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What I took away from playing World of Warcraft for eight years was that in reality everyone in Starfleet would alter the Kobayashi Maru scenario, and after a couple of years they’d start complaining that it had been created to be too easy. Granted, Starfleet training’s selection process could be preventing that from happening. But given how competitive raiding works in WoW, perhaps not. It is not nearly as glorious, as prestigious, and as much of an achievement as people make it out to be. It is both product of, and factor in the overall company environment as we’ve come to know of in 2021. That alone should absolutely wreck all prestige surrounding the scene. But it doesn’t. It’s also not all that impressive if your prowess is the result of training in a way most people don’t have access to. It’s not as impressive if you’re in with the devs and can influence the rules to your advantage.
While it isn’t that glorious I’d also feel bad not acknowledging the effort that is actually being put into raiding, all forms of it. From people trying to understand their class mechanics to people organising raid schedules impressive skills are required and people on all sides deliver. It’s just that you don’t know how nasty the carrot is that people are chasing. Some are more motivated because of how nasty that carrot is. Parts of society that are larger than we’d like to acknowledge even deem the carrot’s state a delicacy. In my teenage years, and when I was raiding that could’ve been attributed to me. It’s also that some people get celebrated for skills everyone brings to the table, and people don’t like to hear that someone else was also good.
With the initial speculation I wanted to highlight that in reality we may be a much more creative species than The Wrath of Khan makes us out to be (in this instance; the creativity of mankind often is a focal point in Star Trek, and this is not a thorough analysis of themes in The Wrath of Khan). We’re also adaptive, as the last twenty years have shown, and can be so much more technically literate than our parents or grandparents could’ve ever imagined. Kirk is no more special than you.
As I didn’t even manage to get an update on Core Keeper out for the last seven days, I figured an attempt to explain myself was needed.
I took a bit of a break after releasing the Year-in-Review blog post and the update on Core Keeper. I researched the relationship between the British Crown and media for a couple of hours because understanding ways in which media presently control our view is useful, and a very plain democratic thing to do. After March, 20th I also put a few hours into the hack’n’slay RPG Hades.
My daughter who has been diagnosed with ADHD does not have a good phase right now. Getting criticised for her is living through the end of the world, in that very moment at least. She’s also struggling particularly hard with any kind of time limit or getting any impulse to do chores at all. That ate into my and my wife’s sleeping times, and of course my working hours.
Then, I spend about two hours a day on quality-of-life stuff for other people – trying to make them feel less as if they were less of a human being because they didn’t work full-time jobs. For various reasons there is no way they could work full-time. We just chat or watch films together, it’s just what friends do, and they deserve it.
On top of that there is my wife, who had doctor’s appointments – just routine. The usual medication had to be ordered and taken home. I bought groceries. On principle, we don’t use a car but try shouldering whatever we can of the climate crisis. And that often costs time and money, and so far few have come forward to help us out with either. A blog post that discusses climate change and low-income more thoroughly is in the works.
These brownies were made after most of this blog post had been written, and after publication of “White Future”. But searching for recipes falls in the time gap between the review post and “White Future”.
I worked on my daughter’s RPG campaign. Later this year I’m planning to tell a bit about that, giving a guide through the campaign or some parts of it. I feel very, very insecure about this. After all, I didn’t have much experience before somehow happening to become a GM. It’s not wildly imaginative, but being able to talk about the goals I had in mind – maybe there’s still some merit to it.
But, on the blog front, I have been working on illustrations, and currently have to buy a few tools for that. A combination of hand-drawn pictures and screenshots Is currently planned to get utilised in blog posts, as has been suggested by S from The Internet of Words. I had been toying with that idea before but people who know me know that graphics design isn’t something I would consider to be my strong suit. I had had ideas but wasn’t satisfied with them, and training would be time-consuming. On the other hand I used to create hundreds of pages of fan comics – of questionable quality, but it’s still time I spent honing my skills.
Here's a useful and nuanced pieced by @KelseyTuoc about the many problems with degrowth. https://t.co/7QgggPJkzU And here's a book about a radically different perspective that the left could (and I think: should) adopt: https://t.co/DltXm0GbAm
I remember when and why I started following Rutger Bregman. It was in about 2017, and I was looking for people who dared to create and talk about positive concepts of the future.
“Degrowth”, “Defund”, and “Embrace failure” are all very fine words and good concepts. They all are expressions of the same basic idea that it is okay to be human and to not meet current social standards. They reject a, frankly, quite infantile notion of progress. They put a stop to the trend of us killing ourselves in the name of efficiency and perfection. Arguing against these concepts is primarily arguing for the continuation of White worldviews. The growth that some people celebrate over the last century has been growth focussed on white countries led by white people. Police funds have mostly benefitted white people which is why the “Defund Police” movement is mostly black. Our global mental health crisis is caused by expecting everyone to either grow, or perish, constantly. Rejecting Degrowth does a disservice to everyone who needs to hear that they are enough. And I happen to live with one such person. Growth is not utopian, and it is not positive.
