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silveradept[Welcome to December Days, where I natter on about things organized around a theme (sometimes very loosely), one a day, for 31 days. This year, we're taking a look back at some touchpoints along the way of my journey with computing and computing devices.]
This is a console war in full swing. I hadn't seen this kind of three-way competition in basically ever, since everything before this was between Nintendo and either Sega or Sony, but not both at once. As Sega eventually fades and bows out, Microsoft will step in with the Xbox to continue the three competitor console fight that continues to this day. And while I will only ever own one of these three consoles (a redesigned PS2, because my niche is JRPGs much of the time), I have played all three of them extensively, and all three of them at a specific genre of games - fighting games.
For a significant part of my undergraduate years, my roommate's friend Al and his friends had an official video game group. We even had shirts created. There wasn't any ambitions past getting together and playing games in our group, and while there were friendships there, I can't say that I did any sort of great job at being a great person in those gatherings. If I wanted to be more forgiving of myself, I would tell myself that it would still be more than a decade before anyone seriously suggested to me that my brain chemistry might not be fully normal, I'm still probably dealing with untreated sleep apnea (or its precursor), and that brains are still cooking and people figuring out what's important to them in their undergraduate university ages. I don't know any better at this point, because there aren't any signs that are alarming or interfering with any of my academics or other activities. It seems cold comfort even to myself, because the failings on display in those years are the kind that have strong emotion attached to them, and so I will always believe that they were worse than anyone around me might have believed.
Most of the games that got posted way those meetings were the various 2D fighters available for each of those systems. The Dreamcast got a hefty workout, and then the GameCube when it arrives in the dorm room to play the second installation of the Smash Brothers series. We'd play against each other at these games, rotating controllers around between matches as needed. Most of the people there had nicknames of one sort of another, based on their names or some other aspects of themselves.
I was Berzerker. Partially because we all had a good laugh at the song of the same name, but also because that describes my gameplay lack-of-style for these games. I didn't have the memory or the ability to get the timing windows down for the combo systems, so if I managed to string two or more hits together, it was almost always by accident. And I didn't do great at defense, either, holding the block too long or letting go too early. Many of these woes were likely related to my inability to move analog sticks in ways that the game would register and then do what I wanted.
High-level fighting game players often use a specific type of joystick called a fightstick meant to be roughly handled and have bigger buttons in a specific layout so as to make tapping the correct button a lot easier. We never had the money or desire for those in our group, so instead we would use the analog stick on the controllers to play the games with. This wouldn't be a problem, except for the part where I have trouble getting analog sticks to the correct cardinal points consistently. If you ask me to put an analog stick to down/south/270 degrees, I'll put the analog stick to where I think is down, and it will probably be about 5-15 degrees away from the correct cardinal position. On a keyboard, at least, pushing the down arrow moves the character down, exactly down. On my analog sticks, down was never actually down. And if the maneuver I want to complete requires me to start in cardinal down and swing up to cardinal right before pressing the button, how well I'm going to achieve that idea is going to depend on how tight the judging window of what qualifies as "down" or "right" is.
So if I can't get my initial attempts working, I start to flail in frustration and start just trying to tap buttons to make sure they're listening to me. Which isn't exactly a calm way of doing thing, and against people who know how to take advantage of mistakes or people who don't have the same abilities, that's going to mean losing a lot. And a little bit of frustration that the thing I'm envisioning in my head is not the thing that's happening on the screen. Which sometimes becomes a bigger frustration when those mishaps produce a combo against me that eats a lot of my character's energy bar.
