M A R M

sigh ugh i hate this i'm gonna really miss this website

i want to try and find at least some of y'all off-site, whether through discord or your own site/blog or something else... maybe now's the time to get into rss lol

i really don't know what i'm gonna do. i kinda wanna try making a neocities but like... it just can't replace this site full of cool weirdos! i don't know how i'm supposed to find new people, new ideas, new art on the Internet without a centralized social media site... and i don't really want to use any others. even like pillowfort or spacehey like i just don't want to start over again...

i'm especially gonna miss the #ttrpg tag. being part of that community really invigorated me and got me to start making stuff again, made me want to actually finish a game and share it... and now i won't get that chance here. anything i finish will end up on itch (https://virtualmarmalade.itch.io/ currently empty but watch the space!) and/or my own site (if i make one), but like...

i feel like i'm gonna end up just yelling into the void, like i was on twitter, and i'll never find another online community like this one. and that fucking blows.

i loved cohost it wasn't perfect but it was good for me. better than fuckin twitter, and i sure as hell ain't going to bsky or threads... or masto...
guess its time to start a blog?? webring anyone?

a part of my brain changed forever when i realized that many (most? all??) games are just systems that tell you what to do, and then you do it and win and feel good or you don't do it and lose and feel bad

like

a mario level says hold right and press the A button to jump over obstacles until you reach the flag pole

a moba says click on these parts of the game to get exp, then click on these other parts to destroy them, and whichever team does it better is the winner

a shooter says use this stick to position your character, use this stick to move the cursor, and pull the trigger when it overlaps the enemy to destroy them and make progress

chess says calculate your next moves in a limited set of legal moves and predict how your opponent could respond, and whichever player does that better is the winner

like... the act of playing a game, of improving at it, is simply the act of figuring out what the input is to get the output, and then executing it. but there was nothing to figure out - the game was designed so you'd do that thing, and then you did that thing. nice

or you didn't do that thing, and you got frustrated and stopped playing. bummer

i am struggling to express what a huge paradigm shift of a realization this has been because it seems so obvious when you lay it out but like...

what is going on gamers are we ok?

edit: i think what i'm trying to say is

i have discovered a new interpretive lens and i am now obsessed with it lol