💾 Archived View for appl.garden › play › 2024.gmi captured on 2024-06-19 at 22:51:36. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2024-02-05)
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This is a new year (although I've said this earlier already...), and a new page on the blog (at least if you're reading this on the HowLongToBeat forum thread right now).
It's been fun writing about Linux and low-spec gaming. I have a passion for tinkering with software and pushing the limits of hardware, this remains fun to me even when I'm not enjoying video games as much as I used to as a kid. For more than two years this has been a fun outlet for my hobby and has also encouraged me to play some games that I might not have tried otherwise.
However, it's also starting to feel like a bit of a burden. But it's not an inherent problem with the blog, moreso with the specfic way I've been handling it.
I don't want to annoy others by writing a bunch of nonsense (I say this, as I write a bunch of nonsense, hehe), which is why this is not a typical blog where I simply talk about games I'm currently playing. Instead, I try to put at least some effort into actually "reviewing" games, and trying to be informative, especially about, well, the Linux and low-spec experience. This meant that I felt obligated to complete games, to form concrete opinions.
I don't think this is a healthy relationship to games. Sometimes a game just kinda sucks and it should be okay to abandon it.
There is a technical issue here as well: basically, since I keep "statistics" and extensive links to every game I "review", it means that every post I make about a game must be my definitive and final opinion. Either I complete the game and rate it, or I retire the game and officially swear to never play it again. Because, if I do play it again, or just write about it again, well, it's annoying having to update links and statistics again.
This may sound silly but that's kinda how my brain works. All of this puts stress on me, I find myself thinking "oh crap, I just finished a game again, ugh, I don't want to have to update the blog again...". Sometimes I put it off for weeks or even months, which (ironically) results in a backlog of games that I've finished-but-not-yet-reviewed, and that's on top of the backlog of games which I paid-for-but-have-not-played.
(It's worth noting that I also mirror this blog on HowLongToBeat, a web-based forum and tracker for game catalogs. I quite like Gemini and like participating on it, but that complicates the blog even more since I must convert the forum posts to Gemtext, and update the statistics and links in two different plaes... In fact I even wrote scripts to do this somewhat automatically, but even then, you may start to understand why this blog is becoming annoying to deal with)
My conclusion is that I want to make the blog a bit more relaxing and "low-key" for my own sake. I will continue to post more fully-fledged (though still short) reviews of games sometimes. But other times I may simply mention some games in a less formal way. Ultimately my writing is read by very few people anyway so why spend the time and effort if I don't want to? If I do something interesting with a video game on my Linux system then I'll mention it, if not, then I'm not necessarily gonna bother with a "definitive" game review.
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On a slightly more philosophical note: I got inspired by the idea of "digital gardens". (this has nothing to do with my username, and nothing to do with IRL gardening, which I don't even do...)
My blog is a digital garden, not a blog
The phrase "digital garden" is a metaphor for thinking about writing and creating that focuses less on the resulting "showpiece" and more on the process, care, and craft it takes to get there.
What makes a garden is interesting. It's personal. Things are organized and orderly, but with a touch of chaos around the edges.
A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden
[The] main argument was that we have become swept away by *streams* – the collapse of information into single-track timelines of events.
This is not inherently bad. Streams have their time and place. Twitter is a force-multiplier for exploratory thoughts and delightful encounters once you fall in with the right crowd and learn to play the game.
But streams only surface the Zeitgeisty ideas of the last 24 hours. They are not designed to accumulate knowledge, connect disparate information, or mature over time.
The garden is our counterbalance. **Gardens present information in a richly linked landscape that grows slowly over time.** Everything is arranged and connected in ways that allow you to explore.
... focused on the process of digital gardening, emphasising the slow growth of ideas through writing, rewriting, editing, and revising thoughts in public. Instead of slapping Fully Formed Opinions up on the web and never changing them.
Digital Garden Terms of Service
On the surface it seems like it's more effort than a regular blog, and not less, but... Stringing a few low-effort ideas together over time, rather than writing one definitive post, seems easier to me. But that is something that I still kinda struggle with, I guess.
gardenapple - 2024-01-19