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I live in this modern world, as a lower-middle class English-speaker. As a child I wanted to consume all sorts of media, but back then, the internet couldn't handle sharing large files, and there was only crappy dial-up for me. As a teen, really spotty, craptastic "broadband" (if even that) was all I had at home. At school? All the good stuff was blocked.
Video games were still pretty basic. But the most significant thing was, time was slow, and even though that industry was well-established, especially PC gaming (which I barely did, other than usual kiddy stuff... also other people hogged all the Blizzard games and burnt out disc drives, so...), but it was like a golden era for that industry.
The word "soul" is thrown around a lot. Probably the best definition someone gave for what "soul" is in that context, is doing as much as possible, with major constraints. Time constraints were always an issue, even back then. The Christmas Rush destroyed so many games that could have been good. "The most wonderful time of the year" was a guaranteed shit-grim-reaper that would destroy any potential some games had to be not-horrible. Sonic 06 was destroyed by the Christmas Rush. Fallout New Vegas, IIRC, was also damaged by Christmas. (feel free to correct me on anything)
And then there's the usual oppression that the very nature of industries and publishers and distributors and sniveling "think of the childrens" pearl-clutching crybullies that think children need to be forced to wear straitjackets and live in padded rooms all their lives, because oh no there's broken glass and rocks and stuff outside.
I already wore myself out typing this huuuge rant about fake money (check the Consider Department), so I'm gonna take a break from that. Yeah the other money page is incomplete, but I'll finish it later, when I recharge those batteries.
BTW, these pages are subject to updating whenever I feel like and am able to. (Heads up, I may be away for a while, or maybe not... But don't worry, I'll probably be back with more, just might really slow down for a while. Nothing stops YOU from making good content for your own sites!!) So you can just save the html files and give them a date or something. Because the main files have the same names, but the content is often rearranged. So go ahead and save.
Back on topic, I played a lot of Gray Brick games, like the Pokey Men (it used to bother me when adults would call "Link's Awakening" "pokeymen" and it triggered me every time, but now I know they were trolling on purpose), and those ancient little things really drive the point home that:
LESS IS MORE
"Leave stuff to the imagination" is a real psychology thing. If you speak Rainbowpuzzlepiece-ese, you may have heard the phrases "nothing is scarier", and "wanting is better than having". These are certainly a matter of personal fears and likes. One size doesn't always fit all when it comes to subjective things, but for many people, these two phrases are often true.
In GB Link's Awakening, when Link would play the ocarina, it just looked like he'd morph into some weird bug-eyed monster, similar to that "buzz blob / cukeman" thing. Also I found cukeman to be fascinating. Little things that that can really capture your imagination. And capturing imaginations, well today, it can be... not exactly the sweetest, most innocent thing. Sometimes things like that are like antifreeze. A bright green, sweet POISON.
Of course I also really dug the Pokey Men. What some Pokemon genwunners say about it is, "the monsters felt bigger". And I'm not gonna bore you (or me) with all the blah blah technical stuff about how unbalanced the surface game was. People complain that good mons in g1 got nerfed or overpowered, and everything was poison type and psychic broke the game, etc.
... if I ever come across some pages written about amazing glitches and cool stuff, I'll link to them, but some seem to be gone from their original sites. Also I have missingno pages linked on the "other sites" page.
Sometimes as a child, I'd daydream about potential and possibilities, what would I do if I were directing a game, and the sky was the limit. If censorship and no-go topic zones, and backlash or money-related restrictions weren't a thing. But a mental problem I'd have (without realizing it), was I had the "pissing contest" and "fitting in" mindsets. The mindset that tells you to do what everyone else is doing, but one-up them at their own games. So to speak.
Do red MSPaint airbrush blots, low-poly cone tiddies, and swear words and guns really make a game better? Some would say yes, because they like those things, and other stuff. But for real, those don't necessarily increase the quality.
Money is a double-edged sword. It pays for equipment, electricity, production, hands on deck, costs, labor, etc. And because these productions are usually massively oversized because they want to one-up each other and win the almighty pissing contest, no company wants to take a risk. Back then, when the industry was in a golden era, a few stinkers weren't necessarily a death sentence for a small company. But you know how embarrassing companies act when they want to appeal to the snot-nosed kids whose parents have money.
Because cringey internet shit is for stupid idiots who live indoors and marry cartoon characters, and never go outside if they can avoid it, the EMPTY internet is full of bots and idiots spouting off tired old memes and snowclones, instead of talking like people that actually have minds and hearts. (I already wore myself out writing about that...). And because not many real actual people use the internet, the people "researching what kiddies like", see inane bot dribble gibberish and think that's what 8 year olds are into. But big productions take like 4 years to make, and time's going insanely fast now, twice as fast as it did in the 90s. No company wants to make a multi-million dollar risk and go bankrupt. It's just not possible to create something huge and solid, that's hip with the times.
The other part is, these industry pros who are miles above indie media makers in skill and resources, are like 40 or older. It's that ancient, eternal thing where, a bunch of 40yo are making media aimed at 8yo, and what do the 40yo remember of their childhoods? Stuff from 30+ years ago, that has long since been phased out and is today just barely a footnote in history books.
