 or more) and then some cassettes are of different price than most as everyone knows the value/rarity of these 8 bit games. Every cassette comes with more than one game, all cassettes (cartridges) are custom made by some person and mass produced. Instead of one game in one cassette, usually there are more than 5 games in one. Lower the number of games in one cassette, higher the price (4 in one ~Rs.350!!). There are many games which are of different names but same game with different variations, for example, there is a version of Contra which has 30 sub-games, and we can select any stage and have any permanent fire power.

There are different brands of Video Games yet none is different from the other. It is a really different world here, any other info wanted? Post in comments, and the entry about how we enjoyed 8-Bit gaming is next

CD-ROM (Comments Discussing – ROM)

Cartridge as a word was not commonly used until it started referring to the thing you put in inkjet printers. Everyone called the media you put into the consoles as Cassettes as audio cassettes (not “tapes”) were the most common form of media back then. These cassettes were the size of Famicom cartridges, not NES. The console that we got was called the Media WhizKid, very well made and I think we still have it. The variations of games were what you would call now “Rom Hacks”. The cover arts for all these games on these 5-in-1 etc. cassettes would be vary drastically from the original game. They were Atari 2600 cover type artistic renditions. Games would have different names from their official names too. Just google for the images and see for yourself, haha. It was a market full of mass produced hacks, A TV that has a Famicom slot and has wireless remote control to play the games? In 1995? Nice frontier for experimentation with stuff. Many cassettes also had Chinese names on them, so I guess there was a lot of reverse engineering going on in India from Chinese imports. A very interesting world, more on that in the next post!

Editor’s Prologue to ROM (EPROM)

My memories of my childhood, from my childhood. Reetesh’s Old Memoirs (ROM) will be a series that archives my auto-biographical posts from my GameSpot community days.

It has been close to 10 years since I started writing blog posts at GameSpot about my gaming (life) history, and I decided it’s high time I archived it. With most of my personal history on the internet fading away as portals decide to delete forum and blog posts while transitioning to newer software, I started thinking of maintaining a personal record of everything, in my own personal space.

I will be re-reading all of these for the time since I posted them. It will be a nice personal exercise too, as I see how my personality and writing style changed over the years. I will make careful and minimal changes to the original post, so that it stays true to the original character I wrote it in. Will also link to the original post at GameSpot so that you can read it in its original form. In its later stage, the series was selected by GameSpot community staff to be highlighted in the community “Soap Box” whenever I had an entry. This meant it was showcased on GameSpot’s home page. There were around 50 comments on every post, and it brought up interesting discussions every time I posted; made many friends that way too. All comments were purged in the recent GameSpot transitions, which was also one of the main motivations to start moving it here.

Each post in the series recaps the experiences I had with a particular generation of games in my life. A Generation is a chronological division based on major shifts in my personal timeline. Posts are mostly about expressing how much games defined my childhood and shaped my future. The first post in the series talks about the Atari 2600, I did not have any idea of the games’ names when I posted it, friends who saw that post later informed of the names.

The Beginning

After so many days , I at last got the chance to write my journal, I wanted to start it by telling about my “Life in Gaming” till now. So the first chapter begins……

I grew up (and still exist) in a place where the only thing that people (90%) know when it comes video games is 8-Bit video games. No one even plays video games here (at least as much as I do) and no one even knows what a PLAYSTATION is. In the Beginning years, I and my brother were the only people who were so much interested in video games but since the past two years gamers are increase here too( though only PC gamers). Anyone who owns a PS2 or any other current gen console, keeps it for show and to says that they bought it for big $$, they play them with the first set of games that they got when they bought it and rarely buy new games. So this is the place where I live. I would like to start with how I got so much interested in games, and how much they mean to me.

I had a video game console at home even before I was born. It was an Atari 2600 that my father bought for my elder brother. It was a special one since it had 200 games built-in. I can say that I started playing games from the age when I was able to see things and co-ordinate my hands and really play (age 3-4). We had two joysticks for that, and my brother would always set it up with the TV and show me how to play.

I still remember the first game in the system, it was some aeroplane thing with refueling stations through which we had to go to not fall off. Then there was the escalator and police-thief game. When we turned on the system the games would continuously scroll and we had to pull down a sliding button (Reset) to make it stop at that game. Selecting the game itself was a challenging thing.

The See-Saw game for Atari 2600

The games that I liked very much were the see-saw (teeter-totter) game where the other person jumps and we had to make him fall in the other side of the plank, and so on and so forth. Then there was the Bowling game (featured in one of the Button Mashing episodes), the Tennis game and the game that we called TOM BOY, which actually we found out last year is Pitfall.

Now comes the most interesting part. The system was played through joysticks (like the aeroplane things) and when we played all these, we were little kids (I was very little). So what happened is that, when we used to play the games, I would get hyperactive, like in the see-saw game if the person is about to fall I would push the joystick hard (real Hard) making it loose or cracking it and all that. Then my brother says to be careful with it and I say yes and the same thing happens again. There was this another game where we had to pull the big block backward and hit the small dot and make the

dot reach the destination. I would always pull it back hard and push the joystick hard so that the big block would hit it hard and WHAM! the Joystick broke and the dot moved like an inch or something, my brother was

Golf? More like the Block-and-dot game!

like “NO! THE JOYSTICK BROKE” and I was like “NO! IT DIDN’T HIT IT PROPERLY” (what can I say, I was a little boy :P) and when my brother played, he pulled it back slow and hit the ball and it went way near the hole, and I was amazed how he did that without hitting it hard.

From there the breaking started. The tennis game made a joystick break (by me of course), the see-saw game and many other times. My brother only broke one and it was the one that I spoiled earlier and he was playing with it so that I could have the better one (my dear brother :D). The bigger part is that these joysticks were available nowhere in India, our father worked abroad so he used to bring a new pair every time

Some other interesting points are that when we wanted to play a particular game we had to wait for it come and if we failed to stop correctly we had to like wait another 200 games for it to come again it was a very tough job (a game in itself)

This was our Atari2600 Era. I and my brother played in till the last joystick coming up in the next entry will be our great intro to 8-BIT GLORY..

