Argobot

Well, it is segregating, because they are literally cordoning off a part of the conference for "diversity" instead of, you know, integrating that into the entire conference. It allows the people who actually need some kind of diversity instruction to easily ignore it. This feels like PA wanting to defend themselves from criticism without actually doing anything to address the criticism. The intentions may not be hateful, but they're certainly not pure or good.

The difference between PAX and just being out in public is that PAX is marketed as a "safe space" where a community can gather and enjoy their shared love for a specific medium. The organizers of the conference have a responsibility to make their event as inclusive as possible, as a service to their fans and supporters. If you're alienating a part of your community, you're doing something wrong. Shrugging off these problems by saying "it happens everywhere else" is such a defeatist (and privileged) attitude to have. By literally segregating a portion of their conference off for "diversity," the people who run PAX are admitting that making their conference as open as possible is not a top priority. They want to do as little work as possible and then be praised for it ("We made a Diversity Lounge! What more do these people want?")

Hey, this is pretty great. I have been a big fan of Bissell's non-game writing for awhile, so it's cool to hear him talk about his publishing history. Good cast.

That's why Katie is the most interesting (and devastating) character. While she was off having these frivolous adventures her entire family was disintegrating.

He's trying to say that neither Bioshock nor Gone Home actually engage with the serious themes that they each reference. Bioshock acts like it wants to say something about Objectivisim (just like Infinite acted like it wanted to say something about American exceptionalism) but utterly fails to do so. Bogost is suggesting that Gone Home is guilty of the same thing -- bringing up a serious topic that only serves as window-dressing in the game. It's an inaccurate comparison, because Gone Home does a lot to engage with the issues it brings up. Those issues are actually integral to the point of the game, as opposed to the whole Ayn Rand plot falling to wayside in Bioshock.

I wouldn't call myself a gamer (although I have to admit that I know more about games than your average non-gaming person) and I am someone who has a read a fair amount of "serious" stuff. I am the audience that Bogost is theoretically addressing his essay to and yet I loved Gone Home. I got as much emotional value from that game as I usually do from "serious" writing. Obviously, my opinion on the game shouldn't dictate how others feel, but that is also true of Bogost. He can't make these broad statements on how "readers" will react to this game (especially when those broad statements are just wrong). What do you get out of comparing a book with a movie, or a book with a game? They're so fundamentally different, I just can't see the point of it. And I'm sorry, but playing the game is absolutely why I had such an emotional reaction to Gone Home. I'm sure I've said it before but, had I just read this story in straight narrative form, I probably wouldn't have felt much of an emotional response. The combination of the systems and the narrative is really what made the experience for me. Gone Home succeeded at doing what some many AAA games fail to -- it told a compelling story that was enhanced by gameplay, instead of having story and play feel like two disparate parts that were hamfistedly bolted together (eg: most big-budget games).

Did anyone actually do this? There was a lot of praise for Gone Home, but I don't remember anyone talking about it in this way. Glad that Bogost could come into the conversation though, and tell us all how to feel about Gone Home. It sure is embarrassing that we all had the wrong opinion about the game before he set us straight! (Sorry, but I am just forever annoyed by that essay. I'm fairly confident that most people writing and praising Gone Home are aware that it's not the pinnacle of what game's can be, and we certainly don't need someone like Bogost telling us that in the most condescending tone imaginable.)

Condescending is a great way to characterize that essay. To suggest that the people who enjoyed Gone Home did so because they don't read (or that people who read wouldn't enjoy Gone Home) is such a condescending way to talk about the game. It's also untrue. I'm not sure what the point of the essay is, except to say that Gone Home is good, but that we shouldn't overly praise the game because it's not as good as Orlando. Compare that to another LARB essay on Gone Home, one that doesn't have this 'above-it-all' tone. (Side note: I had never read Orlando before and am doing so now in part because of Bogost's essay. He uses Orlando as a counter-example to other, "better" queer stories in literature, and I have to say, that's not really what Orlando is about. The book is more about the difference and power dynamics between genders, not about a young woman coming to grips with her queerness. That means Orlando isn't even a good literary counter-example to Gone Home, since they're both telling completely different stories. It's such a lazy comparison and it retroactively has made me dislike that Bogost essay even more.)

Yes you should! Everyone says to start with Dear LIfe -- her most recent collection -- but honestly, you can't go wrong with any of them. Open Secrets is a standout favorite of mine (maybe because I read that one first).

I think you (and Bogost) might be underselling what actually is happening in Gone Home. Sure the romance is maudlin, but it's about teenagers! That's what relationships are like at that age, that's what being in love as a teen is all about. Sorry, that Bogost essay still rankles me. I read Oranges are Not the Only Fruit because he specifically lists it as a better version of what Gone Home is trying to do. Honestly, I didn't see it. Sure, it's a great book, but it's no more unique than what is in Gone Home, and it has the same "cliched," overdramatic story beats that the game does.

I'm sorry that it didn't work for you. The "depressing" parts are what I most enjoyed, because they felt so true to many of my own experiences.

