Unscripted, #9

Hey, I just watched this video by Savannah Brown. It’s the most real conversation I’ve seen in a long time, a level of realness I aspire to. Allow me to set the stage:

---

(Excerpt from another essay:)

I want to use tools of the past to create games of the future, games where you feel something real. Like reaching the summit in Getting Over It, losing all your items in Minecraft, and when the music hits the perfect moment in GRIS. Digital art is inherently less real than traditional media, but it has just as much power to affect the heart and mind of the player. This is why I like using old tools. They bring character and realness to an inherently unreal medium. The Atari 2600 is 45 years old and C99 is 23 years old, yet I believe we’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible with them. A Slow Year by Ian Bogost is a collection of games for the Atari 2600. Released in 2010, long after Atari’s commercial age, A Slow Year is totally unlike its predecessors. It has a sense of calm and character, much of which it inherits from the Atari 2600. Those aspect of the Atari only emerged after it became obsolete to the mainstream world. C and assembly are beneath the waves, deep in the sand on the beach of computing. They’re away from the noise and the crowd. No one really talks about them because they aren’t new or shiny. I believe that it’s worth spending time with old languages and hardware to discover how they really work, and in doing so, how computers work.

---

I want to make real things. I’ve been looking to old tools to provide realness, when the ultimate realnessinator is myself. (For example: the spoken word will always be more real than the written word. If Bennett Foddy hadn’t narrated in Getting Over It, it would be monumentally less real.)

This is a tipping point. I understand resistance now. Resistance for me isn’t about doing the work, it’s about comfort zone. Making things on the computer isn’t scary. Writing blog posts isn’t scary (this one was). I have an illusionary sense of safety here: I’m pseudo-anonymous and basically no one reads this blog.

I know what I must do, and I have the strength to do it: I must leave my comfort zone.

Here’s the top things I can think of:

• Show my face and speak my name with my voice
• Sing
• Dance

These things are scary and uncomfortable. Here’s the catch: I can practice them. I don’t have any idea when I’ll be ready, but know that I’m working on them. I’ll be building confidence, growing in the background.

In conclusion, I am absolutely determined and nothing is going to stop me.

PS: Do you ever feel like the timeline on midlife crises has moved up? Like, why not get them all over with now? xD

Edit 2/18/2023 (About 10 months later): Missed an “is”. You know how it goes.