Is the title a BRMC reference? If so kudos, big fan personally.
I get that feeling of detachment if I spent too much time inside of clothes stores. A day spent shopping tends to leave me with a gnawing feeling that the world of fashion is entirely ridiculous. It just leaves me thinking along the lines of, “why on Earth does anyone care? They’re telling you what’s cool, then you give them your money and praise them for it”. It’s all just signalling, which I suppose it always has been, but there seems to be an underlying ‘fakeness’ to the trends of today and I can’t tell if I’m right or just jaded and imagining things.
Your posts reassure me a bit on that.
“Rock and roll- being the artform that requires the least objective talent or effort- is a bellweather. Rock is the canary down the mineshaft labelled culture. And the bird is not looking too healthy.” Being a metalhead, blues, rock, punk (basically anything with a guitar) enthusiast, I’m sad to say I agree. Mainstream rock is dead - look at Greta Van Fleet, they sound so much like Zeppelin that I thought they were re-discovered Zeppelin b-sides.
Thankfully there’s life in the sub-genres yet, psychedelic rock, stoner, good chunks of punk, but on the big stage it’s all rock, very little roll. Keith Richards complained about how one-note it all sounds, and pointed out the near-complete absence of syncopation in modern rock songs, and now it’s something I can’t help but notice.
“One thing that instantly struck me was how expensive gear is now. Fenders and Gibson’s- even non-US ones- seem to be way more expensive than when I was a teenager. Even taking inflation into account. Amps too. And pedals.” Les Paul will set you back 10k new. SG, Strat, or even a Tele is about 1k at least, before amps and cables. It’s just mad, and by all accounts the quality is awful compared to the ones they made in the 50’ and 60’s.
“If only those whose parents are able to pay their rent can participate (as this enables the kids to perfect their craft via unpaying gigs at dive bars or comedy clubs or small theatres) then you are going to find that the artists of more humbler means are going to either retreat to cheaper forms of expression or else give in entirely and simply live a 9-5 life instead.” Another possible reason for the immense popularity of hip hop/rap these days?
“Music for most is now an infinite collection of pleasantly meaningless background sounds, rendered essentially valueless by the infinite Borgesian library of tunes that is only a few screen touches away.”
Ooof. Wouldn’t hurt if it wasn’t so true.
“I worry- perhaps without grounds- that kids are becoming mere spectators in their own lives rather than being active participants and creators and collaborators. I worry that teens are stifled, bemused, anxiety-riddled, consumers-in-waiting rather than the rebellious wide-eyes cultural saviours that they have traditionally served the world by being.”
I think you have grounds to worry, it’s been my experience too, and I have a lot of contact with that generation through my siblings. One of my proudest moments to date has been helping my girlfriends younger brother discover confidence in himself through introducing him to Black Sabbath. He was extremely overweight, reclusive and heavily addicted to video games, but all he needed was some sort of a role model (however reluctant) to give him some tips.Video games became a healthy transition into coding, an interest in old school metal led to him discovering the current gen of punk/metal bands and a new circle of friends, and in representing that new identity he started to dress better and exercise more. All he needed was a little encouragement and exposure to killer riffs to start engaging with the world, because he had the confidence to do so. All credit goes to Iommi at the end of the day.
"Because if you can’t have fun being creative with your friends then what’s the point of being young?”
Well ended, and I would add that maintaining that creative spirit is what keeps you from ageing as you get old.
I think it really mostly comes down to the "Borgesian library" of entertainement... How was a kid in the 70s/80s having fun? There was only one TV in the whole house (if any) with only a handful of channels, so there wasn't much to watch AND you always had to share it. There was not internet; records were scarce, so you were left with 2 options; either reading books and comics (a breeding ground for imagination, which is like a muscle; if you don't train it, it doesn't grow. And TV/video games tell you how it is, there's minimal efforts of imagination to be made), or playing with your friends outside (remember, no internet and phone calls were expensive). So it only seems logical that the most introverted would develop a knack for writing, painting, music, or other solitary pursuits (no pun), and the most extroverted would end up "building things" with their friends.
All of that is (for now) obsolete; too much choice, too much consumption, etc. Like Thomas said.