If you'd ask me this question a week ago, I probably would have said The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (which came out in 2013), but now my answer is everything by Alice Munro. I had only read a smattering of her short stories before, but when she won the Nobel, I felt obligated to give her a second try. I don't know if it's because I'm older, or if it's just where I am in my life right now, but I have never felt so connected with a writer. Munro has such a direct, bare-bones way of telling her stories, and I've never seen an author so painstakingly describe what it is like to be a young woman. Her stuff is amazing and I would strongly recommend it to anyone. So far I've read the Open Secrets, Dear Life, and Too Much Happiness collections and have loved them all. I can't pull myself away from her writing and I honestly don't really want to.

NW NW NW NW NW NW! Seriously, NW by Zadie Smith is one of the most important books I read this year, if not ever. It's an examination of different characters who all live NW London and the connections they have to one another. The honest way that Smith writes about female relationships (with their mothers, with each other, with their partners) is what really made this book for me. Flamethrowers, by Rachel Kushner is my second suggestion (to keep up with my theme of important books about being a young woman). Kushner is a fantastic writer and this was just recently nominated for the National Book Award.

Wow, I don't remember that! Do you have a page number by any chance? (Ignoring all rational thought, I'm now just going to pretend that Pynchon is a fellow Idle Thumbs reader.)

If you follow me on twitter (hahah), I quoted some of the more hilarious Pynchon pop culture references. For being a nearly 80-year-old man, he sure knows a lot about Brittney Spears.

I read Bleeding Edge immediately after reading Inherent Vice, and I think that greatly helped my opinion of the former. Neither of those books are like Crying of Lot 49, but they all contain that apocalyptic tinge that I'm starting to really love in Pynchon's writing. Of the two Bleeding Edge is much stronger, but I loved the descriptions of 1960s LA in Inherent Vice. Bleeding Edge may not say anything profound about the human condition, but I think it does capture the horror of the tech culture and our modern paranoia, in this very stark, very humorous way.

IF ONLY

Why is it young adult exactly? Because it has an adolescent protagonist? Because I can point to several "serious" novels that also have young main characters. If it's young adult because of the themes, again, I can point to several novels that cover the same ground as Gone Home. Young adult implies some kind of immaturity, which I don't see Gone Home having at all.

Again, I just disagree with Bogost's argument. Personally, I play very few video games, largely because they don't appeal to me on a story/mechanical level. Something like Gone Home has a much better chance of keeping my attention than the majority of games that are made. The idea that Gone Home might not appeal to "non-gamers" because they're used to a richer depth of story, or whatever Bogost is trying to say, doesn't really jive with reality.

Right, that's where I fundamentally disagree with Bogost. There's nothing pretentious about Gone Home; it's incredibly straightforward with the story that it's telling. I'm trying to imagine what a "deeper" story would look like, and I can't come up with anything satisfying. Bogost compares the game to other literature with queer characters, and says that because Gone Home isn't as "literary" as these books, it has failed as a piece of writing. But again, Gone Home isn't a book, and comparing it to other books while ignoring the game part is poor way to approach criticism. (Tangentially, I'd argue that Gone Home is just as well written as many "literary" novels.) I see the aspirational angle of his piece, but it gets lost in the unnecessary literary comparisons. Statements that are akin to -- "how can readers of "serious" literature find any value in this game" -- do nothing to prove a point. As a reader of "serious" literature, I found that whole argument to be very reductive.

I had a lot of problems with that Bogost review. Comparing the game to other literature with queer characters -- especially something written by Virginia Woolf -- felt unconstructive to getting at what makes the game good or bad. Of course Gone Home wouldn't make a good novel; it wasn't designed as a book, it's a video game. But I did agree with Bogost's overall point of how entertainment in general has a fixation on telling stories at the level of young adult (although I don't believe that Gone Home should be considered part of that problem; it feels like a response to it.)

As far as the danger: I just had a real sense of dread while reading this book. It bordered on supernatural at points: the references to the Zodiac; the gargoyle statues that are in the narrator's building; the narrator's mysterious background. It's not that I necessarily expected anyone to die, but it did make me hyper aware of some kind of looming darkness around the edges of the story. Which is such a great contrast to the actual Holocaust horrors that Ullman describes. It's a play between the horror our brains naturally fill in when we're presented with an unknown, slightly off situation and the actual horrors that humans have visited on one another -- the imagination versus reality. And yes, The Bug is great. Especially if you have any knowledge of computer programming, or so I've heard.

This book was a weird one, but I personally really enjoyed it. Ullman is such a fascinating person, it's hard for me to fault her writing too much. Shortly after reading this, I picked up her first novel: The Bug. It's all about a computer bug that slowly drives the main character insane, and from what I understand, all of the programming references Ullman makes are accurate. Her writing -- especially in By Blood -- has this very hazy, vaguely threatening undercurrent. I kept expecting something truly horrible to happen while reading this book, and that tension of never being able to completely grasp has was going on is what I loved so much about the novel. It's so cool to see someone read through all the selections in such a short period of time! Good luck with Wolf Hall.

If you liked Crying of Lot 49 than you should check out Bleeding Edge; they're both roughly the same level of difficulty, plus, Bleeding Edge is all about Pynchon's take on the early 2000s tech and programming culture.

There is a lot to love about Gravity, but my absolutely favorite part of the film is the characterization of Dr. Stone. Finally a female character that feels like a real woman and not some coldly competent superwoman. She is allowed to make mistakes, panic, and be recognizably feminine in ways that are sadly rare in action films. The Dr. Stone character reminds me a lot of Ripley, and I hope that she gets the same kind of reverence among sci-fi fans.