#like can society just stop apply gender to unnecessary things that’s the real issue here

[raeathnos]

.

[zenosanalytic]

4/20/19 HSE 8

Ok back at it

MEAT 15

Cool Fight; Not terribly surprising.

MEAT 16

Dirk’s as much Rose’s father as Rose is his Mother. I guess maybe it’s more convenient, psychologically, to choose a causative direction and stick with it, rather than accept the Mobial nature of their genesis, but for some reason it bugs me this keeps getting overlooked.

Dirk’s over here talking about how right he is all the time and I dont think he was ever right about anything even once in canon(aside from certain aspects of his talk with Dave, and choosing not to kill Hal) XD The only “plan” of his to work was the one re: entering the Session, and 1)he outsourced it to Hal and 2)it only worked because he managed to improvise his way through every aspect of it failing to go the way he thought it would, and even that probably had more to do with their entry being part of HiC’s plan to use them, so she wasn’t trying to wipe them.

Another Thing: I dont think the Ascent Differential is Aspect so much as Personality.

Another Another Thing: That Rose, when discussing her life-long fear of knowledge as a corrupting and ruining outside force(this being a person who always felt her mother wasn’t her mother, in some sense, and responded to that fear by rejecting emotional intimacy with said mother), doesnt see the connection between that life-long fear and her fear that Ascending will be bad, damaging, and corrupting, is Notable. Perspective continues to be important, and lack of self-awareness continues to hamstring ppl in this narrative.

MEAT 17

I feel like this new narrative belligerence on Dirk’s part isn’t going to work out too well for him with a person as aware and recalcitrant to narrative meddling as John. It’s going to be John and WV all over again. This is also a wonderful example of how personal flaw and specificity isn’t solved by Godhood in HS, and can really trip you up; basically all of this, including the “impotence” applies to Dirk, too, when others disagree with the direction he’s trying to push them in, and this whole rant may be meant, ironically, as an example of dramatic irony: basically, that Dirk’s rant about total control and knowledge reveals the limits of his knowledge and will be followed by examples of how limited his control is, which he can’t be aware of, but which the “impotent” audience will.

MEAT 18

...And, almost immediately, John’s objecting to the narration and doing things before Dirk “writes” him doing them(the sigh).

MEAT 19

“So yeah, I’m gonna allow it” Notice how he asserts power over situations he does not, in fact, have power over.

Which is kind of an interesting dynamic to bring up in the context of authorship? I mean: in the realm of nonfictional works an author can’t “make” things happen, only alter for their audience what DID happen. In some respect this is being written as equivalent to that dynamic; the simple admission in M17 that Dirk is misrepresenting events also admits those events happened another way than he’d prefer, meaning it’s also an admission of his lack of power over actual events. And, of course, all the other things I’ve been talking about, and the fact that everyone’s “character” is rooted in natures established in the original work. But in a fictional work an author’s creative power is absolute, and this is a fictional work; though I suppose a derivative or transformational one, which accounts for the shortfall. Another interesting aspect of this is that the “Author” is presented as a Narrator; Narrators merely describe what happened, they don’t create it. I was going somewhere more concrete with this but it popped out of my head >:T >:T

Ok so other aspects of this: I agree that Jane’s been established as a pretty ambitious person, but she was also always a pretty moral person and the way she’s going about this so far doesn’t seem to be in keeping with that part of herself. And also: she literally wants to create shortages, and thus the suffering shortages will cause, for... what? Nostalgia? Because she think she can run Capitalism better than the adults from before all this?? Because Hierarchy is Neat??? Seems like a whole handful of really petty, selfish, and juvenile reasons to me. Also one guaranteed to cause social conflict; I doubt a civ that’s never known material want is going to react too well to sudden starvation and financially-manufactured forced-labor(which, lbr, is what most work in our world is).