Great points. It seems the task of being a parent brings with it a number of difficult decisions to be made regarding controlling what your kids are exposed to and allowed to consume.
Too much analog and they may feel alienated from their friends, but too much exposure to video games, YouTube, social media, will destroy their attention span and turn them into mindless consumers of information.
It seems as though one has to take a much more conscious approach to parenting - less "figure out how to have fun by yourself", and more teaching them how to love learning and deal with an enormous amount of shiny objects.
In many ways we had it lucky - Reading books and playing outside with some video games thrown in for short bursts as a teenager meant there wasn't any distractions that would consume my life.
But I mean how many hurdles does the average male teen have to navigate beyond the chemical nightmare of puberty: Porn, Video Games, Social Media, Everything on Demand All of the time.
Not to discredit my teenage self too much, but I worry that it would have ruined me, so I have a lot of empathy for the kids of today.
You're right, it seems to miss a lot of the organic, human messiness that made awful angsty garage rock so fun.
It's not all hopeless, though. Did you hear about Dave Grohl and his online drum battle with Nandi Bushell? The old guard is ready for the new members to take over. We may lament the endless drone of new rock bands that sound the same as the last one, but where are these bands coming from in the first place before being plucked and processed by the industry? I suspect there are a lot more that just never get noticed, or who try to make it work in online and in person venues that aren't as conducive to what rock and related music need to survive.
(I disagree that it's a class thing that only those with resources can break into, though. eBay, Amazon, garage sales, uncles and cousins who need the wall or storage space - there are guitars to be had, and other supplies too. But when learning to play takes time, and you can be joining your peers in creating the latest TikTok video and get instant adulation, why bother learning chords?)
I suspect it's less that the guitarcase kids are a dying breed, and more that we need to stop feeding it the chemical killer of social media and trying to prune it in ways the machine will accept. Leave it alone, let it go wild, be willing to accept something not quite like the rock we grew up with, and I suspect it will be just fine.
An intimate newsletter this time, I can see. It's funny I had the same tought a while ago. See, when I was younger (currently 31), many of my friends were playing some form of garage rock; some because they liked music and had "the itch" to give it a try; others less good looking to boost their luck with the girls. But it wasn't rare to see guys walking with guitar cases in my high school or in the streets of my hometown. See, this was the era of punk (Blink 182, Sum 41, etc.) and many young lads were joining the ranks of the more "traditional" rock bands. Nowadays, as you said, this is mostly electronic music (everyone wants to be a DJ or, more likely, a "producer").
And I have a few issues with that (obviously). First, there is a dimension of mercantilism right from the start: you produce not for yourself but for an artist; so your tracks must be tailored to a market. Then, you bypass of the socialization/coming of age education aspect of the garage band era, since you work mostly from your little bedroom, in contact with people often far away from you that you'll have trouble visiting (remember, you're a broke 15YO). Many of my high school friends learned how to talk to people, negociate and act around girls through their music practice. This is not impossible with DJing from your room, but much more complicated.
When I find myself wondering how it happened, I think of a few explanations; first, as you said, the price of the gear (no doubt abt that). But also the decrease in popularity of rock music and the rise of electronic music/rap beats. There was still plenty of rock and punk music on MTV in the early 2000's. But you don't see that much of it nowadays on Youtube; music genres have shifted and with them, the interest of the young men (don't forget many are getting into music to have access to girls, so when the rock/punk genres don't draw that much girls to the scenes anymore, don't expect our testosterone driven teenager to sacrifice himself).
Another idea; my history teacher once told me that in the time of Montaigne, all the known knowledge of the world could fit on a 512mo usb key. So the literate of that time felt the urge to create themselves since once they'd read the ~100 books available, there was nothing else to do. When I was young, everything was analog. So you'd discover artists through your parents' music library, the CDs and audio cassettes your friends (relunctantly) lent you, and the word-to-mouth around you. An album CD was ~20€ so you couldn't buy that many of them. Thus, you felt more the urge to create yourself; you could spend 1 month listening the same two albums back to back and "impregnate" yourself enough to copy them, and eventually, give it a try yourself. Now there's just too much choice, too much music to listen to, and too many influences to absorb. You can't be a creator if you consume too much. You don't know anymore what to do and you get paralyzed, in a way: Spotify gives you access to 50 million songs for a third of an album's price.