Rejecting these concepts primarily stems from a desire to uphold neoliberalism or necrocapitalism. Because both concepts draw from a vocabulary that is opposed to neoliberalism and necro-capitalism, it hardly even exists as part of and within the latter two concepts of society.
If you struggle with the word “degrowth” you’re incapable of imagining a future, period.
2022 was a personally difficult year. And we had those for a while now. On top of that this is the general trend, and if we desire to reverse that trend it is important to look it in the eye. But in an attempt to not get overwhelmed by it I want to highlight positive developments, across the world and in my personal space. Please note that there is a paragraph in here discussing the BBC as they’re the producers and primary broadcasters of “Docotr Who”. That paragraph will be talking about transphobia, not in detail but still. A second content warning is placed immediately prior to that.
Biden announced student loan forgiveness. He also announced public access to federally funded research in the US. Both of these are important steps giving reason for optimism. Public education (and, for example, the attack on it through misinformation) are core challenges and issues of the 21st century. Having the access to the best reasoning available is a fundamental requirement of democracy, of a person being able to make free decisions. Freedom of deliberation requires access to the best information available.
In September of 2022 protests erupted in Iran, and are still ongoing. While they’re often met with violence and worse, and the direct cause is more than saddening, these people are heroes and fight for human rights and for progress. They are their country’s hope. Thank God (figuratively) mine doesn’t disappoint them entirely.
My wife drew a slew of pictures, rather loosely based on any specific fandom. That means her works are relatively safe from adding to some creep’s social power. These pictures have also been made accessible online, so something of my wife is out there.
Through mystical machinations my daughter finally got into One Piece. Getting her caught up on the anime (as reading the manga currently is not on the plate) is an ongoing bonding experience for us. The emotional low points of that series are absolutely davastating for her but, as she is reassuring me repeatedly, the series is absolutely worth it. With a little bit of help she is remarkably quick in cathing some of the more xpmplex philosophical issues. I’m keeping an eye on Oda, though (the author of One Piece). Issues have been raised with his depiction of queer people and heterosexual cis women, and I’m not familiar enough with Japanese LGBTQIA+ culture to be able to assess them successfully. He’s also got some problematic friends.
I started playing Core Keeper, and I purchased it, too. My wife and I had planned to play it together. That didn’t work out. There is probably too much farming and dying involved for her at this point, and the graphics are not enough to her taste. Instead it came to be another thing I play with my daughter.
On the social gaming front I also started mastering Pathfinder RPG sessions (for one person). Most of the work and achievement so far lies in the preparation for those first sessions, getting accustomed to the rules, and character and world creation.
My wife and I returned to Valheim as well. In summer that stupid error occured (in consequence to a patch changing the way save files work), which caused us to lose many of those days worth of game progression. With manually saved back-up files that wouldn’t have happened. You may take that as a nudge. Anyways, because mental health I took it upon myself to re-create that progress as good as possible while my wife took a break. Then we did some stuff together, I lost a ship to a sea snake, and eventually we offed the third boss. With that the patches of Mountains biome finally got a purpose. Right in the first smaller one we were successful in discovering a silver vein. Not so much in the next one. Trolls invaded our base which prompted my wife to re-inforce it. Then my wife stopped playing again while I took stock of our ships and killed a bunch of sea serpents for nutrition.
2022 was the most-active year on Ko-Fi, yet. In addition, I wrote two blog posts on this very blog, one of them addressing my ventures into the Fediverse which also happened last year. I’ve been extremely happy to re-connect there with friends and acquaintances from Twitter. Especially reaching out and finding me on your own means a lot to me. A special shout-out has to go to Belghast and his blog who really helped me get along on this new platform.
In terms of films I mostly remember seeing Everything Everywhere All at Once, and that blew me away. The trailer had been promising but I had not been prepared for this film. It was so good. I’m no stranger to Asian cinema (a couple of Japanesse films, a couple of Thai films, a couple of Chinese films, a couple of Indian films – so this is not necessarily me lumping different cultures of cinema together), I recognised some elements, and yet it did well with US box offices. The film team got people, Westerners even, to watch this weird thing. The film meshes different cinematic traditions from east and west, and it does that well. Extremely well. Creativity was front and centre in this film, narratively as well as visually. It was a remarkably touching film, and one that cared about the average person. About people who don’t meet their own expectations.
TV shone a much-needed beam of light into our lives. The series I probably liked best were Peacemaker, Severance, and Andor. Severance in particular was a very creepy social critique. Peacemaker was at the same time very unexpected and the thing you probably would’ve expected from James Gunn taking on a series on that character from Suicide Squad. I think it’s his best exploration of toxic masculinity so far, and accurately blatantly linked to white supremacy. Peacemaker is a series about a white guy, though – as are both the other series. That’s worth pointing out, regardless of how good they may’ve been in other departments.
