A Century in Review

A few weeks back, my stalwart colleague Influx posted a comment on my YouTube channel to congratulate me on reaching 100 subscribers.  It's encouraging to think that, somehow, I've fooled over 100 people into thinking that what I am doing is somehow watchable.  And thanks to our ten-digit hands, 100 is a good, round number and is thus a milestone.  Hence this post, and hence your current discomfort.

I didn't start making Let's Plays for the stats.  Preliminary exploration into the LP landscape showed a world that could be unwelcoming at times, being strewn with abandoned channels whose owners were unsatisfied by their own numerical progress.  Elsewhere, I'd read too many posts from folks bemoaning their slow acquisition of views, subs, likes, comments, pokes, hugs, anonymous caresses, fnurps, glorbs, and hickeys.  It seemed to me that an obsession with digital metrics of success would be a Bad Thing for me as a fresh-faced LPer.  So I decided not to worry about it.  It's been a good policy.

However, I will confess that I love data.  I am a gamer, after all.  High scores are awesome.  I generally love to observe trends, finding causal relationships in numbers that give me pseudo-valuable insights into my tiny world.  And I will absolutely confess that, in spite of the fact that I supposedly don't care about the stats, it's nice to see my views and subscriptions accelerating the further I pursue this silly little hobby.  I would probably feel differently if my numbers suddenly cratered or were non-existent to begin with.  But then I could conveniently revert to the whole "well, I'm too cool for the numbers" thing and be happy again.

After all, the act of LPing itself does make my little reptilian heart happy.  I guess the whole "why I make Let's Plays" thing would warrant a post of its own, but it's probably enough to say here that I like it, and I like it in ways that numbers can't really capture.  They are the intangible, experiential elements of gaming that everyone loves, like laughing my ass off when I manage to get some of my troops killed in Myth or when I split a ship in half in Silent Hunter 3.  What makes Let's Playing even better than just sitting and playing the games I love is that I get to actually share them with people and interact with them.  There's no statistic that captures the quality of the experiences I've had doing this.  Even though my channel is relatively small, I've become acquainted with people all over the globe.  It's pretty damn cool to find people with a common appreciation for what are often the underappreciated games that I play on my channel.  It's even better when I introduce someone to a new game and watching them become a rabid fan themselves.

You might argue that I'd get more of these experiences by being more numerically popular or whatever.  I guess it's possible.  But when I look at the LPers with thousands and thousands of subscriptions and millions and millions of views, I don't know that I see a lot of that interaction happening.  I'm grateful to be where I'm at and to be able to interact with the people I've met.

So I guess that this post is a thank you, in my own clumsy way, to all of the folks who are watching, enjoying, and sharing in what I do.  I'm not really keeping very good track of you, but I'm personally very grateful for the opportunity to pollute your minds with my mumbling digital idiocy.  Here's hoping I can get even worse!

Of Love Lost and Youth Wasted

Let me take you back to the heady days of 1997. Clinton was in office, and at the risk of beating a dead horse with a really stupid joke, he was, as they say, getting his weiner sucked. The dot-com boom was entering COCAINE-INDUCED DIGITAL FRENZY MODE, but like many young Americans, I had no idea that there was an internet beyond the confines of AOL keywords and chat rooms. Yes, for many years, I was a user of AOL. I am not proud of this fact, but nevertheless, it is a part of me. A non-malignant tumor, in all likelihood. 

Back then, there was a game on AOL called DragonRealms.  It actually still exists, albeit with far fewer users than it had at its peak. It was basically a MUD (multi-user dungeon, for the unsullied among you). It was nerdy as all get-out, and since I was a fat kid without fashion sense or a robust social network, I spent many adolescent evenings in the Crossing, hunting rats at the shipyard, skinning them with my cutlass, and selling them for pennies. I then graduated up to goblins and cougars, and boy, those were exciting times.

