Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@JohnnyShoulder Perhaps I spoke prematurely. 😅

@GirlVersusGame That’s interesting about the obsidian mirrors, so perhaps that’s another intended metaphor or symbol of the title.

And definitely happy for you that your Minecraft creations are now accessible! Did you ever play Dreams? It might be of interest to you if you enjoy creating digital worlds. I tried it (and I’ve done a little bit of Minecraft years ago) and it was too much for me to wrap my head around. I didn’t quite have the patience or artistic vision to do much with the creation suite. But it was entertaining to see and play some of the content the community created.
It’s unfortunate that Dreams crashed and burned for Sony and Media Molecule. It’s not quite Concord level of catastrophe, but such a long time developing a game that fizzled so quickly. I don’t even know if the servers are still on or if there’s still an active community there.

@Th3solution Will absolutely check it out and try to remember to share my thoughts on it

@GirlVersusGame So happy that you got your hard work back! It sounded like a regression bug (when you fix something and accidentally and unknowingly break something else) so I was quietly hoping they would fix it. Very glad they did

@GirlVersusGame That’s an interesting take on Dreams and your experience with it. So it does seem like you really gave it a chance. From the sounds of it, I dabbled in it much less than what you did, but I agree with what you said — there was a remarkable lack of community zeal and rapport. Which is weird when you think of it because the whole point of the game was to promote camaraderie and sharing creations and creativity. It was very stylish and unique, and yet… still felt soulless.

Creator style games demand a certain amount of time and energy, and I think that’s part of the hurdle. Not to mention that imagination and creativity are things that society socializes out of us as we transition into adulthood and take on responsibilities and jobs. Some professions do cultivate imagination, dreaming up creations, and innovation, but honestly I think it’s a small percentage of laborers. The vast majority of people end up in a job that is mostly iterative, high pressure, conformist, and uninspiring. I’ve been in jobs where they try to encourage creativity and innovation but it all seems lifeless when it’s a veiled attempt to increase profitability and job efficiency. Creating for creations sake is limited to only those that work on the arts.

Even game development is hampered by deadlines and revenue goals. It was really refreshing to read that recent article from Kojima where he said that he was actually disappointed that DS2 was receiving universal praise. He admitted that his company needed to have some level of profitability but that he didn’t create games to appeal to the masses, rather wanted to make games that were divergent. (I forget exactly how he said it, but that was my interpretation)

@AgentCooper 🤜

I'm back, now. Still on a break from gaming, though. But using the forum again, for the time being.

Just a couple of thoughts. I see myself outside my voluntary roles, as primarily being a free jazz guitarist. But I alternate my free jazz study with hip hop listening sessions, to ground me and bring myself back down to earth when things get too lofty and intellectual in the worlds of six-string jazz.

I am reading Jon Fosse's Septology at the moment, and will be moving on to Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust after that. Taking the summer time, easy.

I feel like it's important not to over-intellectualise in life. Especially for those of us, I'm sure including many on here, who are interested in the arts and culture, in general. I think a balance is important. Live well, work hard or study, and dedicate your free time to the things you love, but don't get too heady with it, focus on the "lowbrow" in addition to the highbrow in terms of your intellectual and cultural pursuits, is my advice.
There is definitely a danger, imo, in dedicating oneself solely to the life of the mind.

As a caveat to that, I am not saying that hip hop can't be intellectual as well, there are rappers, for example, who actively encourage their listeners to read and study.

Also the depth of the lyrics in addition to their weight and profundity in some hip hop cannot be denied either, that doesn't apply to some of the well-known ones, from what I've heard of their work, though. Gotta dig at least a little bit for those special gems.

There was a whole debate about whether commercial or mainstream entertainment has the same value as high art, on the radio, and I think the recurring sentiment was that it doesn't really matter, as long as you, personally, find it enjoyable. Art's worth is always susceptible to subjective judgement.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN just wondering.. Do you consider yourself an intellectual or a musician first?

@Mr_B021 Definitely as a musician who is interested in "intellectual" pursuits.

How about you, how do you see yourself? just out of interest.

@AgentCooper Glad you decided to stick around the forum, the place is a better for for it.