None of these things would be major issues by themselves in a friendly space where someone can let go of it all and learn to enjoy losing entertainingly. That requires maturity that I don't have at this time. If I had known then about some of the ways my brain fails to work properly, then I could adjust and compensate for that or ask someone else to find a way of suggesting to me when I need to take a break or change my thinking so that I'm not feeding bad pathways. If I wasn't already unbalanced about significant parts of my identity and what pathways of nerdery and geekery I wanted to take, then I might have been able to put all of this in better perspective and lessen the negative spirals. (It's possible, because of my brainweasels, that I'm remembering these things extremely sharply and everyone else didn't think of it as being this intense or this problematic, even if they did think of it as a problem.) Since I didn't know enough about myself, because I was trying for a goal I wouldn't achieve, and because I couldn't execute the stuff in my head perfectly, or at all, it all boiled over into much greater frustration than it should have, and that's where the other meaning of Berzerker came into play. Big venting, big frustration, often mad at myself because being good at games was something that I poured a lot of identity energy into, but as soon as it was against other people, I sucked. And couldn't get any better, it seemed. And this frustration and upset showed up in just about all of the gaming sessions I was playing in those times. I expected to be better than I actually was, despite everyone else having much more practice and expertise at these kinds of games than me. And actually owning the systems to drop that practice on. Whereas I was still playing adventure games and RPGs and other kinds of games. If what was desired was how to find tactics to beat puzzle bosses, or how to combine items in unconventional ways to solve problems, or how to notice and find secrets in stages, I would have done just fine at those things. Or, say, if we were playing Smash with items on, that would work out perfectly well. But I was doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results, really. No wonder it was making me really frustrated.
And the worst part about it is that even now, with perspective and knowledge and the surety that my games playing skills will not be needed to save the world in any capacity, I still get frustrated with games when I have a string of bad luck, or when something isn't executed perfectly, or when something that should be theoretically simple turns out to be much harder, or even that I might not actually be good at a particular kind of game, even if I think I enjoy it. I get big mad over things that have zero importance, just because I've convinced myself that I should be better at this than I actually am, or I'm letting confirmation bias into my thinking by believing bad random is not actually random. My evil ex was usually pretty sharp on that point, to the point where I got extra mad when she pointed out the general meaninglessness of the whole thing and wanted to know why I was getting so frustrated over a game. Her incorrect conclusion was that I was only having fun when I was winning, which would have been equally wrong in the far past as it was in the nearer past. I can lose games and have had a great time at it. And it's only with time and reflection that I've developed various coping strategies to try and blunt the parts of my brain that are going to get flared up with games and games with other people, and to recognize the kinds of things that actually animate a lot of the frustrations. (Since I haven't developed them at this point, I'll hold off until the entry where they appear to describe them.)
When I wasn't being Berzerker all over the place, the games I got to play were good ones, even if some of the speeds that were coming up for the games and the shrinking timing windows for them started making me feel like the games were getting too fast for me to be able to keep up with them. And I never got kicked out of the group for my less than stellar behavior, so it either wasn't as bad as I believed it was, or they were willing to overlook that tantrum tendency in favor of whatever other good qualities I also have. And, thankfully, I never invested so much in the idea of being a gamer that I started trying to gatekeep others out of it or to develop attitudes of misogyny or sexism based on the misguided attitudes of a few people. Things do get better for me, but at these points in time, I'm uneqiuipped, ignorant, and prone to spilling my emotional state all over other people. I'm probably at my worst in this time period and I could use a lot of things that I'm not getting and probably shouldn't get, based on those same faults.
And then I went to grad school, where the sleep apnea symptoms worsened, but I still didn't know what to do about it, and I had many fewer opportunities to put my bad tendencies on display for others to see and comment on. Which didn't mean any of it went away, far from it, but at that point, at least, I wasn't being myself in public, not until I had more time and wisdom to try and apply to myself so I could try and head it all off before it got too terrible.