But what really separated DragonRealms from the massively-multiplayer games that we have now was that it was primarily a social game.  Even though the game's combat and crafting systems were brilliantly designed, levelling and "theorycrafting" both took a back seat to the game's content and story.  Another way to put it is that the players were people that knew how to read and enjoyed doing so. Most people that know how to read don't have a lot of friends. That's just a simple axiom that everyone can agree on. So, logically, these people who knew how to read would socialize with their fellow agoraphobes in the mystical land of Zoluren and its environs.

I had played the game in a very casual fashion as Charlo, the Dwarven Paladin. I was shitty at the game but I had fun. More importantly, I learned about life and love. It was in DR that I met Shetan Johar, an Elven Cleric who had cast a charm spell on my heart.  She had violet eyes, just like Elizabeth Taylor.  We laughed and chatted together in the Crossing, trading adolescent observations about good parenting, cinema, knock knock jokes, and some dreadfully misinformed notions about procreative processes. We grew very close, or at least as close as the indifferent 28800 baud bonds of AOL would allow.

 

One day, Shetan told me that her mother was going to cancel their AOL account. We were both heartbroken. We resolved to stay in contact via mail. After swearing to contact me, she said "I hope I see you again" and vanished into digital oblivion, never to return to DragonRealms.

To my astonishment, about a month after that incident, I received a letter from an unfamiliar address. Jubilation! A letter from my lost e-love! I opened the envelope to discover that she had calligraphied my real name on it with a blue pen (parts of it had white-out on it. Calligraphy is fucking hard, okay?) It smelled of air freshener and reunion.

Here, faithfully transcribed, is that letter in its entirety:

Charlo,

Hey, how ya doin'? I'm pissed at my mom but thats usual lately. I wish I could talk to you, I miss you so much. I'm in one of my foul moods, I think its withdrawl, ::laugh::. Anyways how are things up there? I'm trying to think of a way to get AOL back so I could talk to you again. I feel like I just gave up all my friends. I know I didn't but thats what it feels like. It would be so cool if I met you one day but I doubt that would ever happen. Do you think you might be able to call me sometime? If you can't thats ok but I'd really like to talk to you. I wish I could call you but with the state of mind my mom's in I doubt it, she keeps saying its a waste of money (she won't even let me pay for it). Either way I'll try to call you if you give me your number. Mail me a recent picture of you ok? ...or two or three. ::grin:: My dad's mad at me now ::sigh:: ....I'm not used to him being mad at me. He's mad 'cause I cut my hair without calling him first. I know I should have but I didn't think about it because I don't live with him and I only see him three times during the year....god I wish that was a good excuse. Anyways! I don't know how I got on that subject. I'm going to have to try to find some of my good pictures or take some new ones. I guess I should get new ones since I cut my har. ::shrug:: I dunno. Oh yeah I'm glad you have my necklace. It kinda made me feel special, that you wanted it I mean. Shelley kept asking what you were to me, I really didn't know what to tell her. I couldn't tell if you were being completly in character or OOC or what. Obviously I can't keep my mind on one topic. Oh well! I'm trying to think of somethin' else to say but I'm running out of ideas. Okay I'll describe myself so you'll have to do the same.

Like I said I have dark brown hair, which is now only about three inches past my shoulder (its so short!!!!), brown eyes, I'm 5'1", and 95lbs., and I usually have a tan. I don't wear glasses, I used to though, I don't smoke, drunk, do drugs etc. etc. I have a little white American Eskimo - dog, her names Sassy. I already told you that I sold the horse I had. That's what pic. I'll send you! One of me riding! My best side! ::grin:: Ummmm........I like riding, blading, arguing, talking to my friends, hanging w/my friends, ....I really like talking to you. Thats about it. I gotta go so I can sulk and try to change my moms mind ::grin:: Well I'll see ya.

Shannon Harris

2-19-97

P.S.

My phone # is XXX-XXX-XXXX call me if you can. Can you give me your #too? Alright thats it. G'bye.

I believe I mailed her back, and that she mailed me back one more time, but I don't know what happened to either letter. In the end, we weren't meant to be. Shetan, if you're out there, I'd just like to say thanks for the memories, and also that I hope you weren't a rapist, because if so, well played, good sir.

