#loop is so very I Bet on Losing Dogs core

[post-pacific]

Isat sketchbook dump :P

[nailgunstigmata]

10 songs ive been listening to lately tag game!! (aka some faves from the mcden playlist im currently looping hehe)

ty for the tag @denfucker @ricketycr1cks and @ratcoffin69 !! <333

1. i just want you to love me….so real sufjan stevens. ur just like macdennis (both of them)

2. soo macden it makes me sick…actually maybe one of the most macden songs ever. i have a drabble about it but i can never finish it because thinking about cherry wine macden makes me insane <3 haha yeah

3. this song makes me insane idk!! a terrible wretched love that ends in fire and destruction but could never not be worth it despite all the pain…being doomed from the start but still holding hands among the wreckage….haha yeah lol

4. makes me pull my hairs out and yell. this is north dakota core it makes me sick….sometimes you leave someone because you love them!!! exploding screaming yelling

5. i mean yeah. we were in love. so true <3

6. mac core…i think its so cool actually when he has to choose which god to worship once and for all haha

7. this one is soo dennis to me idc (small warning this one gets very loud apruptly halfway through. its a banger tho <3)

8. ive been kate bush macden pilled lately <3

9. i dont have to say anything u get it. u get it

10. this deserves a spot just for the line „dumb enough to kneel“ like yeah. yeah (this one also gets loud halfway through tho!!)

(sorry for using this tag to ramble about macden songs but also i like doing it so im not that sorry <3)

i never know who to tag and who did it already and who even wants to so whoever reads this and wants to do it ur tagged!! <33

[pankopop]

Ask Why Before You Go:

Pokemon Go is getting an update with 80+ more critters from Johto, but it’s still neglecting a massive part of what makes the franchise so appealing

I’ve always been a big ol’ fan of the Gold/Silver generation, it’s the game that I brought with me when I moved continents and left all of my friends behind. It was the one continuity in a time of so much flux, I feel like if I’ve ever over-associated escapism, comfort, and nostalgia with a piece of media, Silver is it.

But the new pokemon introduced into Pokemon Go aren’t getting me all that excited. And I really wish the new batch was going to kindle a good flame, but in all honesty I feel like all of the criticisms that I’ve always had with the game haven’t at all been addressed. To properly give form to those criticisms, I want to elucidate why the common criticisms of legacy media are actually very similar to the ways Niantic Inc have missed the mark.

Preface: the articles about Pokemon Go were out of the loop. Of course they were; technology sucks fire is bad and Edison was a witch. What else is new.

I think what bothers me more than anything is that the subject matter of Pokemon Go was so poorly misunderstood. Even by the developers, I’d venture to say. So much emphasis was put on how Pokemon Go was an augmented reality game. This point in particular was important to a lot of the olds who were writing and reading about it.

This kind of gameplay came from left field for those people who still think all video games fall in to two categories: tetris and Violent tetris.

So coming from the Febreze-commercial understanding of the medium, it would be shocking that there’s be a game that somehow “augments reality”, like a shitty matrix that somehow tells the government your whereabouts, sin number and sexual deviancies. So why are people playing this Pokemon Go? Surely it’s a dumb millennial thing. So Let’s dehumanize them by portraying them as brainwashed zombies. Fuck them for wanting to outlive us.

As such, the real focus for SO much media attention wasn’t on why people were playing this game, nor did it really care to ask. It was who was playing it. It was the people affected by this wave of zombified young’uns. Like a worldwide outbreak of tornadoes ravaging our public parks and private property (and making money for opportunistic cafes).

Along these lines, developers were (and continue to be) dead-set on wanting to make a pokemon-flavoured Ingress over a pokemon game. The core tenets of pokemon were half-met, with so little player interaction. Niantic tends to be more interested in the “real-life” stories of people rediscovering their neighbourhood, being able to meet new people, and losing weight. Which is great – I don’t want to say those are negative aspects of the game, but they could be made much better by some variety of faithfulness to the core of pokemon.

