From the Aether #2
Hello to new friends and old! As always, we’d like to start by thanking you all for supporting the show — it truly means the world to us.
As we mentioned in Issue #1, we hoped to use this newsletter as a platform to elevate others from both within and outside of the community. As such, you’ll see a bunch of new names below among our own. Please check out their work, follow them, and support them as well!
We’re extremely excited about this one, so without further ado, here’s number two!
Brendon + Stephen
Video Games Do Not Exist
by Kyle Starr
The year is 20XX. Video games do not exist. They never have.
But tomorrow they will.
And when they come, all of today’s modern technology and tools will be available to their creators. There will have been no precedent other than their analog counterparts, which — come to think of it — consist of cardboard, cards, metal or plastic tokens, dice, tiles, paper, pencils, backpacks, guns, talking… walking… geese…
The first ones will be clunky; nigh unplayable. But without limitations in technology, we’ll quickly learn what’s acceptable, butt up against new limitations, and impose our own.
The first will feature a camera moving around a space. The next will include music. Then voice over. Then a third-person perspective and objects to interact with. Some will simply be digital recreations of analog forms. Maybe you’ll simply speak to them. Maybe you’ll move a character from left to right, or maybe right to left. Maybe you’ll console a character. Maybe that character is actually a real person. Maybe you’ll discover the nuance of an intimate relationship, or the complexity of geopolitics. Maybe all you’ll do is observe and sustain an ant farm, a household, or a city. Maybe it’ll strictly be text, or nothing at all — just a voice.
You’ll play them on a smartphone, a first-party handheld device, a TV, a computer, a watch. Perhaps you’ll play these through goggles or virtual assistants. Maybe your phone will ring or you’ll receive a text message that informs you to open an email that tells you to navigate to a particular GPS coordinate in your neighborhood, then open an app to reveal a new clue.
Each is an experience. Each requires an interaction. But they are not simply interactive experiences. The act of reading these words, right now, is an interactive experience. The mode of input varies. The goals vary. The display, playback, or broadcast will vary.
Perhaps the constant is a digital device. It may not be the only artifact necessary to partake in the experience, but it’s a requirement.
Perhaps the other requirement is agency or the illusion thereof. You’ve been spewing thousands of opinions on social media, but you know damn well that you have no control or influence to change the world in a single tweet. But in this limited, digital experience, you play god. An analog god over a digital domain.
So, what are these things? What are these experiences? Some are games. Some are simulations. Some are stories. Some are lessons. The same as any form of book.
But they don’t come on paper. They come to us through video — “an electronic medium for the display of visual media”; a screen — but maybe also a speaker, or require a pen and paper.
With unlimited creativity and technologies that can produce images that rival reality, these things reshape what we know of interaction and storytelling. They unlock our ideas of what worlds and systems should or shouldn’t be — human-made full-sensory utopias and dystopias. They are as simple as connecting dots and as complex as connecting people.
So, what do we call them?
Kyle Starr is a Publishing and Platform Manager for a big tech company. He’s a practicing musician and web developer. He writes about video games at zerocounts.net.
Find him on Twitter at @_kylestarr.
Halcyon
by Brendon Bigley
The wind meets me here.
I stand above a land of rolling green, below an immaculate sky. On the peak, I remain still, and I can see for miles. Serenity lingers. The breeze carries with it a melody, and the sound of howling laughter. The faint smell of a roaring campfire dances past.
I leap, and the air catches me in its embrace. Tugging ever so gently on my glider, the valley below rises to greet me. As I follow the melody to an old stable, wooden planks creak as I make my way past the smiling faces of its many patrons. Just outside, a dog barks, and a guitar continues to enchant a gathered crowd.
I’m told I was asleep. One hundred years stretch between my visits to this valley. I watch as sun vines pierce the clouds above, and wonder how I could have possibly forgotten something so beautiful.
I’m told I failed. Allies perished. “End times.” Calamity hangs aloft perpetually these days, they tell me with heads bowed low.
And yet here I sit, eating a stew comprised of the few edible materials I could scrounge together in my short journey thus far, and I am welcomed by these people with open arms. They surround me with their tales, and with their tidings. They offer advice, and they offer supplies. Not a shard of malice rests in the eyes of the stable bearers, nor those stopping for a well-earned rest on journeys of their own. Before the sun has set, I am prepared for the road ahead, my bags are filled with many a token of kindness. The last of the day’s light once cast an orange hue upon these strangers, but I now find myself among friends as the moon joins in our festivities.
This does not feel like a world torn asunder.
This does not feel like an apocalypse.
Or perhaps, this is exactly what it should feel like. When all is seemingly lost, do those who remain not fortify themselves with the aid of those around them? We look ahead, across the fields before us, and we can see it from the ground upon which we sit: The Castle. It splits up through the earth and into the aether like an ever-present colossus, an imposing monolith against the glittering horizon.
