You see, we flock to Twitter to have followers. We dive into Facebook not exactly only to be in regular contact with friends – all 1500 of them – but to enforce them to follow us on our daily adventures. Myspace I won’t mention as it’s completely passé and therefore bad form these days.

Mundane mishap with bacon becomes an adventure for others to reflect upon when it’s written in an appropriately cynical and/or hurt and/or humorous manner. We thrive to be recognized and noticed, and by gods, if someone retweets our daily adventure further down the social pathways, we are accepted en masse, and what could be better than that? Have Justin Bieber answer “<3″ to you?

We post photos to Flickr not solely to catalogue them to ourselves, but to receive attention from likeminded strangers. Oh, we just want some love. DeviantArt I’m not even going to talk about.

After indulging in this outright whor- ..selfpromotion that’s quickly replacing the oldfashioned mirrors at home, we settle down on our always socially acceptable Ikea Klippan and grab the latest socially approved game console controller in our hands, or stand around waving hands as per the new trend. We engorge ourselves with arbitrary puzzles, ultraviolent birds or outright mass slaughter, whatever happens to reflect our current needs of latest trend.

Now, one of two things may or may not happen.

For the first option let’s assume we play a game, controlling a character we of course project our needs into, being psychologically weak bags of meat. Our surrogate waddles around the designated game world, doing whatever darkly deeds we make him do within the set limitations. Now, again, in this one thing, one or two further things result. Projecting his daily self (or his need to act like complete opposite of his daily self) into virtual adventureland, our gamer avatar creates a massive mishap and more often than not the surrounding random NPC’s do not reflect on it. Nobody comments “haha lol didnt know you could do that with bacon! is awesome”.

Experience feels detached, unless it feels to the player just like it does in Facebook and Twitter where nobody comments on your antics either, in which case it really is just very sad. Then, if they do react, it’s most likely one spoken line randomized out of list of three after which they fall back into their walkcycles oblivious to the event that should have changed their depicted virtual lives.

Come to think of it, how closely that also matches Your Daily Facebook Experience is just downright creepy.

That’s it. World goes on inside the very tubely shaped game, indifferent as ever, because the characters don’t have to guide you forward – merely provide some mood filler, provide the backstory piece by piece and preparing player for the next level in a subtle, non-intrusive manner.

“Oh, didn’t know bacon could do that. By the way, stranger with a nice face I place my trust upon, did you hear the uberkapitan of our oppressive alien enemy forces has been seen three blocks ahead of you, just now? Can’t imagine anyone would take the opportunity, really, these days. Won’t they think of the future of our children. Goodbye!”

Of course, it doesn’t matter if our player listened to the dead-eyed monologue of future events or not, since he’ll invariably end up three blocks that way anyways, and will end up shooting things until things go away in various fashions. End result is the same. Both ways, our player might feel a bit cheated and dirty for being treated cheaply. Also, the bleak pointlessness of heard-it-already monologues is the reason they get always skipped. They don’t really add anything for most players.

Second option is we get a permission to wander off the plot path into the wild blue yonder of sandbox, a prospect that terrifies the already shambled minds of story- and game designers.

In there, player actually relies on feedback to be kept on the plot pipeline, fending off the dreaded situation where player gets lost, out of sight of any story engine characters and plot points. Of course, rarely such possibility is allowed to happen – you are essentially kept on a steeply inclined surface with nowhere to go but in the generally correct direction.

In here, mishap with a bacon gets commented upon as you need to be coerced into deeper interaction with NPC’s in order to figure out your way. Of course, the bacon that caused your wildest mishap ever was most likely an important macguffin in which case all apparent freedom is just a logical series of traps to lure you forward. All very elaborately designed set pieces one after another to produce an invisible tube you hopefully run through, either straight and ignoring the outside world or zigzagging around to enjoy the inessential.

If a sandbox game world had no lures and traps and big pointing arrows, player would eventually slumber to stop, bored with nothing to do – just like in his real world, except devoid of social networking sites. THAT crap does not sell.

But I’m not really writing about any of that stuff.

What player loves to find in the game world is some sort of recognition and results from his actions. Only a few games have done a longterm cause and effect stuff for the insanely horrible convoluted mess they are to create. You know, stuff like burning a village down making you a bad guy in those parts AND forcing the locals into bitterer and poorer bunch of bastards, planting a tree and coming back in few years gametime to see it has grown, awwhowniceandcute, et cetera.

Of course, those games suffered from other anecdotal mishaps which took over the whole public view and ended up defining the games. Devs just couldn’t put the brakes on after figuring out a nice world to live in, and instead ended up with extra buggery people loved to laugh about.

What happened was social networks, viral, sharing funny screenshots and agreeing with critics to become a popular dude, you know. People happened. It’s why we can’t have anything nice.

Anyways, think about it. What’s important in my mind is that games should retain a tangible relationship with you through your actions. The world you return to after your TwatterFissbookSpace journeys have to feel familiar, with your own proverbial shoeprints all over. I say return to with italics to make a certain point. We return to home. We return to familiarity. We stick to our old shoes because they’re comfortable and they smell only because they’re full of ourself, as horrible as that sounds. We’re on buddy terms with the grime we leave behind. If the game feels like you have left your fingerprints all over, banged the nice old villagers daughter and got even his dog a lasting drug addiction, you’re immersed because shit has just got personal through involvement.