I’m not gonna moan about Go not being a direct port of Pokemon’s battle mechanics. It’s absolutely worth rethinking core mechanics when you’re going to be fundamentally changing the way it’s going to be played. I have no gripes about designing alternatives, but there’s a key to designing within parameters of a general direction. Design without restriction isn’t good design.

There’s a big big draw to pokemon that has been largely glossed over in this discourse: Pokemon are the animals we don’t get to see. They are the dinosaurs, rhinos, lizards and hawks that your average city kid never gets to come into contact with (damn country folks with your dinosaurs). They’re the dogs and cats and turtles you couldn’t afford. It’s the magic of running down to the pond to try and catch frogs, or finding a weird bug, that a lot of people don’t have the luxury of doing. There’s a reason there’s such a resemblance between pokemon and tamagotchi; they’re both about some kind of bond between humans and non-humans.

Pokemon has always been thematically wrapped up in that relationship, and about negotiating sharing a world. A lot of plot commonly revolves around overcoming some destruction of environment, or maintaining an ecosystem.

Niantic’s Pokemon Go has discarded that connection for quantity, and misunderstood that the goal of collecting hundreds of pokemon has always been totally optional, and for the most part, an afterthought. This is absolutely a design issue that sprouted from people not asking people why they love the franchise. Think about the masses of people who never played the games, but watched the anime – their impression of pokemon has nothing to do with a collectathon, but in the narrative bond of overcoming challenges with our pets, basically.

Niantic values “reality” and meatspace more than it values the content of its game; Pokemon Go is just a means to an end of getting-out-the-house. On the other end, people are reacting to some kind of invasion of millennial digital gamespace in the pure, unsullied true reality of God’s green earth.

In prioritizing “real life” over the actual content of pokemon, both of these ideological parties badly missed the mark in translating what pokemon means to the people who were readily playing, proselytizing and spending money. These people have largely become disinterested because what they were looking for – the novelty of simulated companionship.

It’s funny - I feel Pokemon Go had designed some very beautiful solutions in simplifying leveling, battling, and various other contrived systems. So why couldn’t they form some kind of team relationship? The canonical reason why you could traditionally only have 6 pokemon on you at once is that any more and you’d lack the bond that’s necessary between trainer and pokemon.

In the culture of pokemon fans, there’s a term: “Shoulder Mon”. If it’s not clear enough, it’s basically the status of Ash’s Pikachu. It’s one particular pokemon that, while often not massively powerful, is your friend. Pokemon Go’s attempt at this is telling.

The “Buddy” system, which lets you add one of your pokemon next to your avatar, will gather you an evolutionary candy for every set amount of kilometers you walk. With a bit more tweaking, the idea could have been a step in the right direction. But the buddy pokemon doesn’t get anything out of it. It doesn’t get stronger, it doesn’t gain any kind of hidden value, it’s simply a way of saying “I need more of this pokemon’s candy so I can evolve it and move on”. This weird microcosm points to the way Pokemon Go will be for a while, I think. A game that aims to nurture skills of relationships and bonding with the world and it’s inhabitants, repositioned as a means to a mathematical, uninteresting, gold-farming end.

This all serves as a good case study for designing games within the constraints of a franchise. I may have salty opinions, but I don’t believe it’s unfounded to really ask dedicated players of a game, or preachers, fandoms and otakus of a franchise, “why?”. “What is it about this world that you fell in love with? What keeps you coming back? What makes this worth your time, money, energy and commitment?”

The “hardcore” contingent shouldn’t always be seen as a fringe, but as a unique perspective that cuts through the cool apathy of adulthood to articulate what you should be focusing on. In fact, I’d say they’re the core you should be designing for. If you design well, you’ll amplify everything that’s great about a universe, and remind a lot of people why they fell in love with a fiction in the first place.

But when all’s said and done, you can bet your chiselled ass I’ll keep playing this dumb phone app until I’m buried in snow.