I probably shouldn’t admit this here, but I’m trying to keep an accurate journal of my journey into video games for new media.
I am afraid.
It is past two a.m., a perfect time for me to play or read. Yet I am dragging my feet because I know what lies ahead in Silent Hill; that horrible naked skin stretching thing that wants to kill me–or my character, James, that is, who I have somehow come to identify with either in a maternal instinct form or as the character himself (hey, we all have male and female gender qualities within us).
I, who am not afraid for my own death in reality, fear this possibility in the virtual world. Odd, eh? For I am sure that I would not be locked out of the game if indeed I do not survive combat. Even if I did, I could easily start a new game. Manufacturers of software games are smart enough not to kill off their readers/players.
Maybe it is because I’ve seen this thing, faced it before, panicked, but had help readily available to save me (I can turn girly in an instant).
Meanwhile, I am wondering if this edginess is extending into my reading of Suttree–not the same horror genre, yet I worry about the old man who is boiling his potatoes in water from McCarthy’s river…
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
It’s been a long time since I played any games so the only games I know anything about were much more primitive than anything today. I never was really into them anyway. For some reason “dying” in a game always bothered me. It didn’t matter that I had four more lives and the possibility of earning more. It bothered me. I don’t like games in which I (my character) have to die – over and over again. Silly I guess.
I like simple games. Majongg used to be my favorite. I played it for hours at work when there was nothing to do. (It was one of those jobs where there was always either nothing to do or way too much to do.) Anyway, I used to have the old DOS version of Majongg. I bought a Windows version and it was nothing like the old version. Too complicated; too many rules. Once in a while I miss my old Majonng and a couple of other simple computer games but there are so many interesting things online I doubt I would make time for the games anyway.
Lynn, I admit that TaiPei, Freecell and Solitaire were the only games I fiddled with prior to this, and actually used them in effect to automatically to something while my mind wandered into more creative areas. With the first session of the new media course behind me, I look at these games–especially one with a strong narrative line such as Silent Hill–as story, and am intrigued by it as yet another method of reading. And more importantly, as a means of writing into the new media concepts that are on the edge of technology. Plus yeah, they’re fun!