The Importance of Being Idle

Very Off Topic

Playing far too much Titan Quest, as I do, it occurs to me that nobody in the game world ever asks me to do anything nice. It's always kill this, kill that, occasionally rescue/find the other (which invariably involves a lot of killing), and nobody ever asks that with my frankly godlike prowess I help plough a field, rebuild a house or temple, or just help clear up the enormous chunks of rubble the monsters leave lying about; I can't imagine how the towns folk'll move them, but I could juggle them like they were tennis balls. I suppose this is all reflection on reaching the milestone of having killed 25,000 monsters (and counting!), and I also suppose that I'm over-thinking far too much: Titan Quest is an action game after all, if somebody asked me to help plough a field I'd probably just complain and wish I could be off in the wilds killing things... but I suppose it's something that extends to almost all video games. It's pretty much a given that the only way to interact with something in a video game is to kill it, whether it be by punching, hitting, shooting or whatever and I occasionally wonder what psychological effect this is having on people when the only method of problem solving in our recreation is to kill things. I suppose movies did this first, taking a ridiculously simplistic view of the world and how problems can be solved with fists and guns, and it is a visceral and exciting form. It follows that this would be a primary form of video gaming as it doesn't require much thought, originality or writing skill, and allows players to take part in their own action movies. A lot of games will justify this wholesale genocide by making your opponents unspeakably evil, but does even that morally justify such depraved violence? And what about when they're just hired hands? How about when I'm playing Far Cry, sneaking through the jungle avoiding the mercenaries, I wonder how many of them are just their because it's the only work they know? How many of them have wives and kids that they'll never see again because I can't walk past them without machine gunning them all to death. I know that there are no "real people" in these games, that they're just little puzzle pieces moved around to my entertainment, but is the wanton slaughter of so many little human shaped pieces really that much fun? I know that's over-thinking the situation, but maybe it's a situation that needs a little overthinking once in a while? Or maybe not.
We're in the final run up/count down to Christmas now and I'm still not feeling it, as per usual. I'm even listening to Christmas music in some sort of attempt to kick-start the whole thing. I spent the whole day yesterday working out how to make Ronnie's secret santa present to her boss, which I finally finished just after 10pm last night after many disastrous attempts. I really didn't figure out how to get to grips with it until about 4pm either, so most of the day was a truly stressful and depressing mixture of failure and feeling I was letting her down. Still it all came good in the end, which I suppose is the point of the whole thing.
While I was working on this, Ronnie went out to a the local pagan groups winter solstice celebration. Apparently they were going for a Mayan celebration, although I was disappointed (but not even slightly surprised) to discover that there hadn't been any blood-letting at all. I suppose captives are rather hard to come across in Peterborough (well, in the nicer parts anyway), but the priest should've self-mutilated, and considering the special place that sacrificing children had, and also considering the heads of the group do have a particularly annoying and ill-behaved child it seems there could've been an opening there... ah well, I suppose it was all for the best anyway; I wouldn't have wanted Ronnie involved in a murder, even if it did make the sun rise the next day. Which it wouldn't have.
Oddly I can't remember anything very much about Tuesday or Wednesday, so they must've been oh so very entertaining. Really, can't remember a thing.
I wonder if I'll post again before Christmas?

posted by BadMonkey @ 2:33 PM