Grounded Nature

Every now and then I forget why I’m here. Nothing can matter if you have no fears. Anytime I feel the earth under my feet, I’m reminded of grounded nature. The sound and the beats of leafs. The hum and whistle-whir of engines in the street. The daily meet and greet of walking-onward’s. Burn it use it but never waste it. Too many do; I walk in the forest instead. Connected through my limbs to the ground and transcending with sight beyond bounds. I discard thoughts of absolution. I will never find solace in retribution. Yet, I may find resolution here. Down and ground and twists and earth-made-rock-steps traversed only by large bounds, upside down, hanging without a sound the pale oak-cast shadows that drown, over the lake that speaks in tongues which confound those who never look around.

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Orc VS Human VS Panda in Denmark

Wow (ahem). Apparently some Danish artist had some fun with the trailer for World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

At the very end where the logo pops up it’s not just Azeroth spinning inside the globe, it’s Denmark. I think the credits for the picture below go to Eurogamer.dk. If they don’t, they should really do a better job of saying where they got their images from! Spent a long while trying to track the right credits down…

World of Denmark

Denmark? It’s not just a photoshop, go watch the last moments of the trailer…

I’m thinking either the rest of the team really missed it and the Dane had his laugh, or they kept it in there to generate hits/hype. Blizzard recently lost a handful of EU subscribers. Maybe this is like a shout out? Obviously Pandaria is Asian, not Danish. A lot of European game sites ran stories about this. Seems like Blizzard is a pretty savvy company to me. Extra publicity via the media.

Video games as a storytelling medium

A really longtime pet peeve of mine are people who dis video games for being video games. Sure, many have violence, poor representation of women, graphic content, illegal substances ect., but what doesn’t? Many books, music, and movies all have that too! This all easily leads to a question. Why are video games singled out?

Most people answer by saying it’s the interactive element. That can’t be right. When watching a horror movie our hearts race and when we read a sad story we feel the emotions of the characters. Everything is interactive. I think it’s because video games are newer. Eventually, I hope they will be accepted as what they should be, another storytelling medium.

I’m not talking about Pong or (most) other sports games when I say that (Pong is totally a sports game. It’s table tennis! That’s an olympic sport!). But just about every other genre has stories. Shooter games have stories. Action games have stories. Perhaps the largest, most expansive stories are found in Role Playing Games. Most good RPG’s are essentially fantasy novels in another format.

Over at Artix.com (the homepage for my favorite indie game company) a few weeks ago Artix posted a PDF of a guide for creating game worlds and quests. This is incredibly similar to a guide one would use for writing a story. Why? Because it’s the same idea. What is the goal of the character(s)? What adversity will he or she face? What are their motivations for success? Video games have just as much merit as other storytelling!

And that concludes my rant of what was on my mind.

That Darn Baseball Bat

A silly, nonsensical Projection on Paper story

That darn baseball bat. The one over the mantel. Yeah, the one dad died over and mom lived over.

It was forty years ago when that fire broke out at the baseball emporium downtown. Dad couldn’t really think too straight back then, either. See, there was the fire, and he got stuck. A “baseball player” saved him. Smacked the wood beam he was stuck under clear in half and pulled him to safety. Smacked it with that darn baseball bat. Ten years later, I was born. Dad had kept the bat that had saved his life. The darn one. He had even started a collection of bats. That made us poor. Then it became things that were not baseball bats, but could be used as one. It was a huge collection. I started selling them under his nose; we were broke and needed food. But it didn’t matter how many I sold. Dad never noticed and he just kept buying more and more of them. Mom got sick. She was going to die. I tried to sell the darn one, the darn baseball bat. Now that he noticed. That one sent him into a rage when he saw it was missing.

And his heart broke down.

Empathy

Twisting, diving, spinning and turning. Watching the flow drift and soar, weaving patterns of worlds up in the air. Energy that warps, bends, has no end. Like a lucid dream that never wakes. Water silently roaring, cascading down, falling into the deep abyss below.

Under the earth where the water falls is a lake of emotion. The limestone walls are of lies and pains. It flows into a steam of time through the tunnels of direction. Sight leads to the left and an endless fall. Collapse. The right leads past the walls and outside, and can only be traversed with word. Empathy.

Outside the trees grow tall, the energy spirals and the stream flows between them all, into another lake. Ripples form on the surface and meet. Scatter. Converge. Waters meet as one lake, one mind. Time ends. The winds pick up suddenly. A storm carries droplets into the grass where they sink back down into the earth. Cycle.