Then, I managed to watch It’s a Sin and Years and Years. That was so good. Of the two It’s a Sin made the stronger impression with me but I’m extremely happy to have watched either of them. It’s a Sin is personal, I know that, and it looks like that. It’s a series taking place during the HIV crisis in the UK and centers around a group of gay friends. From start to finish it was extremly sad, it could also be very angry (and rightfully so), but it was pure joy as well. Russell T. Davies created fantastic scenes depicting the protagonists’ everyday life. I think that’s very important for an audience so they’re able to connect with the characters you create. Having them come up with their own greeting was genious. And it’s such an upbeat greeting forever deeply linked to the series. It shattered me, with every episode. But it also made me laugh, and I wouldn’t want to miss it.
Years and Years depicts the UK’s fictional descent into fascism following the year of 2018. The protagonists weirdly but very accurately take an active part in that, and for the most part are pretty oblivious to it. They celebrate lavish birthday parties and wonder why supermarket shelves aren’t as well-stocked as they used to be, while getting news of, for example, nuclear strikes around the world. But as they didn’t hit home they’re quickly forgotten. Murray Gold’s theme is haunting and captures anxiety very well. What affected me most about Years and Years was probably its depiction of transhumanism. That gave food for thought, as I’m very conflicted on that topic. Anyway, that storyline was also so full of love for future generations which is essential for the series to work at all. The people who come after us are our hope. For all the flack we give them they’re usually much better than us, and they’re hella undeserving of that burning planet of an inheritance we give them and expect gratitude for. In the end the formerly Tory-voting English middle-class family saves the nation which is – let’s say that’s not what happend in It’s a Sin, and I may be wrong but to me that distinction appears to be important. The future envisioned is as haunting as it is close to what reality has become since.
Russell T. Davies’ return to Doctor Who I watched with mixed feelings, but the cautiously optimistic seed within me got a bit of fertilizer with the announcement of new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa and Yasmin Finney as whoever. That leads me to the next section which will open with a bit on transphobia.
Speaking of Doctor Who: The BBC decided to celebrate their centennary with a Doctor Who centennary special. There is a lot to say about the BBC currently, and that I shall do befor we proceed. Particularly in light of the last few weeks around the release of a certain video game it is worth saying the BBC support transphobia. Youtuber Shaun lays out a series of problems (primarily, but not limited to one article). On top of that the BBC issued an apology to JK Rowling for almost calling her transphobic – which she is. They’re dependant on and threatened by the British government who control the BBC’s funding. But them being co-operators in trans genocide needs pointing out. If not that, I don’t know what does. Pointing out biases in any news organisation matters, for everyone not actively against trans people probably wants to know the BBC don’t try to cover everything important on related topics.
But I can not hide that for all the turmoil the last few years of Doctor Who have seen, I’m very happy with that last special. I can not because this review is supposed to be about the good stuff. I did wish for the thirteenth Doctor to have some highlights, and I’m quite confident this was and will be remembered as one of them. That may just be because I could grasp what it’s going to be about from the get-go. That makes one feel very clever, and for a time I could pretend watching all those in-depth analysis of several fictional works had paid off. In all honesty I think it’s just been made very obvious because viewers should be able to pick up on that. I enjoyed it a great deal, my wife wasn’t as impressed. Above all she misses Missy and the progress the Master had made at the end of Moffat’s run. While I can definitely sympathise with that, I think Sacha Dhawan’s Master worked and was interesting and to a minor degree picked up threads from Moffat in understanding himself to be an inferior version of the Doctor. I really, really loved when he was the Doctor because of how he couldn’t deliver on his own expectations. And in difference to many other more modern versions of that plot, he didn’t come across as someone who wanted to realise a misguided version of a better world. He didn’t think the Doctor had failed, he just wanted to be rid of her. I’m also not too bothered by character development across incarnations because from the moment all that weirdness about the Doctor had been established in New Who (I think all the important mechanics of the show had been explained at point of his regeneration, with said regenerational feature being the last?) that timelords did not appear in chronological order of their stream of consciousness. For me the Doctor always had more regenerations than those we had seen on TV etc. etc. I don’t like centering the show around Earth and the viewer. The more we do it the less of an alien the Doctor is. So these are some of the camps in Who fandom I’m in.
I reconnected with a couple of friends which is a frightening thing to do. It came a bit unexpected even though I took the initiative in each case. In one of those I expressed my gratitude for introducing me to the works of Jaques Derrida and pushing the gates to French philosophy wide open. That’s useful basic knowledge for many essays on social issues ranging from AI art to racism. Understanding that everything is context to your text is key (or can be key) in having a response to AI art. One is a lofty idea, the other may very well secure your income.
I took part in both global climate strikes organised by Fridays for Future. One was in Spring, the other in the late days of September. I wasn’t part of one of the big protests in the cities because that’s quite difficult for me to manage. Still, I contributed to the numbers, and every action is more than just standing by and watching.