Obvsl, as a snake and member of the storied gens Atheris, I agree with Roxy&Calli that patriarchal human concepts of gender are not the end-all-be-all of identity, but what really jumps out to me here is Roxy’s description of the nature of their love for, and previous sexual interest in, Dirk which I find really True. Like: the sentiment of wanting to see children of a person because you really like that person and think they should continue, or of thinking having the kids you might have with another person would be pretty interesting. Also that loneliness is a hell of a drug 8T

I’m trying to figure out why this conversation would be circumstantially simultaneous with The Furthest Ring being “destroyed”, but I got Nothing :T :T :T

MEAT 20

So yeah, Jade’s merging with her Alt!Selves, not too surprising since it was heavily foreshadowed in Endgame.

Given that Sessions are located IN the Furthest Ring, and Sessions MAKE new multiverses, I find it being made out of “negative potential. The absence of a future” pretty ironic :p I wonder if the tentacle hair bit is a nod towards the Horror-Terrors, and theories about them being Players? Rose and Dirk’s view of Ascension would seem to suggest HTs might be SUCCESSFUL players who eventually abandoned their universes out of fear of the damage they’d do misusing their godhood(as it doesnt solve your personal problems), rather than the old HC of them being failed Players.

MEAT 21

My theory about “The Economy” being code for sex doesn’t stop feeling ever more confirmed by this narrative :|

Dirk’s anger at the idea of anyone not thinking he’s right about everything is Palpable on this page. Also I’d just like to note that This:

Is being said by a person currently in the middle of metaphysically manipulating a friends towards her worst impulses(and also potentially some amounts of self-hatred, give her thoughts re: femininity) for the sake of establishing a dictatorship through which she, as his agency-dimmed puppet, will enforce his personal politico-philosophical preferences regardless of what anyone else thinks and he’s saying it about people who just said This:

which is to say: a bunch of political pluralists who are NOT seeking to impose their morality on anyone but rather to establish a system where EVERYONE can SHARE their moral understanding of policy issues and come to a consensus decision on them, within the context of a political society DEFINED by the equality of all as political actors. There’s just so much that’s wrong, weak, and easily dismissable about Dirk’s argument here. Not to mention his obvs, undisguised, physical disgust for trolls >:T

And he’s doing all this Purely because, given his fixation on “Winning”, he wants to Win. Like: he’s not actually even pursuing what he considered good policy; he is, literally, doing this all for Pure Ego, which he has the gall(and lack of self-awareness) to accuse others of acting from. And this self-deluding buffoon is a person who believes himself “Ascended” and therefore possessed of a “higher” and “clearer” perspective on matters above their “petty” concerns about, oh non-humans being allowed to live as they like, or practice any political agency at all, and all ppls being spared unnecessary and pointless suffering due to entirely manufactured shortages. So much (real, actual)Irony, of so many types, in all of this, all at once.

An aside: I am really liking the political-mindedness of these Epilogues so far; really playing to my Interests uwu

The bit about Hybrid babs and shipnames is funny, and it doesn’t read like a shot at the fandom to me at all; it’s more a joke at Dave’s expense given the obvs distress Kanaya’s in and his inability to stop making the situation more awkward(itself prob the result of Bro’s neglect/abuse)

Oh hey look: it’s Dirk the “Omniscient” being distracted, caught unawares and off-guard by the actions of others, unable to handle the role&work he’s chosen for himself(ie “out of his depth”), unable to split his attention between even just two conscious ppl at once, and not knowing what others are thinking. Given this and his handling of Jade’s thoughts in the last section, I kinda feel like it’s less he can actually sense the thoughts of others, and more that he gets some kind of inkling or hunch, or maybe that’s it’s purely just him guessing(that’d fit real well with his comments on Roxy being “inscrutable” to him), or even just having an awareness of the plot he is narrating(and thinks he’s writing). Of course it could also be some kind of Heart thing; not really even access to their thoughts at all, but a sort of awareness of their Agency? Like: Heart is The Self and The Self is expressed through Agency, so he has, in some way, developed an awareness of “Self-Action”, which is to say, Agency? Kinda like how Dave “feels” Time and Jade “feels” Space and Rose “feels” Relevance. Which, just as an asnide, would be something super-basic powers-dev wise, since Dave started having a sense of Time way back in the early Acts, long before godhood. Though I can see how Dirk developing an awareness of OTHERS intentions(and feelings, potentially, given Heart’s other associations) would seem like a big step for him, given how self-absorbed he is.