Are We the Baddies?

For whatever it's worth on a YouTube channel as small as mine, my LP of Silent Hunter III is probably my "flagship" series (har har, it's a submarine game, and then it's my flagship, and then... I hate myself.)  It definitely comprises the majority of my videos and views.  I'm glad that people seem to like it because I like playing it, most of the time.  Sometimes it devolves into a grudge match where I feel like I need to finish a patrol simply because it needs to be finished, not because I'm having fun.  Silent Hunter generally reminds me of fishing.  I sit for a while, sometimes a long while, before I get a bite.  The time between bites can really drag and I can get a little cranky waiting.

In those long moments of quiet, a fisherman often finds himself in idle introspection.  I did most of my fishing as a teenager and thus my thoughts generally involved video games, warrantless self-pity, and boobs.  My tastes have since become more refined, and while I still pay due consideration to the odd boob now and then, I can say that I've become a thinker-gamer.  Between sinking ships and infiltrating ports, I have to consider the fact that I'm playing a game that casts you in the role of a German naval officer in World War II, and that I'm most definitely fighting for the bad guys.

I should mention that nobody raised this point to me other than one of the many voices inside my head.  Nobody sent me some sappy jeremiad about how I'm corrupting the minds of 50-some YouTubers (an achievement which I'm really happy about, by the way!)  If I allow myself to think about it, I feel... well, I don't feel BAD about it, I just feel odd.  It's a video game, after all.  It's pixels and switches.

So why have I tallied the number of people my digital kaleun has killed with his boat?  It's 2,937 so far, according to SH3 Commander.  1,449 of those were civilians.  I've sunk 266,193 tons of merchant shipping, most of it vital materiel for the Allied war effort.  103,338 tons of naval wreckage sit on the bottom of the ocean too.

These numbers have no meaning whatsoever since it's a god damn video game.  Yet there's something irreverent to me about quantifying human misery and using it as the "score" in a game.  It reminds me of Robert MacNamara's statisticization of war, an extension of Stalin's infamous remark about a man's death being a tragedy, while a million deaths is a statistic.  It's probably an undeserved association that I'm drawing because, again, it's a silly-assed game.  It's also a historical fact that a u-boat captain's success was measured in tons.  If you're going to make a game about it, there's nothing else you can really use.

I'd probably be okay with all of this if I didn't feel an irrational tinge of guilt by association.  World War II video games seem to attract a small but highly vocal cadre of what I'll call revisionists.  Not necessarily Nazis, mind you, but some people whose "what-if" scenarios are frankly kind of sick to consider in the level of detail that they go into, and they seem to dwell on them.  I'd cite examples but it's naturally kind of a touchy thing; I'm not really interested in calling random Internet people Nazis.  I do feel safe saying that a few minutes spent on a wargame forum, especially ones that specifically deal with WWII, will show you that there are people with a strange sort of Wehrmacht fanboyism.  They talk about how great German tanks were and muse about the results of a successful German campaign in Russia, and so on.  I'm sensitive to that kind of talk; not hostile, mind you, I just feel like it's sort of an inane effort that becomes ethically suspect when it's repeated often enough.  In order to find the merits of Nazi Germany's technological advances, you have to do a hell of a lot of surgery to detach it all from the fact that we're still talking about Nazi Germany.  Some people seem to dispense with that easily.  I don't.  And I don't know what good it does to make a habit of envisioning Nazi successes where there were historical failures.  Barring some sick fantasies, I don't think there's much of a result to that line of thinking other than "well, that's fucking terrible to consider.  Glad it didn't work out that way, hope it doesn't again in the future."

Video games invite us to project our own preconceived notions upon them.  Interactive as they may be, games can't answer for themselves.  Any statement we make about a video game's social value is going to reflect our own social values because the game obviously can't answer for itself.  When someone like Jack Thompson sees a game like Counter-Strike, they see a path down the rabbit hole that leads to a fat legal settlement.  Others see nothing but the pixels.  Others can't stop screaming "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"  Maybe some people see an outlet for their violent fantasies.  I'll admit some guilt on the last count.  I cackled like a banshee when I blew up an ammunition ship in the game not too long ago.