Thanx for reading my journal’s first entry. I finally got my summer break (7 days ) and am going to fulfill all the things that I wanted to do in the forums, and can anyone help me in naming those games so that I can add them to my collection:?

Game names were told to me By Guuthulu. Thanx Friend

Comments Discussing – ROM (CD-ROM)

All those games whose name I did not know were River Raid, Keystone Kapers, Circus and Miniature Golf. Haha, I would have never thought that the block-and-dot game was actually golf. I was not aware of the concept of golf at that age anyways.  Also, my brother is still the same awesome person as he was back then

This was the first time ever I got to buy a console at launch, so I got myself a PS4. After the initial rush of playing the launch games, I spent most of the year playing the free games that came with PS+ and making use of the Netflix, Crunchyroll streaming apps. Then came the release of basically the most hyped game in a long time, something that just felt to everyone like it was supposed to change the face of gaming even if they never explicitly said that in their marketing campaigns. I had a $25 off coupon at Dell.com and decided “Hey, why not?” and got the game.

Dell shipped the game, but it reached me the day after release. I only received the game one day after release but everyone else on my friends list had already gotten to Level 10 and above. I started off playing the game solo, and played all of the Earth and some Moon missions solo. At this point, I was playing the game just like any other FPS game, trying to play one level after the other. If you know one thing about Destiny, good chance is that you’ve heard how bad it is at explaining itself. Just like the main protagonist who is just resurrected from the dead and put into this world they know nothing of, you are just shoved into the world and shown all these things with little to no explanation. The mission selector shows you various places you can go to, it is very open ended, no chronology. I ended up selecting the mission that had a difficulty level closest to my character’s level.

Quest For Destiny, All Alone

Facing off hordes of Enemies, every mission is a stand off.

For most of these, the level of my character was one level below the recommended level for the missions. I was playing these things alone, and at this point, I began to realize that the game was not made to be played alone. Of course it may dynamically change the number and difficulty of the enemies on screen based on how many people are currently playing it, but the vast expansive levels and their design where you have to travel along really wide but isolated areas gave a real feeling of helplessness. Even though I was able to complete the missions, knowing the fact that every mission I will be facing hordes of enemies as my robot friend tries to decrypt something, just did not sit well with me. Unlike many other games, Destiny just lent itself to being deconstructed right at the start; there was not much to do in those missions. There was no way to pause the game or even delay the respawn; if I kept dying in the final wave of enemy hordes, I could not wait and take a breather. I had to either abort the mission or just keep trying.

This just made me think about why I was even playing the game. The lack of cohesive story and the repetitive nature of missions made me question myself. I told myself for a while that all I had to do was level up by playing some free-roam missions or PvP, but soon the whole point of playing a different part of game just to be able to play the “required” part of a game felt like nuisance to me. I joined some of my high level friends at one point, hoping that I can hop on and enjoy. I saw them fighting a horde and tried to revive them, but then as I revived them, they started dancing, soon the game restarted from checkpoint. I saw this happen more than once and then it struck me, they were doing this just so that they could gain experience easily and level up. I also joined a friend shooting at the infamous loot cave. This was basically my first ever introduction to “grinding” in a game. I’ve been playing games all my life, I have probably done some grinding before, but have not come across anything that felt so devoid of soul as those examples. I could not see myself just shooting at stuff so that I can gain experience, and all for what? So that I can shoot some more?

I am the type of person who plays games mostly thinking that I will 100% it and then not replay it ever, and this game was basically taking me out of my comfort zone, making me play the same levels, telling me that 100% does not mean anything as most of the things in the game are randomly generated anyways. At this point it was more or less clear to me that this was just not meant for me to play all alone. I started telling myself that I could be completing so many story-based SP games in the time I spent grinding in Destiny, told myself that even my job never felt as chore-like like Destiny was feeling right now.

We have come up with various origin stories for this ominous tree.

Ones In Tune With Their Destiny

I was ready to trade my game in, and then got an invite from a friend to play the game. We ended playing for 5 hours. This was the same game that I was thinking so strongly of trading in and now I had spent a good part of my Sunday just sitting there and playing the same missions again with someone else. None of the missions felt anything like they did before. All we did was chit-chat and comment on the game, and we were pressing triggers and moving sticks as we did that. I then decided to give Destiny another week.

This time I found two other friends to play with, and have played most of my Destiny missions with them. Majority of the time we spent complaining about how the game was not fun and was trying to change anything that seemed remotely fun and why the game made no sense and how the lore was all put in the apps but not in the game. We played for over 10 hours this weekend and we did all kinds of missions and activities in the game, ranging from hunting rare trophies to playing with huge balloons in Tower.

At this point, every time I played it, I no longer felt any of the feelings that I felt playing solo, and it felt like the game had some redeeming qualities to it too. I soon began to realize that Destiny was making me play my first ever MMO without directly telling me that. The only aspects of it that I started liking were the aspects that could have been experienced playing any other MMO. However, the biggest thing was that Destiny went out of their way to tell people that it was not an MMO, but in fact, this is nothing but that. The messaging of Destiny has been such that it is everything that Bungie has explicitly said it is not. The Players and Bungie are indeed defining Destiny together, Bungie defines Destiny as everything that is not what it’s players define it as.

Where Am I Headed

A Symbol to question existence.

