In my previous post regarding the sudden skyward ascent of one YouTuber Sinnocent, I made it a point to disclose that I was going to disclose another project of mine:
Did anyone ever take them on their dare at 1:25?
I wish to write a comedic “Life Philosophy” pamphlet, citing the first iteration of Sim City titles for reference, but the other thing I want to do in the blog, other than help people bail out of otherwise trivial if maddening problems, is a game design project.
If you think about it, we learn by doing and a walkthrough is best shared rather than merely led. Thus, I want this project to be something I can explain, that anyone with patience and perseverance can follow through with and adapt for personal use.
I wish for this to be the case because software modifications, courtesy of their trickiness, are embraced by a community of obsessive, self-absorbed sots who seek attention above affinity. For example:
You want attention.
You see, programming and coding and anything to do with electronic hardware engineering are such foreign languages that only the most dedicated mastermind ever breaks headway. Often, you have no choice but to applaud whatever doohickey emerges.
The drawback: the temperament alone determines most probable direction of a project. This means, for whatever reason, most of the headiest pieces of video gaming emerge from a small handful of stoked, stolid, stark and stir-crazy dweebs.
Now, none of this should bother the public at large. We understand and accept the stereotype of cloistered, pencil-necked goobers clickity-clanking on keyboards in café kiosks to make the world more accessible provided we have a live electrical outlet.
You’re kidding, right?
But, these same guys debated pirates vs. ninjas with greater enthusiasm than whether the European Union was overstepping its bounds with a one-world currency during the 2,000s alleged financial crisis.
Put simply (and as mildly as I can), anyone who is isolated for too long is also left to one’s own devices for far longer than necessary and the number of positive examples (i.e. those that confirm my thesis) outstrip every last sappy, heartfelt exception to the rule.
Like any sort of applied force, you can penetrate just about any sensibility or decorum. It’s a matter of continuous pressure over time upon a pliable surface. If your grip does not produce uncomfortable feedback, you can crumple any solid structure.
Or societal structure.
Three years. Three years.
Three years.
Say that three times.
Fast.
Someone took three years’ time, the latest advances in processing resolutions and graphics onto an emulated or C#-rewritten ROM of Majora’s Mask–that eerie darker half of the N64 Zelda games–and plastered Nicholas Cage’s face everywhere.
When I quit my job in 2021, bereft of purpose and disillusioned less from the state of the world and more from my inability to shape it for the better, this level of detached, despondent disenfranchisement was what I envisioned would enslave us all.
Oh, boy howdy, it would be embarrassing if that actually happened, now wouldn’t it?
Anyway, these guys, longing to retain their youth and relevance, vie to tinker with toys from golden times, many of which are video games. I chock up to the same hobby and admit to indulging my sweet tooth for mods–just look up Moon Man Doom!
Part of this is being fascinated with patterns and minutiae, like a red soda can amid an otherwise totally green hayfield that other cattle keep staring at while everyone’s strolling up to the slaughterhouse (it’s an actual phenomenon, okay?), since it’s different.
Oh, come ON!
And then, someone decides to rewrite the hit detection, object-to-player interaction, and literal collision code for the original Super Mario Bros., magnify Mario’s visage by four times regardless of sprite drawing limitations on original NES hardware, all to make a gimmick mod on par with giving him a shotgun in Super Mario 64 (yes, someone did that, too), and then follows through!
What balls!
Now, to be fair, none mentioned thus far are anywhere near morally reprobate. Not even the lowliest Terry Trap that Cory Scott has since catalogued will ever make me rue the day we ever stepped beyond throwing stones into ponds. I just accept that game makers, while undeserving of derision, are weird folk regardless.
For perspective, there’s a puzzle mini-game in the PS1 underdog classic Vagrant Story, called “Evolve or Die”, where you speed-run the solution of a block puzzle. Your completion time determines your “place on the food chain”, which includes “Little Green Man”, “Homo Sapiens” and, yes, “Video Game Designer”.
