So, let me talk about how "close to the pain" stories are.
I've noticed a rise in the number of video games which are literally about trauma, as in they flat-out say "here's representations of this character's trauma, use cards to beat it up and win!"
These are "close" stories.
However, many video games are about the same kind of journey, but abstracted.
For example, Outer Wilds is not "here's the terror of death, here's some cards to battle death with!"
It's still a game about coping with death.
This is a "distant" story.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with either option, but the medium does matter.
See, if I read a three-page comic about someone personally coping with something, it's one tweet and takes twenty seconds.
But playing a game about it takes hoooours and requires downloads.
Now, if I want to cope with the same pain, if I am a fellow sufferer in the same place, I might be happy to download and spend hours with your pain.
But in general, the connection is fainter than that.
A reader can sympathize for a minute or two... but hours?
The problem here is a lack of empathy, but it can't be solved by magically willing humanity to ascend to a more sympathetic species.
Instead, it is solved by getting them on board. They can sympathize if they empathize, so your art starts with one before introducing the other.
This is why so many stories - anything longer than 30 seconds - tend to be a few steps removed from whatever they're actually about.
To get people interested and keep their interest.
Otherwise, your audience will only be people who are in basically the same place as you.
... I hope that doesn't sound super callous.
You can't change how people empathize. You can, however, learn how to make your art so that it allows people to empathize.
... Also, strictly from a position of pain, I don't think I'd want to represent my trauma as something that can be overcome by card battles.
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Watching a very long video on Elder Scrolls games and I'm happy to report that I disagree with most of the points he makes!
I actually got to watch a video that makes points! And has reasonable opinions!
Being able to watch a video and go "hmm, good point, but I think-"
is so much nicer than watching a video that grinds down your resistance by spending the first five minutes pretending to be about a stupid joke skit.
Skits are a way to recontextualize the body of your video. They allow you to bypass most of the critical thinking your audience might do because, hey, it's just me, Fartdog. It doesn't matter whether Fartdog is right or wrong, so you might as well not think too hard.
Well, I'm thinking about Ogre Battle before sleeping. What makes it so much better than modern autobattlers?
Let"s talk about it on my tiny phone keyboard.
The first thing is that there's some complexity. There are five slots (most autobattlers have three) and front/rear rows as well as left/right positioning mattering. Modern autobattlers don't do that for one bug reason: gacha.
The driving force of gacha means things need to boil down to raw stats, to drive you towards the five stars and the stat-up purchases.
Having actual strategy involved would reduce the gacha pull!
Hm. I'm very sleepy, looking for a game I might like. There's a new game out in a genre I sometimes like, but it... looks really terrible.
I mean, the art quality is great, but every screenshot screams "we didn't include any gameplay".
It looks like a phone game. Not in terms of art, but in terms of play.
"Here's two squads of three autobattling", "here's a clickable map", "here's a talent tree", "here's cards"...
They proudly assert it's a mix between Dungeon Defender and Roguelike, which is a bit like proudly asserting your newest dish is a mix of pudding and beefsteak...