However, playing Destiny has made me question a lot of things. All my life I’ve been playing games, wanted to play them, and keep doing something with games, not just play them. Now that I have the time to actually sit and play games the whole weekend, playing only one thing whole weekend, where the whole game is self-perpetuating, made me question why anyone would play a game such as this. I recently spent time completing all cups, all gold in MK8, questioning why I was doing it, every lap I drove around in a loop. Ended up telling myself that it was because it is “fun” and it only takes 15minutes to play a cup and I end it with a sense of satisfaction. Destiny is very similar but more than giving me any kind of sense of satisfaction, it only made me feel like I could be playing so many other, better, games. I could be playing games that have an interesting story, nice set pieces and don’t just involve shooting hordes and hordes of enemies one after the other. However, I still keep playing it.

I’ve purposefully kept myself away from games like Hearthstone because I know that I will like the gameplay, but it is an endless game. Even if I am having fun in that fleeting moment of deciding victory, I will at the end of the day end up with just as many games in my backlog, and with lesser time. Feels like even if the games can be fun, just fun is not enough. Or maybe, fun is just enough, but I don’t want myself to get addicted to the endless high of having only-fun that will never be satiated once one gets a taste of it. Maybe it is a way of exercising self control. Maybe I am limiting the experiences I have, so that I do not end up limiting my experiences by playing only that one thing that I have now chosen not to play. Maybe I should keep playing Destiny, because I keep waiting for “the right time” to play anything else from my backlog and it never comes. Maybe having an endless supply of menial game tasks will bootstrap my urge to play other games.

Everyone has a reason why they play games and what they want out of it. I seem to have lost the plot somewhere, and all I know is that I want to play games, and get a sense of satisfaction out of it. For the time being, the biggest sense of satisfaction is, missing. I will keep playing games, and ask myself why I do it and what it is that brought me here. There are so many experiences within this year even, that gave me this great sense of satisfaction and cerebral pleasure. But Destiny, did a good job of making me question the futility of anything and everything.

I have only one Story mission left. I see my friends playing. I see BestBuy is still offering $40 for Destiny Trade-In…

Spoiler Alert: The following post will contain spoilers for Naruto (Manga Chapter 661), Attack on Titan (Season 1 Anime) and Gurren Lagann (Complete Anime).

The one’s fallen in despair. source

Let’s start with the Moon’s Eye plan in Naruto that was revealed almost 2 years ago. As the chapters progressed and the-man-behind-the-man-behind-the-man, Uchiha Madara once again explained the details of the plan and his reasons, it brought forth the always existing ambiguity of “So who’s the Bad Guy?” that Naruto series has made the viewer ask multiple times. Uchiha Madara and the first Hokage, Hashirama Senju, were friends as kids and they both wanted there to be peace and harmony amongst humans. Hashirama thought that there would be a way to achieve that by making people talk to each other and destroy the hatred among them. Madara, through his life’s experiences, thought that no matter what happens there is something within in humans that will always make them hate the other and fight, hence creating an endless life of conflict, death and misery. These two opposing views created the biggest divide in Naruto-verse and went on for centuries.

Here come in the details of Madara’s plans, he plans to cast a huge genjitsu that will will project itself from the moon and make it such that all humans are controlled by Madara’s will and he will make it such that no two people hate each other, and there is no more fighting in the world. When this spell occurs, all humans would be in a vegetative state with their minds trapped in genjitsu and thinking of themselves as living a happy life. Of course, the Manga doesn’t go too much in detail by telling what would be done about aging and population etc etc, but the basic idea is that Madara has fallen into despair and thinks that there is no future for humans because the very fact about humanity is that there will be a continuous conflict among groups, no matter which angle it is seen from. He forms a group of destructive people, Akatsuki, just to reach his goal of preserving humanity, he (and Obito) “gives up his humanity, to save humanity” in a way.

Naruto, the hero of the story, believes what Hashirama believed. First of all, the fact that all humans would be vegetative and not have free will is basically “loosing humanity” and that it would not be a life worth living, is as good as death. He has Hope for humanity that they can fill the holes in their heart by finding friends and love, and in such human compassion, is where eternal peace is found. He does not have a solution to how he would stop all the deaths and fighting, what he believes in is that with love and hope, humanity will find it’s answers as time comes. The Second Hokage also says a similar line in Ch 661 where he retorts to Madara that he “wants to dream” and that is what humanity is, not the dreamless, lifeless solution that Madara has thought up of.

The Titans, They Attack.

All Humans, united.

“Humanity” is probably the most used word in Attack on Titan, it is clear from the start that the show is going to be way more raw with it’s theme and message, compared to Naruto . The basic premise is that all of humans on earth are now living among three concentric circles. The Circles are huge walls that have existed for a long time and the class-hierarchy of the population goes higher as you approach the inner circles, with the center being where the top politicians and leaders live. There is a line that Commander Dot Pixis tells the hero, Eren Yeager, something of the sorts that long ago humans roamed the earth freely, there were no walls, but all humans were at war against each other. He says something on the lines that there was one line of thought, that claimed that if there was a unified enemy to fight, all humans would set aside their differences and fight that enemy and would be at peace with other.

The premise is very similar to what Madara is planning. The Moon’s eye plan, similar to the plan to keep all humans among walls, reduces the freedom of humans, instead of reducing humans to a vegetative state, humans are reduced to mere cattle in Attack on Titan. This is where the Eren’s ideology starts to form, he thinks that humanity is about being free and roaming the earth and crossing the seas, conquering mountains. Waiting inside the walls, like cattle, just waiting for the Titans to break-in and eat people as food is not acceptable to him. There are many forces within the walls who think what they have right now is the best possible solution and that they should make the most of it, and that Titans attacking and eating people is just the price to pay for a comfortable life they have rest of the days. No matter how much in-fighting within the organizational structure of the Walls among the politicians, military etc, everyone still thinks that their enemy is all that is against Humanity, i.e., the Titans. Even here, many realize that their way to fight for humanity, is by giving up their own humanity. Armin and Eren seem to realize that very soon. Also, Mikasa starts off by falling in despair but finds a friend in Eren who fills the void in her and gives her hope.

