Traffic: This is not Queens Blvd
Today I found someone apparently stumbled upon my blog with the following search query: “matrix reloaded shane bettenhausen.” I don’t really want to know what that’s about and I find it odd that such a query would link to my blog. On the plus side, I’m getting a lot more traffic these days from searches it seems, although sometimes I find it funny/wrong when people come looking for something they definitely won’t find. “Street Fighter Gill” – looking for a strategy on how to beat the guy? Well you’re completely out of luck here, I’ve never even played enough Street Fighter III to make it to Gill!
My overall traffic has come down some since December, I assume it’s due to my more haphazard posting structure these days but I think every blogger (who’s not being paid for it) eventually learns that traffic isn’t the most important metric for measuring the quality of the blog. While my traffic may have gone down, I feel more and more careful and self-aware of my writing ability as time passes. Recently I feel I’ve been varying up the content of my posts much more, mostly unconsciously, and that’s always the direction I wanted to take with this blog. Also I want to make sure I’m writing about things that matter to me, rather than write because I feel obligated to put something down on paper. I may have finished Crackdown, but you’re not likely to see a Crackdown review because the experience wasn’t significant enough. Should I write about games that are exceedingly terrible here? Sure, but Crackdown doesn’t fit in that category either.
Don’t expect this blog to live on the bleeding edge of anything, games, movies, etc. If you want news stories, this aint the spot, besides there’s other people who’d definitely do a better job than me. And I can’t think of the last time my gaming experience of the year was actually from a game that came out the same year. Ideally, I’d like to edge more towards contemporary works, but budgetary issues prevent such a thing. Another thing, a lot of people will say that game reviews today are reviewed as products, not works of merit, I’d love to try to go more into the latter half more myself, if I have the writing hutzpah to do it. Everything with time right?
In other news I beat the first Contra game yesterday for the first time ever. It was with a friend and 30-man code to boot. It wasn’t anywhere as difficult as I expected, it didn’t help that as a kid I didn’t actually know that the Konami code was for everything (back then it was just the TMNT code to me).
Nothing into Something
I’m sitting here listening to Schala’s Theme (from Chrono Trigger) and I just can’t help but wonder how it came to be. Maybe Yasunori Mitsuda saw some of the script in-progress, had an idea of the general character description, what music would be used near her theme, etc. but then how does that all translate into what he made? Surely a lot of it was improvisation and hammering away on a keyboard to see what sounded good, but that wasn’t everything.
As cliche as it sounds, the actual song itself tugs at one’s heartstrings while being a little uplifting at the same time. I guess that is because her character represented hope in a very dim world. There was a point where Mitsuda got sick and was temporarily hospitalized or at least removed from the project until he got better. With this being his first major production, he was ridiculously stressed out and more than likely completely enveloped in his work. It makes me wonder whether when he composed the piece, was he going through a rough time in his life that gave it that sense of emotional destruction, of a person whose been torn asunder. What if he had written it in a happier time in his life? Could’ve sounded completely different.
I know this entry is a little cheesy, but there’s something inherently interesting about composing for something that is not your own product with your own vision. Deep down buried between the notes, a piece in the life of that person remains. That’s what makes creation so powerful. There’s simply no way two people can be going through the same problems or be feeling the same way when crafting something, and as a result what they produce will surely be different. It’s a preservation of something greater than the media it’s presented in.
Makes me question whether a “masterpiece” can really exist. Then again, many masterpieces come about when an artist is the most dedicated to their style and form which allows the most amount of emotion to be injected into the work. I just hope I can look back fondly on whatever masterpiece I create.
A case for the real
Let’s get this out in the open. I’m a pirate, you’re a pirate, your cat’s a pirate, and your little sister watching Miley Cyrus videos on YouTube is a pirate. Yet I feel that despite the incredible convenience, low or zero cost, and availability that piracy entices us with, there is still value in having “the real thing.” It’s not even about making sure some starving artist has food on the table. To me it’s about showing respect and commending something that you feel is worthy of praise. As self-centered as it sounds, when I buy something like a piece of music or a movie, it’s almost like the artist has earned my trust and I’m agreeing to treat their work with the right attention and criticism. A lot of people said that those Amazon users who slammed Spore upon release due to the DRM had no right to, since there’s a good chance a lot of them pirated the game to begin with. It would be extreme to say that without a purchased copy, we can’t pass criticism. When we do pass judgement, it should be when we’ve gone through the effort of experiencing an artist’s work properly (not some 128kbit audio file that sYk066 ripped and uploaded onto Limewire).