Inspite of our financial struggles we managed to have considerable meals for both Christmas and New Year’s Eve. That’s honestly a bit of a miracle, and mostly because of my wife.
We managed to survive 2022. Because of that we could witness all of these things. And that in itself is a feat. I do not in any way exaggerate.
If you want me to elaborate on anything, let me know. And please support me on Ko-fi, I don’t know why.
As with many other people, a couple of weeks ago it was time for me to use the Fediverse (Mastodon) more extensively, and now I’m quite active on there. I started on mastodon.social, but switched to mstdn.social. One of the most important features over there is the implementation of trigger warnings. If added to a toot, they’re shown instead of its other content until the reader expands the toot by clicking on “Show more“. As it’s been only a few days since I learnt using them myself I want to share that knowledge and help promote the function.
Under the text box we all use to send our toots there are a couple of options to modify them, and the almost bombastically large common character count (for those of us who started Twitter on 140 characters). The third of those options sports a CW as the abbreviation for content warning (as seen in the screenshot below).
Clicking on it will reveal a one-line text box above the toot’s main body text box. That new box can be filled with whatever you want, preferably as helpful to the viewer as possible. You can also simply warn of specified spoilers (or general spoilers). Just write something like “Doctor Who spoilers”. And that’s it!
Upon learning how it worked I was enchanted with its simplicity. It’s neither annoying to add to your toot, nor is it annoying for the reader. I can’t really find out why but it feels liberating. And after watching other users for a while, my most common warning became “political content”, or variations thereof. Because these topics might hit home really hard. I think it really helps people to start thinking about these issues.
Some ordinary people in the current political discourse are left with the impression that the Green Party suddenly changed their opinion on saving energy with federal Minister of Economy Habeck’s newly-presented laws on energy-saving. So I went to Twitter to look if there had been any demands for energy-saving from members of the Green party (Bündnis90/Die Grünen). Because I remembered the party to be one not to keen on wasting energy. So far I found this:
Jede Kilowattstunde zählt, jetzt geht es auch ums #Energiesparen. Das ist nicht für alle gleichermaßen möglich, es ist eine soziale Frage. Wer Unterstützung benötigt, muss sie erhalten. Wer in der Lage ist, einen Beitrag leisten, kann jetzt Verantwortung übernehmen. pic.twitter.com/fukvXN4fcp
Firstly, we can observer that members the Green Party indeed did talk of saving energy before recently. These mentions are neither popular, nor frequent enough to make assessments on that topic’s visibility. However, there had been media appearances, and some of them, for the magazine “Spiegel” for example were rather high profile appearances. It should also be noted that some of the mentions were in response to opposing CSU party member Markus Söder, and primarily attack his policies. The intention likely was to hurt the opnnent, global economic and environmental considerations came second.
Additionally, core voters of the Green Party would hardly be surprised by the Green Party demanding a reduction in energy consumption. Therefore disappointment could not be found among them.
What I admittedly don’t understand is how we’re supposed to take Minister of Energy and Economy Habeck’s assessment that our energy supply through the coming winter was warranted. It is not wrong to observe some conflict between that statement and the recently passed laws. However, this would be somewhat alleviated by the fact that energy savings would have a negative impact on Russian forces in Ukraine.
So if energy savings have been addressed on mutiple occasions before (that is, across a longer time span or by several party members), and it is not a divergence from well-known views of the party, you could perhaps ask yourself whether people had listened to the wrong politicians and the wrong news sources. You could ask for better sources and better curators.
My method: I used Twitter’s search function. I entered “Energie sparen” (saving energy) and “Strom sparen” (saving electricity) for the time between July 1st and July 31st. In addition, I looked out for Twitter accounts of Green Party members specifically (I already knew of some of the most prominent accounts). For those I checked the time from January 1st until July 31st for the words “Energie” and “sparen”.
Disclaimer: I voted for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the last federal election and am rather well-acquainted with a member of the British Green Party.
The purpose for people outside Germany: In this article I highlighted what could turn out to be an attempt at disinformation. It is my perception of what the broader public considers to be important topics in political discourse. The article could help you recognise similar patterns in your own local political discourse, and provide you with a method to counter these patterns.
If this blog post was helpful to you in any way, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi.
Dieser und einige kommende Blogartikel werden die Grundlage dieses Blogs bilden und Rechenschaft über die grundsätzliche Ausrichtung ablegen. Es ist hilfreich für die Leser und zukünftigen Gesprächspartner, die hier dargestellten Ansichten zu übernehmen. Das bedeutet, ich möchte möglichst überzeugende Gründe für diese Ansichten angeben und die Gründe für meine Ansichten verständlich ausdrücken. Rückmeldungen zu diesen Artikeln in Form von Kommentaren, Fragen hier, auf Twitter oder per E-Mail werde ich zu dem Zweck nutzen. Diese Grundlagenartikel verteidigen die Perspektive, aus der später Alltagsprobleme behandelt werden. Probleme also, die uns – wenn ich richtig liege – direkt betreffen.
