I’m going to go off on a tangent and write about critically-acclaimed Canadian author Douglas Coupland. I’ve been reading quite a bit of his work lately, and it seems to be rather hit-or-miss where my tastes are concerned.

The ones I really liked:
The Gum Thief
Eleanor Rigby
Microserfs

The ones I found a bit meh:
JPod [1]
Generation X
Life After God
Hey Nostradamus!

I’m currently trying to read Shampoo Planet, but I seem to be getting bored of it, so I probably won’t finish.

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I see it’s been almost a month since my last post, so in an attempt not to sound like one of those people who only blogs about never updating their blog, I’ll instead share with you a few tidbits that have been preoccupying me for this past little while.

First off, I’ve been reading a bit. Recently, I’ve finished Persuasive Games by Ian Bogost, which was not only an interesting read, but also very useful in providing me with practical knowledge to inspire me in my own work. As well, I picked up Good Girls And Wicked Witches: Women in Disney’s Feature Animation, which appears to be a feminist critique of Disney movies. I’ve only just started, but so far, I’m very intrigued.

As for games, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my DS lately, as I managed to finally get around to playing the third installment of Phoenix Wright, as well as Hotel Dusk. Neither are particularly epic in scope, but both are very charming, engrossing, lovable, and just plain fun, and that’s more than good enough for me.

As for games I’m working on, I’ve got a thing or two in the works at the moment, but nothing I’m particularly ready to divulge as of yet. In the meantime, did you know that Chivalry recently got mentioned on Play This Thing! and Rock, Paper, Shotgun? I think this bodes well, as it signifies that the game is finally starting to get itself exposed to gamers at large, rather than just the adventure gaming community. Now, I only hope that said gamers will find something to like in it…

Leopold McGinnis, author of Game Quest and friend of yours truly, has recently written a new novella called Bad Attitude. Being the huge Leopold fangirl I am, I bought a copy as soon as it was available (and was even congratulated on being the very first to do so), received it last Friday, and gobbled it up in two hours that very evening. It’s a freakin’ hilarious read, poking merciless fun at people who see success, money, and power as their reasons for being, and even has clever hand-drawn illustrations in it. Needless to say, I highly recommend reading it.

In unrelated news, I finished my summer game company job about two weeks ago, and am now back in school, both studying and working as a teaching assistant. It’s looking to be quite an eventful term, indeed. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to finish Chivalry in the process.

I have had it up to here with people who measure a game’s quality by the number of hours spent on it, and how the industry, as a result, prices games in these terms. It is for this reason that when you ask adventure game developers if they would please stop inserting unfair and nonsensical puzzles into their games, they respond with a whiny “but if the puzzles were too easy, then the player would finish the game too quickly!”

Now, I understand the importance of pacing in storytelling. Television and movies, a fixed-length affair, go through great pains to get this to work properly. Still, what about the oft-forgotten practice of reading a novel? The way I measure a novel’s worth to me personally is how quickly I find myself reading it; if it takes me too long to get through a book, it usually means that it isn’t very interesting, and that I’m probably never going to finish it. When it comes to adventure games — which, I argue, have more similarity to books than visual media in that the player controls the pace at which the story progresses — the same applies: the games I consider to be the best are the ones I speed through quickly, even if I need a walkthrough to do so. And they are the ones I’ll play again and again to see what I missed the first time around, just like I do for stories I love in other media. And it’s usually these subsequent playthroughs I end up enjoying the most, because now that I know all the solutions to the puzzles, I can better concentrate on exploring the story instead.

Does anyone else in the universe feel the same way about this? Anyone?

I have to say, I find it quite depressing that these days, when watching a particularly mediocre movie on TV, I find myself writhing in disgust at the cheesiness of the dialogue and the clichédness of the plot and characterization, while at the same time thinking to myself “…but if a game were to have a story of this quality, it would probably be lauded by critics everywhere as being the best thing since Grim Fandango.”[1]

I also have to say that I absolutely hate when people cite the ability to cry in a game (or lack thereof) as an indicator of its artistic merit (or lack thereof). The majority of books and movies I read do not make me cry at all, and on the rare occasion that one does, it’s quite likely that I’ll never, ever want to read or watch it again. Such a lack of waterworks on my part does not, however, imply that I wasn’t emotionally moved by a particular story. There are many more emotions in the panopoly of human experience than just pure, abject depression, after all. Yeesh!

So, I’ve realised that I don’t write nearly enough about books in this blog as I do about games. Surely, that’s to be expected, since my future (present?) career is in games; however, I do love to read. A lot. I just haven’t been doing enough of it these days.

However, two days ago, I did happen to purchase a copy of Phantom by Terry Goodkind, and yesterday, I happened to finish it. Now, for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Phantom is the second-last book in the Sword of Truth series, which I expected would be just as frustrating as finishing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Fortunately, it wasn’t all THAT bad. But maybe I’ve just become desensitized to cliffhanger endings.

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I honestly planned on spending my day catching up on some homework and getting some work done on that article I’m supposed to be writing for Adventure Gamers. Instead, however, I ended up voraciously devouring my recently-acquired copy of Leopold McGinnis’ Game Quest. I’m sure it goes without saying that given the fact that I couldn’t put down this book no matter how hard I tried to do so, it is absolutely imperative that every single one of you reading this blog goes out and buys their very own copy.[1] (The sooner you do so, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to take advantage of the launch discount!)

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