When we were young, we "knew" that someone else probably tried to cover that song we were in love with; but we (and the people arounf us) couldn't know for sure, so we'd just try by ourselves and be the man with our friends and the girls. Nowadays, you can find 100s of people who did it in just 2 clicks on Youtube. Some will say it's fuel for emulation, but I can see how it can suck some of the joy out of it and just leave you with a "Why bother" attitude.
And if we throw in the mix the abundance of high-grade entertainement available for cheap (video games today are far more complex and addictive than my Nintendo 64/PS1 era), our average young man simply has too much fences to jump over.
Great comment. As Tom already mentioned, that point about Montaigne is a fantastic piece of trivia, and makes a lot of sense.
It's also one of the reasons why I sympathize with those trying to get into reading the classics but struggling with where to start. I'm about as driven as anyone to go and read these books of my own accord, but between the different translations of the foreign novels, and the seemingly endless list of books considered "must-reads", it's a bloody difficult endeavor just keeping track of where to go next.
The feeling of "Why Bother", is something I've felt on numerous occasions, and it's absolutely because of the reasons you mentioned. You can go on YouTube and watch an 8 year old shred his way through Eruption without breaking a sweat and it comes back to you when you're struggling your way through trying to barre a chord properly.
But in my opinion, that's why it's so important to have writers like Thomas, because they show you the value is in the practice itself - it's who you become in the journey of learning to play, the resilience you develop, the confidence that comes with learning how to do something difficult - that's what matters, and what matters even more is that you're having fun.
You don't need to be the best, and odds are you'll never even be close, and we need to be reminded that it's absolutely fine for that to be the case.
I can attest to the addictive nature of videogames myself - I dumped hundreds of hours into both Skyrim and The Witcher 3. I'm not one for a shoot 'em up, I need a story, and games like those tell stories better than anyone, in what I would argue is a superior fashion in some respects.
As a whole, video games are more than likely a net negative for society, and young men in particular. They sap energy and focus, and we're left wondering what could have been if the guy at the top of the leaderboard had turned his efforts to poetry instead.
But on the other hand, video games are a unique platform for telling stories. They can be more engaging than books, you feel a strong connection to the story because you feel as though you're a part of the story, more than just an observer like when you're reading a book.
With good writers, as in the Witcher which is based on a book series, you can tell hundreds of stories, all initiated by and "lived" by the player. Sure he's still simply observing the character go through the motions, but the character doesn't go through those motions without his control, and VR/AR will soon mean that the player IS the character in the story.
I don't have the time to play video games anymore, and I played on easy because I wasn't too bothered about the "game" part, but I'll stick my neck out and say that in the next few decades, some of the best stories written will be written for video games, and likely lived through them as well.
Apologies for the mammoth comment, couldn't help it.
Funny what you're saying on video games. I myself spent an ungodly amount of hours on Morrowind (right back at ya Skyrim), the Final Fantasy franchise and the Dark Souls trilogy (the only video games I agreed to play these past 10 years). I know too well the feeling of spending your entire day obsessed with all the things you *have* to do once you're back home, like you were craving your next line of blow. It really is addictive, and in there lies the danger, even if I believe some games like the ones you mentioned can be a positive thing when you're still young and creating your taste - as long as they don't prevent you from doing other less instant-rewarding things... which they often do. I think what got me the most with Morrowind and Dark Souls was the uniqueness their narration: they were no cinematics in Morrowind and you had to read the books and scrolls you found everywhere to understand the world around you. Same with DS where you can only decypher the complex world the developers created by reading item descriptions and connecting the dots. This truly is a new form of narration that is specific to the video game media (unlike traditional video games where the story is advanced and revealed through cinematics, like in the cinema). I think it's incredible that games like DS can have tens of Youtube channels and reddit topics solely talking about "the lore": creation through discovery and community sharing.
I was too young for Morrowind unfortunately, but I hope to go back and play the remaster when the fans finish it - that project is a true testament to the connection people have to these games, thousands of hours of free labour to remaster a game for free so that more people can enjoy it, simply incredible.
I loved the dark souls series as well, and I completely agree with you about the method of storytelling, I've spent hours poring over those websites discussing the lore and watching the YouTube videos.