Hauptteil
Ich will in der Zukunft leben und ich lebe bereits in der Zukunft. Gemeinhin wird das schlechtgeredet. Die Zukunft wird in den Bereich der Mythen gerückt, zum Seelenheil in der Religion des Atheismus erklärt. An zukünftige Generationen zu denken ist auch schon mal Stalinismus, passt ja auch zu meinen übrigen Ansichten. Immerhin bedroht Nachhaltigkeit (von der man annimmt, sie gehe wohl mit Gedanken an die Zukunft einher) den Konsum. Die Ziele, die ich habe, werden überhöht, die Taten, die ich begehen möchte, zu Taten erklärt, die nur Übermenschen zustehen; Taten, für die ich nicht die nötige moralische Integrität besitze – oder im unterstellten Gegensatz zu mir kein normaler Mensch. Bodenständig sind dagegen Menschen, die im Hier und Jetzt leben, die keine finanziellen Rücklagen für die Zukunft bilden, sondern von ihrem Geld im Moment Spaß haben. Für die meisten Menschen in meinem Umfeld sind die Finanzen auch spärlich, durch Geld erzeugter Spaß selten. Es gibt keine Auslandsreisen oder Kreuzfahrten. Selbst Kinobesuche sind selten. So eine Situation ist aus sich heraus kein glückliches Dasein. In dem Zusammenhang muss man es Menschen vielleicht gönnen, sich Spaß zu kaufen.
Aber ich habe gar nicht so wenig Anteil am Hier und Jetzt. Ich bin zum einen Objektivist und denke, es gibt Wahrheit und Realität. Zum anderen rege ich mich aber auch oft über die Gegenwart auf. Ich freue mich und lache und es gibt Momente, in denen bin ich unendlich traurig. Ich habe Sorgen und Nöte und Freunde und Familie. Ich treffe so viele falsche Entscheidungen und mache so viele Fehler wie jeder andere Mensch auch und lebe im Hinblick auf meinen Körper sicherlich nicht enthaltsam. Dass es mir an Bodenständigkeit fehle, oder ich mich um mein Seelenheil sorge, will mir nicht in den Kopf. Im Gegenteil endet alles, was ich tue, alles, was mich betrifft, in dem Moment, in dem ich ende. In der Hinsicht gibt’s für mich nicht viel zu holen. Ich ende. Auch diesen Gedanken finde ich ziemlich bodenständig und ernüchternd.
Ebenfalls bodenständig finde ich es, an die Zukunft zu denken. Jeden Tag erlebe ich die Zukunft, die andere Menschen nicht mehr miterleben. Meiner Erfahrung nach wird das auch ohne mich so weitergehen. Und natürlich kann ich was ändern. Andere Menschen ändern täglich mein Leben. Oft werfen sie meine Pläne über den Haufen. Sie bringen mich aber auch unerwartet zum Lachen, zum Weinen, oder dazu, mein Leben (oder einen wichtigen Teil davon) zu überdenken. Ich habe in der Vergangenheit schon ziemlich selbstgenügsam gelebt, mein Leben ist aber auch ziemlich vom Leben anderer durchtränkt. Es ist für mich nicht plausibel, mich mit Ärgernissen herumzuschlagen und dann auch Menschen in der Zukunft unter diesen Ärgernissen leiden zu lassen. Wenn ich weiß, dass etwas gut ist, ziehe ich keinen persönlichen Gewinn daraus, das für mich zu behalten. Also habe ich persönlich zur guten Zukunft anderer beizutragen, um mich im Hier und Jetzt gut zu fühlen. Ich mache mir Sorgen um die Zukunft und für mein persönliches Hier und Jetzt will ich doch, dass das aufhört. Eine Zukunft mitzugestalten, die ich nicht mehr selbst erlebe, steigert mein Wohlbefinden. Ich will eine Zukunft und irgendwie ist mir ziemlich egal, dass die nicht für mich ist. Dafür verzichte ich auf ein, zwei Spiele, aber eine Zukunft schaffen ist viel realer als das, selbst wenn mein Anteil daran nur winzig ist. Besser als nix, oder?
