Hey James,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In your note, you wrote about returning to memories of your childhood. I have been doing the same thing for the past few months. Pulling out the Nintendo 64, I\u2019ve been playing games that our parents bought for us 20 years ago: completing missions in Goldeneye, racing levels I hadn\u2019t seen before in Diddy Kong Racing, spending hours shooting computer simulants in Perfect Dark. These are games that I never fully beat as a kid, and perhaps that\u2019s why I\u2019ve returned to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m someone who enjoys crossing things off of a checklist. In fact, I create checklists for things that have no business being systematized. For 15 years, I maintained a process of listening to CDs that was so regimented that it took 2 years for a new album to be moved through the system. That\u2019s unbelievable! But from there, it\u2019s not a surprise that I gravitate to video games, which provide a clear line between victory and defeat. If you die, you didn\u2019t do what you were supposed to. If you collect 100 coins, you\u2019re rewarded with an extra star. It\u2019s a mode of thinking and approaching life that I\u2019m comfortable with, because it doesn\u2019t require thorough analysis to determine if you\u2019re on the right track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I, like a lot of people, respond to the chaos of existence by attempting to create order through my own convoluted systems. Video games reinforce that desire by lying to me: there is a way to exist perpetually in an ordered universe. Just keep hitting buttons until you accomplish something. What video games spend so much time and processing power trying to obscure is the fact that those accomplishments don\u2019t have much importance in the context of our society. When threatened by systemic inequality and a group of people who are comfortable with fascism\u2019s rise in our country, it takes a lot of work to challenge the situations we are in \u2013 let along to vanquish it and create a more just world. I don\u2019t know if anything I do will be enough; I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m spending my time in the right way. The anxiety that accompanies such uncertainty can be paralyzing. You know what isn\u2019t uncertain? Whether or not I killed Jaws and beat Aztec on 00 Agent in Goldeneye. (Which I did. It took a while.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s another thing I should spend more time reflecting on. Why am I drawn to games that require, or at least encourage, some element of destruction? You and I \u2013 along with our friends \u2013 have spent a lot of hours in these worlds of guns and blood. Now, I\u2019m not trying to claim that video games have desensitized us or made us into more violent people. But it is important to be mindful of how we spend our time. You talked about the disappointment you had with Game of Thrones, a show noted for its brutal depictions of violence. But those images were always challenged and countered by the joy and love in our apartment. On those Sunday evenings, you made delicious meals for our friends. We broke bread together, discussing wedding plans or challenges at work, or any other topic that helped us feel less alone. The way we spend our time and the way we react to media matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I recently won a copy of Pilotwings 64 on eBay and have spent a few nights with it. I hadn\u2019t played this game since the days of Video Frequency, that rental store that was consumed and converted by its neighboring Wawa. I didn\u2019t remember all of the details before I turned on the system. But that music! It\u2019s as beautiful as I could have hoped for, and I\u2019m back in our house on a Saturday afternoon. We are boys, still just learning how to exist in a world that doesn\u2019t always care much for anyone. The controls are easy to learn but the game doesn\u2019t stay easy. We spend the afternoon gliding on the wind, lifted by thermal drafts, and soaring through rings before landing. We are in an airplane, popping balloons then returning to the runway. We are lifted by rocket fuel to the sky and see others in formation, passing buildings and clouds. The whole point of the game is to be above the earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we must come back down at some point. And when we do, we\u2019re judged. We missed some rings. We didn\u2019t do it quickly enough. We had too rough of a landing. We receive a rating: 67 out of 100. Better luck next time. Part of me yearns to reach 100, to shave off extra seconds, to make sure I pass through every ring, to come back down lightly and in the correct location. Steady improvements in my scores mean that I\u2019m getting better. I\u2019m accomplishing something, and I can prove it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when I play this game tonight, I will be in the\nsky for hours, gliding, hoping that those notes that first brought me back to\nour carpeted childhood living room floor will never fade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey James, In your note, you wrote about returning to memories of your childhood. I have been doing the same thing for the past few months. Pulling out the Nintendo 64, I\u2019ve been playing games that our parents bought for us 20 years ago: completing missions in Goldeneye, racing levels I hadn\u2019t seen before in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hey","category-paul","tag-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}