But there's some weirdness and "logical extremes reaching their logical conclusions" stuff going on here, at the end. You know in your heart that there's not going to be a 2040. I'd be shocked and dismayed if 2030 ever becomes a year. Doomsday type stuff. Back in the 90s, people actually had children. I remember being a child and having at least a variety of people in my age groups to play with. The worst part of being a child though, was one year made all the difference between children. A 9yo won't tolerate a 4yo, but a 70yo and a 20yo can be best friends just fine.
As cool as the idea of video games are, explorable worlds in digital space, they are a massively contributing factor to the rapid decline of society. But there's really so much more to say, and I can only wonder how long this page will get. But it won't be rage froth-typing! But as media got more impressive and colorful and had big numbers, like uh, bits and megs and polys and colors, the more people didn't have children. They sat inside more, playing on the glowy box, beating off to neon robot characters, and not interacting with other people. Fewer and fewer children were born. Nutrition got worse. Personal care got worse. People only wanted to consume, consume, consume everything.
There's countless factors as to how things got to how bad they are, the fast-boiling pot of raw sewage, and we are all helpless frogs trapped inside the tall walls of the fast boiling pot. People who don't remember what things were before, they don't understand. They still only care about "fitting in" and "being popular" and winning pissing contests. Being the "most oppressed" (wtf kind of contest is that), having the most "token points", the most "rainbow hair and crazy fashion" (PSA: neon hair and fashion doesn't a personality make.)
Gamers are notorious for their toxic personalities. Gatekeeping is their favorite hobby besides getting big numbers on shootyshootybangbang with the big tiddy anime catgirl mod. Their "battlestations" are their pride and joy. They can brag all they want about how they ordered all these blackboxtech parts and assembled them and coded stuff, but no one actually KNOWS how computers are made. No one actually KNOWS how an 8-function pocket calculator is MADE. From the very bare materials sourced from all over the world, mined from who knows where, assembled in secret, in compartmentalized Chinese tech-sweatshops by laborers who are only told to put the pieces together, and no one knows how the whole thing ACTUALLY WORKS. Ever noticed how computer wizards, are called "WIZARDS"? And what they do is called "sorcery", with barely a joke to it? And yeah, the black mirror screen. Okay so that's how a good screen actually works, it needs to be black. But there's people out there who insist you can in fact, scry on a deactivated computer screen. However, they say a polished obsidian disk is better, but a computer screen is an option.
Guess what, "sufficiently advanced technology is, wink wink nudge nudge, indistinguishable from magic". Hey guess what. Electricity is magic. True facts. Your nervous system uses it. Your bio-chemicals in your body are magic. Magic is a mundane part of everyday life, no one's gonna burn you at the stake. We all live here.
Fire, wind, dirt, rocks, water, air, crystals, plants, animals, metals - all these have some magical properties to them, by design. God made this place, and magic is the force that makes things go and do what they do. Witches are bad, because they're rebellious and hijacking and messing with this aspect of creation that you're not supposed to touch. Fire is itself a magical process. Electricity is just plain ol magic juice. Some chemicals are magical. You're not supposed to exploit these things in bizarre and malicious ways.
That said, analog tech is inherently, VASTLY superior to digital. Look at real film photos, that detail is just out of this world. Listen to something on vinyl. Use a wet fountain pen and watch the ink shift and settle and change colors as it cures in the air. Digital is done for convenience, and today for mass surveillance. AI's can read typed text and identify photos and image compositions, but they can't read scribbles.
So, "computer" means "machine that counts numbers". "Calculator" is the exact same word, but one's Greek and one's Latin. But they mean the same thing, a machine that processes numbers. An abacus would probably be the analog version of that, idk. I'm not going to pretend to understand stuff, and I'm not a math person, but I have eyes and can make connections, I can see parallels and things that are related to each other. And I can actually make an easy webpage and share my observations with other people.
I don't know what the most faithful and recognizable equivalent to a $currentyear (it's called that because time's too fast, but people were saying "currentyear" in 2015) computer as we commonly know them. But I wonder what it would be like. And I wonder what kinds of explorable worlds and things to see and experience, would be in a truly natural, human world.
Media industries are all fiercely closed, gated, and gatekept. You'll notice that animation is a medium that children and a truly astonishing amount of "adults" are completely obsessed with, because it's simple visual sugar.
I don't want to make this too long, but I'm absolutely not knocking these media forms, I appreciate them for what they inherently are, but I understand that what they are is distilled imagery with the rough edges filed down and clutter removed, making them easily mentally digestible. That's why animation has the stigma of childishness. It's a perfect way to make a kid beg and BEG their parents to take them to see a cartoon movie, or buy a cartoon toy, or cartoon video game. And there's also an engineered class that recently emerged and is increasing in size relative to the unaffected population... you know what I'm getting at. Their minds are crippled and unable to "chunk" and process complex information, and they act childish permanently, because their brains never developed to adulthood. And likewise, all their brains can process is distilled cartoon imagery, without complexity.
No one wants to talk about that.