Hinzu kommt, dass der Gedanke, anderen, zukünftigen Menschen ein besseres oder gutes Leben zu ermöglichen, nicht mit mir anfängt, sondern schon vorher existiert hat. Die Zukunftsvorstellungen vergangener Menschen waren vielleicht merkwürdiger als unsere heutigen. Vielleicht hatten sie zum Ziel, das Griechische, Römische oder Osmanische Reich fortbestehen zu lassen, was offensichtlich nicht geklappt hat. Die Lehren des Aristoteles haben aber beispielsweise zu unserer modernen Wissenschaft geführt und damit zu Penicilin, einer höheren Lebenserwartung und dem Internet als Voraussetzung für diesen Blog. In der Französischen oder der Novemberrevolution haben Menschen Rechte erkämpft, die wir heute genießen. Sicherlich gibt es in all diesen Punkten die Frage, inwieweit die Entwicklungen im Namen zukünftiger Generationen geschahen und in welchem Ausmaß die Beteiligten selbst Vorteile aus ihrem Handeln gezogen haben. Dieser Blog ist keiner, in dem so getan wird, als gäbe es auf alles eine Antwort oder als sei irgendeine Sicht völlig unproblematisch. Es lässt sich aber zumindest festhalten, dass andere Menschen vor uns Bedingungen geschaffen haben, unter denen wir heute leben und die (zum Teil, vielleicht zum größten Teil) unser Leben ihrem gegenüber verbessern. Für mich ergibt sich in diesem Zusammenhang auch ein moralischer Antrieb, etwas deshalb für die Zukunft zu tun, damit der Gedanke, nicht nur für sich selbst zu leben, honoriert wird und mit ihm auch alle, die sich diesem Gedanken verschrieben haben, wer auch immer diese Personen sein mögen. Falls jemand Anstrengungen für andere (für die Zukunft) unternommen hat, würde ich die Bemühungen dieser Person ad absurdum führen, wenn ich meine eigenen Bemühungen einfach aufgäbe.
Falls die in diesen Artikel investierte Arbeit jemandem genutzt hat, kann man sich hier erkenntlich zeigen.
Ich möchte hier ausführen, was ich vor einigen Monaten und auf Englisch bereits angerissen habe, nämlich was zukünftig von diesem Blog zu erwarten ist.
Ich setze mir die Vermittlung zwischen Wissenschaft, Politik und Volk zum Ziel. Damit, denke ich, lässt sich auch die Demokratie in unserer Gesellschaft stärken. Demokratisierung wäre also mein zweites Ziel. Drittens möchte ich die Fähigkeit zur Autonomie verbessern, also die Möglichkeit meiner Leser stärken, ihr Leben selbst zu gestalten. Viertens möchte ich hier mit anderen Menschen zusammen unsere Zukunft formen und dafür Probleme und mögliche Auswege aus diesen Problemen aufzeigen.
Dies ist keine Nachrichtenseite. Es werden Zusammenhänge her- und infrage gestellt. Neben Fakten finden sich hier also Fragen, Zukunftsszenarien, Meinungen und Begründungen. Soweit ich kann, werde ich all dies auseinander halten, damit wir hier nicht anfangen, alternative Fakten zu produzieren. Wenn man so will, wird dieser Blog also ein Forschungsprotokoll, das meine immer vorläufigen Erkenntnisse und zukünftig vielleicht die einer ganzen Gemeinschaft festhält.
Ich glaube an einige Dinge und dieser Blog wird diese Überzeugungen reflektieren. Nach und nach und wenn ich mir klarer darüber bin, welche das sind, werde ich eine Liste mit ihnen erstellen.
Die Richtlinien, die ich für den Blog vorgebe, lassen sich auf der Seite “Transparenz” finden. Sollte ich im Austausch mit den Lesern weitere Dinge entdecken (z. B. Finanzierung des Blogs), die transparent gemacht werden sollten, werde ich die Seite ergänzen.
In Blogeinträgen werde ich außerdem Rechenschaft über meine Fortschritte, etwa in einem Themengebiet, aber auch im Umgang mit dem Blog und seiner Software ablegen.
Vormals habe ich einen Blog betrieben, der sich mit Videospielen befasste. Aus Werten, die ich in diesem Blog vertrete, ergibt es sich, die Inhalte aus jenem Blog wieder zugänglich zu machen. Darüber hinaus behandeln die Einträge Probleme, die uns auch hier und im Zusammenhang mit Politik wiederbegegnen werden. Einige Leser, Leserinnen und Lesende dazwischen werden vielleicht ihren Spaß daran haben, die Parallelen ausfindig zu machen. Möglicherweise helfen die Einträge sogar, hier gesammelte Erkenntnisse und Überzeugungen in der Erzeugung von Kunst und insbesondere Spielen umzusetzen und zu vermitteln.
Nachdem damit die Brücke schon einmal geschlagen ist, werde ich auch neue Einträge verfassen, die sich mit Videospielen beschäftigen. Seit Menschen einen Zusammenhang zwischen Amokläufen an Schulen und Videospielen hergestellt haben, begegnen Spiele uns immer wieder in politischen Debatten, zum Beispiel auch in der erfreulicheren Debatte um ihren Schutz als Kunstwerke und Kulturgüter.
For those of you who’ve been looking around it’ll be obvious that aside from the first blog post, little is written in English. With that change in preferred language will come a thematic change from my previous blog.
For reasons of transparency and incase some of them were actually good, helpful, and worth revisiting, I’ll re-publish my old blog posts about World of Warcraft and gaming. But going forward both topics will be outliers among my writings.
