works of wanderlust

Tag: gamer

  • media reviews: a lack of independence

    All work and no play make Brad a dull guy.

    I’ve been working on real projects, too, but I still find a lot of time to dabble in entertaining myself with no hidden agenda. This past month I’ve been stoking the seeds of rebellion and growing virtual canola, but not necessarily in that order.

    I’ve been enjoying…

    gaming: farming simulator 2025

    There are really only two types of games that exist. I mean, when you sit down and think about it—and believe me, I’ve done my share since trying to build a video game from scratch this year—but those two types of games fall basically into one of two core game mechanics: create chaos or create order. The create chaos games are simple: blow stuff up, fight, battle, knock down a wall of bricks with a little ball and on and on. The creating order games are pretty obvious, too: craft stuff, build structures, sort objects, organize those objects into neat rows. We could probably argue about the nuance of all things and that sometimes creating chaos is leading to order or vice versa, but hey, I’m trying to keep this simple. And all that said, what I can’t exactly tell you is when the first “farming” game came out because farming games (unlike this game I have been playing) are not necessarily about literally running farm.  Farming games are generally about creating order: taking a wild space and converting it into a resource-generating source.  Farming games can, yes, and often do replicate vegetable farming from reality, but too sometimes you are farming gold, or in-game energy, or dinosaur eggs, player experience points or maybe just maguffin-like doo-dahs that progress the game play, and many farming-type games use the abtraction of farming as a mechanic to create a need in the game to progress gameplay by forcing a labour-like management system of creating order out of the seeming nothingness of the game world. But Farming Simulator is literally what it says. It’s buying tractors, harvesting crops, and managing animals, all in a massive virtual space that looks like a slice of some agricultural landscape pulled from a film trope. And I’d be damned if I denied that driving a virtual tractor around gravel roads to pick up a load of wheat isn’t the coziest way to lose oneself in a few hours of meaningless order-creating video gaming. The 2025 version is probably my fourth or fifth official stab (not counting the mobile versions on my phone) at digging into this game, and really only the second one that stuck. The game is of such complexity that it is easy to get lost and eventually bored in the first layer—driving a tractor until you run out of things to tractor on—and just miss all the nuance offered at deeper levels. A thousand other reviews have already talked about the graphics and the mod base and the mechanics of the engine, so I will simply say that what is often overlooked—and probably what drives some suburban computer nerd to play games like this—is a kind of latent urgency in the genes of humanity that impels us to grow things, harvest food, and tame the land: it is like a survival instinct, almost, fulfilled by the simulator pretending to do work that is the foundation of human societies. Plus, who doesn’t like to drive a green tractor through the countryside?

    streaming: andor, season two

    There has been a meme floating around online that Andor has ruined Star Wars because it was just that good. And, frankly…I almost agree. The jibe goes something like this: watch Andor, then go back and watch the very first Star Wars film again, A New Hope. At the end when Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are getting kudos before the end credits roll, put yourself in the shoes of just one of those guys standing in the crowd some of whom were (now, according to canon) probably friends and at least coworkers with the characters of the new mini series. They had fought together, suffered together, built a rebellion through personal sacrifice for years…  and then one day some farm kid and a space trucker show up, luck out in a single battle and they get a parade, medals and literally all the glory. Oh, Luke, wipe that shit eating grin off your face. Don’t you understand the game you just stumbled into? Didn’t you watch Andor on Disney+ for fs sake? All joking aside, what makes this show so good and what I think a lot of people who like this series so much (but maybe aren’t fully able to articulate about it) see in it’s story is simple: real stakes. The whole point of the story arc that leads from the first scenes of Andor to the end of the Rogue One movie is that literally none of these people make it. The whole story is based on what is almost a throwaway line from that famous opening crawl of the original movie, that some rebel spies stole the plans for the death star, the plans that become the key the story in that same first film.  Some clever person said, hey, let’s tell that story because those guys did the real hero work and probably lost their lives to do it: stakes. Andor ignores the mysticism of the force and assumes that the regular suite of bad guys are busy somewhere else doing their bad guy shit and that the real fight is happening out of sight, in dark corners and that people who have been drawn into it because they are people who make good choices while still doing things objectively less good, are giving up everything to help everyone else for change they will never live to see: stakes. There can’t be a season three because what happens next is all the movies you love already and all these characters did that for the galaxy and the plot: stakes. Weight, purpose, and stakes. I haven’t had much good to say about Star Wars for a while, but if you are any kind of fan at all you need to watch Andor. 