Ok that’s it for this one I think. I know I’m not being terribly kind to Dirk in all this but, tbf, he’s being kind of a huge snide Dick in basically every respect, and I also don’t have a lot of Chill in me when it comes to 1)arrogant people or 2)manipulators (:T

[teewai1836-blog]

Hey guys,

  Welcome to a new week, the previous week has been better than the previous 2 weeks. Been trying to catch up on academics and other stuff.

Fair Warning: I am going to touch on some controversial issues,

Caveat: I am responsible for what I write, you’re responsible for what you choose to understand.

http://teewaiblog.wordpress.com/2018/06/23/what-is-feminism-part-1-true-meaning-of-feminism/amp/?_twitter_impression=true (Here is a link to my first post on the blog of the ‘WHAT IS FEMINISM’ series).

https://teewaiblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/01/what-is-feminism-part-2-why-feminism/ (link to the second post of the series)

http://teewaiblog.wordpress.com/2018/07/07/what-is-feminism-part-3-feminism/ (link to the third post of the series)

 In my previous post I wrote on how men and women alike have been affected by the standards of society. I also spoke about how feminism recognizes the pain of both genders, the double standards in certain scenarios especially in the cases of male sexual assault. On how real feminists recognize the pain of men, they don’t ignore it, they don’t choose when their feminists hat is on and truly fight for the equal treatment of both genders.

Next up is this belief that men can’t be feminists, only allies to feminists (this is more popular amongst guys), but that is very wrong as I am living proof of that, repeat after me MEN CAN BE FEMINISTS TOO. Like it goes to the very core of feminism which is the equality of the sexes, how would you call it equality if feminists are advocating that men and women should be involved in everything as they like, but at the same time men would not be allowed to feminists too because it something only a woman can do??????????? The idea that men can’t be feminists is a simply a misunderstanding of feminism by men (or women who say so). Feminism belief system is based around gender equality and doesn’t have gender specific requirements.

Now, feminism is about choice as I earlier mentioned that shaming a woman for wanting to be a housewife is bad, and I stand by that. Feminism is about equality, it hopes to allow people to be able to do what they want to. Now when you shame a woman who wants to be at home and be a housewife, aren’t you doing exactly what you’re trying to stop. By forcing women to leave the house and work? you are not making it their choice again, you are simply just replacing one slave master with another slave master.

You will recall the Chimamanda (CNA) controversy about her interview with Hillary Clinton, where CNA asked her why wife is the first thing on her twitter bio. what Chimamanda did there wasn’t forcing her, she simply asked why she would do that and what makes Chimamanda correct is because there have been very few women that have had the kind of career success that Hillary

  Clinton has had in her life, Former United States Senator, Former Secretary of State of the United States (fourth in line for presidency after Vice President, Speaker and Senate President Pro Tempore), Democratic Party Presidential Candidate (who won the popular vote, where she would be the president if America decided to have a normal voting system) and Clinton is a renowned feminist and influences a lot of people, hence them seeing the wife first would make them think “she has occupied all these positions and still values wife the most, so is it really worth it?”, you get my

point now, she would be influencing a lot of people’s thought unconsciously. She wasn’t saying the position of the wife isn’t important or anything like that, but she should realize the effect of what that was having on people, that’s why she asked her to explain that. If you want to be a housewife, be a house wife it’s an important job, if you want to be a career woman, then be a career woman, if you want to stay at home and still work, then please feel free to as illustrated by the cartoon with the 3 women.

You will notice that the some of the pictures I used for this part both include men taking care of children and women doing the office work . I intentionally did that, because the housewife thing doesn’t just apply to women, if you are man and you want to be a house husband then please let him be a house husband in peace, don’t disturb him, it’s not laziness or anything. If a man wants to work, I assure that he will work, but if he doesn’t, please allow him to stay at home in peace. And NO, feminists don’t want women to be the heads of the house, just for the man and woman to be equal partners in their marriage.