Instead I’ll try to create a better future and discuss the options available for that. From my point of view, very kind and intelligent people lack the degree of organisation required for political change. Civil disobediance and other Democratic processes and values are not being made transparent enough, and we’re guided by a bad culture of debate that’s rich in tradition. That’s what I’ll try to change. It’s an enormous endeavour, but it’s high time we start it.
Introductory note on form: I used to use an indifferent “you” in generalised and unspecific statements. But after running into problems on several occassions of using it on Twitter, I decided to switch to an indifferent “one” instead which should be less prone to misapplication. I think that usage accentuates the divide between writer and reader but apparently these are the times we live in.
There are players who are enjoying the game right now. In leveling zones people organise themselves through nonverbal communications. They entertain themselves and each other jumping around, climbing onto buildings and trees, or taking a bath in Crystal Lake. They duel each other or try flying through the zone using a goblin glider. Players group up with other players who can’t read. Together they work on quests and it bears results! A remarkable number of them does not cross lines during these events, indicating any possible frustration exclusively through leaving the group. A few classes allow one to bring something to the table even if one doesn’t understand gearing. With the current difficulty of leveling zones one can at least heal or ressurrect the other players. Some are excited just seeing players of their own race cross the same place. And from now on that will apply to Present State and Classic servers. Some of you may frown upon seeing such behaviour but I’m enjoying that immensely. It may be the main reason I stay subbed for the game. That and that music and visuals are quite pleasing. It’s amazing to see people not give a shit about experience points or gear score.
I have to assume that there is a large silent majority of people happily pottering away on the Classic servers as well. And I suspect I can’t do anything to make the other people see the lie they’re living. Watching activity within my guild and on my server, it’s a lie that Classic and Retail were different communities. It’s also not difficult for like-minded people to be tolerant towards each other. Someone called the activist Classic community “elitist” regarding the way the LfG add-on was handled. Within that particular context I don’t agree but in general one could say that person had got a point. Often these people express desire to control their society. The kind of kindness prevalent in early day WoW that they’re talking about is a certain kind of kindness. They downplay acts of kindness on Retail. Often they demand admiration, not neccessarily of their own, but being able to admire others for the gear those people got. It’s still admiration of gear, and they’re unwilling to problematise that. Classic enthusiasts seem to be partcularly fond of the distinction between real gamers and casuals. They describe themselves as the passionate type of WoW players, while those who like something about modern day WoW are less passionate. They present themselves as more intelligent and creative while being unable to create their own entertainment on Retail. But that’s not their fault, they say, on Retail there’s just no way creative people could get entertained.
At the same time reliance on their intent to deliver as much of an authentic experience as possible can only go so far. I suspect that upon further investigation severe limitations to such a proclaimed authenticity would surface, challenging our understanding of “authenticity”. Classic may not be an authentic experience but it meets the players’ desires. That is a game not freed from some shackles of Capitalism, nor obedient to some true Capitalism, while Retail was submissive to some false form of Capitalism. Both products are just aiming at different drives for consumption, and the final goal is to get everyone playing Retail again. Because as much as Classic is “free” for the loyal Retail player, so is Retail for the returning Classic player.
The company are chipping away on artistic integrity every month and every time they introduce convenience after legitimising inconvenience through artistic freedom. There is a great deal of tension between their words and their actions, as there is with your usual corporation. While I take into consideration that many customers could be unaware of it, that tension still leaves its mark on the game. Under these circumstances the people who create artwork such as that of the Kul Tiran landscape are even more phenomenal.
We can’t separate the game from that. For one, in an MMO and other games with a social network the people are part of the product. If a person renews their subscription because they had fun playing with others, Blizzard made money from those other people. Second, these are some of the services we pay for when games becomes services. The company try to make more money by offering the game as a temporal or immaterial good (or both), which may even be justified by the ongoing costs an MMO creates. That’s the motivator they have, and it’s not particularly well-suited to finding non-monetary disadvantages to a change of system.
I happen to agree a lot with Bellular’s evaluation of Vanilla and not just on a surface level of misguided community-building. I don’t accept any superiority of Vanilla WoW at face-value. Vanilla WoW was more of a sandbox. Quests were less separated into story that mattered and story that did not. The monetisation of Retail WoW is problematic and admiring people for gear they got in raids is probably less of an evil than admiring the display of real world wealth.
But for the last few months I didn’t feel inclined to talk much about that. Because as soon as I start saying anything positive about Vanilla WoW, I become complicit in that sort of behaviour. I promote the product and their marketing choices affect me. That is how social media work. Yet you will find such utterances on my Twitter account for instance. It is difficult and it is a struggle even if you know it’s all going to land in some metric for success and that any mention is taken as proof that these tactics work in advertising. If they got you talking they *did* work on you, and they did indeed work on me.