Bloodborne, made by the same developers, is probably the best Lovecraftian style game ever made, it took me days upon days of reading just to decipher what the hell was going on in that game - but again, the narration style is what draws you in because the whole thing is a mystery, it's cryptic and pulls you along relentlessly.
Like all things I guess, as long as they remain a pleasant distraction, like a bit of light fiction on a lazy Sunday, and not an addiction, I'll be more than happy to see how they use the medium to tell interesting stories in ways that books can't.
‘ Another idea; my history teacher once told me that in the time of Montaigne, all the known knowledge of the world could fit on a 512mo usb key. So the literate of that time felt the urge to create themselves since once they'd read the ~100 books available, there was nothing else to do.‘
Man, that’s a fascinating but of trivia. If the pubs ever properly reopen, I will be dropping that one into the conversation without doubt.
And yes, you are completely right about the abundance of music (or ‘content’ or whatever) being an impediment to creativity as much as a boon. One reason I use analogue media is that it reintroduces limits like price and physicality. The next logic progression (or regression) for me will be reverting to cassettes and making mixtapes etc.
A 2-3x annual discovery session on YouTube will probably be all that would be needed to find new stuff. Without artificial barriers information and media becomes overwhelming. I suspect a leitmotif in these newsletters over the months and years will be my quixotic attempts at trying to deal with this.
Thanks again for inspiring yet more newsletter ideas. Always good to talk to you here.
Hi Thomas - thanks for keeping my head in reality and a link to the past, such a great observation. Keep up the writing. Simon
Haven't read this email but I read your piece on Quantity Culture. You killed it man. Still processing it, but well done.
Is the title a BRMC reference? If so kudos, big fan personally.
I get that feeling of detachment if I spent too much time inside of clothes stores. A day spent shopping tends to leave me with a gnawing feeling that the world of fashion is entirely ridiculous. It just leaves me thinking along the lines of, “why on Earth does anyone care? They’re telling you what’s cool, then you give them your money and praise them for it”. It’s all just signalling, which I suppose it always has been, but there seems to be an underlying ‘fakeness’ to the trends of today and I can’t tell if I’m right or just jaded and imagining things.
Your posts reassure me a bit on that.
“Rock and roll- being the artform that requires the least objective talent or effort- is a bellweather. Rock is the canary down the mineshaft labelled culture. And the bird is not looking too healthy.” Being a metalhead, blues, rock, punk (basically anything with a guitar) enthusiast, I’m sad to say I agree. Mainstream rock is dead - look at Greta Van Fleet, they sound so much like Zeppelin that I thought they were re-discovered Zeppelin b-sides.
Thankfully there’s life in the sub-genres yet, psychedelic rock, stoner, good chunks of punk, but on the big stage it’s all rock, very little roll. Keith Richards complained about how one-note it all sounds, and pointed out the near-complete absence of syncopation in modern rock songs, and now it’s something I can’t help but notice.
“One thing that instantly struck me was how expensive gear is now. Fenders and Gibson’s- even non-US ones- seem to be way more expensive than when I was a teenager. Even taking inflation into account. Amps too. And pedals.” Les Paul will set you back 10k new. SG, Strat, or even a Tele is about 1k at least, before amps and cables. It’s just mad, and by all accounts the quality is awful compared to the ones they made in the 50’ and 60’s.
“If only those whose parents are able to pay their rent can participate (as this enables the kids to perfect their craft via unpaying gigs at dive bars or comedy clubs or small theatres) then you are going to find that the artists of more humbler means are going to either retreat to cheaper forms of expression or else give in entirely and simply live a 9-5 life instead.” Another possible reason for the immense popularity of hip hop/rap these days?
“Music for most is now an infinite collection of pleasantly meaningless background sounds, rendered essentially valueless by the infinite Borgesian library of tunes that is only a few screen touches away.”
Ooof. Wouldn’t hurt if it wasn’t so true.
“I worry- perhaps without grounds- that kids are becoming mere spectators in their own lives rather than being active participants and creators and collaborators. I worry that teens are stifled, bemused, anxiety-riddled, consumers-in-waiting rather than the rebellious wide-eyes cultural saviours that they have traditionally served the world by being.”