  The above illustrations are all okay.

Some people might be tempted to say that men don’t oppress women or the other way round, wrong, I will cite the example of the O.A.U lecturer who did sex for marks, that is real time oppression whereby he was saying, he won’t give her marks because her work merited it but rather because she will sleep with him, and if she refuses to sleep with him, then she will fail (for those of you that don’t know this, she didn’t sleep with him, she recorded it and reported). Also take the example of Mira Sorvino (an actress) and the Harvey Weinstein issue (disgusting assaulter who was one of the biggest producers), Harvey Weinstein had tried to have sex with Mira Sorvino back in 1995/1996 and harassed her, but she refused, and when she was telling people about it, they told her to keep quiet (it came out last year, 2017). We discovered last year that Harvey Weinstein blacklisted her in Hollywood for not having sex with him, that is he told people not to hire her for movies, she was meant to be one of the main roles in Lord of the Rings, but Harvey told Peter Jackson (Harvey’s Friend and producer of Lord of the Rings) not to cast Mira (peter didn’t know why until when the whole issue of Mira and Harvey came out that he connected the dots and apologized publicly to Mira), and several other movies that the producers came and started saying that Harvey told them not to cast her, movie roles that would have been life changing for her, he basically stopped her career for over 20 years. Now having heard this, can you honestly tell me that women aren’t oppressed (And I mean both Harvey and the producers who listened to him here).

I am coming to an end of my write up but let me quickly take a detour to what Chimamanda said on the Trevor Noah show because I felt the reaction was totally unnecessary and stupid, it kind of went like this;

CHIMAMANDA: Buhari is the President of Nigeria or the sky is blue

PEOPLE: how dare she say that?

She was simply stating facts, chivalry is rooted in the belief of women being weaker and standard set that a man always must pay etc., if a woman doesn’t want chivalry then don’t, if she loves stuff like that then please do if you wish to. Also she was very right in saying the women and children stuff and how it is connected to them being weak, there are women way stronger than a lot of men (among the guys reading this, How many of think that you are stronger than Serena Williams), but in a disaster people still insist women and children first when there are women stronger than men, no you allow the weak and those that can’t help themselves go first, then you can go out in any order after those people are helped, I don’t see the problem here.

Now as I wrap up, let me say something I use in governing my life and something that Blessing Abeng (check her out in twitter at @Ms_Einsteinette, I swear you won’t regret it) said, when I first meet you I respect you and continue to respect you till the day you make me see otherwise, like what happened with the Dean of my faculty when he was saying things like human rights has nothing to do with the family, and men should never cry, he would never allow his wife to accept a minister position if she is offered by the president etc., I said it to everyone especially lecturers my respect for him that day died. We should respect each as humans first and honestly life would be good.

Well that’s all from me now, if you read the post up to this point then I am greeting you. I part with these words of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS”

I want to get your thoughts and observations in the comment section below, if you have questions to ask, contact me on my work Gmail teewai1837@gmail.com or if you have something you want me to write about, you equally drop it there. Love you guys, till next time.

“BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER” – ELLEN DeGENERES

What is Feminism Part 4: Feminism 2 Hey guys,   Welcome to a new week, the previous week has been better than the previous 2 weeks.

[symbianosgames]

Most players won't play to the end of your game. That's not a tragedy -- that's a feature of video games' design landscape. Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBerghe explains, in this reprint from the final (June/July 2013) issue of Game Developer magazine.

Argument: As a game designer, you are more free when crafting your ending than you are for any other piece of your game.

First of all, having an ending at all is your choice. Don't want one? All good! Games are loops, and if you want to leave yours closed, you will be in good company. No one has ever "finished" poker, or football.

But for games that do have an ending, only a small portion of your players will ever see it. We are, as an industry and as a culture, still confused about this. We are dismayed at the low finish rates of our games, and a player who puts down the controller before reaching the end is left with a vague sense of having dissed the game team.