When I have this little moral quandary about Silent Hunter III, I'm speaking as someone who has the unfortunate distinction of having a bachelor's degree in History.  I can't help but feel a little queasy about the Nazis.  I'm also probably just an oversensitive guy; after all, I have a blog.  There's my bias, and there's my game.

Don't worry though, I'm still going to play the game and laugh like a woman whenever I do something cool.

Let's Justify Ourselves: A Case for the Let's Play

As I mentioned in my first post to this blog, I enjoy Let's Plays.  Generally, I enjoy watching them as well as making them.  And I do so with a keen awareness that what I'm doing is a horrifying waste of time.

Even though I've played video games for over twenty years (or maybe BECAUSE I have), I'll always be skeptical about the supposed benefits they provide to the player.  Some people will practically bang the table with their shoe, Nikita Khrushchev style, if there's so much as an eyebrow raised about the worthiness of gaming: "They heighten critical reasoning and hone our fine motor skills!  I've made lasting friendships through gaming!  They keep me from killing again!"

These considerations were an afterthought to designers up until the very recent past.  Not that I'm an expert, but I feel confident enough in my own experiences to say that there are usually better activities if one wants to improve oneself in almost any area aside from being a better gamer.  From that standpoint, I can't help but conclude that games are largely a waste of time, for whatever that's worth.  Watching other people play them as they commentate the action is a chocolatey layer of wastefulness atop the fluffy goodness that is gaming itself.  I have absolutely no problem with any of this.  Gaming is about that amorphous blob we call fun.  I try to have fun playing the games that I play, and I get a kick out of seeing other people enjoy games that I also enjoy.

If you've somehow come across this blog and you're not into games, and this whole rationale befuddles and angers you, take heart!  There are plenty of ridiculous analogies to be found in your world too.  Let's take a look at another huge waste of time: cooking food.  Food guru Michael Pollan wrote an excellent article for New York Times Magazine that shows just how much Americans seem to think that cooking is a huge timesink.  We've managed to cut our time in the kitchen in half since the middle of the last century, down to less than a half hour.  But despite our apparent disinterest in the task itself, we're watching more and more television about cooking.  Pollan asks, "how is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves?"

Damned if I know, but I'll hazard a guess.  Although this situation differs from what's going on with gaming and Let's Plays (both appear to be growing commitments for us), I think it offers a vital means of understanding why anyone would even watch a Let's Play.  More than just cooking shows, think of all the craft shows, fishing shows, travel shows, and perhaps most importantly of all, think of how many times you've watched the gentle brushstrokes of Bob Ross.  For some ridiculous reason, we love to watch.  We can't help observe people doing things that we appreciate or that intrigue us.  We'll observe them even at the expense of actually doing them.

It turns out that the brain absolutely craves learning.  When we learn something, whether it's how to play a concerto or the combo for a sweet new move in Street Fighter, neurotransmitters (including dopamine) fire off inside of our heads.  We actually get a bit of a high off of learning.  We're so hopelessly addicted that the areas involved with learning are still active while we sleep, like a tweaker picking scabs.  So craven is our brain for the acquisition of knowledge that we don't care if it comes our way experientially or observationally.  Sloppy seconds are more than enough for us to get a boost.

It feels silly to talk about the act of watching another person talk about a video game they're playing.  But at its core, a Let's Play ends up being about sharing experience.  That's a deeply human activity, one that is exceedingly rare among animals.  It's our hallmark trait.  We communicate elaborate concepts to one another as a means of survival.  It's no wonder that our bodies have evolved to give us rewards for teaching and learning, no matter how silly the concept may be.

