November 13th 2023

***

there's a gap in entry dates because i forgot i was working on this site

working with css can be kind of annoying so it isn't really the first thing i jump to when i have extra time on my hands.

so i guess i kind of just naturally forgot about it

as maintaining momentum with these things is kind of hard to do.

i think i am starting to understand it better now though

i can make nice looking pages
ones that don't even break on mobile

even if i still don't know what i'm doing

***

i started playing video games regularly again recently

i've had a hard time for a long time with being at all consistent with it.

when i was in school, they were a good escape. something to do with myself that was more fun than all of the stressful work i had to deal with and such.

a light in a hard time

but now i'm not in school anymore

there is nothing to escape from

no job or particular goals

i have been stuck in a sedentary state for years

so it can be very hard to find the motivation to do much of anything, even fun things, very often

when there is nothing to give the fun things any particular meaning.

a lot of games these days feel very dense

years ago when you wanted to play a game you would just turn it on, press the play button, and then you'd be off to the races just like that

but now games are more complicated. too complicated for that to work a lot of the time

physical manuals are phased out in favor of in-game tutorials

dense introductions that will regularly stop and interrupt the flow of gameplay to show you lengthy paragraphs of explanatory text

that sort of thing really messes with my brain. i can never focus on things like this

the starting and stopping throws off my focus and half the time i can barely process what i am being told to do

i would prefer to just have a manual that i can look through at my own pace, but nobody makes them anymore

slow introductions aside, a lot of games also just don't lend themselves well to a pick-up-and-play sort of approach

where you can just open a game, play for a few minutes, and then close it again

a lot of games i am interested in are story-heavy and resource intensive

so it can take upwards of a full minute to even just get into the game

and then when you're in there, if you don't remember what's going on in the story or what you're supposed to do, and aren't prepared to remember a lot of new information that you may recieve,

it can feel like a little much, and likely is far from the ideal intended experience

so more simplistic games that you can just jump into at a moment's notice have become more important to me

because games that are more suited to long play sessions feel like such a commitment that it can be hard for me to ever feel like i have the time or energy to actually get anything out of any session. it feels like something that i have to prepare for, be ready to dedicate myself to for an extended amount of time, an emotional investment

i don't have a lot of energy

i have a hard time focusing on things even with meds

so anything requiring that many steps to initiate can feel like an insurmountable task most days

but,

i did finally swing back into a state where i am playing multiple games on the regular again

and have been doing a lot of mental retraining so i think i should start having an easier time with it in the future

what i mean by that is, like,

i feel like the reason those tutorial-heavy games turn me away so harshly is because not being able to process the info given is stressful because i feel like i am going to do poorly and fail a lot if i do not understand it properly

so i carry the assumption of, well,

"this is telling me how to win at the game. if i don't understand how to win at the game, i will lose at the game. losing is a bad thing, so it will not be fun."

i think playing dwarf fortress made me realize this isn't really true

(it's tagline is, quite literally, "losing is fun," after all.)

the tutorial of the steam version is set up in such a way where it basically just shows you how to do all the bare essentials

and then, once you have a rough fort set up and ready to go and has shown you how to feed your guys to keep them alive,

it kind of just goes "yeap that's it good luck out there bud" and ends

dozens of in-depth and complex mechanics go entirely unexplained, leaving you to have to figure them out on your own

leaving you with a "remember: losing is fun!" before it goes away

i think it's funny that,

in a time where most games felt too difficult to get into for me,

dwarf fortress and elden ring,

two infamously hard games,

ended up being some of the ones i played by far the most after being introduced to them

and i honestly think it might be a case where it's because of the fact that a lot of modern games are just...terrified of letting you lose.

i don't mean "games these days are too easy" kind of way

i quite like easy games

but rather sort of the opposite, where many games that do have the potential to be quite challenging, become so fearful of the idea that someone will struggle with it and have a bad time, that they forcibly grab your hand and make perfectly sure that you understand every single aspect of what you are looking at so that there is no grey area, no potential for misunderstanding or failure

and i feel like this can sort of have an inverse effect where having all of this instruction just puts considerably more pressure on the player to do well and succeed than it actually fills them with the confidence that they can succeed

creating a vibe where when you lose you think "well, the game clearly told me everything i need to know to win, so i guess it's just on me for not being able to do it properly, guess i'm just stupid as fuck"

instead of "wow, this game is challenging. let's try that again"

as an unrelated aside, for some reason talking about this is reminding me of that span of time years back after cuphead released

where some random journalist couldn't figure out a part of the wordless tutorial stage and got stuck on it for a while

and afterwards they were fully aware it was funny like "haha this is silly. let's upload this with a title like 'guy gets stuck on tutorial for 5 minutes' just for fun, for a laugh" or some shit like that

but then people took the clip out of context and started throwing it around as proof that game journalists are dumb and lack self-awareness or whatever, even though it was uploaded in a fully self-aware context from what i recall

