Post #1: Rationale and Discussion

Look out! It's another video game related blog! Yes, it's true - this blog is about gaming, but before you consign this new venture to the scrap heap, hear me out on WHY I have decided to contribute to the signal to noise ration of the internets [sic]. My desire for this blog is to see it fill what I see as a gap in the blog roll, if you will. A gap when it comes to discussion of the games. In particular, a gap in the discussion about the games that I play. That's right. Not the games YOU play, but the games that I play. Note the italicized capital I. That means it's me.

In the immortal words of The Might be Giants, "I'm not a real Doctor, but yes I am a real [not worm]." As a brief Bio, my name is Ben Abraham, I'm currently a 3rd year music student of the prestigious (Ha!) University of Western Sydney, Australia. I have a Myspace music profile for all the awesome mahup music I make and I'm still trying to position myself as a music producer/ live mashup artist, and I have just recently submitted my Honours proposal for next year, based around video games and interactive music.

So, without further ado, I'm officially going to start writing down and posting my thoughts on the games I play. I'm sure I'll make a list of them or something, but for the moment I'd rather leave you our sole single reader (Yes I'm pointing at you there on the couch with your laptop in your track pants), in suspense. Also partly because I have University assignments to do, and I can't be stuffed right now.

I'm not going to pretend that this Blog is going to be the next big thing or what have you, but I AM going to honestly and openly share my thoughts on the games I'm playing and gosh-darnit, if that ain't worhtwhile reading, then I don't know what is!

So anyway. First game I really want to talk about is one that I FINALLY finished today. Yes, my first ever finish of System Shock 2 after buying it who know's how many years ago in a Target, just because it was cheap and looked cool. I think it might have mentioned hackers on the box.

So yah. System Shock 2 took me (this the first time) just over 13 hours to finish. A Kotaku post recently got me thinking about game length, and System Shock 2, while being an awesome story full of twists and turns, seemed to kind of drag out a bit towards the end. Possibly this has to do with the fact that it seemed to ramp up in frustrating awkwardness towards the last 2 to 3 hours, but I digress. I wonder if there really is an ideal length for a game.

One game genre that doesn't really ever seem to have this same issue is the MMOG, and a great post on The Escapist website documented a WoW players 'final weeks' and the sense of finality he recieved from his arbitrarily imposed 'finishing date'. When I was playing SS2 this time around, I realised that as I got further and further past the point I had only ever reached before (somewhere around Deck 4, recreations) I kept expecting the game to end. I wonder if my expectation had set me up for the feeling of the game 'dragging on'. Something to think about, mayhaps?

Well, that about wraps up the first ever post of the tentatively named 'Dr Gamelove' , It was a bit of a random pick, but hey, beggars can't be choosers and as I am well aware, I'm not exactly blazing a new trail by contributing to the blogosphere. Next I think i'll post some links to the blogs that I read everyday.

Cia for now!

P.S. Feel free to comment if you can be stuffed, or not. If no one else reads this, at least I can use it as a resource for my thesis and reference what I've said myself(!!!). Brilliant, even if I do say so myself.