And yes, I firmly believe Let's Plays are silly.  But so is most TV.  What makes a Let's Play any less legitimate than watching someone land a trophy fish that they're just going to throw back?  And I'm speaking as a fisherman as well as a Let's Player here.  There's no material use in catching a fish only to throw it back; it's actually kind of an asshole move in my book.  How many millions of people plant their ass on their couch and watch fish abuse, or watch Guy Fieri try to dupe us into thinking that every single thing he eats is orgasmically delicious?  How many times have you watched The Woodwright's Shop or another craft show and thought, "man, I'd love to be able to make a snuff box like that, but... effort... ugh."

All of the values assigned to these activities are culturally ascribed.  That's not to say they're meaningless, but it certainly means they're not set in stone.  The ways in which we waste our time have changed over the centuries thanks to advances in technology and we've changed our opinions to suit them.  Let's Plays are just another progression in our long quest to fritter away our days.  You don't have to enjoy them personally, but I do think that their existence shouldn't be seen as an aberration.

A College Football Diversion

Students at Penn State rioted over the firing of Joe Paterno.  This isn't exactly news anymore, but I was completely astounded by their reaction when I was watching ESPN in the middle of the night.  According to the one coherent rioter that ESPN found, the rioters were pissed because:

1. Joe Paterno was fired over the phone.

2. Joe Paterno told everyone he needed to about the rape.  It's unfair that he's being punished while some other people involved are not.

3. Joe Paterno has a $10 million dollar library named after him.

Let's do away with the probability that most of the rioters were just drunk and stupid college kids who just wanted to trash a news van or two, and assess these points as they stand on their own.  The first complaint is a breech of etiquette at worst, and one which is insubstantial compared to the rest of the evils of this entire situation.  Mike Golic was sputtering a little bit on Mike & Mike about the phone call-firing, trying to make it into a discussion point and realizing that he was failing.  Nobody (including Golic) is really arguing about the merits of the firing itself.  The phone call point is pettifogging, and I think the people who are citing this as a reasonable complaint know this.

The other two issues strike me as reasons to be mad at Joe Paterno.  Only in the narrowest sense did he abide by Pennsylvania's mandatory reporting laws concerning child abuse.  I can't imagine being approached by a subordinate who tells me that another subordinate was anally raping a child at our workplace, and not going to the police immediately.  What makes it even more heinous is that Sandusky continued to abuse children thereafter.  Had someone brought the issue to the attention of law enforcement personnel, it's possible that there could have been fewer victims.  Joe Paterno would probably still have his job too, and would have been commended by the public for handling a horrible situation correctly by getting an absolute scumbag arrested.

And as illegitimate as the library thing sounds, I understand completely what the guy was trying to convey.  Joe Paterno is a living legend, and I absolutely mean that.  The winningest I-A college football coach of all time.  The coach with more bowl appearances and victories than anyone, ever. The man who made Penn State a hallmark team in college football.  A career with the school that lasted for almost all of his adult life.  He's a part of Penn State's essence. These immense achievements stand at odds with a colossal lapse in judgement, and people don't know how to extract Joe Paterno from Penn State.

I understand completely that people are in confused disbelief that the premier coach in college football could end up going out this way.  The most emotional of them don't know who to blame.  It comes down to this: first, you blame Sandusky.  Then you blame the people who created a culture of silence that kept him on the loose.  You don't blame the victims.  You don't blame the people who fired him.  You don't blame the players.  Paterno absolutely deserves blame if these allegations prove true, and he deserves to be fired at the very least.  And depending on what he said to the grand jury and to law enforcement, he might deserve a trial.

In the end, Paterno is one man.  An exceptionally good coach, but still a man.  There are no good men in history; there are men who we can say made good decisions, with the benefit of hindsight guiding us.  Penn State has many difficult decisions ahead.  Hopefully, they face them with more resolve and maturity than they did the night that Joe's career ended.

I've never been one for manifestos.  I dislike statements of intent.  First posts.  Yech.

So we'll call it an introduction.