This is basically a starting situation where despair had won, seeing that humans will always strive to expand and conquer, someone who had a despair filled view like Madara probably executed the plan of the Titans and the Walls so that humans would find a way to be self sustained and not reach the potential of imploding onto itself.

The Spiral Drill of Humanity.

This is all we have…

Enter Gurren Lagann, a story that starts off very similar to that of Attack on Titan, all humans are living under-ground, there are only few who even think of imagining a world outside, a world with no roof. Kamina and Simon are the heroes and they are seen dreaming 0f an outside world. The leader of the village is similar to that of the politicians of the walls in Attack on Titan, he suggests that they stop thinking about going outside and enjoy what life they have here underground… live there and die and always live in fear of earthquakes.

Right within the first episode, Simon and Kamina find themselves going to the top after a fortunate turn of events, and then they learn that at the surface there are Titan-like huge Mechas that kill all humans that are visible above surface. Their purpose and reason is not understood at first, just like the Titans, only thing they do is go around and kill humans. Eventually the heroes reach the main King that is controlling all these Mechas ordered to kill humans, and they defeat him. He leaves them with a warning that once the number of humans above earth increases over a million, the moon is going to do something.

Through a series of events it is revealed that the moon was programmed to be like a monitor that would check for the number of humans above the surface and all humans would be eradicated once it is observed that there are more than a million humans living. Now begins the phase of the show where questions are asked and the characters try to understand why there would be a force that wants to kill humans.

The way the show reveals it is by saying that humans are a type of species that carry the SPIRAL within them, it is in their DNA (double-helix etc). The spiral tendencies in them makes them want to keep conquering and expanding and changing with the world, which means that eventually they would engulf the whole universe and this would make the universe implode on to itself and remove everything from existence.

The Human spirit (spiral) instinctively strives to reach for the heavens, nothing can stop it…

The only force that can push-back this innate urge to grow within spiral species is “fear” ( as explained by the anti-spirals, etc). In order to emulate this fear, the Spiral King created the Mechas and cultivated humans inside the earth, so that they could be preserved and not be wiped away like the anti-spirals intended. Making the Spiral King an indirect good-guy, but one who had fallen into despair by looking at the eventual future of the world as explained by the anti-spirals. The Spiral King basically created the Walls of Attack on Titan, he was that guy who had this view that containing humans in confided space and limiting their growth through fear of life is the way to save the world.

They eventually reach the main anit-spiral villain who explains that they were also a spiral species previously, they had realized that the only conclusion of this would be that all life would cease existing. What the anti-spirals decide to do is to go into an eternal state of meditation and stop their growth permanently, while leaving one of their highly-realized beings alive along with automated machinery that would keep tabs on the spiral species of the world and prevent any outbreak.

The Hero of Gurren Lagann, Simon, learns to live from Kamina, whose views are very similar to Naruto or Eren. “Pierce through the heavens with your Drill” is what Kamina always hoped and aimed for, which is basically a way to exemplify the urge to expand and grow and not be limited by any boundaries. However, Gurren Lagann is the only one of the three series that is actually complete and the way it concludes is by Simon giving a very conclusive statement, a statement that exemplifies his Hopeful view on Humanity. He Says something on the lines of:

“Humanity keeps expanding and growing, and it keeps changing, we are not now what we were 100s of years ago, not what we were a minute ago because we chose to keeping soaring to the skies with hope to evolve. Hence there is no limit but what we set ourselves.”

He believes that the constant growing and changing nature of Humanity will overcome whatever problem it will face, when it faces them, a very hopeful outlook. It is similar to what Naruto says to Madara, also is what Eren wants.  Imagine walking on a spiral path, where at every step you think you know where it leads to, but after every step along that path, the endpoint changes. (similar to a reversing car with fixed steering angle). This is how Simon claims that change is the only constant and why he believes in constant evolution and has hope. He calls out the despair filled view as something that is the anti-spiral’s limitation, and not something that it should enforce on others.

Change, the only constant.

All these major series have Humanity and it’s future at the crux of it all, it could be because that is what is in the mind of most creators, or it could be because the masses find solace in looking for hope. When shown in a way that they are more aligned to (anime or manga) they perceive it way better than being say, forced to think that way. Gurren Lagann is filled with pseudo-science explanation for almost every supernatural thing that happens in it. More than it’s silliness, it shows how well even the most magical can be made to seem logical. At some point it all might start sounding like some religious doctrine, but the shows try to communicate the theme of Humanity, the pros and cons of Hope and Despair by sprinkling them with familiar anime goofiness and impossibilities. All three of them also try to show the evolution of human communities into forms of government (The elders of Konoha, Elite of the Walls, Rossiu’s new government), fundamentalism (Adai village, Worshipers of The Wall) and their internal problems. It’s like they are trying to show their audience something, all the despair that exists and how to find hope, all for Humanity and it’s future.

I felt that this year 2013 was less diverse in terms of the new artists I discovered, but it was interesting nevertheless. Ubiktune still remained one of the top sources for music that I enjoyed, and I used bandcamp a lot to find out new music. Then of course there are the Game Music Bundles that come out periodically and shower awesome VGM goodness. I also created a twitter list that I put all the music people I listen to, most of them are active on twitter and share a lot of interesting things from the VG Music world. Discovered a lot of music through their recommendations and tweets too. Other than those, I listened to a lot of older music and radio this time around. This was also the year when I could tell who the artists of a song were by just listening to the instruments used, which surprises myself every time I am correctly able to do that. I also found out that there are quite a few VGM podcasts out there, but because most of my music listening happens at work and I prefer not having people talking straight in to my ears when working, haha. Maybe I will start listening to some on my commute this year, but there’s already like 30 hours of podcasts queued up on my phone right now, so maybe sometime later.

