"It's Just a Game!"

On friday, August 31st, it was announced the MMO City of Heroes would be closing, effective November 30th, with all development ceasing immediately.

I'm sure there are some people who would say to me "too bad, so sad, it's just a game, get over it".  To a degree, I keep berating myself with that, in hopes of making this less depressing.  It doesn't really work very well.  I guess in a way that is because for me, it never was just a game.  The gameplay, honestly, took second place to my friends there.  It tied us all together.  It's been a part of my life since 2005.  In my characters there I have pulled myself through many mental states.  Sometimes they were escapes of whimsey, but more often than not, they reflected my own thoughts - whether I knew it at the time or not.

Honestly, it's not so much the fact that teh game is shutting down that makes me angry.  If it was struggling, and there was a clear case of "writing on teh wall", well, I'd be more understanding.  Upset, but understanding.  But that isn't what happened here.  The game was not struggling.  It really wasn't.  They were announcing new content until <i>a few hours before</i> the closure announcement.  This is not what a dying game does.  A dying game starts showing more and more neglect and again, that isn't what happened here.

Instead, NCSoft pulled the plug, and the worst part is nobody knows WHY.  Paragon probably does, but they probably are not allowed to elaborate, and have asked the community to just accept the closure.  A llot of peopel are going to say that CoH was struggling because NCSoft lost money in the past year so oooobviously they lost it on CoH going free to play.  Know what else went free to play?  Aion.  But it's a newer game and less likely to be cut loose, not to mention develped in house by NCSoft.

Remember how I mentioned friends?  Well that pretty much describes the whole community.  CoX has one of the most dedicated MMO communities I've ever known, and in general avoids the whole "lrn 2 ply n00b" standard.  Serious topics are just as common as the lighthearted, and in many cases we feel just as strongly about anothers successes as our own.  It's just... Well.  The community is one of the best I've ever known, and we aren't just taking this quietly.

I wanted more people to play the game.  I know I proclaimed its virtues every time someone said they were looking for a new mmo.  From the character customization, the vast array of powersets, the story arcs that only got better and better, or teh mission architecht, where players made their own stories, I have yet to find a match for it.  On a personal level, it gave me a chance to explore my own heart and mind through those of my characters.  What would I do if I suddenly awakened with super powers?  what would I do if I was raised that way?  What would I do if all was suddenly ripped away?  How about betrayal?  Friendship?  Trust?  All these things I send my mind down.  I put a lot of my heart into that...

So... Please, don't tell me it's just a game.  For me, it is not.

It never was.

Boredom

Since I seem to have turned into a trend of self reflection, I thought I would share another little tidbit -

I don't really get bored anymore.  Not even when doing things that are 'boring', like sitting through a lecture I'm disinterested in.   About the only time I do is when the regional manager is in our office, because then I can't pull out my kindle, or my knitting, and have to watch what I do on the computer.  It's not that I don't have work to do, but at the time he is in the office... I don't have work to do.  My work mostly happens post 5 PM.

Other than that though... boredom just doesn't happen.  Even when I'm basically just lying in my room doing nothing... there isn't boredom there.  It's more of just a state of restfulness.  I don't feel a need to be in constant motion (or so it feels.).  Beside this - I have more than enough to occupy my mind that the boredness that plagued me through middle and high school... it's gone.  I do too much.  I knit, crochet, program, write, and especially worldbuild.

It almost feels like I've grown up a bit.

Almost.

I'm not going to delude myself by thinking I am superbly mature.

Perhaps I am just lucky that most of my hobbies are things I can do unobtrusively and nearly anywhere.  I think it's mostly though that I've finally figured out that thing about constant motion.  It's okay to rest.  It's okay to not be turned on all of the time.  It's okay to want peace and quiet, or just to listen to the sound of the rain for a while.

There is value in action, but necessity also in inaction.  It partially makes me want to get away from home for a week, alone, and just do nothing... or just do whatever my whims take me to do.  Likely that would be sleep a lot - at least initially.  Perhaps walk a lot to help me sleep a lot.  I don't really know.

But it just feels weird, not knowing that boredom I knew for so long... and I don't know when it left, either.  A lot of changes are like that - you don't notice them happening until BOOM.  You've changed.

This, at least, I think is a good one.

A response to a friend, Re: Screwedness

If you know me moderately well, you know one thing about me.

I handle worry poorly.