My cutesy internet name is Effing Controller.  I haven't always gone by that.  To my knowledge, my mother never called me that, and if she did, I'd feel really bad that I exerted that much influence over her life.  The name came up as a running gag between me and my college roommates.  Didn't block that hadouken in time?  Fucking controller.  Can't wall-jump in Super Metroid?  Fucking controller.  Did you make an atrocious batch of homemade General Tso's chicken?  Fucking controller.  And so on.  I've omitted "fuck" from my name because that's way too street for me.  I'll never argue that I'm a man with delicate sensibilities.  It's just that, to have so vigorous and tingly a word as "fuck" in my very own name... well, I just don't think I could live up to the expectations that people have in mind for a person who goes by "Fucking" anything.

This is a lot of drivel already.  Allow me a chance to explain before you return to your pornography.  Not many years ago, I used to write fluidly, even copiously, in a manner not unlike some kind of lanced abscess, the cheesy discharge that was my writing oozing its way onto assorted blogs, notebook pages, IM windows, and elementary school chalkboards.  There are reasons that I'm no longer leaking words, reasons which I will broadly term "life."  The past five years or so have felt blurry, giddy, and sad.  Maybe I'll talk about that.  Maybe not.

The point is that these assorted events have somehow led me to stop writing.  I'd like to change that.  Since I stopped, I've felt dull and unlike myself.  That sucks ass.  I'd like to write and see if it makes me better off.

One thing that's kept me from doing this is that I think blogging can be a crystallization of everything I hate about the Internet, and, in turn, society at large.  I'm of the opinion that no one should feel entitled to my opinion; I don't think that having everyone broadcast their opinions amounts to much more than alienating noise, no matter what people say about the liberalizing qualities of new media and Web 2.0.  That shit is marketing and is meaningless.  Noise is noise, no matter the medium, no matter the branding.  Obviously, it's tough to blog if you think that you, as a blogger, are contributing to some kind of technological conspiracy connived to alienate people.  It's also tough to blog if you're that paranoid.

Armchair psychoanalysis aside, I really can't help but think that it's a hugely self-indulgent enterprise.  What decent person wakes up and decides that they should tell everyone how they feel about "Turner and Hooch," Optimus Prime, fisting, crawfish étouffé, and/or quilt basting?  In the immensity of history, the Internet is still new, and we're still trying to cope with it.  I'd prefer that some future digital archaeologist comes across my blog and says "according to my calculations, this blog is above the median Internet Asininity Quotient and thus was not a factor in the techno-nuclear plague of 2034."

That's probably far too much to ask because the things that interest me are colossal wastes of time.  I am a boring man with a job that's interesting but which I refuse to write about.  It's excruciating to read people's blog posts about their office.  Such posts tend to be all bitchy and telling secrets without a frame of reference to guide us as to whether or not what we're reading is somehow important.  Hugely annoying.  Not going to do it.  If you catch me, give me the Inquisition treatment.

In my time outside of the office, I enjoy the outdoors.  I cook and bake to feed myself, sometimes with something resembling acumen.  Often, I find myself lost in thought while doing mundane tasks, wondering about the world, about people, the universe, and whether I can concoct a cripplingly funny fart joke that will win me millions.  These are my daydreams.

However, most of my focus will be on gaming.  My father affectionately called me a "vidiot" growing up.  My generation started off plugged in, then we went wireless, and now we're in the cloud.  I don't like some aspects of this, though I do embrace others gleefully.  Gaming is one of those things, usually.  I used to enjoy it a lot more than I do now; not sure why that stopped.  Well, I've got ideas, but in addition to wanting to like writing more, I'd like to have more fun with the games that I play.

Consequently, I've also taken on an odd hobby, which I think puts me in the aforementioned "Turner & Hooch" crowd.  I've just recently started doing "Let's Plays."  Essentially, I record myself playing a video game and I include my commentary as I do so.  It's like Mystery Science Theater 3000, but nerdier and not funny.  Despite my reservations about worthy uses of my time, I'm really enjoying this little diversion, and it will probably figure into my writing here (though I hope in a more thoughtful way than just advertising whenever I put a video out).

I think that covers most of the caveats and proposals I had in mind.  You've been warned.  Thanks for bearing with me.