I am depressed (And so can you!)

So many of you know that I'm struggling with depression to some extent. Those of you who don't, hi, I'm Baylor. And I've been in kind of a weird blue funk tonight, and it was bugging the shit out of me because I couldn't see WHY I would be like that. I feel like I'm on a pretty good streak right now (note to self, recover the Basement Batman I'm missing), talking to pretty girls left and right, talking more with good friends and leaving shitty ones behind, and I'm going back to Norman in less than a month. Shit, there was a good half hour period when I was trying to listen to a STWT and my little brother and dad were SO FUCKING LOUD that I had to stop until they shut the fuck up for a minute so I could finish it, and I just got so angry. I mean, I acknowledge that where my computer is is a terrible spot for trying to do ANYTHING without interruption, but I like to think my headphones are pretty good.

A few hours later, I was playing Borderlands with Taffy himself but I just wasn't really enjoying it, which sucks because it's SUCH a fun game. Maybe I'll make sure that we're actually communicating on voice chat next time. I mean, I did an entire playthrough with Maya by myself but had a blast the entire time, my Zer0 file with Blake has been just a shitton of fun. I didn't know what was up.

And then it hit. Depression don't give a FUCK if you're doing well or you think you're doing well, it comes down on you without warning and without mercy and just beats you until you feel like shit and you think "Hey, maybe it's a good idea to text that one girl who treated you like shit because you wanted to sleep with her that one time." And then when part of me went "No, that's an atrocious idea," that first part of me went "Dude, no, just go buy some alcohol and you can blame it on that!" and I just went "Seriously brain? This is what you're going for?" And that's about when, on the timeline, it hit me that it was just depression fucking with me and I shouldn't pay it any mind. I should just go back to playing Isaac (if the little sack of shit would run at full speed, but nooo I had to get an AMD processor) and listen to prog metal.

Are you still reading this? Why? There wasn't a moral here.

Well. Maybe I'll go get some alcohol. I still want to try Mike's Hard Lemonade. Maybe THAT'S the moral, really sweet alcohol is good. I like that moral.

Video games as an artistic medium

So I'm reading the new issue of Game Informer when I come to the article asking "Why have gaming companies recently been using live-action commercials? Isn't the in-game action, which is often really fucking cool, good enough to attract new customers?" They raised the point that people who are going to be looking for the very specific gameplay elements that such a trailer would show aren't exactly looking for new games to play from TV ads; they're online looking at gameplay videos, playing demos, chatting with their friends about what they've heard or played. And I think that's fair. We're not the target audience for those TV spots. And as much as I've come to loathe Call of Duty in the last three years, I'll give them that the trailer with all those big-name actors is pretty goddamn appealing, so I see their point.

But then I came across this gem of a line and I had to stop and revive this blog that hasn't been touched in a year: "Video games sometimes take hours to slowly develop a bond between the player and the character. The nature of the medium allows for such an elongated process. Live-action film, on the other hand, allows viewers to invest in characters at a much faster pace. For this reason, filmmakers are better suited to create media where viewers can quickly connect to a character."

And I can't tell you how upset I am at reading those words. Those words, penned by an employee of a fucking gaming magazine, is telling the reader that video games are not as good as their contemporary counterparts. I'm being told that jumping on top of a goddamn Brute and punching his brains out is not as evocative as watching Kat get blown up by a Covenant grenade and lie on the ground with part of the visor on her helmet blown out. I'm being told that watching Elder Scrolls Guy walk through a town to have a giant CGI dragon land in front of him and roar at him is more gripping than killing that very same dragon with nothing but my sword and shield (this one is actually true, by the way, Bethesda games are boring as shit). For all of Capcom's faults, they at least did SOMETHING right with Resident Evil 6 when they used footage from the game for all their trailers.

Is it any wonder why video games are still a joke in adult society? We have industry fucking standards like Microsoft employee Frank O'Connor, who I am ashamed to hear has been with the Halo franchise since its inception, espousing such undermining values. I've long held the belief that video games are the ULTIMATE in art, combining every form you can imagine (traditional art, music, cinematography, storytelling, etc.) and then making it interactive. What are we as gamers supposed to do when our passion, our lifeblood, is playing second fiddle to a lesser form of itself? Do you want to know how to sell Bioshock Infinite? Not with a couple square miles of green screen and shitty CGI.