anyway, unrelated to that specific aspect, there was a whole lot of weird games discourse that spun out from that moment for quite a while after that, not all of which was totally related

and it makes me think sometimes if maybe like,

a lot of people see things like that isolated clip and many other unrelated situations similar to it

and just think "hm. this guy sure is struggling with this part. that probably isn't fun, so when i make things like this, i should get rid of all the ambiguity, so situations like this can't happen to my players"

i don't know

maybe these are not thoughts that devs have

i just wonder about what sorts of thought processes go into these sorts of decisions

and how these trends evolved and grew into what they are today

i don't think one random guy being bad at cuphead spawned the trend of overly verbose tutorials or anything like that for the record, this is something that's probably been building over the past decade or more

it's just something that i was reminded of

that i figured i might as well bring up, since you are looking at the "stream of consciousness thoughts" part of the website, after all.

but anyway, back on the subject of games that are too scared to let you fail vs. games that encourage failure and are built around it,

i think it is an interesting problem, where in some cases, the pursuit of becoming as frictionless as possible can end up accidentally spawning more friction in other ways

when a game lacks both the sort of inherent confidence in itself to be clear as well as trust in the player to be able to pick it up and understand how it works, attempts to correct the percieved gap in clarity can often end up over-correcting and feeling stilted and awkward

tutorials are a part of the game itself and i feel like it is easy to overlook what that actually means, both as a player and designer

games are a complex tapestry with threads of mechanics, graphics, sound, etc, all carefully woven together with intention and precision to create a bigger picture

and in-game tutorials, when present, are a part of that picture too

but when you handle them as an afterthought or without confidence, it can clash with the bigger picture

and when handled poorly, rather than feeling like one of the threads in the bigger piece, can end up coming off instead as just like, a sticky note attatched to the picture that tells you what it is and what you're looking at

covering up part of the picture and not letting you try to understand it yourself

maybe this comes off as me saying that games should never have detailed tutorials but this is not what i am trying to say

i think the biggest problem with them is that in many cases i have encountered, they do not feel well-paced or integrated at all

and the sort of lack of confidence in itself that i speculate may be behind them feels very palpable

i mentioned before that the types of introduction that starts and stops constantly because tutorial popups keep interrupting you and how they particularly grated on me, but elden ring and dwarf fortress also have that kind of tutorial

and i think the reason that they can pull it off better than others in my eyes is because i feel like there was a lot of thought behind them, and i don't know how else you would really do it in their cases

elden ring keeps its explanations short and to the point, basically just telling you what all of the buttons do while it guides you through a few natural-feeling situations where you will need to use them in an area that feels like any other dungeon, and then lets you go

dwarf fortress' explanations are much more lengthy and text heavy and i did still have an issue with processing the information in it at times, but there were also no issues with momentum. there is no story, and it's a game where time is going to be regularly paused while you take in information and decide what to do next anyway, so it feels like any other part of the game

for a game with a very involved tutorial section that IS woven into story and such that i think pulls it off well, i think that ocarina of time is a good example

after the intro cutscenes, you're let loose into a big enclosed area that you can freely run around in while you get a hang of things

the tutorials are not subtle. every character around you just tells you what buttons to press to do things straight to your face without trying to neatly cover it up or anything but it still Works it doesn't really feel jarring or anything

you are told you need to talk to the deku tree, but the way is blocked and you can only get through if you have the proper equipment, so you have to go run around and locate them and talk to the people who give you the tutorials along the way

since you all you need to progress is items, actually talking to the tutorial characters is entirely optional, outside of like One who i think just prompts you to target her but doesn't force you to actually do it. if you know what you're doing, you can just do a mad dash to the items, and if you don't you can take your time and talk to everyone. everything is at your own pace.

once you get through that first gameplay section, you get another long story cutscene, and then you get to do your first dungeon

the dungeon contains a few bits where you are suddenly stopped and told how to do something which is a little annoying but they are few enough that it is not really a big deal. after you finish the dungeon, you get another couple story cutscenes, with some gameplay in-between to break it up, and then that's it. intro's over, the game has started.

ironically the game does such a good job at a natural and unobtrusive tutorial section that when i think about replaying it the only part i dread about the introduction is the multiple long story cutscenes you have to sit through before it opens up

but since they are all broken up by extended gameplay segments that give you ample time to run around and stretch your legs, and the longest ones are all at places you would expect them to be (as in, after you complete major tasks that you already know will progress the story, instead of them just being thrust upon you unexpectedly) it does not feel nearly as tiring as it could be

games being frontloaded with story is another main reason i can have a very hard time getting into new ones that i kinda neglected to mention

though it does mostly tie into the whole problem i mentioned with games that are specifically designed for long dedicated play sessions rather than short spontaneous ones

it's a lot of information to have to take in and there's no guarantee that much of it will be broken up with gameplay