Soothing/Inspiring album – Motorway by Fearofdark

Released towards the end of last year. I really got in to the album this year, and so far this has been that album which never fails to set the mood right whenever I listen to it. The selection of instruments and their melodic sways make me want to go on a drive in moonlight. The album was made when the artist was still in their teen years, and the album was made in recollection of their transformative year of moving from home and starting at a University. That mood of going on long travels and new beginnings is definitely felt in the album. I still listen to it every now and then and it doesn’t fail to feel fresh, every time.

A Very Sega Album – SEGA SWING by The Flight Away

I often choose to listen to tracks without vocals, as I mostly discover new things at work and prefer to have them speak to me with their music than words, to understand which I require more concentration. This small album was featured in one of the Ubiktune posts earlier in 2013, which as the title of the Album suggests, consists of SEGA of tunes. The whole style of the composition and vocals also feel like something that would have released during the Sega Genesis days. I see the vocals being used as a melodic instrument in this album, hence could enjoy them even as I work away coding and thinking. One of the more refreshing and unique sounds from this year. There are varying styles to the songs would highly recommend checking out all tracks at least once.

Most Moody Album – Melancholy by WMD

For those quite afternoons, and for those times when I want to set a contemplative mood, or for just when I want to feel a different kind of tranquility, I found myself listening to Melancholy by  WMD. The breadth of emotions expressed in this album is very impressive, then comes the fact that it is by someone who is 17yrs of age. The album has 36 tracks in total, which includes a cover here and there too. As is the point of this post, I felt like this was worth sharing, so that more could see what variety of talent is out there.

Interesting Theme Songs:

Both not necessarily from this year, but tracks that I heard for the first time this year. I don’t  get to hear original and new “Theme Songs” being created now a days, but the ones for Noise Channel and Gun Godz had very anime/cartoon-theme song vibe to them. The Gun Godz theme feels just outrageous and funny to me, it’s either a smart parody of adrenaline pumping gun games, or just a plain good celebration of obsession. The Noise Channel, celebrates noicechan and her digitized tastes with a very fun vocaloid track.

YouTube Channel I listened to the most – Pogo by Nick Bertke

Found myself at various points of the year, especially towards the end, listening to the Pogo YouTube channel a lot. This channel is filled with trip-hop tracks from all your favourite childhood franchises. The style of cutting small clips from various pictures and then stringing them together to make a harmonic song is pretty impressive. Nick Bertke, the artist, also got to visit many localities thanks to funding from fans etc which allowed him to create some original works too. This is one of those good examples of youtube popularity leading to a nice self sustaining career, he even has a video about it.

Favourite Track – The Path of Machines by C-jeff, Danimal Cannon and Raz Ben Ari.

I really love prog-rock type music. Which is how I found Ubiktune in the first place. C-jeff released a new album this year, Big Steel Wheels, which is a themed album that to me sounds like the adventures of a trucker traveling through the barren roads, then meeting an adversary. The whole album is definitely worth a listen, however, my favorite part from the album is the 9minute long collaboration between C-Jeff, Raz Ben Ari and Danimal Cannon. This tracks embodies a lot of things that I like about progressive music, the track by itself feels like a complete story. It doesn’t fail to impress me whenever I listen. It’s not that I go out looking for long tracks, but this one is definitely one of the well composed long tacks I came across.

Honorable Mentions:

Instead of just creating new categories to give a specific mention to all, I would rather direct you all to my “This is My jam” profile, where I regularly share the music I listen to and like. At some point in time, I might just shift to their “Jam Odyssey” feature as a recap of the songs I do. I already always used to look at my Last.fm profile to recollect on all the music I listened to, and This Is My Jam feels like a more curated recap of what all I heard. Artists like Joshua Morse, chibi-tech, DJ Cutman, Yoann Turpin, coda, Blitz Lunar, Calum Bowen had some really good creations this year, I shared theirs and others work as and when I was listening to them at This Is My Jam. Go check it out, it’s a great way to share what you are listening to, and to look back on your music journey! Check out my Jam Odyssey of 2013 to get a taste of all the sounds!

Superest Duper Album of the year – The Black Box by Aivi and Surasshu

Black Box from Aivi and Surasshu was such a great project released this year. The album follows the story of Aivi the archaeologist and surasshu the eternal being that comes out of the Black Box that Aivi discovers. Diana Jakobsson also created a small comic series as a prequel to what happens before the story of the album. The album itself, with help from it’s track titles creates a lovely story. I listened to the album so much that at one point I was seriously considering writing up a narrative inspired by the tracks in the album, but much like every other thing I think of a lot, it ended up being a draft that never published. There is so much resonance between the two artists that their Piano and Chip music amalgamate wonderfully into a melodic treat. They even covered on of my all time favourite track. Seeing two artists that I like, collaborate, and then cover a song that I also like, was a great thing to experience. The album also got remixed by DDRKirby(ISQ), which itself is worth a listen. Aivi and Surasshu also went on to work on the music for new Cartoon Network show Steven Universe, which is a pretty awesome!

In Conclusion, this year was pretty fun for music too, there were a few late comers to my music playlists, like the Gone Home OST ( A very 90s melodrama soundtrack with 100% nostalgia inducing factor) and Risk of Rain OST ( very varied soundtrack with nice influences ) which I didn’t too much to yet to have a firm opinion on. Artists also maintained their defining traits, surasshu kept sharing a lot of new music and fun stuff on twitter, coda continued to be very dedicated in music making (He recently released an album by completing compositions on his 2013 OHC ). I got to play a bit more games than I did last year, still did not play many games that I wanted to ( and which have good OSTs). There is always so much stuff out there to experience and learn from, and here’s hoping games, music and everything that our mental self consumes, continues to invigorate us in 2014.

Everyone tries to follow a code of conduct, this code defines that person, the actions of that person are guided by the rules in their code. This is like the playbook/rulebook, this in reality can be an actual book (religious text) or an internalized set of rules that the person learns through direct input from others, various experiences in life. The main goal of this code is to reach a satisfactory end state. Simply put, let us consider a very basic understanding of Hindu philosophy of life:

1. Do your Dharma (Guidelines for being a good person).
2. Gather good Karma through your actions performed in your lifetime.
3. Attain Moksha (the ultimate satisfactory end state where you are not reborn).

