I really connected with the nostalgia topic we discussed in class. It never occurred to me that there may be different kinds of nostalgia and that people can experience it so radically differently. As far back as I can remember playing games has been a big part of my life. I can think fondly back on playing Mario Kart with friends, trying to teach my grandma how to play Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour on the Sega Dreamcast, and countless hours hiding away in my room playing Harvest Moon 64.

However, it struck a chord with me that there are different types of nostalgia and that those experiences can’t always be replicated properly. I think that’s why the indie game genre has boomed so much over the years. I have tried to go back and play some of these childhood favorites and it’s usually pretty disappointing. I’ve been spoiled with modern controls and graphics. The N64 controller was really ridiculous and not intuitive at all. Some of the graphics on these older games are so outdated, I’m amazed sometimes that I was ever able to determine what was happening on the screen when I was a kid. The control mapping is often clunky and limited. This is not to say these weren’t great games at the time they were released, just that games have advanced so much since then.

So, while I’ve never actually played Shovel Knight, I can relate with the excitement of playing a game that captures that retro feeling without actually being retro. I think this is one of the reasons I love Stardew Valley so much. Harvest Moon was one of my all-time favorite games growing up, and Stardew Valley is beautiful homage to it. It captures a lot of the same whimsy, relaxation, and appreciation for the little things in life and keeps a bit of the retro feeling by implementing pixel art as it’s graphical medium. However, there are so many quality of life updates and so many more options for game play that I don’t experience nearly the same amount of frustration as I would if I was actually playing Harvest Moon.

I’m always impressed by people that can religiously play retro games and recapture some of those nostalgic feelings. They’re so dedicated to keeping the old games alive and continuing the passion for them. I applaud them for their dedication. But I also think it’s still important to appreciate what indie developers are doing to help those of us with less patience experience some quality nostalgia.

            I never thought so much about what it really means to identify with a character before reading the “He Could Be a Bunny Rabbit for All I Care!” piece[1]. I found myself trying to reflect what makes me connect with a character or avatar and having a hard time putting my finger on it.

            Generally, when making a custom avatar, I don’t tend to make them look like me. An exception to this is that I will often match my avatar’s hair color to my real-life current hair color. That’s about where the similarities end. I feel like when I’m making an avatar, I usually go for what I would like to look like instead of how I actually look. This typically means light grey eyes, a smaller nose, fuller lips. I don’t necessarily hate the way I look, but I also don’t want to spend hours looking at myself. Making a different looking character also helps me get into role-playing a bit more, I think. I feel like I would be too focused on my own real-world limitations with a character that looked just like me.

            Depending on the game, I might make my avatar look like another character from a game that I really like. Usually, in games where I’m playing as a caster (magic user), I will model my avatar after Yennefer from The Witcher 3. For example, I did this in Dark Souls 3 where I gave my pyromancy-welding avatar a small frame, luxurious black hair, and purple eyes. In The Witcher 3, you cannot play as Yennefer, so it’s extra fun for me to imagine being as badass as her in another game.

            In a lot of games that I play (Dark Souls 3, Red Dead Online, Bloodborne, Fallout 3, New Vegas, and 4, etc.), how your avatar looks has no bearing on how you play the game. However, when we were creating characters in World of Warcraft in class, I found my decisions were being limited by functional gameplay choices. Aesthetically, I was immediately drawn to the Draenei race; Something about humanoids with horns is really appealing to me. However, when I was looking over the class options, I noticed that the Draenei can’t be warlocks. I’ve played WoW in the past and the warlock class is my favorite. I generally like to play games as morally grey characters and I also really like demonic lore, so the warlock class fits perfectly with those preferences. In the end, I chose to make an undead character. I actually do really like the undead race and they were a close second choice for me, regardless of their ability to be warlocks. Obviously, I don’t identify with being a rotting reanimated corpse, but there are a few things I could relate to; A fascination with the macabre and a spookier/grumpier disposition. And the hair color, of course.

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[1] Shaw, Arienne. Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

            I will preface this post with a SPOILER WARNING for BioShock Infinite.

I wanted to share my interpretation of BioShock Infinite for my blog post this week. It’s one of my top 5 favorite games, so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it (I even have tattoos from the game!) Very briefly in class we touched upon the representation of race or minority classes in the game and how the creators may have negatively portrayed them. I wanted to argue that I don’t think the decision to demonize the minority group in the game was meant as a slight on minority groups nor was it out of line with the over-arching story.

As mentioned in the readings, the game takes place in a religious, white supremacists idealized version of 20^th century America. You play as Booker DeWitt, hired to rescue a girl named Elizabeth from the floating city of Columbia. You quickly learn that what seems to be an enlightened utopia has many of the same problems that the real America back down on the ground has. Mainstream society is very whitewashed, while minority groups live in poverty and squalor. A resistance group forms in the game as move throughout the floating city with Elizabeth called the Vox Populi. The group is led by an African American woman named Daisy Fitzroy. At first, the group’s rallying cry for equality sounds appealing and like something many players would root for in the game. However, as things between the Vox Populi and the privileged members of Columbian society get more and more heated, you quickly see an ugly side to the group. They become violent and overzealous, arguably “just as bad” as the oppressors they’re working so hard to overthrow. It ultimately culminates in a destructive all-out civil war in the streets of Columbia.