I think you have grounds to worry, it’s been my experience too, and I have a lot of contact with that generation through my siblings. One of my proudest moments to date has been helping my girlfriends younger brother discover confidence in himself through introducing him to Black Sabbath. He was extremely overweight, reclusive and heavily addicted to video games, but all he needed was some sort of a role model (however reluctant) to give him some tips.Video games became a healthy transition into coding, an interest in old school metal led to him discovering the current gen of punk/metal bands and a new circle of friends, and in representing that new identity he started to dress better and exercise more. All he needed was a little encouragement and exposure to killer riffs to start engaging with the world, because he had the confidence to do so. All credit goes to Iommi at the end of the day.
"Because if you can’t have fun being creative with your friends then what’s the point of being young?”
Well ended, and I would add that maintaining that creative spirit is what keeps you from ageing as you get old.
Great post as always Tom.
I think it really mostly comes down to the "Borgesian library" of entertainement... How was a kid in the 70s/80s having fun? There was only one TV in the whole house (if any) with only a handful of channels, so there wasn't much to watch AND you always had to share it. There was not internet; records were scarce, so you were left with 2 options; either reading books and comics (a breeding ground for imagination, which is like a muscle; if you don't train it, it doesn't grow. And TV/video games tell you how it is, there's minimal efforts of imagination to be made), or playing with your friends outside (remember, no internet and phone calls were expensive). So it only seems logical that the most introverted would develop a knack for writing, painting, music, or other solitary pursuits (no pun), and the most extroverted would end up "building things" with their friends.
All of that is (for now) obsolete; too much choice, too much consumption, etc. Like Thomas said.
Great points. It seems the task of being a parent brings with it a number of difficult decisions to be made regarding controlling what your kids are exposed to and allowed to consume.
Too much analog and they may feel alienated from their friends, but too much exposure to video games, YouTube, social media, will destroy their attention span and turn them into mindless consumers of information.
It seems as though one has to take a much more conscious approach to parenting - less "figure out how to have fun by yourself", and more teaching them how to love learning and deal with an enormous amount of shiny objects.
In many ways we had it lucky - Reading books and playing outside with some video games thrown in for short bursts as a teenager meant there wasn't any distractions that would consume my life.
But I mean how many hurdles does the average male teen have to navigate beyond the chemical nightmare of puberty: Porn, Video Games, Social Media, Everything on Demand All of the time.
Not to discredit my teenage self too much, but I worry that it would have ruined me, so I have a lot of empathy for the kids of today.
Scott Adams describes music as a raw form of persuasion.
Perhaps the youth of today prefer watching as opposed to creating.
The biggest losers are audiences that connected with the performers and fellow fans as they moved in unison, together, and connected.
Analog concerts are have been replaced with digital headsets and the creators (bands) have faded to a memory of the past.
You're right, it seems to miss a lot of the organic, human messiness that made awful angsty garage rock so fun.
It's not all hopeless, though. Did you hear about Dave Grohl and his online drum battle with Nandi Bushell? The old guard is ready for the new members to take over. We may lament the endless drone of new rock bands that sound the same as the last one, but where are these bands coming from in the first place before being plucked and processed by the industry? I suspect there are a lot more that just never get noticed, or who try to make it work in online and in person venues that aren't as conducive to what rock and related music need to survive.
(I disagree that it's a class thing that only those with resources can break into, though. eBay, Amazon, garage sales, uncles and cousins who need the wall or storage space - there are guitars to be had, and other supplies too. But when learning to play takes time, and you can be joining your peers in creating the latest TikTok video and get instant adulation, why bother learning chords?)
I suspect it's less that the guitarcase kids are a dying breed, and more that we need to stop feeding it the chemical killer of social media and trying to prune it in ways the machine will accept. Leave it alone, let it go wild, be willing to accept something not quite like the rock we grew up with, and I suspect it will be just fine.
Tom, were you listening to U2's "Kite" as you wrote this? :-)
Life should be fragrant
Roof top to the basement
The last of the rock stars
When hip hop drove the big cars
This song is from the year 2000, which seems like it means something for your narrative here, although I'll leave it to you to discern what it is.
I have never heard that song, to tell you the truth Andrew. But I will check it out.
