I’ve been reading up on Derrida and deconstruction for college recently and honestly, I’m enjoying it a lot more than I feel like I should. I’m probably heavily dumbing down or even misunderstanding the text but the idea of him analysing philosophical texts like literature just as a “fuck you” to philosophers who negate the importance of written word is extremely funny to me.

As consoles become almost literally all the same hardware (Xbox Series, PS5, hell even the Steam Deck, all run on the same CPU architecture) the way they try and differentiate beyond things like exclusive deals are starting to get pretty absurd. Some of this is old, like the exact requirements about achievements that every game has to conform to (which is not some given thing all video games need and benefit from, it was an Xbox "innovation" that everyone copied). Some of it is new random integrations, like PS5's "activity" system that all games are required to support. Then there's the way their online services work that are so obviously targeted to address issues with games like Call of Duty or Fortnite, or crossplay requirements obviously designed directly following the explosion of crossplatform games like Rocket League.

All of these tensions really do harmfully shape innovation in games. It quickly becomes difficult to build anything even slightly outside the mold and succeed. Anything meta quickly goes right out anywhere but PC. Undertale, DDLC, and other massively influential titles that make you consider what the boundaries of a video game really are simply are not allowed. I've read from Antichamber developer Demruth that he gets active complaints from players to this day that his game does not have achievements, which is an intentional choice, a message of the game.

The consoles actively prevent games artistic expression to get a few bullet points in a marketing strategy, and to get players to demand meaningless, semi addictive/FOMO inducing non-features.

It's antithetical to games as art, and we should reject it.

Because I don't have a boss, editor, or publisher to answer to I don't have anyone telling not to go back and update art. This is second time I've done it.

The first time I entirely reinked and recolored my first Saturday Tales Comic because everyone instinctively wants to start at the begging of a series and I wanted that first impression to be a good one.

This time around all I did was take out the panel boarders and blur everything along the edges. It took an afternoon that I wasn't in the head space for more cognitive intense creative work. I tend to have a list of easier-on-the-brain work to pull from so that if I'm not feeling great I won't feel worse because I didn't get anything done.

All that said, if there is any indie publishers out there that wants to talk with a creator that has a day job and does comics of varying quality on the side, my email is BootlegPotato@gmail.com.