Unfortunately, this seems to go hand in hand with a propensity toward anxiety and viewing the worst case scenario.  I have done better with this the past year than I have before, but still it gnaws at the back of my mind.  People use many examples for themselves, for what goes on, and in my case, worry is a river.  Sometimes it surges, sometimes it just erodes, and all attempts to dam it off seem to fail, only bringing a bigger torrent when I allow myself to feel it. 

More and more, I allow myself to feel the worry, accept it, and move on.  Or at least, that is what I attempt to do.  See the above statement about handling worry poorly.

More often, what happens is I start visualizing worst case scenarios, pushing myself into quite a mental state, including being in tears, before I realize how silly I’m being and calm down.  I used to plague friends with what-ifs.  I try hard to leave the worries I put on them to things that are actually happening, now.  This is both harder and easier.  It’s harder because I push things down sometimes until a bursting point.  It’s easier because sometimes when I start talking about it, I start spilling my worst cases on other people, which just makes me dwell on them more.  That’s not a good situation for anyone.

On the other hand… Well, what got me on the topic of this in the first place is something a good friend of mine wrote – “You’re seldom as screwed as you think”.  With my penchant for making up worst case scenarios, well, is it any wonder this phrase struck a cord?

Yeah, my transmission is mostly dead, but it will last going to and from work until I can put down a down payment on a car, as well as get my own insurance.  The longer trips I’ve planned have been postponed, but so long as I can budget for it, renting a car to take those trips isn’t too bad, pricewise. (I think a couple of my friends would shoot me, including the ones I’m visiting, if I tried to drive to Brooklyn or North Jersey with my current car. Also, the new car fund at least won’t get raided into for tuition immediately, as my next semester is paid off.  Okay, I can handle that.

Okay, my grandmother broke two vertebrae- but she also has been in the hospital which has been taking good care of her (… for the most part.  I’ve got some complaints there, especially involving her insurance but I am trying to maintain a relatively pleasant tone here.), she’s had the surgery she needs to glue the bones back together, and now is doing rehab to get her strength back.  Besides which, I’ve visited her when I can and seen for myself that she is in good spirits.

And okay, so my aunt has tripped over her cat, can barely walk, can’t seem to stop shaking, and is basically incoherent right now.  On the other hand, she is also in the hospital and being taken care of, though I don’t yet know what’s going on, and can’t really visit her as she is in Delaware and well see earlier point about the car.  But again – she’s in the hospital, and hopefully I’ll find out what’s going on soon.  It’s equal odds I won’t though, as mom and dad like to withhold information so I won’t worry (which… only makes me worry more because then I just start imagining things. I have explained this but that is a whole separate situation).

That’s the thing about worry, I think, for me.  I handle it poorly, mainly just trying to sleep it away because sleeping is not thinking about it.  It also messes up my appetite something terrible – not that I comfort eat (nothing wrong with that by the way), but that I eat less than I do on a normal basis, and well my eating habits, in terms of amount I eat, is not the best anyway.  I attempt to not send myself into fits of tears with it but fail more often than not.  But on the other hand, I’ve also learned how to turn the nervous energy to something productive – usually knitting, crochet, or writing.  This past week and a half (for all of the events I’ve mentioned have happened in that time period), there’s been a lot of playing Diablo 3 and learning more of the game’s lore, which kind of works well as I seem to have acquired a muse of that universe. 

I guess my point is this… Sometimes the most innocuous phrase can trigger a lot of things and well.. I really rarely am actually as screwed as I think I am – once I calm down, anyway.  Now I just have to learn to send off the panic a bit sooner.

Gaming Elitism

It should come as no surprise (I hope) that I have rather strong feelings about people feeling they are better than others.  I also realize, in many ways, I may come across as a hypocrite saying that.  After all, don’t I word my rants from a “place of authority” I am not necessarily entitled to?  On the other hand, things annoy me and I have to talk about them somewhere, so you poor wretches get to deal with it.

Just recently, I read an opinion going roughly thus:  “I hate it so much when people play Skyrim because it’s popular without playing all of Bethesda’s other games”. 

Changing the World

It seems like an odd thought to strike one, when thinking about video games, but here it is, what I've been guiding myself toward:  I want to change the world.  I know, odd, right?  But it makes sense to me.  It came to me when writing about my future development plans.  But I think it had originally come to me far sooner, just not in so few words.  I'd struggled, before, with trying to justify why I want to do this.  I have other plans too, naturally.  I want to start a clothing store.  I want to make many people happy.  I want to tell my stories.  But most of all, I Want to change the world.