That said, the animation industry, because it won the hearts and minds of children for decades, and increasingly, the hearts and minds of mental children in 40yo bodies, is a fierce monster in itself. The "people" involved in it, are the most viciously backstabbing, drama-obsessed, socially-cannibalistic, horrible people. They're not normal people who just like to make drawings move, that's their cover story. They present themselves as being fun, harmless, normal people. But underneath, they're some of the most FOUL abominations to ever wear a humanoid meat suit.
Video Game industry goes for a few different target demographics.
But all media industries, all of them, what do they put in their products. Look at the characters. How many IRL women do you know, that look like the "women" on TV or in media? Why are 100% of she her people on the screen or printed in a magazine, lanky, gangly, long-armed, have long, straight spines, narrow hips, and depend on makeup like it's their very skin? How many people do you know like that IRL? And how many women do you see IRL that make biological sense? Short arms, sloped shoulders, big hips, things that make sense. Why do the "guys" you see IRL, how come they look like TV people and cartoon characters? Why are the IRL guys able to be shown on a screen, but IRL women aren't? Why do you suppose that is.
Did you notice that I use "guys" and "men" in different ways? I never called these he him people "men"?
What themes are mandatory for media, very especially media aimed at children? (And now with very, very few children being born, it's aimed at... the typical reddit youtuber crowd). Outer space. Ball earth. Dinosaurs. Apes. Do people really demand that many gorilla characters? In the 80s and 90s, gorilla characters were blatantly shoehorned in. It's like gorillas were tokens and were mandatory cast members in many story settings. How many times do you see characters going to space for no reason, going to planets that are nothing but a city in the shape of a ball? If they go to aaaalll these different planets where everyone speaks English or Japanese, but they only go to one biome, see only a few humanoids with weird colors and antenna (and they're gender-inverted alien humanoids, no less. Wow, even on "other planets", only baffos are allowed to be depicted) only see one type of environment, what's the point of those being planets?
Wouldn't it make more SENSE for there to be different continents, countries, regions. Fantasy continents with wacky fantasy people and life, with wacky various landscapes. Washington alone has deserts, rainforests, high elevation areas, valleys, pine forests, tundras, shores... All that diverse landscape in one area. Why do fictional characters go to planets that are just one patch of land and one city, and nothing else? Why do you see egregiously shoehorned in shots of ball earth for no reason? Why is that necessary?
And what about story themes? Usually big-scale productions that cost multi-millions (fake money!!) have "high stakes" plots that usually revolve around a lethal threat is threatening to blow up the planet, or something to that effect. Guess what, the world's gonna go up in literal flames and fireballs soon, and Someone Very Important is going to be a giant metallic force of destruction. Think of kaiju or giant mecha scenarios, where a 200 foot tall being made of metal and with fire powers, is stomping around on CITIES, like NYC, Tokyo, major cities. You don't see metal giants stomping on Nebraska or in empty deserts or tundras, you only see them smashing New York City or Washington DC or Tokyo and the like. Related, notice how all cultures have Flood stories, and Flat Earth lore?
The day the earth is smashed and burned, is also past the day when select people are going to suddenly vanish. And the guillotine is going to come back in style, you're going to see that. No sci fi laser weapons or giant microwave dungeons, the GUILLOTINE is coming back.
More humble stories with lower stakes, are usually about some generic dumpy guy who's a dumb loser (can't make the audience feel intimidated!) (yeah, people get mad jealous of cartoon pastel fairy people or something...), and the dumb loser main just bumbles around on some quest to get popular and get a "trophy" """wife"""... Ever notice how IRL, all the guys and women look the same? And very very few people actually look like the """women""" on TV, but all the guys look like the TV guys? HMMMMM. But the main theme of the story is, being popular and liked is good, and you get some vapid bimbo eye candy. The reward for being... some lucky dumb slob who did somethingorother.
Or, combined with that, the story has money as its prize. The main character wants MONEY. Money drives the plot. All the characters want is money, or some treasure, or some machine that does something significant.
These stories aren't about a real life person, like an IRL man or woman, who goes from valuing the wrong things, to realizing money and popularity are a sham. The "potential admirers" are mostly a bunch of vapid p-zombies, the money is fake, the "ancient treasure" is just an inanimate object and nothing more, and being "the best" doesn't matter.
Yeah, wasn't this originally kinda related to video games? And I mentioned Pokemon, so. "I want to be the very best, like no one ever was". To be a master. Call no "man" (or anyone) "master". Because anyone can tell you what to do, but you make your own choices, and you'll have to answer to God for each choice you made.
If the pokemon trainers were real people, would they become better off personally for "mastering" elemental dogfighting? Does it make them wiser, stronger, smarter? Or just better at putting giant dragons into little balls and telling them what to do? Okay pokemon isn't that deep, but the main point here is, in what way does "becoming a master" make someone into a better person? Think of the rich people you know, do you like them? Do you think popular, rich people are good? Remember the popular KIDS (goat word!) (goats have high intersex rates) at school, the popular rich people at your job, were they truly nice? Or good at being fake-nice to customers and people they wanted to impress, but what were their TRUE faces like? The faces they showed to people they didn't care about impressing.