Maybe, one day on your neverending journeys, you return to the same village which you have forgot about in your 15 in-game years of exile and come across a bastard teenage boy NPC with certainly very familiar facial features. Oh, hello, world just dropped you a kiddo bomb and you can take it as a sidekick.

If real life can stab you with a loving knife when you’re not expecting, why shouldn’t game world?

Even better,your character starts an unstoppable aging process from that point on to bring out another “oh okay, let’s watch this one out” trap for the player to keep playing those extra 35 hours.

Then he dies next to his son, in whichever timely manner an old hero would die in.

Game ticks on without falling back to “End Unlocked! Here’s A Badge! New Game? Y/N” trope.  Slowly realize your thumb twitch on the controller jolted the old mans’ son who, by now, after accumulating experience with his battlehardened father, is now a formidable character of his own. Sense of involvement through heritage, hoo boy.

It all pans out quite smoothly as a concept. If there’s NPC party involved, you’re the logical next leader again and game flows on without breaking a sweat or beat. If NPC party disagrees, enter the short skirmish among buddies as a player tutorial to your new character skills.

Sure, it’s nigh impossible to create, but I can bloody well dream while running in my tubes shooting things that look different. Maybe next gen allows us to create stuff not as limited by hardware. Maybe next generation of publishers allows us to create stuff not as limited by quarterly fiscals.

On a sidenote, we’re still calling current gen next gen. What’s up with that? Why isn’t there anyone trol-.. prepping us for new stuff already?

“Oh hi, nice blog post, didn’t know you can write. By the way, stranger with a nice face I place my trust upon, did you hear your gaming hardware is well out of warranty and oh right did you hear there is this really cool video leaked where a character in a popular television show is playing a game that looks amazing and it’s something very nextnext gen looking and everyone’s talking about it online..”

We’ll know it’s coming when we scramble to share it to our massive entourage of people who knows us by our links only.

Meanwhile, have a look at none other than Salman Rushdie checking out in-game storytelling where you can deviate from plot path whenever you like.

The original the-cow.net’s (back in 2002, yikes, that’s 7 years ago) first post read “Well, I’m single again” and it was posted on the day a relationship that had tried to turn me into a “normal person” had ended.

During the time I spent living in it, I did my best to focus on the things that aren’t frowned upon by the mainstream society – I worked hard, I did what I could to be a good boyfriend, and kept a very presentable self-image so that we wouldn’t be marked as “strange people”. For a while we lived in what was probably closest thing to a gated community there was in Turku. So I cut back on my habits of watching strange Science Fiction television series, focusing on on “funny” family friendly comedies. I didn’t have any time for RPGing, but instead exercised at the gym. I didn’t hang out with the LARPers on my free time as I was befriending the neighbors and had barbecue with them.

In general I was being the guy that I could see the girl wanting to spend her life with. Sad thing was that I wasn’t really that guy at all. I’m a geek, through and true. So eventually there was bad blood, there were tears and there was the end of the relationship.

After that I spent time finding a balance to the question of what I wanted to be in a relationship, something that led me to avoid them for a long time. Either I saw a “critical flaw” in the other party, one that made me think I’d have to compromise myself to be with them, so I didn’t even bother. Or I’d again found myself drifting into the role of that “normal guy” to impress them, and then, disgusted at myself, would back off before things got serious.

So yesterday, the topic of “Do you cut your game sessions short so you can see me sooner?” came up when talking with my girlfriend. It’s one of those questions that have no good answer, really – either I’m placing more value on the gaming than on the relationship or it’s an indication that I’m once again slipping to the “compromising who I am just to be with you” pattern I had fallen prey to all those years earlier.

Like I’ve mentioned before in the blog, our gaming group’s sessions have been going through a scheduling crisis the past year or two. We’re in a situation where even a simple game can get delayed for months because people don’t manage to fit their timetables together. On one hand this is because we’re busy with our lives and jobs, but on the other it’s become an issue of prioritizing. Everything goes before the games. But then, why would you want to spend the evening pretending to be in a fantasy world killing goblins when you can go see a great gig at the local nightclub? If it was just that sort of things that can be easily justified, I think there wouldn’t be a problem. Sadly, before gaming also comes watching some movie alone in your room, washing your hair or ordering your sock drawer. Games feel like a very low priority hobby sometimes.

And as it feels that much a prioritizing issue, I tend to ask those of my players who have problems with their schedules if they really want to continue playing. And let them know it’s not a bad thing to quit if they don’t feel like carrying on. But it seems that the issue really is about time just being a rare commodity and people not being available on the same days. Player A has choir practice on Monday and Thursday, and Player B could only play on those days. Finding a day that fits everyone is painful, and everyone wants to play.

So, cutting the game short once we’ve managed to get the session ready would be a bit unprofessional. And I told her the truth – I haven’t been cutting the sessions short to get to her earlier. But the rarity of the games is not the only reason why I answered so.

