January 2025
Something this foggy day, a something which
Is neither of this fog nor of today,
Has set me dreaming of the winds that play
Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach,
And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray:
Ah, pleasant pebbly strand so far away,
So out of reach while quite within my reach,
As out of reach as India or Cathay!
I am sick of where I am and where I am not,
I am sick of all I have and all I see,
I am sick of self, and there is nothing new;
Oh, weary impatient patience of my lot!
Thus, with myself: how fares it, Friends, with you? Christina Rossetti, Later Life (1881)
As I sit down to pen this month’s update, I feel there’s an overwhelming number of issues to address. But there’s also no time and I have no capacity, so I’ll try to keep it brief.
2025, The Year I Return to Game Development?
I’ve viewed over 16,377 video games via Steam’s Discovery Queue feature. I own at least 6,000 video games—sure, 2,000 of those are either duplicates or I've never launched, but we’ll politely look at the ceiling when forced to think about them. I’ve published 40 of my own video games, though it’s been over a decade since I last opened a game-authoring tool with any real intent. I’ve half-heartedly worked to scrub the “gamer” identity from my persona, and I’m certain that time has erased whatever traces of “game developer” remained.
So what? As I close another daily Discover Queue filled with copies of copies all attempting to capitalize on trends and memes I wonder if I even need to make another game. The thought of returning to development and somehow redeeming myself for cold-quitting the industry is one that’s dogged me ever since I walked away in ’14. It bothers me more than the fact that I’ve abandoned writing the Solarus series of books, though as I reimmerse myself in computer science and daily float further away from the arts this too becomes a growing concern.
I guess I’m once more starting to feel disconnected from my creative spirit. While there’s certainly room for creativity in computer science, I don’t feel any authentic passion for the field. A few weak nudges from database design, inspiring only so far as to keep me interested in the classwork, but that’s about it. I keep returning to this idea that game development is one of the greatest forms of artistic expression in media, and that I’m squandering a lifetime of experience by not engaging with it. But then I’ll sit down and write a poem, or read a piece of literature, and I’ll think how foolish and pretentious any ideas of gaming grandeur are.
But those are thoughts of legacy. Ozymandian delusions driven by ego to leave monuments for the future to gaze upon in wonder. And I know in my heart of hearts that such desires are futile.
We have to create for creation’s sake. I think that’s become so much harder for me as I’ve progressed through this ever-connected world of ours where success is so often equated with financial and material gain. Advancing age doesn’t help, either: an encroaching awareness of mortality, that descending pendulum of Death’s scythe as it creeps closer to cutting my thread with each passing day... it all imparts an anxious desire to do something.
On a side note: I was trying to get my older computer, the one I used for dual-PC livestreaming, working as a Linux box. It has several terabytes worth of hard drives installed, one of which I thought was kaput. It turns out they all still read and write, and the one I’d given up for dead holds nearly all of the work I did as Dark Acre Jack/Dark Acre Game Development. Also, almost every episode of the livestreaming shows I did for Twitch.tv are stored in varying degrees of editing—some 550 shows of at least an hour’s length each. I would love to upload this monstrous collection to YouTube, as I’ve long since gotten over the shame of how cringe inducing that time was. There’s also still a raft of game development blog entries and videos I need to post here. I hope to tackle this project after this school semester, but I make no promises. It’s enough to know that all of these records of still exist, in one form or another.
Jared
My brother died on a January morning this month—thank you for your condolences. We weren’t close, but he was family. Three years my junior but he never lagged behind. We stopped talking a few years after my parents divorced; I must have been in my early teens. I’ll be fifty in two months, I leave the math to you.
I don’t have much experience with grief. The closest loss prior to Jared was Pon Pon, our British Bombay cat who passed a couple of years ago. I’m lucky to reach this age and have so little exposure to death. Spending decades rationalizing my mortality helps, as do my four near-death experiences. I respect the eventual end, even if I’ve only just brushed past it.
Things go away. Everything is temporary. There would be regret, I suppose, that there won’t be any more conversations or shared experiences with my brother, but there was no prospect of those prior to his death. It’s wishful thinking that “there was still so much to say to each other, so many questions gone unasked and unanswered.” That was a relationship in another dimension, a different timeline, and I doubt that Jared passed this soon in those alternate realities.
I fell ill after learning of my brother’s death. I don’t know that there’s a causal connection, but the combination came at a bad time. This last semester of my undergraduate study had just begun, and I’d managed to restart my physical training regimen after a five-week layoff. Now, my house is in shadow, and I’m running to catch up. But things are tolerable, and what’s keeping me going is the thought that it could be worse. On balance, I'm very much blessed.
Aside from the loss and lack of cardiovascular exercise, the semester’s off to an excellent start. The previous one overprepared me: I’m now back in full academic mode. Science is so much more rigorous than the humanities, and half a century into things I feel a genuine struggle to stay focused and retain the lectures. But it’s happening, and the end of this overlong leg of my educational journey is in sight.
Music
When was the last time, if ever, that you sat down and simply listened to an album of music from start to finish? For me, it had been years: possibly mid- to late-October of 2018, when Canada legalized marijuana. I got baked on high-test THC oil and put on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Both of my ears were still working well at that time. But, much like long-form reading, the practice of appreciating an organized piece of music had long fallen by the wayside. Even on an industrial level, in the zeitgeist, it seems that the main delivery method for new music is background tracks in short-form videos and singles.
I’m readopting my old practice of listening to albums. Along with exclusively reading literature, watching shows, and playing video games (meaning I do these things without any outside distractions, no so-called “multitasking”) I feel a real sense of appreciation for art returning to my soul. This may have been one of the many holes in my heart that needed filling. The “trouble” with this approach to media consumption is that it takes time. But the tradeoff is that I gain a higher level of quality on the intake. These books, shows, games, and pieces of music all take on richer meaning. There’s never been a reason to rush, to try and consume as many things at once as possible. That’s always been an artifical pressure created by the information age. And now I find it takes a real application of will to focus and appreciate. But I can tell you this: it is absolutely worth it.
That’s January of the year of our LORD 2025. I’ll talk to you again in a month.
2024.12.27 – 2025.01.29