The other thing about buying physical copies is it entitles me to be able to experience an artist’s work closer to the way they intended it. I’m writing this because the Band of Brothers boxset was on sale yesterday for a cheap 27 or so bucks. I asked my brother to go halfway with me but since “we already have it,” he doesn’t feel it would be worth it. True I’ve seen the series before and I could watch it in a few mouse clicks since I downloaded it a long time ago. Yet anyone who’s seen that show knows it should be experienced in the best way possible. A nice picture, great sound, all the features intact, and of course the tin itself. He happens to be part of a generation that pirated movies in college to hell and back, even though they were watching low bit-rate files on a 14 inch monitor. Movie rips are a lot better these days, but just the other day I was looking on some divx sites for a copy of The Matrix. Between two files only 10 megs or so apart, I saw immediate differences in aspect ratio, audio pitch, and color. And while I’m not one to look for dominant hues in films, The Matrix pays a lot of attention to color.
My buying Band of Brothers is more a nod to the show’s quality and a need to have it for myself rather than a need for top-notch quality though. The now percieved as “old-guard” business model of mass distributed media made available, for a price was a solution to the faulty method of supporting artists through patronage. Ironically it seems that that patronage model is making its return in a manner of speaking as consumers are choosing more carefully what they feel is worth their money, rather than having to pay for everything that might be worth their money. It’s a model that doesn’t give much security to the artist, but most artists were never secure to begin with due to the control of top-heavy studios and record labels. Most artists create with the intention to get their work exposed, hopefully they can appreciate the cost of greater exposure at the expense of their monthly check.
I’m still going to selectively download for as long as it’s possible, but you can be sure that I’m going to use my purchasing power whenever I can as well. In my mind Band of Brothers is a work of art, and just as one can go out and buy a reproduction of “Starry Night,” there’s a reason an original production still warrants a high price.
Of two minds
Now that I’m starting to hit a writing stride where I’m posting a few times week (and it feels pretty good actually), I’m wondering if visually, I’m not on the right track. When writing a blog, the contents of the writing should naturally be the focus and where the viewer’s attention is centered. Knowing from first-hand experience how intimidating a “wall of text” can be, I’m trying to implement more visual aspects into my posts as well (pictures, videos, links, etc.) without going overboard. The problem right now is the sidebar though. When most of the page is uniformly presented with well thought-out colors, etc. I wonder how off-putting all the links and such are in my sidebar there. With the top of that sidebar being completely text-based, the images just start coming out of nowhere the second the user starts scrolling, in a potentially distracting manner.
It’s difficult to focus when multiple colors are jumping out at you (1up, IGN) so most people will eventually start to tune out whatever information is presented on the sides. But then I know if I keep those links as simple text-links, 9 out of 10 will likely never even notice them. I think the gamercard/zunecard stuff can be tidied up a bit and it’s a nice addition as it gives readers direct access to materials I might actually be writing about. As to the userbars? I guess if anything I can keep them as graphics but instead turn them into a single color scheme more inline with the blog’s theme so it doesn’t quite stand out as much.
Now to the next issue. I recently checked out a recent SoreThumbs post by Crispin Boyer (long-time staffer at EGM, now doing freelance writing in and out of the industry) and one of his biggest tips to give to wannabe journalists was to read outside their usual circles. I’d agree with him when he says that most people look at the average writing on sites like ign, kotaku, etc. and think they can do better, pretty sure I’ve said the same. But then there’s plenty of “big boys” like N’Gai Croal’s Level Up, MTV Multiplayer Blog, gamasutra, etc. who I always want to start following but it’s so much more additional reading per day (and I follow a few different sites/channels as it is). He’s absolutely right that without anyone to strive to, you’re never going to really step up your writing skills. I hear so many good things about Edge magazine and think “Damn I’d like to write for them one day” but I’ve never even bought an issue of Edge!
Here’s an excellent quote from Crispin:
It’s your brain transmitting words to someone else’s brain. Don’t clutter the conversation with a bunch of useless crap. Write economically. Kill the clichés. Be more creative with your leads. With a little work and some practice, you can help make lousy writing a thing of the checkered past.
