I don't really have anything much I want to say today but I didn't want to skip another post after the weekend, so I guess it's random grab-bag of nonsense time. On a Monday, yet. And why not? Why should Fridays have all the fun?
Chicken Police
I finished it! A few days ago, actually. Unlike Steam, Amazon Prime Gaming doesn't tell you how long you've been playing, or at least if it does, I've never spotted it. What I can say is, I played at least one session pretty much every day until I got to the end and for however long that was, it was my go-to game.
I'm not going to review it or even say much more about what I thought about it than I did in my first post. I will say the quality held up right to the end and I never lost interest or enthusiasm, which is about all you can ask.
As noted, the gameplay elements can feel a little abstract - not to say irrelevant - and the mini-games really don't add anything. All the strengths are in the writing, voice-acting and visuals. That said, I did find it fun to play as a game, not just as a visual novel, which arguably is mostly what the experience is. I did find the detective bits quite engaging, even if it's unclear how success or lack of it affects the outcome.
I was amused to discover, while doing some out of game research, that it's "Based on a true story". Or, more accurately, a true meme. It's this one:
The writers saw that thirty-second clip and span an entire game out of it. If nothing else, they at least have a ready answer for the inevitable "Where do you guys get your ideas from?"
The Wild Gentlemen have a new game in development but don't ask me
where they got the idea for this one. It's called RetroSpace and
according to
Rock, Paper, Shotgun
it's "a disco-punk immersive sim", which makes it sound even more like
Disco Elysium than the last one. I would be excited but I watched the
trailer and it really didn't gel for me. Still, very early days. Herer it is,
anyway. Maybe it'll do more for you than it did for me.
Faux Productivity
This is a term used and quite possibly invented by Krikket of Nerd Girl Thoughts and a very useful one it is, too. For a while I was thinking of dedicating a whole post to it in response, as Dan/MagiWasTaken from Indiecator did but in the end I decided I didn't have that much to say about it.
I don't not have anything to say though, so here's what I do have: I wonder what, if anything, outside of the four base tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, even counts as Real Productivity? Certainly not much that anyone I follow ever writes about, that's for sure!
More to the point, to take a classic cliche example I used to throw in to
arguments about worthwhile or entertaining in-game activities, before I
realised just what a poor analogy it was, is cleaning your oven
really a more productive use of your time than running a dungeon for
the umpteenth time? I mean, what's so all-fired wonderful about a clean oven?
If you don't clean the thing, does it not work any more? Do you get ill? Does
anything bad happen? At all? And aren't most ovens self-cleaning these
days and even if they aren't, who ever examines the inside of their oven
anyway? The oven police?
When it comes to many - probably most - real-world chore-like activities, my feeling is the truly necesary ones always get done and the rest fill exactly the same "faux productivity" role as anything you might do while playing a game, watching a show or writing a blog post. Yes, I feel almost unaccountably good about myself when I've spent an hour hand-washing the paintwork in the hallway but has anything in my life changed materially for the better because of the removal of a layer of dust or am I just enjoying the feel-good factor that comes from slotting comfortably into a societal norm?
Discuss. Or don't. See? Doesn't matter either way!
I think I'll carry on posting nonsense, playing games and aggrandizing pop culture as well as cutting the grass, tidying the cupboards and washing the car and I won't waste any time trying to work out which of them matters more, so long as they all make me feel like I've done something worth doing.
(Heh! Like I'd wash the car...)
He's French, You Know...
And finally - because as I said, I really don't have anything to say - let's have a couple of tunes. Only a couple. I don't want to walk all over my own What I've Been Listening To Lately post that I'm going to need in a few days' time. It's not like I'm dripping with post ideas right now...
First, there's this, which doesn't have a video so might otherwise not have gotten space. It's a cover of J'aime Les Filles, originally recorded by Jacques Dutronc and written by him and Jacques Lanzmann.
Now, you don't exactly find yourself snowed under by Jacques Dutronc covers, so that's probably reason enough to call attention to this one but it's also really good. Dare I say it, better than the original, although maybe that's just a comment on time passing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this song is the lyric. If you don't speak French and can't be bothered to look up the translation, you'd probably assume it was one of those "California Girls" style sixties paeans to the ready availability of willing female company for the aspiring stars of any rock, pop or other musical subgenre, an interpretation that, these days, would most likely set your teeth slightly on edge.
That, however, is not what the song is about - or not exactly. Here's a link to the full, translated lyric but for short try this sample verse:
Posts
I didn't bother to define "real" productivity, because everyone's got their own version of what feels like being productive. However, for me, I have it stuck in my brain that productivity must material improve your circumstances. Does it make money? Then it's productive. Does it improve your immediate environment? Yep, that's productive. Does it improve your health or well-being? Again, productive. Does it improve your community? PRODUCTIVE!
ReplyDeleteWhere I get caught up on occasion is the idea of improving my well-being. I was always led to believe that was done only by things like education - it was quite a long time before I realized that happiness, enjoyment, and entertainment are *also* part of one's well-being.
If doing something to make someone you care about feel good counts as productive (and in my mind, that always has), why doesn't it count for myself? Am I not also someone I care about?
Yeah ... this whole thing is a work in progress, clearly. I frequently feel like, as a species, we humans are doing this entire "living" thing all wrong.
Of late, I seem to be pretty much equally satisfied by "achieving" things in all spheres - practical, virtual, necessary, whimsical, easthetic, creative, functional, anything, just about. It feels like a similar chemical reward is being released whatever I do, so I might as well just do whatever needs doing first, then whatever I feel like doing afterwards.
DeleteHow long this is likely to last remains to be seen; I definitely used to get more of an "I should be doing X not Y" sensation, albeit that X and Y weren't always in the positions an objective observer would expect them. I have to say, I prefer the more laissez-faire situation I find myself in but I suspect it's an artefact of the last few years of pandemic-and-illness disrupted behavior combined with the natural slowing-down of age. The real worry is whether I could gear back up to full productivity should the need arise. I suspect inertia would be a problem there.