????????????????????
(Go play it.)
See, even commercial releases are the works of fever dream addicts–the kind of suckers whose faces you want to punch repeatedly just to let them know they’re alive and that people do, in fact, acknowledge them–but even Minecraft players on a whole have transcended their collective “Dick-on-a-High-Mountain” phase.
So, whatever excuse you might have written in my theoretical comments section would need to be written as part of your signing up for the e-mail list, and I assure you–you won’t miss out on a lot.
Regardless, something must be done!
Getting closer to the mark.
I take it as both a case of temperament and a need for fresh blood. If insiders to the scene believe outsiders, that may otherwise suck and drag everyone down, have acquired a sudden, delirious, contagious case of having actual chops, new ideas may spawn.
The problem persists in the indie game scene. Practically every last entry is a self-absorbed, referential, eye-winking throwback, the side-scrolling platform hop-and-bops of which have this “Dark Souls Quick-Dash” and pervasive “Everybody-Has-to-Have-a-Double-Jump-in-a-Labyrinth-as-Plain-as-Symphony-of-the-Night Movement” Level Design.
The gig is: they can program it, but the components don’t gel. Even their 3D games have issues. PotaTOOM had a field day snoring through something that plenty of other YouTubers should have either vetted further or have been honest about from the outset.
Happens more often than people want to admit.
Nothing against the developers as persons or even as groups, but calling them groups grossly overestimates their networking savvy. While writing fiction is supposedly a social activity, not many writers seem terribly social. Game programmers? Tenfold.
Forget their excuses like, “My dog ate my hard drive”, “I stopped believing in my project”, or “Life happened”. You want to know the awful truth of forestalling a project? The same temperament that got you into coding is the one driving everyone else away.
That’s okay–it’s a very common problem to have. It explains better why large technology firms outsourced customer service representatives to third-world countries–the tech-savvy professionals over here lacked the fortitude to outlast their introversion.
The Metal Tempest said something unusual regarding the differences between hardcore punk and heavy metal in that practitioners are extroverted exhibitionists and introverted onlookers respectively, which factors into their music and even stagecraft:
You should tell him what your favorite band is while you’re at it.
So, if we use the DISC personality system as an example, if we got nothing but I’s and S’s in the game programmer circuit, we’re knee-deep in a passive-aggressive smorgasbord of “I told you so” and “debate me, logical fallacy”?
Yeah, I thought so.
What started as a post about a choice of upcoming project–philosophical pamphlet or tangible DIY game project–became a showcase of what the video game modification community has since wrought upon this earth.
In this, let me show you a video by Cory Scott. He goes by N!troActive in some settings and Aquarius199 in others, namely YouTube. He has sporadically uploaded ever since the company has disputed (unjustly) one or two videos.
Cory’s contributions to YouTube and to the gaming scene are important. Very few will demonstrate the finer details of a deliberate troll mod in the vein of a “Terry Trap”.
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Before you play the following link, DANGER! Epileptics need not apply. Also turn down both the YouTube volume bar and, if possible, your PC’s speaker & headphone master volume control. And if it’s going into a stereo system, turn that one down as well.
You’ve been warned!
So, this is what Cory goes through:
Terry Traps are less known for experimental effects and surrealism.
I’m nowhere near calling for boycotts, governmental intervention, or academic research grants (I’d blow those on candy, anyway). I am, however, calling for the two of us to pull off something even better in this space.
Like it or not, we already have kindred downstairs in the warrens who have lingered there for at least a decade. Scarlet Vixen, also on YouTube, has been working on a singular Super Mario Bros. 3-based project off and on throughout that whole time:
Now, we’re talking!
“Where to begin…?” is the only question we need to ask. Don’t wring your hands. Once we’re through with just one or three of these, a life philosophy will come together on its own. Take a deep breath.
I can see you’re well-skilled. Good hunting.