We Defy Augury: Inevitable Video Game Themed Cross Promotion

I recently read Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which is a novel about friendship, collaboration, and video game design (among other things). 

This book sent me down a bit of a nostalgic/reflective rabbit hole. 

I haven't played video games with any regularity since 1993-- when I completed every level of Road Rash on the Sega.  Road Rash was a motorcycle racing game, but the twist was that as you raced, you also fought people with chains and clubs and nunchucks and crowbars. Very fun. Once I got through all the levels, I got to this weird bonus level that consisted only of cops-- and cops pull you over and end your ride. So you ride for a moment and then the game just ends. It gets all blocky and fizzles out. 

I was kind of disappointed with this finale-- I wanted some kind of digital trophy or a screen with a secret address-- and if you send a postcard to the secret address, then the game designers mail you a special t-shirt that reveals you conquered the game. 

Something for the effort. 

Anyway, that was pretty much it for me. My wife and I certainly played some Dance Dance Revolution (but we had to give it up when our first child started crawling . . . you don't want to stomp an infant's head while playing DDR, which is certainly possible, because you're jumping around, looking at a screen and meanwhile there's a little kid with a soft skull crawling around your feet and if you kill your firstborn while playing DDR it's obviously tragic but people will still laugh) and I played some MarioKart and Wii with the kids . . . I even tried to play Zelda: Breath of the Wild with my son Alex, but it gave me motion sickness. Mainly, I retired from gaming. 

But this novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow got me thinking about all the games I missed over the last thirty years. I also read Simon Parkin's Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline and "Dead Space Only Gets Better with Age" by Lewis Gordon. The non-fiction put a lot of what I missed in context.

I get into all of this in the new episode of my podcast: "Tomorrow, I Will Play Video Games, Tomorrow."

It's a good episode-- I'm proud of it. It gets pretty deep. 

I'm trying to condense these podcasts down into posts on my newest blogging endeavor . . .

 We Defy Augury; Thoughts (Loosely) Based on Literature

We'll see how it goes.

In the end, though, Zevin's novel is less about video games than it is about creative collaboration . . . and just how rare that is. If you get to the end of the podcast-- and it's a long one-- I wax poetically about how lucky I have been with collaborators.

When my wife and I lived in Syria, I hit it off with our neighbor and colleague Matt McEwen. We played a bunch of music together, at various venues (including the Marine House) and we learned a shitload of songs together. We had a fabulous time.

When I got back from Syria, I was lucky enough to run into Cunningham and Powers at my place of work, and we made over 100 episodes of a podcast together and we collaborate all the time on lesson plans. We work really well together.

And, of course, I'm still collaborating with Whitney and we met over thirty years ago-- on our freshman hall. Thrown together by chance, with Rob as well (who enjoyed a brief stint as our drummer). Random idiots, one and all. We both had no business making music, but together we made something bigger (and more crass and disgusting) than we could have made separately. 

Though the content of our songs has gotten grimmer-- a number of them are tributes to friends that have passed away . . . the last one was commemorating the life of our good buddy Johnny G-- the fact that we can still get together and make something is a testament to the power of creative partnership.

But what I did not mention in the podcast was this blog, which is something of a miracle of collaborative effort. This is the place where I get my internet news and gossip, catch up with friends, receive positive encouragement from Marls, and often read something thought-provoking, funny, or fascinating. 

And it's been that way for a LONG time . . . nice work, Gheorghies!