- CPU: MIPS III R5900-based "Emotion Engine", clocked at 294.912 MHz
- Memory: 32 MB PC800 32-bit dual-channel (2x 16-bit) RDRAM (Direct Rambus DRAM)
- Graphics: Parallel rendering processor with embedded DRAM "Graphics Synthesizer" (GS) clocked at 147.456 MHz, max resolution 1920x1080
- Sound: SPU1+SPU2 (SPU1 is actually the CPU clocked at 8 MHz and SPU2 is PS1 SPU), Sound Memory: 2 MB, Sampling Frequency: 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz (selectable), Supports MIDI Instruments, Output: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround sound, DTS (Full motion video only), later games achieved matrix encoded 5.1 surround during gameplay through Dolby Pro Logic II
- Inputs/Peripherals: Gamepads (most famously the DualShock 2), with four shoulder buttons (L1 L2 R1 R2), four face buttons (Square Circle Triangle X), two analog sticks that can be pressed as buttons, a D-pad, and Select and Start Buttons, DVD Player remote control, GunCon light guns, EyeToy camera
- Storage: 8 MB removable Memory Card, DVD-ROM Optical Media Drive
- CPU: Hitachi SH-4 32-bit RISC @ 200 MHz
- Memory: 16 MB RAM, 8 MB video RAM, 2 MB audio RAM
- Graphics: NEC PowerVR2 @ 100 MHz
- Sound: Yamaha AICA with 32-bit ARM7 RISC CPU core @ 67 MHz, 64 channels
- Inputs/Peripherals: Gamepad with two triggers, L and R, four face buttons, one analog stick, one D-pad, and two dock spaces for accessories including a mouse, rumble connectors, and other accessories including a fishing rod controller, Dreameye Camera, connects to SNK Neo-Geo Pocket with cable
- Storage: 128 KB Visual Memory Unit, a memory card that also doubled as a handheld game unit or additional interface for arcade machines, GD-ROM Optical Media Drive
- CPU: IBM "Gekko" PowerPC @ 485 MHz
- Memory: 24 MB main system RAM, 3MB video RAM, 16 MB I/O buffer RAM
- Graphics: ArtX-designed ATI "Flipper" ASIC @ 162 MHz, 640x480 max resolution
- Sound: custom 81 MHz Macronix 16-bit DSP @ 48 KHz sampling
- Inputs/Peripherals: Gamepad with two trigger buttons (L and R), a Z button above the R trigger, four face buttons (A B X Y), two analog sticks (one normal, one C-Stick nominally for camera control), a D-Pad, select and Start Buttons,
- Storage: 2 MB Memory Cards, 8 cm diameter GameCube Game Disc
This is a console war in full swing. I hadn't seen this kind of three-way competition in basically ever, since everything before this was between Nintendo and either Sega or Sony, but not both at once. As Sega eventually fades and bows out, Microsoft will step in with the Xbox to continue the three competitor console fight that continues to this day. And while I will only ever own one of these three consoles (a redesigned PS2, because my niche is JRPGs much of the time), I have played all three of them extensively, and all three of them at a specific genre of games - fighting games.
For a significant part of my undergraduate years, my roommate's friend Al and his friends had an official video game group. We even had shirts created. There wasn't any ambitions past getting together and playing games in our group, and while there were friendships there, I can't say that I did any sort of great job at being a great person in those gatherings. If I wanted to be more forgiving of myself, I would tell myself that it would still be more than a decade before anyone seriously suggested to me that my brain chemistry might not be fully normal, I'm still probably dealing with untreated sleep apnea (or its precursor), and that brains are still cooking and people figuring out what's important to them in their undergraduate university ages. I don't know any better at this point, because there aren't any signs that are alarming or interfering with any of my academics or other activities. It seems cold comfort even to myself, because the failings on display in those years are the kind that have strong emotion attached to them, and so I will always believe that they were worse than anyone around me might have believed.
Most of the games that got posted way those meetings were the various 2D fighters available for each of those systems. The Dreamcast got a hefty workout, and then the GameCube when it arrives in the dorm room to play the second installation of the Smash Brothers series. We'd play against each other at these games, rotating controllers around between matches as needed. Most of the people there had nicknames of one sort of another, based on their names or some other aspects of themselves.
I was Berzerker. Partially because we all had a good laugh at the song of the same name, but also because that describes my gameplay lack-of-style for these games. I didn't have the memory or the ability to get the timing windows down for the combo systems, so if I managed to string two or more hits together, it was almost always by accident. And I didn't do great at defense, either, holding the block too long or letting go too early. Many of these woes were likely related to my inability to move analog sticks in ways that the game would register and then do what I wanted.
High-level fighting game players often use a specific type of joystick called a fightstick meant to be roughly handled and have bigger buttons in a specific layout so as to make tapping the correct button a lot easier. We never had the money or desire for those in our group, so instead we would use the analog stick on the controllers to play the games with. This wouldn't be a problem, except for the part where I have trouble getting analog sticks to the correct cardinal points consistently. If you ask me to put an analog stick to down/south/270 degrees, I'll put the analog stick to where I think is down, and it will probably be about 5-15 degrees away from the correct cardinal position. On a keyboard, at least, pushing the down arrow moves the character down, exactly down. On my analog sticks, down was never actually down. And if the maneuver I want to complete requires me to start in cardinal down and swing up to cardinal right before pressing the button, how well I'm going to achieve that idea is going to depend on how tight the judging window of what qualifies as "down" or "right" is.
