Communicating a message clearly and concisely is a far more difficult concept to get across in theory as opposed to execution…astonishingly so, I find.

Often times leaving me feeling like an
out of context scientist by days end

Yesterday’s post involved a game named My Friendly Neighborhood (MFN), which I surmised in an elevator pitch as “Resident Evil set on Sesame Street”, and it was definitely one of those odd ball write ups that essentially demands a special imbuement, as it neither represents a standard preview nor a complete review, which leaves it as some such nonsense akin to an insight, if you will, or some other catchy name I will continue to workshop on your behalf.

Though this almost seems like a needless moment of reminder, I have held professional gigs in the freelance realm writing about games, so I certainly know how to do more normalized articles if I so please, I just find that approach fairly played out, and quite honestly, too bog standard in terms of interest for me to really get down on at this point, as this sense of failing the idea of helping to create a greater sense of diversity within the the world of the gaming industry’s creative writing side sickens me. These kinds of things shouldn’t just be expositional dumps, mind you, though I get why print magazines at least have to go about things in a more standardized way for sanity’s sake…but that’s more my point, this is neither print not professional, so to ape those standards with any seriousness would be totally contradistinctive to the whole mission statement in the first place.

Today’s write-up is going to be mostly about expounding upon my thoughts on MFN, though it might be about time once again to shoot the shit about process and concept as well. I wrote a couple of days ago the quality of my writing may be suffering, due to a prolonged streak of pouring my brain onto the screen, with today being my 109th day in a row of nonstop articles, I fear I may be reaching a point of burnout in expending more ideas than I’m taking in. Some of my pieces from the past that stand as more proper quality examples of a much crisper, fresher style I speak of, involve Silksong, Prince of Persia, to a T, Gex, to name a few. Maybe you won’t see a difference if you end up giving one of them a chance in seeing what I mean, but I can definitely feel the difference in my ability to flourish, and the unfortunate byproduct of committing to what I’ve referred to as “meatball writing” to maintain this ridiculously long streak of unbroken insanity. Nothing fancy, just get the process finalized, quickly clean it up, shove it out the door for your enjoyable consumption…efficiency and speed being what helps to create the consumable concept candy on hand and on demand.

I offer up this mindful insight now, like I so often do, not only to try and help you understand where I’m coming from, but also as a way of servicing feedback I’ve received in the past, with someone addressing my writing as feeling “too mechanical”, so I figure sharing more details about the man behind the words helps to inject some well needed humanity into the mix. One thing that’s really hard to do, in terms of creating an ideal work/life balance is not thinking about the articles once their done, for better or worse. I objectively fail at doing so almost everyday, but that’s because the delivery of the concepts do matter to me, and trying to deliver upon thee something both informative as well as entertaining in such a short process is thusly quite the parlor trick, and not one I always pull off with the appropriate amount of magical sleight of hand involved.

So I think one thing I wanted to clarify with my thoughts on MFN, is that just because the title isn’t the next evolution in survival horror, doesn’t mean it lacks any redeeming qualities whatsoever. Some games are just not as amazing in literal execution as the theories that the title premises itself upon, and that’s okay. In an industry that is quickly running out of wiggle room for both budgets, time tables, and capably sane team sizes in getting AAA games out the door, games like MFN might represent a safer approach to developing games, to avoid more toxic and frankly unsustainable kinds of business practices. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of average Joe, Jane’s, and They’s in the gaming world, are probably keenly unaware of things like crunch, unmovable deadlines, studio pressure, worker burnout, chasing trends, all the jazz…eager gamers usually just want the latest game in their favorite series to be the best possible, which creates a bad feedback loop of developers feeling the need to deliver the impossible, with gamers wanting even more than that already legendarily impossible white whale standard that desire predicates itself upon.

Another reality on the other end of the spectrum to confront is that since I’m not writing for an official outlet, I’m not really here to kiss ass, be a fanboy, “sell games”, as it were. The goal is not to be a content creator, but a writer and a deconstructuralist, which means that sometimes, you’ve got to get real about details that just don’t work about the games you thoroughly enjoy, not so thoroughly enjoy, and everything in-between. Most games are nuanced enough so that it isn’t a zero sum game of preference, but the issues therein and that follow there after involve a lot of people just wanting to hear simple bullshit like: “buy or don’t buy” or “amazing or garbage”, which is again, terribly reductionist, and one of the reasons I got out of “the game” of writing professionally in the first place…I was tired of playing it.

Which leaves many of us feeling like we are left “holding the bag”, as it were, not necessarily feeling like we got what we came for by days end. I know in my world, kind of like with this article, I don’t necessarily have a clear cut distinct goal in mind when writing it, but still want to post something in the limited amount of time I have to do it in, which doesn’t differ from game development in terms of creating something that is worthwhile in many ways. Creators are always going to be at the mercy of consumers, and their endless gluttony for more, better, faster, cheaper, etc, not realizing it is far easier to ingest content than create it, but if consumers were more thoughtful about the media they interact with, they would probably be creators instead of consumers, so there is your scrumptious ironyburger for you to chew on for the rest of the day, in all of its medium rare glory..

I guess this is a long winded way of saying I haven’t given up on MFN, and may yet enjoy it more than I initially thought I would. On top of that, I’m definitely happier games like it can still find a place in an industry that is overwrought with sequelitis, shovelware, franchise fatigue, bad faith imitators, and cheap cash grabs, so even if MFN doesn’t play amazingly all the time, the concepts it’s built on, in attempting to be more creative is a welcome reminder the industry still has room for proper creativity to grow and thrive, given the chance.

-Pashford