Yet, the ability for players to stop playing whenever they feel like it is inherent in the form! This is not a bad thing; this is a good thing. It is part of the game-design landscape. And if you learn to worry less about insisting that everyone who starts finishes, and put your attention on the advantages this fact of gaming gives you, you will not find a more personally liberating moment in game design than in designing your end.

The question is: How will you use that freedom?

For several years back in the late 1990s, I lived with an eccentric friend named Dylan. Dylan was a carouser, a lover of swords and theatrics, a collector of experiences -- and an avid video game starter.

Dylan played dozens, maybe hundreds of games per year, and this was before the Internet, so they mostly came from the store. But, for all his passion, I don't know that I ever saw him put more than an hour into a single one. He would buy them, try them, love them... and then set them aside forever. This was a man who stopped playing Diablo after an hour or so (!). Even more weirdly, he was always perfectly content with his purchases, never showing a single hint of regret at not seeing the end.

He never did this with movies or books. Ever.

Watching Dylan's weird relationship with the games he played taught me that it is absolutely not required to finish a game to appreciate it.

Last year, you may remember that CNN published an article by Blake Snow that regaled the Internet with the news that only 10-20 percent of gamers actually finish the games they started.

No argument. When we see game finish rates over 30-40 percent, we sing the praises of the team and pop the bubbly. Numbers like that imply that we managed to make some seriously compelling content, and smooth out all the bumps along the way. Precious few games reach that goal.

But, I have a beef with an unspoken assumption in this article, and in many articles like it. Here's how the article's author put it:

"Let [this] sink in for a minute: Of every 10 people who started playing the consensus 'Game of the Year,' [Red Dead Revolver] only one of them finished it. How is that? Shouldn't such a high-rated game keep people engaged? Or have player attention spans reached a breaking point? ...Who's to blame: The developer or the player? Or maybe it's our culture?"

My beef is with the idea that failing to finish a game is a bad thing.

Putting down the controller somewhere before the final climactic scene in a video game is not a sin. It is an intrinsic part of our art form.

I never finished the first BioShock, yet it remains a game I thoroughly enjoyed. Grim Fandango? Never finished it. But I sure as hell use it as an example in design discussions! I have never finished a single Z, but, man, they are fun (usually).

There are a ton of games that don't even have endings. Most arcade-style games and most MMOs don't have real endings. The Sims doesn't have an ending. Poker? Chess? Football?

In fact, a broad majority of the world's long-standing favorite games are specifically designed to never be finished. One game of Sudoku leads to another, which leads to another... In game design terms, even putting an "ending" into your game is, clearly, optional. We know this. It's self-evident. So, then, why do we gnash our teeth and tear out our hair when only 20% of players reach the end of our (story) games?

I believe that the idea has its roots in our beliefs about other media. There is an implicit rejection that is present when someone walks out of a movie, turns off a show on TV, or sets down a book unfinished. For those mediums, the message of this action is clear: "I'm not enjoying this story enough to continue."

When someone stops playing a game, however, the possibilities are far, far more varied:

"I'd love to keep playing, but the time commitment is too high for me."

"I enjoyed the beginning, but now it's getting sort of grindy, and that's not for me."

"Love the game, but I'm weary of the player culture, so I'm going to hang out somewhere else."

"My friends stopped playing."

These are not necessarily sins of the designer. Gaming is as much a lifestyle as it is entertainment, and if a game doesn't fit into an individual's life, they are going to put it down. That's not a tragedy. That's a feature of our design landscape.

So, instead of looking guiltily at our completion rates and fantasizing about a world in which 99% of the players who start our (story) game reach the final scene, let's flip it around and see what we can do to take advantage of this fact, instead.

More than half of your players are not going to finish. You know that going in, so think of it as a design constraint! What does that mean to you?

First: The deeper into your game your content is, the more likely it is that the players that are still with you have been having a good time. They're in. They've bought it. You have earned a certain amount of faith capital with them, and they probably want to see what else you've got up your sleeve.

Second: Because your producers and various high-mucky-mucks have seen the finishing stats for other games, they know that dev time spent in detailed iteration on your ending is effort going to a small subset of players. They will prioritize the team's time accordingly. They will thus be more likely, whether through disinterest or lack of time, to let your crazy idea for the end slip through the cracks.

