Issue : Games : Dark Ports

Son of a... You know what? It's shit like this, this is where it gets out of hand. Dark Souls was a console video game about a knight that gets beat up and killed a lot in a castle and now it may be a PC game about an anything that gets beat up everywhere.

Out of control, it was only a matter of time for the internet with this whole "tell developers what we want to see," thing. Only a matter of time that is, until the internet bumped into a developer that truly doesn't give a guano sac about "players" in the old style, as in a developer that leans back smugly saying, "I wish a nigga would ask to get my game ported to their platform of choice." Then they flip that "come at me bro" shit on it's head with great vengeance and furious anger.

I'm not into this at all, I can't wait to buy this damn game only to hate it because I don't like it and that it's so hard already and it's not even made. Masochists, sadists, game development born of player wants. This is what society has come to. I just, wow.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.63 Issue: People:Wind Tunnels

Issue: People: Siri

I was about eight first time I saw somebody else's wiener up close. It was an old dude, butt bucky naked cept for some running shoes and a straw hat. It was around midway through the Bay to Breakers, near the water station right before the first big hill. 

Dude was crowding the water table by the divider jamming to some funk fusion band. I knew he was one of the "close your eyes," people. I could see his wrinkled ass cheeks flapping around under a grey ponytail, and my mom always gave us explicit instructions never to initiate eye contact or conversation with naked, drunk, or miscellaneous revelers, but that hill looked brutal and I was thirsty as shit.

So I jogged up and tapped him on the shoulder, more like a quick point push to hygienically ease him away. Dude turned around, smiled, handed me a cup, and kept it moving. Still though, pretty gross.

After seeing a lot of that type of stuff as a kid it was tough to understand what adults were talking about when trying to explain sexuality issues, because like I said after a while of being around weird it just becomes normal. 

I came to believe the argument against a parade float shaped like a penis with dudes riding it full on making out in motorcycle chaps and speed o's was based more in redundancy than gayness. Same float every year, different colors sometimes, but still. And it's horrible with corners, and a damn fire hazard. Dudes are down below it on unicycles or something, they can't see shit.

Anyway, so yeah after I figured out that it's not "normal" per se to be seeing all that business so young it was strange for me to imagine how other kids figured out what's going on with their junk in relation to other peoples junk, I still assume trial and error and guesstimation. 

My buddy Lo had it pretty well sorted out, he was known to say, "If you skate a spot in Castro you gonna see what you gonna see, but at least it ain't the Tenderloin." Which is ironic, because we almost got beat up in the Castro one night by some super aggro dudes that took offence to the noise we were making skating outside their apartment complex. Oh, and fleet week, don't even go outside it's a madhouse.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.62 Issue: Games: Cartography

Issue: Games: Alan's Wake

Alan Wake is a game about a writer trapped in his own story. The events take place in that one town in every American state that looks like it could have been based off the movie Deliverance. The writer goes there with his lady to help shake his writers block. Writers block is the state of being a writer enters when he or she decides it's time to write something, but the body and mind are just not into it.

The writers lady gets stolen by darkness a little bit after they show up, and it's up to him to get her back. The only problem is he still has writers block and has no idea what the fuck is going on. All he knows is something is wrong, the place he is at is weird, and if he tells anybody what he thinks is really going on, it would cause more harm than good.

In the game the darkness can make itself corporeal when light is not around, which sets up a really innovative combat mechanic in the use of light to fight the enemies. It's sort of a slow burn situation where if you keep the light on anything moving in the dark long enough you can shoot it. This mechanic has grounding in real life, and occurs often.

The beginning of the game establishes that the night spooks used to be regular townspeople, rangers, gas station attendants, teenagers, but became entangled in a dark mysterious force after wandering into the dark. After a while the game kind of just stops establishing that they used to be people, hoping that the player will see the enemies lumberjack outfit or hoodie sweater and put two and two together.

It takes a while but the writer finally figures out what's going on and addresses it with the help of friends and former enemies, even though after the events in the game play out the life of characters in the story can never go back to the way things were. The game is out there in the wild now and worth a look, there are even homages to it's innovative play style popping up here and there.

The Protoculture Mixtape V.61 Issue: People: Vacuums