Thank you for this intriguingly cryptic comment. I like it.
Hey Tom,
An intimate newsletter this time, I can see. It's funny I had the same tought a while ago. See, when I was younger (currently 31), many of my friends were playing some form of garage rock; some because they liked music and had "the itch" to give it a try; others less good looking to boost their luck with the girls. But it wasn't rare to see guys walking with guitar cases in my high school or in the streets of my hometown. See, this was the era of punk (Blink 182, Sum 41, etc.) and many young lads were joining the ranks of the more "traditional" rock bands. Nowadays, as you said, this is mostly electronic music (everyone wants to be a DJ or, more likely, a "producer").
And I have a few issues with that (obviously). First, there is a dimension of mercantilism right from the start: you produce not for yourself but for an artist; so your tracks must be tailored to a market. Then, you bypass of the socialization/coming of age education aspect of the garage band era, since you work mostly from your little bedroom, in contact with people often far away from you that you'll have trouble visiting (remember, you're a broke 15YO). Many of my high school friends learned how to talk to people, negociate and act around girls through their music practice. This is not impossible with DJing from your room, but much more complicated.
When I find myself wondering how it happened, I think of a few explanations; first, as you said, the price of the gear (no doubt abt that). But also the decrease in popularity of rock music and the rise of electronic music/rap beats. There was still plenty of rock and punk music on MTV in the early 2000's. But you don't see that much of it nowadays on Youtube; music genres have shifted and with them, the interest of the young men (don't forget many are getting into music to have access to girls, so when the rock/punk genres don't draw that much girls to the scenes anymore, don't expect our testosterone driven teenager to sacrifice himself).
Another idea; my history teacher once told me that in the time of Montaigne, all the known knowledge of the world could fit on a 512mo usb key. So the literate of that time felt the urge to create themselves since once they'd read the ~100 books available, there was nothing else to do. When I was young, everything was analog. So you'd discover artists through your parents' music library, the CDs and audio cassettes your friends (relunctantly) lent you, and the word-to-mouth around you. An album CD was ~20€ so you couldn't buy that many of them. Thus, you felt more the urge to create yourself; you could spend 1 month listening the same two albums back to back and "impregnate" yourself enough to copy them, and eventually, give it a try yourself. Now there's just too much choice, too much music to listen to, and too many influences to absorb. You can't be a creator if you consume too much. You don't know anymore what to do and you get paralyzed, in a way: Spotify gives you access to 50 million songs for a third of an album's price.
When we were young, we "knew" that someone else probably tried to cover that song we were in love with; but we (and the people arounf us) couldn't know for sure, so we'd just try by ourselves and be the man with our friends and the girls. Nowadays, you can find 100s of people who did it in just 2 clicks on Youtube. Some will say it's fuel for emulation, but I can see how it can suck some of the joy out of it and just leave you with a "Why bother" attitude.
And if we throw in the mix the abundance of high-grade entertainement available for cheap (video games today are far more complex and addictive than my Nintendo 64/PS1 era), our average young man simply has too much fences to jump over.
My 2cts anyway
Great comment. As Tom already mentioned, that point about Montaigne is a fantastic piece of trivia, and makes a lot of sense.
It's also one of the reasons why I sympathize with those trying to get into reading the classics but struggling with where to start. I'm about as driven as anyone to go and read these books of my own accord, but between the different translations of the foreign novels, and the seemingly endless list of books considered "must-reads", it's a bloody difficult endeavor just keeping track of where to go next.
The feeling of "Why Bother", is something I've felt on numerous occasions, and it's absolutely because of the reasons you mentioned. You can go on YouTube and watch an 8 year old shred his way through Eruption without breaking a sweat and it comes back to you when you're struggling your way through trying to barre a chord properly.
But in my opinion, that's why it's so important to have writers like Thomas, because they show you the value is in the practice itself - it's who you become in the journey of learning to play, the resilience you develop, the confidence that comes with learning how to do something difficult - that's what matters, and what matters even more is that you're having fun.
You don't need to be the best, and odds are you'll never even be close, and we need to be reminded that it's absolutely fine for that to be the case.
