Issue : Games : Salad Days

Psychonauts is a game about juvenescence.

The main character is a kid in psychic camp who invades the minds of other campers and faculty in order to foil a sinister plot. During the explorations he inadvertently helps those minds overcome latent fears or past memories that somehow managed to get wedged into deep crevasses of their brain bins. Heavy stuff for a kids game.

The game sold like crap when it first released. Critics loved it, the people that took a chance on it loved it, but people en masse just didn't... weren't ready for it. So they didn't buy it. Such is life.

Psychonauts 2 is on the way. Well, it's actively being pitched by way of crowd-sourcing, but I would say the chances of it existing are good, over three million dollars good. Shit, Schafer got my buck.

Crowdfunding has become a great answer to a poorly formed question. For the last fifteen years people have loved to bemoan the state of entertainment. "Why do these companies rehash all the stuff from my childhood! Where are all of the new things!" Well the answer is right there in the most funded column of these crowdfunding sites, clear as day.

Given the choice, the end user chooses the same story, told a different way. So who could put total blame on an organization for not taking a chance on something new and giving the people not what they ask for, but what they purchase of their own accord?

The generation that grew up on Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, and Full House are scared to let go. It's time to admit its as much our fault as it is theirs.

Are we stuck in perpetual childhood, subjecting a new generation to stockholm syndrome-light indoctrination through distorted, rose colored, idealized, versions of things we were bludgeoned with in our youth?

Or, maybe it's a second life for some things that another generation deserves to enjoy. I dunno.

Anyway, speaking of this exact thing I don't even have to ask where the squad is going to muster tomorrow. They could chill on the marketing, but the Force Awakens is the truth, GG J.J. Also JERBZ.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Nonage

Issue : Games : Delict

Rainbow Six: Siege is a game about purgatory.

I like the game. It's a tightly crafted team-based shooter with clear action RPG hybrid roots. Beauty lives in that moment of quiet terror when four communicative and cooperative players are finished setting up defenses, mindful that the enemy will come from almost literally anywhere. It's a sliver in a timeline of violence that had yet to be recreated in video game form, the elegance is undeniable.

I don't think Rainbow Six: Siege is a complete game. I think its only as respectful to Tom Clancy's source material as it needs to be to please his estate. I don't think there should be a game about war with no context. But the game is fun, and games should be fun. What the funk do I know?

I don't think Rainbow Six: Siege is going to dethrone the current multiplayer kings, and it has no single player component worth talking about. So where would the longevity live?

Imagine having to replay the same violent fubar over and over again every single day. With little to no context as to why you any of it is happening outside acknowledgment of some amorphous "threat."On a treadmill, no end to the war in sight.

That's all Rainbow Six: Siege has to offer, the same choices played our marginally different but always leading to the same end. I wouldn't imagine anyone would want to go through that for long, if given the choice. Best part of Rainbow Six: Siege is you get to play for a while and then let it go. Unfortunately that's not  great business model, but such is life.

Anyway, I hope information provides a daggon programmer worth a fart. I swear the easy shit is the hard shit and vice versa. Got my blood pressure up... and my knee been acting up in the morning on account of this weather... And these kids today...I'm not old. Also JERBZ.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Malefaction