Gameblogging!

[kjorteo]

When I moved from LiveJournal to Dreamwidth, I expected it to be the same thing but just in a different location because I wanted to make a point about which organization I supported. Instead, even without expanding my friend circle and adding too many random people just yet, Dreamwidth's end-user activity feels more alive than LiveJournal's had for the past several years. Granted, LJ still has artists_beware and the furry drama communities, but its communities (and maybe George R. R. Martin posts) were the only things in my feed. Here, my actual friends are making actual posts in their actual personal blogs! I was not expecting this, but I am delighted.

And not all, but admittedly most of that is because xyzzysqrl seems to have somehow kicked off a gameblogging movement which is spreading from her friend circle to mine. She regularly posts record-keeping book report-style entries when she finishes or officially abandons games, and her journal is therefore full of those. Very fun to read, I always enjoy her commentary on everything.

I, of course, blatantly stole this idea and that's what you'll find on the vast majority (again, not all, but most) of my blog now. I love it, for several reasons. I'm actively writing posts again, and I feel good about doing my part to support this whole local "hey Dreamwidth actually seems to have a pulse so far" thing. I also just like talking about stuff I've been playing, it helps me keep track of which games I beat when and in what order (if I ever get curious about that,) and the "okay but if I finish this I can write it up and then it's off the list" incentive is already doing more than I ever dreamed it would to help me tackle my backlog.

Other Sqrl friends such as swordianmaster and probably a couple others I'm forgetting/am not familiar with are getting in on the act as well! Definitely worth checking out if you just can't get enough gameblogging. Even xaq_the_aereon posted a few updates as he was going through a Random+ AM2R run, though I'm not sure if that was just a special occasion.

davidn hasn't adopted this movement in general, but he did just do an amazing multi-part Let's Play of The Colonel's Bequest that I highly recommend. I'd been looking forward to someone doing that for ages, and it was everything I dreamed.

And if Sqrl's regular gameblogging wasn't enough, she also dips into the extended play runs with an already-impressive and still-growing collection of Nancy Drew titles, including a run of Danger on Deception Island she just started. Please check those out as well.

So in conclusion... uh. Well, to be honest, I started this post because I really owed David a plug for finally doing Colonel's Bequest for me :) but there's just so much gameblogging and therefore so much life in Dreamwidth so far that I really had to take a step back and celebrate the whole thing while I was at it.

Comments

[xaq_the_aereon]

I suppose "a special occasion" would be a fair way to label it. I don't play games nearly as much as I used to, spending more of my free time designing them, and the ones that I do play aren't ones I would imagine make for very exciting/interesting entries.

Though, if you guys would like to see me post about one of my zero-point playthroughs of Umihara Kawase Shun or do what would effectively amount to a walkthrough of some room escape game sometime, I suppose I could oblige. :b

[xyzzysqrl]

I would at least be interested in learning some more about the Umihara games. I've played some of the SNES original but I don't know anything about Shun or Sayonara.

[xaq_the_aereon]

I may be getting the titles mixed up; I thought Shun was the original SNES game based on the ROM filename.

In any case, I believe the whole series is available on Steam now. I know the SNES one is, which I bought about 0.0001 seconds afterwards (I make it a personal policy only to pilfer games that I can't legally acquire a copy of; once I can buy a game I like, I won't play it again until I do so) and quickly found is a right pain in the ass to try and play with a controller OR the game's default (and unchangeable :[ ) keyboard controls. So yeah, legal copy bought, but I guess I'll be sticking to the ROM. *shrugs*

But yeah, I suppose I could do some screencaps of another playthrough to show off the game's version of an Undertale-style Pacifist Run next time I've got a day or two off.

[davidn]

Thanks for the mention! I've also been encouraged by the amount of activity that's happening here at the moment - it's great to read other people's thoughts again. I will certainly take a look at the ones you mentioned that I didn't know about :)

I will also be doing baby posts, because it's the only place that allows friends-only posting and we'd like to keep her off the wider Internet for a while.

[kjorteo]

That restraint in itself is somewhat of a rarity these days! Of all my friends and family, you are perhaps the only parent I know who hasn't quite yet gone full 100% "Here's a picture of our baby, and here are eight more pictures of our baby, and here's a five minute video of our baby, and my icon is a picture of our baby now, and did I mention we have a baby? She's 242 days old now :D Here she was when she was 241...."

[davidn]

Yes, that's pretty much why I'm exercising such restraint - I saw a lot of the people I knew at school and university turn into 24-hour baby update bots who thought it was just fine to talk at length about the volume and consistency of their child's latest bowel movement. The material is definitely there to become one of those people because we currently have 4,680 photos of her on our family sharing account (that's not an exaggeration, I just checked) and have completely filled up one iCloud album and have had to start a second - but they don't get posted publically because to everyone else, she's a baby. She looks like a baby. That's about where the interest ends. And also, I don't want her embarrassing baby photos all over the Internet - it's bad enough knowing mine are in a bound physical album in my parents' attic somewhere.

Once you have a baby, though, there's an overwhelming sense of... it's a combined feeling of pride and of relief at surviving X days that you want to show off to everyone. (We're on day 148.)