this also isn't really a new thing though. i assume jrpgs and such for example have been like that for a very long time

speaking of jrpgs and having to take in lots of information, i feel like the best example i can give for kind of overwhelming tutorialization i can give that is fresh in my mind is final fantasy origin: stranger of paradise

i get the impression that the way it does tutorials is how a lot of AAA games do it these days though admittedly i do not play many of them

it does things the same basic way i have made reference to throughout this whole thing, where you will be walking along and then something happens and suddenly you get a popup telling you something

sometimes the information it gives you is not even directly related to what is happening at the moment, so it feels like it is just randomly letting you know about something that may happen in the future, because they did not think of a better time to tell you this

so it feels a little stressful sometimes, to have to read something multiple times to understand what i am being told, knowing that i will probably forget it within a few seconds anyway, since i am not given a gameplay opportunity to let that knowledge sink in

the last time i played, i remembered noticing several menus and mechanics and not really knowing how to use them even after getting through the large bulk of explanations. it was unfortunate. its something that really could have benefitted from a more involved guided tutorial too.

anyway, i have been trying to remind myself that it's still ok to not understand everything since trial and error can be fun too

one game i started playing recently is moonring, a free old-style western rpg on steam

it was described as similar to ultima, which i have never played, and i sort of assumed that it would be really complicated

i thought that i wasn't going to understand it at all, but i decided to force myself to try and push through it anyway

and it certainly felt kind of intimidating at first, the stats page has a million things on it causing it to look quite overwhelming at first glance, and the controls seemed kind of overcomplicated

but once i managed to push through the first section i realised...

...oh, this is actually really simple isn't it.

the only reason the controls seemed complicated was because it was covering all its bases between mouse, keyboard, and controller keybinds at the same time, so if you just stuck to one of those then it was exceedingly simple,

and most of the things on the stats page are things that you really just don't need to worry about most of the time. useful for in-depth character building later on, sure, but nothing you needed to even sort of pay attention to in the beginning

i had a similar experience a few months prior to that with the game evergrace, a ps2 title by fromsoft.

i had been interested in it for a while, but remembered hearing someone mention that the controls weren't very good, and this worried me, in addition to the fact that i also knew it was an rpg, and that fromsoft is known for being in-depth stats and numbers sickos at times

i finally just said fuck it, i'm pulling up a walkthrough and playing it anyway, and resolved to push through for as long as i could

when i heard it had bad controls, i was expecting the absolute worst. i was expecting something that would be annoying for a hardcore retro gamer that i had heard it from but absolutely unbearable for a normie like me who's too used to modern control schemes

but when i played it, i found...

...that it was also completely fine and simple to play.

the controls were...fine? definitely clunky and less than ideal, there were a couple times i accidentally ran straight off a cliff and died because of them, but it was far from the miserable slop i expected it to be.

the rpg stat mechanics were also a non-issue. it took me a while to really figure out what they meant, and honestly i think i still don't really get it fully, but i was able to, on my own, figure out that it kind of doesn't matter that much. you can play the game without paying much attention to them once again, even if it still is far from the ideal strategy.

i wonder how many games i walked away from in the past out of intimidation i would've stuck with longer if they just said "yeah so there's a lot of stuff to look at here but for now you don't have to worry about literally any of it. by the time you start needing to worry about it you will probably have figured out what they do on your own anyway" upfront

anyway

the point is that i like playing videogames so it is nice that i have finally found out how i can get myself to try more even if it is kind of hard to remember to push myself like this most of the time

i keep going off-topic. i was going to talk about the very laid-back games i have been playing and enjoying lately like fashion dreamer which is a game where you just color in clothes and then take pictures of people wearing those clothes and that's it but then i got distracted contemplating game design theory so i ended up not mentioning it at all

i guess that sort of thing happens to me a lot.

i guess that's why i have a section on my website dedicated to shit that i put no prior thought into at all and just make up as i go along

as a wise guy once said, "look at my videogame opinions boy"

***

instead of dealing with the neocities editor, i finally just looked up a random on-line wysiwyg html editor so that i didn't have to keep updating the site and then hard refreshing to see if any of my style changes actually went through and then repeat this 80 times

maybe you have been reading this page and thinking "why does this page's appearance not reflect the actual content of it at all?"

well, this is because i came up with the idea for the visual before i actually knew what i was going to write on it.

i guess this makes for a sort of unique feeling, so it works out.

it does feel a little silly sometimes,

where, currently, all of the content contained on this site,

consists of me talking at length about making the website that these thoughts are hosted on.

i guess that's sort of to be expected though. it makes sense that i am thinking about coding when i write these things, considering i am always typing them directly into the code editor.

it is still funny though. it reminds me of a lot of older comics i remember seeing that would often heavily involve the main character or even just straight up the writer talking about how they were making the comic and what they thought about it.

i always thought it was a little strange, but i think i understand it now.

***

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