Day 30: What is your fondest memory of a game you thought was fun before you knew better?

September 30, 2016 - By Paul Beakley

Here we are, the end of the hashtag. Everyone feeling #indieAF today?

Two things have jumped out as my takeaways of the experience:

1) I’m loving all the love letters to indie gaming. Read the posts – there are nearly two hundred of them now – and the vast, vast majority I’m seeing are enormously positive. Some of my questions were even written specifically in a “let’s start a flame war” voice. Go back through and read. Amazing.

2) I’m disappointed at the critique of the questions by a small circle of folks. I got what I wanted out of the questions, which was endless love letters to indie gaming for a solid month. But obviously, clearly, there’s a population for whom their Indie Identity is serious business and not a laughing matter. I have yet to see their opinions about the answers, only the questions.

Would I do things differently? Yeah, I would. I learned a lot and got a better grasp of the social media terrain that runs under all this. Specifically, I’d absolutely do more before-the-fact outreach to my women and POC and women POC friends to participate. Some of the best comments in my threads, at least, came from (especially) women. That might come in conflict with the tone of the questions I went with this time around.

Would I do the smug indie hipster voice again? Perhaps not again, no. I think the joke is played out. As a smug indie hipster myself, I’m kind of out of material for now (and yes, I confess I wore myself out with 30 solid days of this). But smugness is a wellspring of hilarity and inspiration! And I do love tweaking smugness about games, because ffs none of this is important. Or, at least, as important as we frequently treat it. Hence my deep skepticism of tying identity and community into hobby activities.

But oh lordy, doing them straight is also so boring. I’m sorry, but it just is. That was my beef with #rpgaday , the earnestness that reads as cluelessness. Nobody I give a shit about gives a shit about what your favorite die size is. So, that’s a problem to solve if I do something like this again in the future. I’m currently leaning super-heavily toward the “oh hell no” end of the spectrum (cue mad applause from the haters). But we’ll see.

I’m also concerned, quite concerned actually, with the unsafe environment this thing allowed here and there. The public-ness of my Collection meant that replies were public and following the hashtag was public. If you got harassed or wrongplussing put you on some enemy’s list out there, I am so sorry to hear you got subjected to that. That sucked. I ended up blocking some folks as well. It wasn’t widespread but the cost of public discourse is asymmetrical social warfare. Fight with the tools you’ve got.

The answer to today’s question is “none.” As in, I never really learned better.

Small press design has shown me a huge and varied range of what it is we’re doing, what’s possible within this amazing activity of ours. As my envelope widens, my appreciation for everything within it widens as well. Not to say that I love all gaming equally; I have tastes and preferences as well. But oh god, who cares about my tastes? Or yours?

Play games. Love games. Investigate them if you’ve got the bandwidth. Or don’t if you don’t, and squeeze what you can out of them for as long as you can.

Me? I’m headed to a con today, with a good friend who also loves games, and we’re gonna game the shit out of some games for three days straight. Some of them will involve killing monsters for their stuff. Some might involve delicious feels. All of it will involve some amount of make-believe, and none of it will save the world.

Hope y’all have a great weekend.