And do we not all see a dark shroud moves within its walls? Do we not see the ways in which it is unnerving, and frightening, and unnatural? Do we not see a constant, looming reminder of history’s greatest failure? Of mine?
We do. I do. Yet we laugh. We trade goods, and we drink, and we love.
After a century of torment, somehow, we persevere.
And we do it together.
Fighting Zombies with Claire & My Dad
by Stephen Hilger
Video games have always been a uniting force for me and my family, but to no one’s surprise, I fell into them the hardest. I was born in 1990, and upon my entrance to this world my parents had already purchased an NES for my older sister. My first experience with any type of game was a social and familial one. The idea of playing Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt alone was unthinkable to toddler-Stephen. Who could bear that dog’s laughter alone?
As I got older, my interest in games only grew. My sister joined me in my early adventures through the SNES Nintendo era with classics like Yoshi’s Island, Kirby Super Star, and Super Mario World. My sister loved games with “secrets” and together we unearthed many a hidden wonder. We both sat in awe when we plugged in Mario 64 for the first time. A world we thought we’d known like the backs of our hands had now literally entered a new dimension. I cried when I tried to move Mario because I was so used to the d-pad, I thought something was broken. We figured out together that the joystick was how to pilot our old pal Mario. Everything was different.
My parents got divorced when I was six. I was fortunate enough to still see both of them, but it was still a fractured time. We had moved to a new town, and everything about that new setting became associated with my family splitting up. Everything was unfamiliar, and going through Middle School was a fairly rough experience. As many of us know, no human being on Earth is crueler than anyone between the ages of 8–13.
Games became an emotional anchor — they were something to return to in face of so much change, both internal and external. More importantly, they were something that kept connected me with my family. My sister eventually moved on to her true passion of poetry, but kept a place in her heart for the Nintendo staples. My mom loved games at a distance, but never felt equipped enough to actually play them. “These remind me of my dreams,” she often prophesized.
My dad, in a separate household, had purchased a Playstation. While we were fortunate enough to have access to so many consoles, new games were still a momentous occasion. Both my parents had us rent games more, both as a vetting process and to see if we really loved the game before they spent the dreaded $40 on the final purchase. Renting was always a bittersweet experience as a child. Something about the lack of permanence always unnerved me.
Needless to say, we slowly but surely built a respectable PS1 library. I need not go into how much Final Fantasy VII impacted young Stephen, but it’s worth highlighting the resonance of other gems such as Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus, Chrono Cross, and Parappa The Rapper. Still, despite the incredible range of genre even in just those three titles, most of our PS1 library was single-player. My Dad could only watch and rub this temple in confusion as Parappa rapped his way through a Bird’s cooking show where we baked a seafood cake (look it up).
That was until Resident Evil 2 came out.
I don’t remember what led to us getting Resident Evil 2. I was, am, and will be a Nintendo fan at heart, and the grim-darkness of a game such as RE2 couldn’t have had that much appeal. Then again, my Dad has always been drawn to tragic Russian Literature and the happiest movie genre he’ll settle for is Film Noir. Maybe he’d finally gotten something for himself.
RE2, like many ambitious PS1 titles, came on multiple discs! But rather than having multiple discs solely to fit four hours of cut scenes, RE2 was essentially two different games: one where you played as rookie Leon Kennedy, and one where you played as Claire Redfield, a new character for the series.
We chose Claire as our hero, and made our way through the zombie infested streets of Raccoon City. The game starts off nightmarish. You’re thrown unceremoniously into a crowded street of zombies. Buildings are on fire. You’re equipped with a handgun and a handful of bullets. You learn quickly that you can’t realistically stay in one place and take out the zombies. You need to run. The game does a brilliant job of teaching you right away this game is not about fighting — it’s about surviving.
Eventually you make your way into an incredibly large, oddly church-esque police station. You catch your breath as you realize the main hall of the building is safe from the zombies. Adding to the game’s tension is the fact that saving is also dependent on a finite number of items in your inventory. The ink ribbons let you save at typewriters. Any room with a typewriter is safe, and it became common knowledge to us. “Let’s play until we find a typewriter” my Dad would often advise.
What we found we liked about RE2 is that it’s also a game about secrets. At its core, it’s a puzzle game about exploring an interwoven and maze-like environment. The zombies added tension and excitement, but they weren’t the main attraction for us. We played it together because we enjoyed helping each other understand and traverse a new environment. It became a tradition. A static ritual rooted in exploring something new. We laughed at the campy dialogue, and eventually the over-the-top nature of the horror elements became comedy gold.
Ironically, I think it made the change around us less scary.
This newsletter was made possible by you, our incredible patrons.
We could never thank you enough. ❤
Stephen + Brendon