This is very similar to how games are designed, you have a set of objectives you are given in a game (do good, stop the bad people etc), you follow those rules and do things that will eventually take you to your goal (save the planet, end the game). Now if you believe the outcome was already set or was something you made yourself achieve is up to you. When you play a video game for instance, even if it is something as simple as Super Mario Bros. where you are jumping from one corner to the other and collecting things… it might seem like everybody is playing the same game (starting their life at 1-1 and ending the game), but each and everyone is experiencing something unique in their journey from the start till finish. People play by different beliefs (save the princess, collect the most coins, complete it the quickest, etc etc) and people end their game at different stages. Which is of course, just like life. You are given this world, a life, and a certainty of it’s end… what you do in that journey and how you spend your time is defined by how you play the game. You play the game as long as you are alive, try to achieve satisfaction.

Meaning of living, search for reason.

One who already tries to follow a set of rules handed down by generations, if it is very abstract, can use the playbook to find a goal for their life… a Raison d’être. It can get tricky, as time changes the equation, makes life more complex… things like centralized governments, economic systems, technology, all of these and others change the way of life. Which makes it difficult to find one’s purpose and meaning if they were to follow the same rules. The game itself is alive and plays with our lives.

Do you want to meditate away, attain Moksha? Or do you want to become the world’s richest person? Do you want to be famous? Or do you want to grow old with a life partner and have a family? It’s the eternal Banjo-Kazooie problem, if you have 5+ types of collectibles you can collect in a game… what do you do? Do you just play the game and complete the story like you have been doing all along since the old days? Or do you 100% the game? Do you want to collect only few collectibles? Then which ones and why? Understanding what each of those collectibles give you and then evaluating what is actually is worth getting in your lifetime (playthrough) becomes a complex and tedious exercise. You can hand down information to the next generation (New Game+) and they can figure out what to do with that information. If you have friends who play the same game and share scores/achievements with them, will you still be satisfied just by completing the game and reaching the end state? Or would you want to have a platinum trophy by the time you complete the game? As time goes by and things get more complex, one’s understanding of what it means to achieve the goal also needs to be studied. You can still be happy just going through the game and completing it, but it is you who must find what satisfies you. Do you need the new wants?

With so many to choose from, which one to collect? (source)

In a world with so many choices, you either get mad at all the choices and feel disappointed at the end of the game (bad review scores) Or you can try to carefully dedicate time to finding what it is actually that you are built for, what you can do, and try to achieve those goals (collecting orbs in Crackdown). Find out for yourself, what makes you reach a satisfactory end; Satisfaction could be your own personal achievement (collect all coins and reach the end) or make your journey good for everyone sharing the world with you (complete NPC quests).

The Games that TV Play.

A game is designed and played in a way analogous to how we live, the game-life relationship is also apparent in other media. A good example for these themes is from the two biggest TV shows I’ve followed this year. One being Game of Thrones and the other being The Wire.

Game of Thrones is about a world where it’s powerful people play the “Game” of thrones, where in a sense of accomplishment is achieved when the throne of Westoros is in their possession and the one on the throne has achieved their goal through the journey of their life. Let us look at some characters from Game of Thrones and their rules of the game:

• Tywin Lannister: Maintain high position and leave a powerful legacy.
• Daenerys Targaryen: At first just wanted the throne, now want’s to liberate the suffering using her powers, eventually reclaim the throne.
• Tyrion Lannister: Just wants to play the game and stay alive, keep the people he likes alive.
• Ned Stark: Rule by moral code and ethics of Righteousness.
• Littlefinger: Rise to the riches and gain power.
• The Red Lady – Melisandre: Get as many to believe and follow her One True God.
• The King Slayer: Lost a physical piece, but found mental peace and probably a code.
• Jon Snow: Stay alive and avoid Extinction.

“Play function of the living, but is not susceptible of exact definition either logically, biologically, or aesthetically” – Huizinga

As you study these characters you realize that all of them are players. They have been given, or found on their own right, a code that is compatible with how their body-mind is designed and what their life experiences have taught them. They’re all trying to get to their end condition; they are utilizing their privilege and conditions surrounding them to achieve what they believe will leave them with a satisfactory end. If their journey were to end before those goals were achieved or they see their goals being crushed in front of them… their end would not be satisfactory, hence failed at the game.

 Next let us look at the The Wire. A TV Show that is very much grounded in reality, many things shown in this show can directly be equated to real life. It is very clear that The Wire tries to tackles one industry at a time, looking at everything in a Drugs-ecosystem-centeric manner. The Drugs system is so closely analogous to a Game, so much so that the actual terminology colloquially used is “Game” and “Players” not just in the show, but in real life too. Following is an understanding of various organizations, systems, represented on the TV Wire as seen thorough the “Game” looking glass:

Drugs Scene :

Game: Dealing drugs, acquiring corners, making a name, getting rich.
Quantifiers: Deaths, Money, Risks averted, Keep the Family close.
Satisfactory End: Most Corners (Avon), Notorious name (Marlo), did what you do best, make dealers pay (Omar)

Most people are born in to the scene and forced in to The Game… the ones that go up high, are the ones who can deal with all the killing and risks involved in it. They learn the rules of the game by studying what happened to others before them (which they experience as they go from hopper, hustlers to kingpins). Some either follow the ones before them (Avon Barksdale), or change the rules (Stringer Bell). Different players have different stats, some are support class, like Chris and Wee Bay; Some are the soldiers, like Bodie; Some are thought leaders, like Stringer Bell and Proposition Joe. Everyone has their own skill set with which they play the game. Knowing their place, and living their life. Many know their journey will end soon, but they identify their end goal and live life such that whenever it ends, there is no disappointment, they are ready… for they have conviction roles they play.