Then there is the question of preservation which clearly isn’t front and centre to a company tasked with creating entertainment. If it was we probably wouldn’t have seen updated graphics (which I think are a smart move) and the company would’ve been much clearer on what to expect for Classic in the future. Nonetheless there are aspects those Classic servers do preserve or re-introduce
Now I have the opportunity to re-experience the opening of the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. But how can I draw the line here? Personal benefit should not be the guideline, I can’t and I shouldn’t decide whom to exclude from this experience while I have the opportunity to experience it. It was fine to say “nobody should”, when it was out of reach for me. To say “I can not have this experience, if I want similar experiences to occur” is the more difficult decision. It’s easier to decline a meal on a full stomach.
During Gamergate people defended the use of private servers, which offered a game untainted by what they considered to be fake reviews from dishonest media. Mark Kern was and is a prominent advocate for both Gamergate and Vanilla servers, being one of the original developers of the game. The concept of SJWs as the enemy carried over from there to the Trump movement. The allegedly lying game journalists became the “dishonest media” who spurred “fake news”.
Starting in Summer 2015 and peaking in Decembre (of all months) I was caught in a heated debate on the German WoW forums. People who IMO were pretty clearly white supremacists and on occassion at that time rather well-known members of the forum community made connections between immigration and retail WoW. At that time discontent with Russian players, with whom we share battleground servers, were at an all-time peak. And they may be much whiter than a Surian but in our WoW forums they were as much the target of German rage as those refugees. I don’t feel well ascribing that to co-incidence in its entirety. The phrases “Lügenpresse” and “Gutmensch” were particularly revealing, with the latter being comparable to mentioning “sheeples”, describing well-intentioned people who’re oblivious to their state of being manipulated. There is a difference between saying, someone was a nice person, and saying: “Oh, she’s one of those NiceGuys again.” And that’s what the phrase is capitalising on. There’s also similarity to the term “Social Justice Warrior”, as calling one a warrior for justice should usually cause someone to feel awkwardly flattered. I got called such, essentially, because I thought doings quests and investing time for virtual travel should get rewarded, and that maybe only 30 people had been needed for Ragnaros back in the day. People also took offence with my opinion that Mists of Pandaria rather resembled an Asia restaurant in the Western world than actual Asian cultures, and thus still was pretty much centred around Western players, and that farmer’s markets were a common thing in Western Middle Ages.
Little evidence does still exist thanks to the poor CM members who had to clean up the mess we made. I didn’t get banned from the forums, nor did I get a personal reprimand for my behaviour, although it wasn’t strictly within the ToS. However, other people did get banned and at least some of them beyond any doubt rightfully so.
That doesn’t mean everyone playing on Classic servers or everyone liking Vanilla WoW was a white supremacist. That should go without saying, since so far (that is: without playing it) I like Vanilla WoW and I don’t consider myself a Nazi. There are friends of mine who’re tempted to tap into Classic, and for my account that’s liking Vanilla WoW. I would be stupid to be friends with Nazis. They don’t mesh awfully well with my political views, and historically aren’t known to show much tolerance towards that.
But this is part of the picture, my picture of both Vanilla WoW and nostalgia. When I read that Blizzard were happy to meet strong demands for native-language servers in Europe, that backstory is what I thought of immediately. People demanding servers in their native tongue looks very similar to people all over the news who don’t want to be part of Europe, so much that you have to start asking what part of Europe they think was left to not be part of. Yet there is good reason in asking for use of one’s native language as had been debated famously in the Renaissance.
Conclusion
In this article I outlined and collected remarks, many of which seem to address hypocrisy among WoW-Classic- and Retail-related people. I began with what I consider to be often overlooked pleasant and worthy experiences within the game as it is. Then I moved on to describe the behaviour of Classic players as I saw it unfold over the years, and I addressed the company’s complicated relationship with creativity. I highlighted an occurence that’s hopefully specific to German WoW players and the discomfort I feel with Activision-Blizzard’s handling of Classic WoW because of that.
Questioning the company is part of questioning our role in this. It might be the point at which we start questioning our own actions. Moved by these questions we might take action to build a stronger, fairer community, or prioritise investing in indie games, we might abandon gaming altogether (because there are other forms of education, art, and entertainment), or start an NGO dedicated to a more sustainable and beneficial form of gaming.
It’s not meant to be cohesive. The work to bring all these different thoughts and impressions together has yet to be done. Maybe that’s not important and what matters more is your comfort or discomfort in reading this text, or how it fits into larger considerations of the role of art or entertainment. Furthermore, this blog post can be seen as a starting point for a more unifying and at the same time more detailed discussion of the topics mentioned.
PS: This entry was in the works well before Blizzard developed issues with democracy. That outshines every one of those highlighted within the article. However, it doesn’t make the others go away.
For those of you who’ve been looking around it’ll be obvious that aside from the first blog post, little is written in English. With that change in preferred language will come a thematic change from my previous blog.
Nerdend News 