As he alludes to in the quote, I have to remember that whoever is reading is taking my word as it is and with only my word to fall back on. And any bullshit laden throughout the article only degrades the message. A few people have told me that they were already impressed with my writing ability but I can find plenty of consistent problems, mostly of style. Almost every post ends in an abrupt manner that lacks closure, occasionally I’ll name drop a game without explaining the greater significance to the story, or sometimes I’ll end up going to far into the tangent and losing my focus for the story. Not to mention journalistic writing is quite different from the essay style that I’ve grown up. Gaming press uses both really so I can’t really place one above the other.
I’m wondering right now if perhaps I’m blogging too much. My initial focus was quantity so I could get into the habit, but writing for quantity would naturally encourage looser, less-focused writing. Not a style I want to take on by any means. Seeing as I’m mostly able to follow J. Parish’s near-daily blogging however, I think I need to stick to writing as much as possible and worry less about whether my audience can keep up. It’ll help shore up any constant issues with my writing and help me notice them.
PS. Here’s one of the reasons why Crispin Boyer and Shawn Elliot will be greatly missed from their posts:
LJ Mood: Frustration
So there should’ve been a new post here about myself admitting that my backlog is full of RPGs I’ll probably never get around to. But that post was “saved” and promptly showed up as nothing but a title and an empty body. Fantastic. And here I thought that writing in a word processor was showing a lack of trust towards my presumed flawless WordPress. Don’t trust anybody.
Marks against WordPress: 1
Needing a New Trench
The name of this blog was originally: “Thoughts in 8-bit,” similar to my old GameSpot homepage, and I recently changed it over to “Notes from the Digital Trenches” in reference to the Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. I’ve never read the novel honestly, but it seemed more personal and was a nice tongue-in-cheek reference to the absurd console wars that plague every generation. Giant-Bomb cited the plethora of sites with game in the name as one of their reasons for going with a name with less flags attached to it. Looking around the web though, it looks like there’s other blogs with similar titles including a parenting blog (ugh) along with random articles, etc. Amusingly enough, a Google query also shows similar results to 8-bit Chronicles including a fan-made trailer referencing Nintendo properties (double ugh), a possible webcomic, and a link to a documentary linking art and gaming (huh, that’s interesting). Whenever I’d hear of a massive company going after some little guy over a domain or trademark, it’d always kind of make me chuckle, but I find it annoying when I’m hidden behind all the other results. Not that I want a regular flow of traffic, don’t know if and when I’ll ever be ready for that, but it’d be nice to have it “up there.”
I really need to start digging into what I can do with WordPress (although being hosted on the site, might not be much). I can’t say I’m as familiar as I should be, but it really looks like the developers put the right time into advancing the technology and that gets me excited to explore it. One thing I’d love to see, if it isn’t available, is a function similar to deviantArt’s “scraps” where you upload unfinished/draft work. I’ve written a bit of stuff either in notebooks, scattered on other sites, etc. and it’d be nice to round that all up. Some of it was actually intended to be posted somewhere but without the determination at the time, it just remained between the pages. I’d love to see the amount of words I’ve posted on GAF as well, as a guardian of the “wall-of-text” style, some of that I’ve put a great amount of work into and I’d credit it with making me more open to writing in general.
What I’d love to do right now is to attach more recognition to my work. I think I’ll look into writing an article here and there for http://www.toastyfrog.com/, Jeremy Parish’s blogging home where he regularly posts submitted articles from site members. Or hell, even writing in to Retronauts to see if I can get my name dropped and my question critiqued. Getting “the podcast” up and running right now would be lovely, but for that to get anywhere near note-worthy will surely more time than this blog. Not going to give up on it though as chances are that expereince could come of some use in the future. I listened to a Squadron of Shame episode (the Silent Hill 2 episode to be specific) and for what I believe started out as a club on 1up, was tremendously impressed. As nerdy as it sounds, it’s really cathartic for me to here a bunch of other nerds discuss 1 or a few games in great detail for hours on end. It makes my job more difficult as I’d likely do a podcast of a similar format, but the scopes are a bit different as well. As time goes by though, my gaming gets increasingly more group and community focused so it should only get easier to relate these experiences with others (see Nintendo, it actually builds relationships for online gaming to be easily accessible!)
Now to finish those drafts…