Playing the same game, but with different rules.

Police Department:

Game: Numbers Game
Quantifiers: Stats, Position, Cases cleared.
Satisfactory End: Good Stats (politicians), Climb the ladder(Carv), Retire with good pension, Quality Police Work (Lester, McNulty, Cedric)

Politicians need to show good numbers to the people to create a good image, which forces the whole department to “juke the stats” . This is done because the whole thing is run as a numbers game. A complex concept that is difficult to understand is converted into a single quantifiable number that when presented to the general public will create a perception of progress. There are people like Cedric Daniels who cannot and will not juke the stats and like good quality work, so that actual visible difference is achieved in the quality of life of the people. Freemon want to Follow The Money, so that there is end an to corruption, which according to him will fix the whole big picture. McNulty fixes a target and wants to get them to justice, makes it a cat and mouse game and tries to end it. Everyone is part of the game, but play it with their own set of rules that aligns with their mentality.

Education System:

Game Objectives: Numbers Game
Quantifier: Students passed, overall grades, specific course grades, Year-over-Year improvement.
Satisfactory End: Funding is maintained, is Autonomous, Get’s the most possible students to pass.

With only one thing in mind, that is to get paid and keep the schools open so that their livelihood is safe, the teachers find a way to “game” the system and teach students using a method by which they are able to pass the exams with good grades. This is done so that the school reaches the required numeric quantifier that the government requires to keep the school autonomous and provide sufficient funding. The basic values of the educational system, which is to educate the children attending it, is given up. This happens because it is difficult to put values on things like “learning”, “getting better”, “having a good time”. When a committee defines a set of quantifiable variables like “grade”, “school average” and the like, they defer the rest of the thinking to people lower in the hierarchy to figure out. The people lowest in the hierarchy are the ones actually getting the education and they get the worst outcome as they do not have a way to make things “easy” for themselves.

The committee makes it easy for themselves by just setting a few quantifiers which they want individual schools to reach. The schools observe which subjects are making it most difficult for them to get to that desired value and make all the teachers teach them. The teachers just follow the Question banks and teach them to the kids so that the students get good grades, through which they are seen as good teachers. In the end, the students trust the teachers and the system and assume that they are getting what people are supposed to get at school. The students can in turn try to make it easy for themselves by trying to skip school or waste the time they are in school by just fooling around.

“Play is a culturally and socially specific idea” – Mary Flanagan

Think of this like a stealth game, you try to play the whole game by trying not to alert any guards, but the game/level is designed so poorly that it doesn’t allow 90% of the players to complete it that way. Once you realize that the game is very difficult, you just choose the path of least resistance, you run straight through the level and maybe alert a guard, but then you maybe use the tricks of the game and run blindly to the next room, because you know the alarms will reset. Players mostly do this in action games too, say you are stuck in a room with very powerful enemies, and you try to defeat each and every one of them, be it Quake or Megaman, there will come a time when you will just run straight through the level because you tried a lot and you just can’t take it anymore, no more retries, no more days of trying to understand what the teacher is teaching, and just skip classes and reach the next level by hook or crook.

The Gamified World

There is a recent surge of “gamification” for each and every thing you can think of. It sounds like a cool new word, but it is basically what aforementioned School, Police etc systems were doing. It’s like the points system for a driver’s license. It’s like the credit system attached to a person’s SSN, it’s all the same. The basic motivator is to obfuscate work by assigning some points or rewards to each activity. This when applied on a smaller scale makes sense, for a limited number of times. A seal might get a small fish and happily clap it’s flippers for bouncing a ball off it’s nose, but giving a positive or negative point to an employee where the end game is deciding the security of their job and livelihood, the stress can get to people. People will start understanding it for the game it is, and play with the system and find ways to achieve it’s goals without caring for the rest of the things that cannot be quantified.

Everyone wants to ‘get money’, so who cares where it came from? I have the infrastructure and people to get the money. – The Wire Season 2

We need a Pulitzer, so who cares if it is not completely factual? I have the grammar and skills to right a really emotional story. – The Wire Season 5

I Play therefore I am.

When playing a game, the game over screen indicates that you are out of the game. People do not want to be out of the game, if the game gets really tough, you either find your own rule set to play it by, take the path of least resistance, suffer for how it treats you for being ‘different’ or you can quit the game and find that there are other games to play (drop out of school, change jobs, change countries, etc etc). But it is the fact that a person is playing a game that makes them feel alive. Playing a game that they want to play makes them feel happy.

Assume the trees and the rocks, water and planets. All of them do the same thing over and over again; governed by the rules that they have been given, they do their thing. Trees grow from seeds and then die away. Rocks just… stay there. Water flows, and the planets rotate-revolve in their orbits. These are the things that we consider non-living things. These are the things that are the Non-Player-Characters of the world we live in. They are not considered alive because they cannot play or participate in the game called life. Similarly a human living a mundane life feels as if they are a zombie, the living dead. Hence every human tries to find their meaning in life, find something that makes them happy and try to play the game and achieve it. It is an endless challenge that keeps us going. It is lead by the desires set and programmed within us.

Planets, non-living things, do the same thing over and over again.

Assume a game with a world where the NPCs are just walking forwards and backwards in the same linear path set by the programmer, think of them as the thing that says the same piece of dialogue again and again. This is a “bad” game because the world of the game does not “feel alive”. Imagine something more advanced, where pedestrians take a cab, discuss their daily life and go about doing things even when you are not caring for them, this game is said to have a “Living-breathing world”. This is how we see things, something that is living and breathing is something that gives us the notion that they are participating in their own game and doing their own things. With their free will.

A MMO game is generally considered good when the game as designed by the designers is inhabited by multiple players and their activities organically start deciding how the game’s future is shaped, if it were a game where only the designers set the rule and it is not something the players like, it fails.