  • game con-spiration

    I’ve been a lazy game developer lately. 

    A couple months ago I was proudly telling people how much progress I was making on Pleck’s Mart. Heck I was logging at least—at least—a couple hours every day adding to the code base and debugging the game and making art and then sitting at the cafe writing story for the damn thing.

    I also wrote a couple months back about how I made some silly choices around leaning into a dead-end part time job that was supposed to round the rough edges off my days but instead wrapped me up into grocery store drama and derailed a bunch of personal motivation in my off-hours, plentiful tho they were.

    In short tho, I haven’t been coding for about two months now.

    Sadly. Realistically. Frustratingly. 

    There is a mental wall in the way, if I’m being honest, because (a) I was just coming up on a challenging bit of code, (b) a new version of the engine came out in the intervening months, and (c) it’s kinda sorta summer and (d) I should be spit-polishing my resume and not making video games.

    But then I went to Game Con this weekend.

    A couple things happened, very passively to be honest, but they happened at Game Con nonetheless.

    First, I got to wander around and talk—actually chat with and talk to—other indie game developers. That’s big. There’s a hundred reasons to go to a convention linked to your hobby, but seriously on or close to the top of that list of reasons should be the simple fact that hanging out with likeminded individuals is inspiring for another long list of reasons. There is a community. There are organizations boosting these efforts… locally. People have trod this path before us and are coming up the path behind us, and that means something.

    Second, I got to finally have a chat with Chris. We’ve been friends for over twenty years now, hung out countless times, vacationed together, stood atop a mountain peak in the sun, and rung in the new years nearly every year of that twenty. He is a legit developer. I mean, he professionally codes for a living, has a business, does community building, and that list goes on. And I sheepishly gave him access to my github repo. We finally got to chat, hanging out in the halls of Game Con, playing some board games and poking at the demo booths, and he wants to help with Pleck’s Mart. What’s our next step, he asked.

    So, it’s monday morning after the gamer inspiration weekend and I’m looking down the day at a question of not if I go down into the basement today to write some code… but when.

    What is the next step?

    As ever, it’s one problem, one line, one version at a time. And if nothing else, looking for that lost momentum.

  • weekend wrap eight

    The last three days have been punctuated by epic thundershowers meaning not only does the lawn now desperately need to be mowed thanks to the rain, but also that it was a good weekend for a time-consuming indoor actitivity.

    This weekend was filled with:

    Games. Anita scored a pair of tickets to the annual Game Con convention over at the expo center, three-day VIP passes, and she apparently had no interest in attending. One ticket to her husband, obviously, but I took the second and spent a huge chunk of the weekend, including Friday, there.

    Friday I got to the con just before lunch, did some of miniatures painting, wandered around, watched a couple demos, and then met up with Chris on his break, who was volunteering there all weekend, and we played some board games in the middle hall.

    I skedattled out of there around five, and chilled with the dog through another thunderstorm as the evening pressed on.

    Saturday I got up and got back to the con to meet Aaron. We did some wandering and product sampling, checked out a lot of the vendor booths and then watched some of the mainstage shows while we ate mediocre poutine. He took off around 2 and I stuck around a little longer to paint another free Warhammer miniature.

    Back home later that afternoon we made dinner and I retreated to the basement to read.

    Sunday morning was a beautiful sunny day and so we logged a nice ten klick run in the river valley.

    Sunday was also a dual event in our house, Karin’s birthday and also Father’s day, so the poor kid was juggling gifts and cards and being in a good mood.

    I had bought Karin a 2 player “duel” variatiaion of another board game we like. Finding good two player games is our new challenge as the parents of a kid just about to launch into university, and we played a couple rounds trying to figure out the rules… then the strategy.

    We walked the dog over to the cafe for something else to do later that afternoon, and then as the evening pressed on we went for a slow but tasty dinner at the nearby sushi place to celebrate the double celebration day.

    And then, just because it had been a busy couple of days, I hunkered down for the rest of the drizzly night to finish off another book in my queue so that I could move onto other things… not that it’s a race or anything.

  • game: civilization seven

    Would you say that I got this game for free?