Third: Players themselves already know that arriving at the end is a rare occasion—because they, personally, most likely don't do it very often. Every player has put down the controller on at least a few games. If they do decide to complete the whole thing, they will wear that fact as a badge of honor (we hope). So, they are psychologically primed to receive some kind of acknowledgment for their effort. Bright-eyed, with the end in sight, your players look to the designer expectantly, ready to interpret whatever you present as a kind of reward, while your producers turn a blind eye...

I only have one piece of real advice for you about this moment: Tell the fucking truth.

Whatever it is that is in your heart, whatever it is that has drawn you into making this game in the first place, do that with your faith capital. Spend it telling them that, somehow.

The first Modern Warfare had a great example of this: The final mission was the most over-the-top crazy, punishing, nearly-impossible-to-complete madness-fest in their game. It had almost no explanation, required none ("PLANE! TERRORISTS!"), and it was simply brilliant. The level was a celebration of the game that you had just finished, a self-referential guns-blazing cherry on the cake that was completely unnecessary, but became legendary.

One of the most satisfying endings I have ever played was the ending of The Darkness. It laid bare the truth of the fantasy they had created, and gave me full rights to punish an evil that I had come to loathe. The truth there was consistent with the story, but it was the play that they created that made that last scene true. I hated the villain of that game, and in the end the game did nothing to force my hand (beyond closing the door behind me). When I took my revenge, it was me that did it, and that act stayed with me.

But it is the ending of the first Metroid, perhaps, that best demonstrates the strange liberty we have with this moment. It could have ended with Samus Aran raising a blaster into the air in victory. That would have been satisfying, and it was an amazing game all the way through. Hero pose! Instead, Samus stepped out of the battle suit, demonstrated her gender, and shattered the 8-bit preconceptions of players everywhere. It is still one of the most celebrated endings in gaming history.

Let's say we were to apply these principles to this article.

You've stuck with me this far, so I can perhaps assume that you're interested in what I've had to say so far. We're near the end, so you are maybe starting to think about what you'll read next, or putting down the magazine. Perhaps you are looking forward to the internal satisfactory tick-mark that comes from reading the last line.

How might I use this receptive state of mind? What is my truth about endings, right now?

Speaking of endings, did you know that this is the final issue of this here magazine? Funny story: Through random luck, I've ended up with the honor of writing the final Design of the Times. That's this article, right here.

You know, the first time I picked up an issue of Game Developer was back in 1996, in the offices of Hyperbole Studios. I was a late-20-something, blown away to be suddenly making games after long years of professional wandering.

It was the existence of this magazine that gave me my first glimpse into the murky, somewhat-secret society of game developers. The magazine's professional-looking cover and its interior pages full of post-mortems and dev tricks all were clearly aimed specifically at a readership made up of people who made video games. Flipping through the pages, I gradually discovered that I very much wanted to be part of that target market.

It's much later now. We have internets, game developers are meeting with vice presidents, and 99.9% of people under 25 have played video games. It's a world in transition, and I cannot wait to see what happens next. But I, for one, won't move forward into that future without fi rst pausing and, maybe just for a moment, placing an affectionate hand on the magazine that was the warm face that greeted me as I entered this industry.

Thanks. Thanks for that, and for all the other stuff.

That is my truth on endings: I mark them, I use them to reflect, and if I can get away with it, I give thanks to people who have had an impact on my life.

As a game designer, you are more free when crafting your ending than you are in any other piece of your game. So, in the end, tell the fucking truth. Tell as much of it as you can manage. Tell it as best you can. And see if you can give the world something to remember.

[symbianosgames]

Most players won't play to the end of your game. That's not a tragedy -- that's a feature of video games' design landscape. Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBerghe explains, in this reprint from the final (June/July 2013) issue of Game Developer magazine.

Argument: As a game designer, you are more free when crafting your ending than you are for any other piece of your game.

First of all, having an ending at all is your choice. Don't want one? All good! Games are loops, and if you want to leave yours closed, you will be in good company. No one has ever "finished" poker, or football.