So if I can't get my initial attempts working, I start to flail in frustration and start just trying to tap buttons to make sure they're listening to me. Which isn't exactly a calm way of doing thing, and against people who know how to take advantage of mistakes or people who don't have the same abilities, that's going to mean losing a lot. And a little bit of frustration that the thing I'm envisioning in my head is not the thing that's happening on the screen. Which sometimes becomes a bigger frustration when those mishaps produce a combo against me that eats a lot of my character's energy bar.
None of these things would be major issues by themselves in a friendly space where someone can let go of it all and learn to enjoy losing entertainingly. That requires maturity that I don't have at this time. If I had known then about some of the ways my brain fails to work properly, then I could adjust and compensate for that or ask someone else to find a way of suggesting to me when I need to take a break or change my thinking so that I'm not feeding bad pathways. If I wasn't already unbalanced about significant parts of my identity and what pathways of nerdery and geekery I wanted to take, then I might have been able to put all of this in better perspective and lessen the negative spirals. (It's possible, because of my brainweasels, that I'm remembering these things extremely sharply and everyone else didn't think of it as being this intense or this problematic, even if they did think of it as a problem.) Since I didn't know enough about myself, because I was trying for a goal I wouldn't achieve, and because I couldn't execute the stuff in my head perfectly, or at all, it all boiled over into much greater frustration than it should have, and that's where the other meaning of Berzerker came into play. Big venting, big frustration, often mad at myself because being good at games was something that I poured a lot of identity energy into, but as soon as it was against other people, I sucked. And couldn't get any better, it seemed. And this frustration and upset showed up in just about all of the gaming sessions I was playing in those times. I expected to be better than I actually was, despite everyone else having much more practice and expertise at these kinds of games than me. And actually owning the systems to drop that practice on. Whereas I was still playing adventure games and RPGs and other kinds of games. If what was desired was how to find tactics to beat puzzle bosses, or how to combine items in unconventional ways to solve problems, or how to notice and find secrets in stages, I would have done just fine at those things. Or, say, if we were playing Smash with items on, that would work out perfectly well. But I was doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results, really. No wonder it was making me really frustrated.
And the worst part about it is that even now, with perspective and knowledge and the surety that my games playing skills will not be needed to save the world in any capacity, I still get frustrated with games when I have a string of bad luck, or when something isn't executed perfectly, or when something that should be theoretically simple turns out to be much harder, or even that I might not actually be good at a particular kind of game, even if I think I enjoy it. I get big mad over things that have zero importance, just because I've convinced myself that I should be better at this than I actually am, or I'm letting confirmation bias into my thinking by believing bad random is not actually random. My evil ex was usually pretty sharp on that point, to the point where I got extra mad when she pointed out the general meaninglessness of the whole thing and wanted to know why I was getting so frustrated over a game. Her incorrect conclusion was that I was only having fun when I was winning, which would have been equally wrong in the far past as it was in the nearer past. I can lose games and have had a great time at it. And it's only with time and reflection that I've developed various coping strategies to try and blunt the parts of my brain that are going to get flared up with games and games with other people, and to recognize the kinds of things that actually animate a lot of the frustrations. (Since I haven't developed them at this point, I'll hold off until the entry where they appear to describe them.)
When I wasn't being Berzerker all over the place, the games I got to play were good ones, even if some of the speeds that were coming up for the games and the shrinking timing windows for them started making me feel like the games were getting too fast for me to be able to keep up with them. And I never got kicked out of the group for my less than stellar behavior, so it either wasn't as bad as I believed it was, or they were willing to overlook that tantrum tendency in favor of whatever other good qualities I also have. And, thankfully, I never invested so much in the idea of being a gamer that I started trying to gatekeep others out of it or to develop attitudes of misogyny or sexism based on the misguided attitudes of a few people. Things do get better for me, but at these points in time, I'm uneqiuipped, ignorant, and prone to spilling my emotional state all over other people. I'm probably at my worst in this time period and I could use a lot of things that I'm not getting and probably shouldn't get, based on those same faults.
And then I went to grad school, where the sleep apnea symptoms worsened, but I still didn't know what to do about it, and I had many fewer opportunities to put my bad tendencies on display for others to see and comment on. Which didn't mean any of it went away, far from it, but at that point, at least, I wasn't being myself in public, not until I had more time and wisdom to try and apply to myself so I could try and head it all off before it got too terrible.