Hope you have happy memories of pappa Cooper and raised a glass for him. 🥃

@Jimmer-jammer @GirlVersusGame I’ve been meaning to respond on the subject of the creative pursuits of adults in society and I’ve just been a bit swamped so haven’t been able to construct a clear and concise way to explain my meaning. Plus, I don’t want to bore everyone with my pontifications about sociology. Suffice it to say, I think maybe I wasn’t clear that when I was talking about loss of creative fostering as we get older it was collectively speaking, not individually. Certainly each person has immense ability to continue their creative endeavors. And a person’s abilities and quality of imaginative output is probably better as we age. Nevertheless as a whole I still think people aren’t encouraged to be creative as we age, at least not in the purest sense. The natural inclination to be artistic and imaginative as humans isn’t fostered in the same sense that productivity, conformity, and industry are. Throw a box of crayons, paper, and some clay onto a table and a child with have a blast making, drawing, imagining. Whereas an adult will organize the crayons, put them in a box, clean up the mess, and wipe down the table, then check their To-Do list on their phone to see what their next task is. It is what it is, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing necessarily. Rather it’s just the way society drives us starting in primary school to spend less and less effort on creative pursuits and more and more on analytic and achievement oriented tasks.

(Oops… I still got off into the boring sociological weeds…) 😅

@AgentCooper Glad that you’ve stuck around, buddy. I hope that a little gaming and Push Square interaction helps to keep the soul healthy. 🍻

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN Glad to see you’re finding balance in your life pursuits. I like what you’ve said there. It strikes on the conversational subject that I was having with Jimmer and GvsG about the tendency for us to abandon artistic expression as we get caught up in the roles of adulthood, compelled in keeping the machine of society going. I think that balance you speak of is key to long term happiness.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I never really thought about it like that. Definitely not a musician. I played the trombone up till high school, but a severe lack of talent closed off a career in music. I like to read but wouldn’t consider myself an intellectual. I’m firmly in the ‘lowbrow’ range of cultural pursuits.

Are you a professional musician, in the sense that you can make a living out of it?

@Mr_B021 Not a professional. But I have played live on numerous occasions in different (unsigned) bands in the past. I won't list the names as I am not in touch with my former bandmates and I don't know how they'd feel about me sharing our work on here.

What sort of books do you read?

@Jimmer-jammer Completely agree. 🍻
I work in an industry that doesn’t have many clear creative outlets; much of my time is spent in traditional productivity mumbo-jumbo. I do try to tackle my tasks in creative ways and try to foster some level of inventiveness where possible. It’s just really hard in a corporate driven world. It takes a lot of effort.

And I feel a modicum of bitterness, to be honest, at how the public school system works where the arts and music is under-financed compared to scholastics and athletics. I wasn’t given the opportunity to learn a musical instrument as a youth. I’ve often wondered what could have been had I started with an instrument in my youth or given some incentive to develop an artistic skill.

When I’ve tried to learn art and music later in life it has been really hard. First, I think our brains aren’t quite as flexible (not to mention our fingers aren’t either 😅) nor as malleable to learning new things. But secondly and more importantly, the time to commit to learning something, like a music instrument, is constantly thwarted by adult responsibilities and there’s a large amount of physical and mental fatigue that has hindered my learning something like that. I’ve tried.

I do like that philosophy of adversity being a driver of creativity. It’s like that saying that “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Unfortunately I haven’t been very good at turning adversity into art or creation. Through most of my adult life when I’ve had adversity, I’ve tended to shut down and become apathetic or lackadaisical. When I’ve been beaten down by the world a few times I’ve tried creative writing, which is about the only artistic endeavor that I have any comfort with. It’s therapeutic, and probably the closest thing I have to what you all can do with painting, drawing, music, building, sewing, or whatnot.

@Th3solution Thanks! I'd like to think so too. What would you say your main creative interests are (outside of gaming, of course)? I remember a time when you said that you had found that you were losing interest in things like books and movies, I know you like sports, though, and you could argue that there is creativity in sport, right?

I am planning on getting a book on improvisation by guitarist Derek Bailey in order to further hone my skills, and in terms of my more "lowbrow" interests I am definitely eyeing up some more Scorsese Directed/Non-Scorsese Directed Gangster movies. Goes perfectly well with hip hop.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I’ve rekindled some of my TV/movie watching lately. Enjoying things like The Last of Us season 2 and Arcane. I’m considering getting back into reading as well.