At face value, this could be seen as belittling the efforts of the real-life equality movements that the Vox Populi are clearly emulating. However, I would argue that this is less about the invalidation of minority struggles and more about Booker’s struggle with his own personal demons. There are clues strewn throughout the game that Booker has been struggling to process events from his past. During the baptism scene in the beginning, he has a strange dream about being in a room with someone hammering on the door and shouting at Booker that he is required to repay a mysterious debt. Throughout the game, he revisits this dream often, with more details emerging as you continue to play.

There are also various mentions of the battle of Wounded Knee throughout the game, including an extremely racist interactive diorama depicting the battle that Booker and Elizabeth are forced to walk through on their journey to escape Columbia. In this depiction of the battle, you see a lot of the same demonization of a minority group (in this case American Indians) that is currently going on with the Vox Populi. At the beginning of the scene as well you hear Slate, one of the game’s villains, explaining to Elizabeth that her “companion,” Booker, “wrapped himself in glory on December 29^th, 1890.” Elizabeth asks Booker what Sate means, and Booker replies, “You don’t want to know.” This interaction implies that Booker is trying to keep his past a secret from Elizabeth and one can be left to assume that it’s because it’s not something he’s proud of.

It’s not until the end of the game that it becomes clear that Booker is suffering from extreme guilt and PTSD from his involvement in the slaughter at Wounded Knee. Since the game’s plot ends up relying heavily on time travel as an aspect of the story, you discover that Wounded Knee was a pivotal moment in Booker’s life. As the game progresses towards the finale, Booker and Elizabeth explore alternate timelines to try and repair damages that have been done in the present. Booker, and by proxy the player, soon realizes that from that titular moment in his life, any timeline that extends from the battle ends in chaos, destruction, and despair. In the end, Booker chooses to destroy all timelines by choosing death after the battle of Wounded Knee.

I believe that this game was really portraying a man struggling to rectify his past and failing to do so. There’s a sense throughout the game that no matter how hard he tries, the past will repeat itself. It turns out that the leader of Columbia, Father Comstock, is actually Booker in another timeline. Comstock is just as guilty of demonizing and working to annihilate a minority group as Booker was during Wounded Knee. In a certain timeline, you see how Booker’s hatred and bigotry get passed down to his daughter molding her into an image of himself, who chooses to wreak havoc on mainland America below. Wounded Knee haunts Booker to the point where he can’t imagine the possibility of himself redeemed.

Clearly, BioShock Infinite wanted to draw parallels to current issues with equality in real-life American society. However, instead of strictly being a commentary on racial struggles in our society, this seemed to be a more personal story of being unable to cope with PTSD. The guilt of the blood Booker shed was all consuming to him. Booker felt that no matter what he did, he was beyond redemption for his actions. He felt the entire universe was better off if he chose to die than to continue on living. He kept reliving his past and projecting his guilt onto the world around him. I believe Booker’s personal struggle is the overall message to be taken away from the game.

The class activity we did last week where we made a timeline of games we’ve played throughout our lives made me realize a few things about myself and the types of games I like. As I was frantically scribbling in games in tiny letters to fit them all in, some patterns jumped out to me.

The very beginning of my timeline is mostly solo card games (war, solitaire) and board games with my grandmother (Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, etc.). My grandma lived in the house with us as I was growing up and I loved nothing more than spending time with her. On the other side of the family, I was also very close with my grandpa. He was (and still is) the coolest grandpa around. He’s very into computers and technology and used to build his own PCs. When I got a little bit older, he was actually the one who first introduced me to my love of gaming. I vividly remember him sitting me down at his desk in his big comfy computer chair and teaching me the mechanics of Mech Warrior, Civilization III, and GTA 3. I was enamored. I would sit there and play for hours while my grandpa watched TV or quietly read a book.

This was the catalyst for me. I loved everything my grandpa loved and soon the love of games blossomed into something all my own. It was hard for me before to pinpoint when exactly I became a “gamer.” To be honest, I only in very recent years felt like a gamer. For me, it was less about being ostracized for being female, but being ostracized for the types of games I like and my tendency to enjoy a solitary or one-on-one experience. For a long time, other gamers made me feel like if I wasn’t playing multiplayer games like CoD, I wasn’t playing “real” games.

But the games I have played over the years have been extremely influential to me in developing my personality and fostering my friendships. Some of my favorite bonding moments with friends have been over trading a controller back and forth or even just simply watch a friend kick a hard boss’s butt. It took me a long time to realize I was internalizing elitist negativity. Just because I always hated games like CoD doesn’t mean that I’m less of a gamer. I’ve also come to realize that gaming doesn’t have to be an overly social activity to still be enjoyable and valid.

Another thing I noticed as I made my list is that video game music is way more important to me than I realized. As I was looking over the list and trying to pick out some notable things I remembered about each game and a common thread between them, I noticed that amazing music was a recurring theme. Sometimes it’s hard to notice how great the music is when you’re concentrating on a difficult platforming area or a mega hard boss, but it turns out the music is one of the things that sticks with me the most. It really adds to the immersion and the atmosphere of a game. I truly think that even if you don’t notice it in the moment, some of the best games wouldn’t be as great without their masterful scores. Immersion is definitely something I’m interested in learning more about in this class.