Sunday 17 November 2002

The problem with video games nowadays is that they are plot-driven. This is of course a sneaky plot by video game manufacturers to get you excited with the game, then bored with it: once you know the plot, you can streamline the sequence of actions to get to the end, or you can explore the nooks and crannies of a videogame, trying to find Easter eggs, but if you have a close-ended plot, that’s about it. Contrast this with, say, Robotron, Poker, and Chess. You can’t get bored defending the last human family, outbluffing everyone else on the table, or cornering the king upon the chessboard. You have the broad sketches of a story, and you start making up a plot of your own, but you don’t know the ending quite exactly, and the suspense is there, held in abeyance. Will you die valiantly after a long chase? sweep the table? 11:59:05 PM    comment []

I do experience fear, though, usually in response to the unknown. Sometimes after an event I can look at my actions as seeming to have originated from panic, though at the time the events happen I don’t think of them as being afraid so much as being irrational in the face of the unknown—as panic. My usual experience of fear is in response to more internal events, like crises of conscience, or of having done badly. I tend to have dreams of fear of having missed all my college classes for a course for which I have an imminent test, usually a class I would not even have dreamed of taking lo these many years ago. Between loooong naps trying to read Harry E. Chambers’s Effective Communication Skills: For scientific and technical professionals, a book that has been on my shelf for five months but has steadfastly refused to become appetizing to me. Still I’m sure it’s worth a read. 12:26:00 AM    comment []