I've long labored under the impression there's nothing I can do.  I'm just one young woman, what worth am I that I can do this?  It may be the hours of work, the early waking up to do more work, and mass amounts of caffiene speaking, but I think, anymore, that answer is "a hell of a lot".  After all, it only takes one person to plant an idea.

I've already had to fight, some, for my game ideas.  My professor loves them, and he agrees with my goals.  It's my classmates that don't understand, or maybe just don't care how I do.  I have had too many questions about why my protagonist isn't pretty enough, for me to take any joy in answering them.  In the end though, I think she's pretty.  That alone is a strange thing, for at least in a physical sense she's a blatent self-insert. (There are NOT enough fat characters in video games that are not jokes, honestly.)

I've been asked just what I feel I have to prove.  I think the time will come sooner than I think that I have to list out my reasons, bluntly, with the same freedom I feel with the relative anonymity of the internet.  That scares me, I'm not going to lie.  These are people I'm at least going to have to work with until I get my degree, and after that, it's a general public I'll have to answer to.

I do not have big ambitions, for all my ambitions are worldchanging.  I know the way the world works at the moment.  If I tried to change the world in a major studio, I would probably be squashed in the culture.  I refuse to compromise my goals.  This might make me a royal pain in the ass, but I still refuse to capitulate.  I think I have important things to say, and with the way the world is going, I feel more and more that games are the way to do it.

Change, after all, often seems to start with the young.

Then again perhaps I'm a strange revolutionary in desiring my players to use their brains for a change and not handing things to them on a silver platter, yet I am NOT their adversary.  Challenge, yes, unfair, no.
But that's for another time.

At any rate, that's what I want of my life.  To change the world.

Can't say I don't dream big.

Attention

Just seeking attention.

I hear it all the time.  "Ignore her, she's just seeking attention" "man, what an attention seeker" "Why do you dress that way?  It just gets attention!"

I am perhaps the last person who should be writing these words.   I like to avoid attention, for the most part, unless it be that of close friends.  On the other hand, in a part of me I try to deny sometimes, I thrive on it.  I love being on stage, I love singing for people.

But it's just attention seeking.

Isn't it?

So what if it is?  Why has wanting attention become just a bad thing?

Or is it just because I'm a woman? Sometimes I wonder if that is truly the case.  Sit down, shut up, listen, know your place.  Why not talk over me?  I'm just seeking attenion anyway.

More and more, I can't see the problem with wanting attention.  Mind you I have a problem with shoving your head up your ass to GET that attention, but in general, wanting to have your existance acknowledged?  What is so wrong about that?

Shame based marketing

About a week ago, I was helping my mother un-decorate our christmas tree.  Okay, More like I was doing the undecorating while she handed me what she could from her arm chair and watched TV.  Now I don't really watch TV (at all), but I am not entirely opposed to an episode or two of the Flying Nun or episodes of How it's Made or things like that.  However what I AM opposed to is shame based marketing.

"But Mel," you may ask, "what do you mean?"  Well.  It's both simple and infuriating.  Not only is it that, but it is harmful.  Perhaps it is just words, but when I see stuff marketed, especially to fat people like me, as 'guilt-free', I want to punch somebody in the face, and then possibly cut out my stomach because clearly food is bad and why is this organ wanting it so much?

To be honest folks, I've hit a point where I resent that.  I resent being told I am terrible for wanting food, and I am sick of food having a moral value.  I am MORE than sick of people trying to control me.  Part of the reason I do not watch television is because watching it means being constantly exposed to this shit and I just will not have it. 

"But that's just running away from the problem!"  right?  Perhaps it is just running away.  But if it's what I need to do to ensure I actually stand a chance of eating, that I don't just lose all desire to put something, anything in my body?  I'll take it.  Besides there's nothing I'm really missing. 

Don't get me wrong folks.  I have nothign wrong with things being advertised as fat-free and sugar-free.  We eat a lot of those in my house, being that my father is both diabetic and has a heart condition now.  Those descriptors don't bother me in the slightest.  It is when people apply moralistic rhetoric to what should be simple choices about nutrition that drives me up a wall. 

Fat is an adjective, and also a noun.  It is a perfectly normal word.  And yet at every turn people such as myself are told to not use it, to sue words like chunky, fluffy, pudgy.  Screw that.  I am 5'6, 385 pounds.  I.  am.  Fat.

And I am TIRED of being shamed.