But for games that do have an ending, only a small portion of your players will ever see it. We are, as an industry and as a culture, still confused about this. We are dismayed at the low finish rates of our games, and a player who puts down the controller before reaching the end is left with a vague sense of having dissed the game team.

Yet, the ability for players to stop playing whenever they feel like it is inherent in the form! This is not a bad thing; this is a good thing. It is part of the game-design landscape. And if you learn to worry less about insisting that everyone who starts finishes, and put your attention on the advantages this fact of gaming gives you, you will not find a more personally liberating moment in game design than in designing your end.

The question is: How will you use that freedom?

For several years back in the late 1990s, I lived with an eccentric friend named Dylan. Dylan was a carouser, a lover of swords and theatrics, a collector of experiences -- and an avid video game starter.

Dylan played dozens, maybe hundreds of games per year, and this was before the Internet, so they mostly came from the store. But, for all his passion, I don't know that I ever saw him put more than an hour into a single one. He would buy them, try them, love them... and then set them aside forever. This was a man who stopped playing Diablo after an hour or so (!). Even more weirdly, he was always perfectly content with his purchases, never showing a single hint of regret at not seeing the end.

He never did this with movies or books. Ever.

Watching Dylan's weird relationship with the games he played taught me that it is absolutely not required to finish a game to appreciate it.

Last year, you may remember that CNN published an article by Blake Snow that regaled the Internet with the news that only 10-20 percent of gamers actually finish the games they started.

No argument. When we see game finish rates over 30-40 percent, we sing the praises of the team and pop the bubbly. Numbers like that imply that we managed to make some seriously compelling content, and smooth out all the bumps along the way. Precious few games reach that goal.

But, I have a beef with an unspoken assumption in this article, and in many articles like it. Here's how the article's author put it:

"Let [this] sink in for a minute: Of every 10 people who started playing the consensus 'Game of the Year,' [Red Dead Revolver] only one of them finished it. How is that? Shouldn't such a high-rated game keep people engaged? Or have player attention spans reached a breaking point? ...Who's to blame: The developer or the player? Or maybe it's our culture?"

My beef is with the idea that failing to finish a game is a bad thing.

Putting down the controller somewhere before the final climactic scene in a video game is not a sin. It is an intrinsic part of our art form.

I never finished the first BioShock, yet it remains a game I thoroughly enjoyed. Grim Fandango? Never finished it. But I sure as hell use it as an example in design discussions! I have never finished a single Z, but, man, they are fun (usually).

There are a ton of games that don't even have endings. Most arcade-style games and most MMOs don't have real endings. The Sims doesn't have an ending. Poker? Chess? Football?

In fact, a broad majority of the world's long-standing favorite games are specifically designed to never be finished. One game of Sudoku leads to another, which leads to another... In game design terms, even putting an "ending" into your game is, clearly, optional. We know this. It's self-evident. So, then, why do we gnash our teeth and tear out our hair when only 20% of players reach the end of our (story) games?

I believe that the idea has its roots in our beliefs about other media. There is an implicit rejection that is present when someone walks out of a movie, turns off a show on TV, or sets down a book unfinished. For those mediums, the message of this action is clear: "I'm not enjoying this story enough to continue."

When someone stops playing a game, however, the possibilities are far, far more varied:

"I'd love to keep playing, but the time commitment is too high for me."

"I enjoyed the beginning, but now it's getting sort of grindy, and that's not for me."

"Love the game, but I'm weary of the player culture, so I'm going to hang out somewhere else."

"My friends stopped playing."

These are not necessarily sins of the designer. Gaming is as much a lifestyle as it is entertainment, and if a game doesn't fit into an individual's life, they are going to put it down. That's not a tragedy. That's a feature of our design landscape.

So, instead of looking guiltily at our completion rates and fantasizing about a world in which 99% of the players who start our (story) game reach the final scene, let's flip it around and see what we can do to take advantage of this fact, instead.

More than half of your players are not going to finish. You know that going in, so think of it as a design constraint! What does that mean to you?