It’s been a way of gaming for us to keep game sessions short. 3-5 hours. This might seem counterproductive since we’re having such long breaks between sessions, but there are good reasons for it. With such busy schedules, investing 3-5 hours every now and then to a game is trivial – You can still get back home after it and prepare the presentation for the bank merger you need to have ready by the morning. It won’t ruin your life to commit to play in such a game. And also, you don’t really need more time to have a good game session. A lot can be accomplished in for example 4 hours. Everyone gets to play their bits and the attention spans stay solid (unless you give the players lots and lots of sugar to eat, but that’s besides the subject).

Doubling the time of the game to 8 hours would never double the time of productive play. Extra hours add up to exhaustion and eventual silliness that follows. And people would be tired as they’ve just come from work and will need to be up again in 4 hours when the game is over. And as a lot of our games rely on improvisation more than tedious pre-planning, exhaustion of the GM will hit at some point and start weighing down the game.

If I need to mention a major downside of the short games, it is that we’re friends, and friends need to gossip and be social when they meet each other. So if some people haven’t talked in a while, they will want time to do that before we start the game. So sometimes the planned 5 hours turns into 3 as everyone has to catch up on what’s been happening. But like said, you can accomplish a lot of gaming even if the time is limited. As long as everyone is into what’s happening and willing to contribute.

So if it takes 1.5 months to organize a 3 hour game session, it would be a bit wrong towards everyone for me to cut that to 2 hours because I wanted to be with my girlfriend just a bit earlier. But even if I said I haven’t cut a session short to get to her sooner, there is a “but”. Just like there always is. If it would happen that she’d ask me to cut a session short, I would.

So, nothing’s different from before? I’m still willing to make compromises to be something my girlfriend wants? Bad Alvan? Well, let’s compare… I’m working hard (well, been on a vacation, but theoretically), I’m trying my best to be a good boyfriend. I’m not watching that many odd SciFi shows (more to do with there being not that many good SciFi shows airing), but even fewer family comedies. I’m using some of my free time playing RPGs and some going to the gym. I’m hanging out with LARPers (if Karaoke with them counts) and barbecuing with friends when I have the opportunity. And if my girlfriend asks, I’m willing to cut down on my personal time… So nuances have changed, but it doesn’t really look that different.

The beauty of it all is in the why. I’m being myself. So when I say that I would cut a session short if my girlfriend asked, it’s because there is no ambiguity about all the trouble we go through to get the games arranged. It’s easy to trust her with the power when she’s seen  me curse all my players to the depths of hell when yet another game falls through.

And like I trust her with knowing what things mean, I do trust my players to eventually get their schedules sorted. We managed to complete one campaign (even if it took time), we’ll manage the others. As long as they’re being truthful to me when they say they want to continue playing RPGs, it will be possible to find a date that fits all the players. And then we’ll play for a few hours, kill some goblins, fight off dragons and then spend ages wondering when on Earth do we have time for that short burst of fun again.

Tonight’s “who I share my sleeping place with” roulette awarded me with 3 Norwegians. I guess the odds of getting them was quite high, considering not many people stayed for today.

So, yesterday was “move from the convention center back to civilization” day. At the after-dinner yesterday it really hit me how much fun this week has actually been and how much I’ve missed “the scene” (and by the scene I mean the people who tend to have an active role in it). I kind of miss these crazy knutepunkt people already. And I’m still in Oslo. Hmm. Should probably say some highlights from yesterday… Maybe waking up, maybe eating breakfast. Possibly going to sleep.

The weather was a bit gray yesterday, but that didn’t really matter so much. Also, it is to be noted that even the blisters on my feet have blisters now.

Now the Swedes are watching South Park and I’m blogging. We’re in the middle of nowhere and there’s 4 people in the room, one of them being a girl. And there are now three laptops on the table and active. I think there is something seriously wrong with Scandinavians.

So-far I’ve been to one (harry potter ?!!?!!) LARP and one lecture. What I’ve learned so-far is that what happens at knutepunkt stays on facebook. And it ain’t pretty. Also, I smell of smoke. Not cigarette smoke. Wood smoke.

“Someone better tell Norway, they were pretty close”

Yesterday I arrived at Oslo airport at 18:30, managed to get to the apartment I’m staying around 19:30 and was whisked about to a restaurant around 19:35. Lots of nice people here. Went to bed sharing the flat with two Latvians, woke up and the place is now filled with Danes. Sometimes I wonder..

Also, if you ever have the opportunity to eat the special kebab at noah’s ark. do so!

Alvan: Listen, all I’m saying is that clichés aren’t all bad

Spikey: Hear hear, people who are looking at things through a black and white filter, skin deep will go “Argh, another cliché! This ain’t original! It’s POOP!” And then I’ll be all horrified by their simplistic views and will have to fight with them about it.

Alvan: Clichés are Clichés because they’re things that have been proven to work.

Spikey: So say we all.

Alvan: Of course, it boils down to how you use them. The situation and presentation.

Spikey: So say we all.

Alvan: And there is nothing wrong with a guy wearing a dress.

Spikey: Providing one can stop the sniffage of glue on the correct date.

Alvan: So say we all.