Yet More Prompts

• Musings

• Blaugust
• Horizon Zero Dawn

I thought about writing a little on New World and/or Crowfall but I’m having a lot of difficulty finding good things to say about those games and I don’t particularly want to ruin everyone’s hopes and dreams for the future of MMOs. So instead I’ll catch up on all the Promptapalooza prompts I missed.

With the pandemic, we are going through an unprecedented time. In what ways has this shared global event impacted your content creation? Sometimes I write depressing blog posts but mostly I try to avoid the subject. It’s a toss-up whether people will respond better to honest discussions of real-world issues, thoughts, and feelings, or to entertaining diversions from real-world issues, thoughts, and feelings. In my experience, most people tend to prefer the latter.

What piece/s of technology would you have the hardest time living without? This one is pretty easy: Electricity. I’m on well water where I live so no electricity also means no water.

What are some of the things that you wish you knew before you started creating content? I can’t think of an answer for this one. I have a hard time conceptualizing my mindset “before.” My content creation life is a constant evolution of tweaking little things over time to see what might work better for me, and I can’t think of any major “eureka” moments.

Tell us about some community that you are part of and why it interests you or how it impacts you? I used to think of “The Internet” as a community I belonged to, but that safe haven for people who don’t fit well into real life is long gone now. I tend to gravitate toward the social pariah archetype so “being part of a community” is an odd way to think of myself. I rarely feel like I “fit” within most community mindsets. To be honest, I tend to think of most modern “communities” as products of or vehicles for advertising and marketing purposes. They’re usually designed to be the “easy marks” that businesses can take advantage of for a stable income, so it’s hard for me to feel any belonging to that.

In PS4 gaming news, I’ve completed another few quests in Horizon Zero Dawn. Still having a really hard time remaining interested on it. It has a big “telling, not showing” storytelling problem around level 20, and the entirety of the gameplay loop currently consists of walking from Point A to Point B, picking up sticks and plants on the way. There’s not a lot of return on my investment into subjecting my thumb to a PS4 controller thumbstick, is what I’m saying. If I ever get to play Horizon Zero Dawn 2, there’s a long list of things I hope they work on. Meanwhile I keep searching my libraries for other games that look interesting but I’m coming up empty.

Pictured: The Sun King blandly telling us the story of his forbidden love. It sounded a lot more interesting than the quest we actually did.