Neocities.org

Games are strange to think back on for sure. That tendency to try to pull more meaning out of it is pathological probably since it was an all-encompassing presence. And that if you somehow figure it out you could recover the joy from it -- also, I wonder if there's a term for what you described: those trying to hype and slather makeup on something that feels hollow

i've checked out some of those bands you linked to, you have quite the interest in "no-audience underground" music. i honestly don't know much about Chinese rock beyond Cui Jian, or more recently, Chinese Football (and that is only because i'm a fan of American Football).

@daliwali thanks for looking at the bands i link to -- at least 50% of why i write on this website is to trick other people into exploring the music i like. cui jian is great, especially his lyrics, and chinese football is definitely a big part of the zeitgeist in shanghai: i feel like that's become the default sound for college students starting their first band to imitate.

i do like some popular rock bands! thanks to your comment, i spent some time today cleaning up this essay i wrote last year about New Pants, which is simultaneously one of China's most popular rock bands and is (or at least once was) very good imo: https://saddleblasters.neocities.org/essays/231130

@siqu yeah, i think a lot of the issue for me is the gulf between what was once "an all-encompassing presence" for my childhood and even early 20s, and the fact that now video games have come to more or less a dead end for me emotionally. a lot of the other things i cared about as a kid did continue to grow into something that still has relevance to me now, yet video games still seem to lie dormant inside of me

it seems like the only way to extend videogames is to make videogames, but it's just such an endeavor

and that was precisely the problem I had with making games: I was ultimately just trying to turn all of that emotional investment accumulated over the years into something "valuable". By it's very nature this forced me to constantly be empathising with my previous selves, taking all their feelings seriously, which was too exhausting (though maybe this is just an excuse)

don't think there's anything wrong with trying to get a return on investment. it'd be cool to make a videogame, and that alone is enough justification. it's just frustrating since it's a multi-disciplinary product -- music, sprites, sounds, design, story and then the actual programming. you'd have to _really_ want to make a videogame to push through all of those roles, to where it makes more sense to invest elsewhere