And then of course gaming is the main artistic and creative product that I consume. I love the whole art of video gaming and the coupling of interactivity with the storytelling.

True that there is some creativity in sport. The athletes have to be creative in the way they attack or defend, and it can have its own impromptu choreography, like interpretive dance. Sometimes I am amazed at how the really good athletes can use their bodies to move and score creatively.

So as you can see, most art I consume and appreciate, rather than create. I’m in awe of people like you who can make music and have such diverse talent!

@Th3solution Thanks man, and I am glad that you are getting back into TV/Movie watching.

I am always one of those people, who, when they like something, like to engage in it and see if they can have a go at it on their own.

I evenonce entertained aspirations to become a Game Designer, when my interest in gaming was first rekindled, but I fear my reach exceed my grasp there! It's very very hard to get a demo created by yourself, or even with a small team of buddies helping you, and takes vast amounts of money to make something even vaguely able to compete with the big budget titles.

As a caveat to what you said about appreciating and consuming art, rather than creating it, video games, I would say, are the only art form that the appreciator actually actively engages with and participates in, simply by playing the game, an interactive form of art, if you will. Especially in the Souls games, where you can be incredibly creative with your builds and how you play the game.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN That’s a great point about the way that formulating builds in games like the Souls games is its own form of creativity. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.

@Jimmer-jammer Cheers, buddy. Kind of you to say. Truth be told I had aspirations to be a writer several years ago. I have some stories sitting on a hard drive somewhere that never got polished up enough for distribution. I was proud of some of the ideas I came up with, actually. And come to think of it, the core themes in a lot of those writings were based on some of my own painful life experiences. Some of my darkest days happened during that time when I started writing. Although the stories I created were fictional and fantastical, they were rooted in some of the raw emotions I was having at the time.

By Jove, I am an artist. Go figure. 😛

@FuriousMachine Just following up on our Books Chat, How are you, by the way? I only know you from the Books Thread, and we have had some discussion of Movies and Music as well, but just to follow that up with a bit more of a formal introduction, I volunteer for a mental health charity in the UK, and outside of that when I'm not reading or gaming I'm usually playing guitar or socialising.

What do you do career-wise? Any or many hobbies outside of gaming and books? I know you like a bit of rock and hip hop music-wise already.

@BlAcK_Sw0rDsMaN I am quite well, thank you 🙂The arrival of the summer months always lift my spirits; undoubtedly my favourite time of year.
I'm a software developer working in a smallish company and we make Norway's leading visitor management solution, and probably Scandinavia's as well. We recently got acquired by the biggest software conglomerate in Scandinavia, Visma, and the onboarding process there has generated a lot of extra work that's taken me away from doing the things I enjoy, and has been quite stressful the last couple of weeks. Even so, I'm learning a lot from it and while some of it feels like "corporate bulls***", it is mostly things that will help us a lot and pay back dividends once we're through.
Thankfully, it looks like I'm nearing the completion of the tasks I'm in charge of, so I will soon get back to doing my "regular" job, so to speak.

As for hobbies, I am a voracious consumer of stories, whether they be written or filmed, which is why I'm mostly active in the books, movies and TV threads here. I do of course also enjoy gaming, again mostly with story based titles, but will also spend time with city builders and the like (currently, "Timberborn"), which I will typically engage with as something to do while listening to music

Music is very important to me, I listen to music almost constantly, whether I'm working, reading or being out and about. I have broad tastes; I have a solid vinyl collection that contains anything from Kacey Musgraves to Foetus, 2Pac to KMFDM, George Michael to Killswitch Engage. I would say rock/metal is what I gravitate most towards, though. Funnily enough, I tend to listen to lighter fare in the summer (Raye, Tyla and Tinashe have been on high rotation the last month) and gloomier/darker stuff in winter (October always brings out Type O Negative and Paradise Lost is heavily played during winter).

I try to not turn into a social recluse, so once a week I connect with two mates to play an online game, which again is mostly something to do while we talk about everything and anything (again, "Timberborn" is the game of choice at the moment, but we've also done "Rimworld" and "Factorio"). I also get together with a group of people for some board gaming about once a month, but it is difficult to schedule with all the busy people, so we don't get to do it as often as I'd like to.

Volunteering for a mental health charity must feel very fulfilling! And it's probably often hard work, too, I imagine?