We live in a world that currently exists and is defined by the players, who like the game of defining the rules, it will be an eternal struggle for the ones who want to play the game of living and the ones play with the lives of the living. Many are forced to play the 9 to 5 game devised to keep people occupied and turning it into a game of highest difficulty level to find their own game to play. The whole world is a game, everyone alive is a player, which rules do they play by and why do they play it, that is the eternal pursuit until the game is over.

As I played through the game, every mission struck to me as a well structured Object, of a Class Mission. I’m sure Object Oriented/Modular Design appears in many forms of engineering and sciences, being a programmer myself, all I could see was Objects, Classes and member functions. After finishing the game I was left with this itch to try and reverse engineer the game design just through game play and get an understanding of how a modular approach might have enabled the Team responsible for Driver San Francisco to create such a polished experience.

I’ll try and describe these using some custom pseudo-code notations that would make for abstract reading. Now lets take a look!

Following is a basic class for all the optional Missions. These are all those little dots on the map, that could very well have been randomly generated.

So many that they’re almost auto-gen!

 
Class Activity{

var activityType; //possible values [ heart_beat, race, crash, police ]
var reward; // Willpower rewarded
var timeLimit; //placed according to type.

//Given a Starting pointA and an Ending pointB, based on the type of event, the route can be generated.
function define_route(var pointA, var pointB);

// Then there would setters and getters for the values of every variable.

}

One of the distinctive features of the game is that there is a lot of dialogue in any given mission of the game. There is a pattern to when each of it is said, which gives a look at how the Class MissionSpeech would have been structured.

Class MissionSpeech {

// This was probably the most used structure in the game.

var initialConversation;
var randomBanter[];
var directedDialogues[];
var sidewalkComment;
var damageComments[];
var finishComment;

//setters and getters

//A specific dialog from directedDialogues is called at a fixed percentage of route completion for every mission.
function direct_dialogue_at_percentage();

//Similarly there would be other functions that echo the sidewalkComment for a mission when driving on a sidewalk, etc etc.
//These things happen in every mission hence easy to spot out.

}

Class StoryMission extends Activity, MissionSpeech {

//Story Missions are similar to a basic Activity on the map in every way, they just have their own Speech/Dialogues in addition to the basic activity.

}

So on and so forth, the structure of  Driver: SF can be broken down into Classes (of course, there is more to it than what I exactly gave in here). This basic structure is interesting to me because it helps in explaining how and why the most noticeable parts of the game felt very polished. All the game Director would have to do, is make sure that the characters involved in a mission are made to say these extra bits of dialogues. Once you have the artists in the recording booth, they might as well say 10-20 lines in addition to the cutscene, which will feel like less work, but add a lot of polish to the game as a whole. Whenever I heard those sidewalk comments, and the same banter at the same section of a mission (thanks to timed missions and multiple restart) this kind of Encapsulation was visible.

The Object Oriented Game Design approach.

It felt like this whole approach extended to the design philosophy behind the game too, which created this resonating feeling of uniformity throughout the game. Let us look at it this way, if we consider the actual Player of the game as the seed:

Class PlayerActions {

var controller;
var playerCharacter;

function control_player_character(controller);

}

We have the playerCharacter (John Tanner) who is controlled by the player (You). A player (You) can then in turn as a playerCharacter (John Tanner), control various nonPlayerCharacters (Ordell, etc) who are inside vehicles in the game. This can be explained as.

 
Class TannerActions  extends PlayerActions {

@override
function control_player_character(controller){

}

//Tanner Specific Functions

}

The playerCharacter jumping to control a nonPlayerCharacter

Tanner can essentially do everything that a player can do, here Tanner’s “special power” of controlling different nonPlayerCharacters acts as the controller for Tanner’s playerCharacters. The playerCharacter for John Tanner is a nonPlayerCharacter for the game’s player (You). So basically, the game can be explained as Tanner himself playing a game… not realizing that he is being controlled by an actual player (You) outside of the game!

This kind of Inheritance and Encapsulation also helps in explaining one of the better missions of the game where Tanner is being followed by a thug ( Ordell Williams ), and Tanner controls both Ordell and himself at the same time.

Think of it this way

Class OrdellActions extends TannerActions {

@override
function control_player_character(controller1p){

    super.control_player_character(controller1p); ...
}}

Not technically, but theoretically, you can explain it as Tanner calling an instance of OrdellActions within his control_player_character() function and the control_player_character() of Ordell is configured in such a way that it calls the same function of the superclass with the same controller parameters (both turn left, etc at same time); which is a possible scenario in most Object Oriented Programming avenues. This kind of approach allows the designer to create a moment like that final Ordell Mission where Player -> Tanner -> Ordell -> Tanner is possible!

Player within a Player.

Interesting Twist: Now think of it in such way that there is one more layer of abstraction, which the player inherits. This would be the designer! The designer can be seen as the player who is using the game as their controller! The playerCharacter for this designer is the Human Player(You)! The designer then uses their game design skills and the game’s narrative to control_player_character() by obfuscating everything that is going on, via the game’s design!

This way the general flow of control in the game can be described as something that goes like this:

Designer -> Player -> Character -> NPCs

So when you are playing the game, you are in a situation similar to that of Tanner and the NPCs.

1. The NPCs don’t know someone’s controlling them but Tanner knows.
2. You are controlling Tanner but he doesn’t know.
3. Via the game design, the designer is playing with your perspective & beliefs but you are not aware of their existence!

In Conclusion

Hats-off to the designers, developers and everyone involved in the game. It was most certainly one of the more enjoyable and interesting racing games that came out recently. In addition to enjoying the game, it was able to spark this idea inside me to sit down and write this thing. However incoherent it might have turned out to, It sure was fun tying to get the idea out of my mind and into writing. I guess I could draw up some diagrams and lay these out in more polished and sensible manner… buuut, I’m not writing for anyone or a paper for publishing purposes, so I can choose to be a bit lazy