    I mean, I didn’t pay for it. I ordered it using points. AirMiles(TM). So it wasn’t strictly free because, I mean, those points have a kind of real and tangible value, but they are not money in the sense that I could buy anything but whatever random crap is listed on their catalog on any given day. I didn’t pay for the game, I guess is what I’m saying, and using points made it feel like something I got for free (even though I didn’t really, I suppose) and I mention it because I’m still very torn on how I feel about this latest insallment in the Civilization series inasmuch as I’m feeling pretty smug about not having spent real cash on the game.

    I’ve been playing Civilization VII.

    And shortly before that I had been playing Civilization 6, which was both a mature game which had been tweaked and refined and bug-squashed long since, and which I picked up up for literally a few bucks on a big digital sale lowering the stakes dramatically for what turned out to be an excellent purchase and investment of my gaming time.

    And? Before that I’ve played every other installment of this game going back to the original in the 90s. 

    All this is just me setting the stage and suggesting my bonafides when it comes to a player of this particular game series and type.

    If you’ve never played a “Civ” game let me elaborate as best as I can bring it down: It’s like a big game of Risk on a huge interactive video game map of a randomly generated world—except rather than just rolling dice and moving armies you need to build the cities and grow the economies to raise and support those armies, ensure that they have resources to fight, negotiate diplomacy with other societies, fend off natural disasters, counter religious uprisings, research and build new technologies and so on and on and on into a kind of complexity that is hard to explain in a single paragraph.

    Look up 4X games which stands for eXplore, eXpland, eXploit, and eXterminate, and which in a vague sort of way truly summarizes the core of the gameplay.

    I play Civilization and have played it for pretty much my entire adult gaming life as a kind of slow, serious, strategic gamer’s pursuit. Civilization is like the chess of the video game world: that is to say a lot of people take it serious as f. 

    So it is a big deal when a new installment ships. Civilization VII shipped just a few months ago in early 2025 and generally—well—people hate it, frankly.

    Personally I’m torn.

    Here’s the thing about that. I play it with seriousness, but I am not serious about the game. I just dabble in seriousness, and in saying that my stake in the game is not about the fine-tuned mechanics of a elaborate and complex simulator leveraging the raw strategy of a well-honed plan of tactical gamers pursuit vibes. I’m just playing to go with the flow. I don’t just click and click and click some more. I think about my moves, but I guess what I’m trying to say is that on a scale of hard-core Civ-ness, I’m like a 4 out of 10.

    I’ve played three games of Civilization VII since I got it for not-exactly-free from my reward points, such a middle aged dad thing to do by the way, ordering video games on a physical disc using your airline rewards, and three games in I’m like… hmm… uh… yeah. It’s… okay. I mean, I like the innovative thinking. I like that game companies are trying new things. I like that this is more than just an updated graphics engine smeared over the old engine. It is a new approach, and that is a awesome and we should all celebrate risk taken in the name of advancing new ideas and updates.

    But there is a hitch—and an itch I can’t quite scratch.

    The game is—I dunno—bumbling. 

    There is just something about it that I haven’t been able to put my finger on. It’s as if the game is simultaneously too complex for its own good and yet insufficiently rigourous in allowing the player to control all that complexity. There is stuff that happens, automatically, behind the curtain, out of sight, that I just simply don’t understand as I’m playing. And I write this not as a good veil-of-war kind of sense where such secrecy promotes strategic play: I say in the sense of it sometimes feels, just feels, like the game is playing itself and that I am reduced to little more than button mashing the turn meter forward. It just bumbles along, tap, tap, tap, bumble, tap, tap, tap, bumble—and I’m left thinking, like, am I playing this or watching it play?  And that is the type of game that leaves you with a kind of vague emptiness when you’ve progressed far enough along.

    It likely doesn’t help that I’m playing this on Playstation, to be honest. On a desktop I assume I’d do more mouse-hovering and poking around the UI to see what I was missing, read the help tips, or something. So is it a UI issue or a game issue or a hand-holding issue or—I don’t even know what is bugging me. But as it stands, I got the PS5 version with points not the other one, so that’s what I have been playing.

    Or should I say watching?

    And even though I write all this I still want it to be good. Maybe I write all this because I want it to be good. This is a beloved franchise. This is a piece of my gaming persona.  This is my chess. 

    I’m just torn on if I like it or not—and actually a little bit glad I didn’t really pay for it, either.