#PastebinMonday 04/22/2019

What is Fun? Edition

Hey guys, how’s it goin?

I’m doing my usual thing with Pokemon Puzzle Challenge and The Wizard of Oz DS RPG. There was no progress in PPC this week, but I feel close to the end of The Wizard of Oz. However, that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today, I want to be vulnerable about a fact about myself that I feel a degree of shame for that affects not only affects the speedruns that I sink my time into, but also some of the other extracurricular ventures that I get involved with.

I would probably be classified as one of those—elitists? Douchebags? I’m not sure what the proper term would be, but probably one that describes one who is hated—people that equates fun with winning, though I’d like to believe that I’m not quite THAT far gone. It’s not that I only have fun when I’m winning a game, but when I am playing a game, I’d like to feel like that I have a chance to win. Otherwise, I am going to be miserable.

In retrospect, this explains a lot of what I do in my free time. I don’t read books. I don’t watch TV or movies. I don’t create any physical art. I only play games, video or otherwise. Even then, I only speedrun video games I think I can get world record in. You gotta remember, I got into this speedrunning thing because I saw people racing Pokemon Puzzle League and wanted to get in on the competitiveness. It has tainted my perspective.

When I’m not speedrunning games, I’m playing games that I think I am going to be competitive in, thus why I’m playing a bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links lately and, even then, I am not enjoying that as much lately because everyone at the top ranks is playing the same goddamn deck that requires a crap ton of booster packs to build up, which requires either a heaping dump of gems (ingame currency) that takes a steaming pile of time to accumulate or a gigantic load of real money in order to purchase, all things that I don’t really have. It also explains why I haven’t been enjoying Panel Attack lately, either. But now I digress.

This “revelation” was brought on by my latest performance in Brossentia’s Kusogrande tournament yesterday. If you’re not familiar with this tournament, players in each match are tasked to make as much forward progress in a video game they have never seen before in an hour’s time. Oh, didn’t I mention the name of the tournament is “Kuso”grande? “Kuso” is a Japanese word usually referred to as “shit.” Thus, all of the games played in the tournament have some crap factor to them. Yesterday’s game was a pile of DOS code called International Ninja Rabbits. It’s a beat-em-up, a genre that I’m usually okay with. However, the game has two big problems. One, it’s impossible to avoid taking damage, even on the easiest difficulty. Good thing the game only has three levels. Two, you’re gonna have to heal that damage off and/or get extra lives from powerups that spawn on every screen, but sometimes, the boxes the powerups come in will contain either nothing or nearly kill you. Still, you’re going to need to go back to those boxes in order to survive. I found myself frequently stopping to grind for powerups. It breaks up the natural flow of the game. This is not how beat-em-ups should play. Yet, I was obligated to play it. I never felt like I was playing the game well. It was not a fun experience. Needless to say, I did not come close to winning the match. That upset me a little more.

Kusogrande has been giving me similar experiences with games lately. The games I’ve been playing have been far from the same fun affairs that got me involved with the community in the first place. With that in mind, I will officially make Kusogr4nde (Kusogrande 4) my last Kusogrande tournament. I am no longer having fun playing these bad games. I will, however, continue to enjoy watching other people suffer through them. Geez, how sadistic of me.

Then again, at the end of the day, maybe I just need to re-evaluate what it means for me to have fun. I also tend to be a bit of a people watcher so you would think I would be able to find some enjoyment in movies and TV, if nothing else, but no, doing those things doesn’t interest me at the moment. I’m finding myself only watching people be entertaining on the Internet. (There, I think that fixed the awkward phrasing.) Perhaps I just need to ask myself, ‘What is fun?’

That’s my life story for the week. Boy, did that get introspective. Until next time, everyone, thanks for reading!

--Cards