This week’s post is a bit of a grab-bag of things that have been on my mind throughout the week. In it, I cover:
A letter from Kurt Vonnegut on the hopelessness of war
Two cool new independent places for games journalism
A neat-looking indie game
Still Life by Louise Penny
A quote I was not prepared for
A letter of note
This letter by Kurt Vonnegut in support of his son’s seeking conscientious objector status arrived in my email this week, and the whole thing is well worth reading, but his concluding statement, “there is no hope in war,” resonated with me particularly. It strikes me as a simple statement, almost too simple, deceptively like a platitude, but nevertheless, one of profound importance. To wage war is, on the one hand, to embrace a kind of hopelessness, the hopelessness of believing that the alternative to war (whatever it may be) is worse. As to whether this is ever the case—well, that’s a question that plagues human history. There usually comes a point when someone is left without a choice. War is waged on them, whether they want it or not.
What I do know is, as many wars as one might argue have been necessary, there are just as many that were waged in the belief in a false hope—in the belief that war could make things better, which it rarely does, and only after making things much, much worse. That’s where I think Vonnegut’s statement serves as a profound warning: do not trust the hope that war seems to offer.
Peace, of course, is hard. Hope is hard. War cuts through complexities and stokes grievances. It does not require trust. It creates a false sense of community through the invocation of a wicked other. And while peace is delicate, requiring multiple parties working in good faith (which is often lacking) to nurture and sustain, war is robust; it can always find reasons to justify its continuation. Yet even in times when we have little choice, I think we do well to listen for the wisdom in Vonnegut’s statement. There is no hope in war. Hope is what lies beyond. Hope is what drives us to seek peace.
The return of independent games journalism
On an entirely different note: the recent rise in interest rates has certainly hampered many companies’ plans for infinite growth, but they haven’t abandoned the dogma yet. Instead, it seems they’ve uniformly decided to achieve infinite growth by, well, shrinking. I’ve written before about how this affects game creators (my own employer’s parent company’s parent has laid off 900 people so far this year, and they claim they’re not finished yet!), but it’s affected games journalism even more. Sites are closing down and laying off staff left and right.
Earlier this year, I learned that Vice planned to shut down their games wing, Waypoint, in spite of it being entirely self-sustaining (and in fact, profitable) through reader funding. Vice as a company was a mess, but also (and again) for them, Waypoint being merely profitable was not enough. I was heartbroken. Then, on the day they were scheduled to shut down, the Waypoint farewell stream turned into a “welcome to Remap” stream. Entirely staff-owned and listener/viewer/reader-funded, they’ve even brought back the critical games writing that originally drew me to Waypoint before streams and podcasts took over, as you can see in this piece on Jusant and the joys of climbing.
In a similar vein, veteran games journalists, including Gita Jackson and Riley McLeod, have launched Aftermath.site, another reader-funded and writer-owned site that is focusing on writing about games.
Check out their article on Yakuza's AI Mission Throws ChatGPT in the River Where It Belongs. I link it because a) one of the singular joys of the Yakuza series is seeing how its big-hearted but simple-minded protagonist wrangles with new technology; and b) I am thrilled to see two sites striking out to create something meaningful in an environment where every product person I talk to seems thrilled at the prospect of never having to read another opinion or encounter another piece of art created or considered by an actual human being.
Especially given the latest developments with ChatGPT owner OpenAI, in which the ethicists battled the capitalists and lost, now more than ever it seems essential to support human beings trying to create interesting things outside of the dominant structures of profit-seeking investment. We’ll all be better off for it!
Blister Blight
Speaking of supporting human beings creating unique things, an acquaintance of mine (we went to the same undergraduate university) is prepping a kickstarter for, I have to admit, a pretty cool-looking game. The pixel art is lovely, and the play-levels-in-any-order-and-make-choices-to-produce-different-outcomes RPG twist is unexpected and exciting in this style of 2D action game.
Check out Blister Blight, and maybe make a pledge to donate to the Kickstarter when it goes live in January next year!
Still Life by Louise Penny
A month or so ago I picked up the first of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache novels. As a murder mystery, it wasn’t particularly knotty (I clocked the killer the moment they were introduced, which could be considered a virtue as well, in that unlike some mysteries, the crime, and the motives made sense) but I could certainly see the charm.
I particularly enjoyed two elements. One, that Chief Inspector Gamache goes home (and sends his team home) for Thanksgiving before taking up the investigation in earnest, in realistic defiance of the “hard-running investigator who drops everything and works around the clock” stereotype.
And two, that the precocious young detective, who seems to be set up at the outset to enter the investigation as some kind of youthful wunderkind to balance out the older detective’s experience, falls flat on her face trying to “prove” herself instead of accepting the more experienced detective’s wise advice to listen, learn, and get used to making mistakes. Having been on both sides of this dynamic, I was caught between the wish that I had had a mentor like Inspector Gamache when I was younger (someone who acknowledged mistakes as part of learning instead of as opportunities for mockery) and the all-too-familiar frustration Gamache felt after trying to get through to the would-be hotshot detective for the third time and realizing that none of his lessons were landing.
And finally, a quote that I was not prepared for
On a lark, we watched A Haunting in Venice last night, and I was not prepared for this line, delivered by Tina Fey’s Ariadne Oliver to Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot:
“No, this is happiness, not satisfaction. A writer knows the difference.”
Oof.
That Vonnegut letter is going to live rent free in my head for a while now. (And now I subscribe to Letters of Note too, because yes, please send me more of these.)