I can attest to the addictive nature of videogames myself - I dumped hundreds of hours into both Skyrim and The Witcher 3. I'm not one for a shoot 'em up, I need a story, and games like those tell stories better than anyone, in what I would argue is a superior fashion in some respects.
As a whole, video games are more than likely a net negative for society, and young men in particular. They sap energy and focus, and we're left wondering what could have been if the guy at the top of the leaderboard had turned his efforts to poetry instead.
But on the other hand, video games are a unique platform for telling stories. They can be more engaging than books, you feel a strong connection to the story because you feel as though you're a part of the story, more than just an observer like when you're reading a book.
With good writers, as in the Witcher which is based on a book series, you can tell hundreds of stories, all initiated by and "lived" by the player. Sure he's still simply observing the character go through the motions, but the character doesn't go through those motions without his control, and VR/AR will soon mean that the player IS the character in the story.
I don't have the time to play video games anymore, and I played on easy because I wasn't too bothered about the "game" part, but I'll stick my neck out and say that in the next few decades, some of the best stories written will be written for video games, and likely lived through them as well.
Apologies for the mammoth comment, couldn't help it.
Funny what you're saying on video games. I myself spent an ungodly amount of hours on Morrowind (right back at ya Skyrim), the Final Fantasy franchise and the Dark Souls trilogy (the only video games I agreed to play these past 10 years). I know too well the feeling of spending your entire day obsessed with all the things you *have* to do once you're back home, like you were craving your next line of blow. It really is addictive, and in there lies the danger, even if I believe some games like the ones you mentioned can be a positive thing when you're still young and creating your taste - as long as they don't prevent you from doing other less instant-rewarding things... which they often do. I think what got me the most with Morrowind and Dark Souls was the uniqueness their narration: they were no cinematics in Morrowind and you had to read the books and scrolls you found everywhere to understand the world around you. Same with DS where you can only decypher the complex world the developers created by reading item descriptions and connecting the dots. This truly is a new form of narration that is specific to the video game media (unlike traditional video games where the story is advanced and revealed through cinematics, like in the cinema). I think it's incredible that games like DS can have tens of Youtube channels and reddit topics solely talking about "the lore": creation through discovery and community sharing.
I was too young for Morrowind unfortunately, but I hope to go back and play the remaster when the fans finish it - that project is a true testament to the connection people have to these games, thousands of hours of free labour to remaster a game for free so that more people can enjoy it, simply incredible.
I loved the dark souls series as well, and I completely agree with you about the method of storytelling, I've spent hours poring over those websites discussing the lore and watching the YouTube videos.
Bloodborne, made by the same developers, is probably the best Lovecraftian style game ever made, it took me days upon days of reading just to decipher what the hell was going on in that game - but again, the narration style is what draws you in because the whole thing is a mystery, it's cryptic and pulls you along relentlessly.
Like all things I guess, as long as they remain a pleasant distraction, like a bit of light fiction on a lazy Sunday, and not an addiction, I'll be more than happy to see how they use the medium to tell interesting stories in ways that books can't.
Yeah, I've watched all Vaativydia videos on Bloodborne.. But I stopped buying consoles after the PS2, so stop teasing me with your exclusives ;)
‘ Another idea; my history teacher once told me that in the time of Montaigne, all the known knowledge of the world could fit on a 512mo usb key. So the literate of that time felt the urge to create themselves since once they'd read the ~100 books available, there was nothing else to do.‘
Man, that’s a fascinating but of trivia. If the pubs ever properly reopen, I will be dropping that one into the conversation without doubt.
And yes, you are completely right about the abundance of music (or ‘content’ or whatever) being an impediment to creativity as much as a boon. One reason I use analogue media is that it reintroduces limits like price and physicality. The next logic progression (or regression) for me will be reverting to cassettes and making mixtapes etc.
A 2-3x annual discovery session on YouTube will probably be all that would be needed to find new stuff. Without artificial barriers information and media becomes overwhelming. I suspect a leitmotif in these newsletters over the months and years will be my quixotic attempts at trying to deal with this.
Thanks again for inspiring yet more newsletter ideas. Always good to talk to you here.
Tom.
Oh shit, didnt realize that wall of text before hitting send ! Sorry bout that :/
It’s appreciated Sebastien. I guess talk of such things makes us verbose. Such is the power of music.