First: The deeper into your game your content is, the more likely it is that the players that are still with you have been having a good time. They're in. They've bought it. You have earned a certain amount of faith capital with them, and they probably want to see what else you've got up your sleeve.

Second: Because your producers and various high-mucky-mucks have seen the finishing stats for other games, they know that dev time spent in detailed iteration on your ending is effort going to a small subset of players. They will prioritize the team's time accordingly. They will thus be more likely, whether through disinterest or lack of time, to let your crazy idea for the end slip through the cracks.

Third: Players themselves already know that arriving at the end is a rare occasion—because they, personally, most likely don't do it very often. Every player has put down the controller on at least a few games. If they do decide to complete the whole thing, they will wear that fact as a badge of honor (we hope). So, they are psychologically primed to receive some kind of acknowledgment for their effort. Bright-eyed, with the end in sight, your players look to the designer expectantly, ready to interpret whatever you present as a kind of reward, while your producers turn a blind eye...

I only have one piece of real advice for you about this moment: Tell the fucking truth.

Whatever it is that is in your heart, whatever it is that has drawn you into making this game in the first place, do that with your faith capital. Spend it telling them that, somehow.

The first Modern Warfare had a great example of this: The final mission was the most over-the-top crazy, punishing, nearly-impossible-to-complete madness-fest in their game. It had almost no explanation, required none ("PLANE! TERRORISTS!"), and it was simply brilliant. The level was a celebration of the game that you had just finished, a self-referential guns-blazing cherry on the cake that was completely unnecessary, but became legendary.

One of the most satisfying endings I have ever played was the ending of The Darkness. It laid bare the truth of the fantasy they had created, and gave me full rights to punish an evil that I had come to loathe. The truth there was consistent with the story, but it was the play that they created that made that last scene true. I hated the villain of that game, and in the end the game did nothing to force my hand (beyond closing the door behind me). When I took my revenge, it was me that did it, and that act stayed with me.

But it is the ending of the first Metroid, perhaps, that best demonstrates the strange liberty we have with this moment. It could have ended with Samus Aran raising a blaster into the air in victory. That would have been satisfying, and it was an amazing game all the way through. Hero pose! Instead, Samus stepped out of the battle suit, demonstrated her gender, and shattered the 8-bit preconceptions of players everywhere. It is still one of the most celebrated endings in gaming history.

Let's say we were to apply these principles to this article.

You've stuck with me this far, so I can perhaps assume that you're interested in what I've had to say so far. We're near the end, so you are maybe starting to think about what you'll read next, or putting down the magazine. Perhaps you are looking forward to the internal satisfactory tick-mark that comes from reading the last line.

How might I use this receptive state of mind? What is my truth about endings, right now?

Speaking of endings, did you know that this is the final issue of this here magazine? Funny story: Through random luck, I've ended up with the honor of writing the final Design of the Times. That's this article, right here.

You know, the first time I picked up an issue of Game Developer was back in 1996, in the offices of Hyperbole Studios. I was a late-20-something, blown away to be suddenly making games after long years of professional wandering.

It was the existence of this magazine that gave me my first glimpse into the murky, somewhat-secret society of game developers. The magazine's professional-looking cover and its interior pages full of post-mortems and dev tricks all were clearly aimed specifically at a readership made up of people who made video games. Flipping through the pages, I gradually discovered that I very much wanted to be part of that target market.

It's much later now. We have internets, game developers are meeting with vice presidents, and 99.9% of people under 25 have played video games. It's a world in transition, and I cannot wait to see what happens next. But I, for one, won't move forward into that future without fi rst pausing and, maybe just for a moment, placing an affectionate hand on the magazine that was the warm face that greeted me as I entered this industry.

Thanks. Thanks for that, and for all the other stuff.

That is my truth on endings: I mark them, I use them to reflect, and if I can get away with it, I give thanks to people who have had an impact on my life.

As a game designer, you are more free when crafting your ending than you are in any other piece of your game. So, in the end, tell the fucking truth. Tell as much of it as you can manage. Tell it as best you can. And see if you can give the world something to remember.