Backwards Through The Telescope — Games

by A.J. Coltrane

(a.k.a. — Part II of Where I’m At With Writing About Things. This time, Games.)

I can’t write fiction. I can’t write poetry either.

To some degree it feels like writing the Games posts draws on that same part of my brain, which may be part of the reason why only 71 out of 1,277 CSE posts have been about games. (About 5.5% of the total posts.) Well, maybe that, and it’s easier for me to bake something, take a picture, and do a post-mortem. And I get to eat the something.

I’m even getting a mental block about writing about writing about games..

..I think it’s one thing to break something apart and examine the pieces. It’s something else altogether to describe the whole. Ideally when describing the “hook”, or what makes a game fun — that thing that keeps me coming back to a game — it’d be nice to create a vibrant picture of what it’s like to be playing, and how the game hits the same chemical receptors that create a drug-like high… even if it’s just a nice, low-level buzz. Given my writing ability, I think my best case scenario is “loose approximation of a vibrant picture”. I’m not sure that’s good enough for me to be putting out there.

Another issue is that I tend to fixate on one game for a while. I could write about a game We’re Not Currently Playing, but, out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

In any event, the category Games has seen about one post per month. I can see that increasing a little bit.

Maybe the right answer is to have a “Game Session Sunday”. Pick a Sunday afternoon and a game we like but don’t play much and do a post about it.

Not a terrible idea!