The Queue: Murphy!!!

Ah, to be a tiny corgi with a pachimari chew toy.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and just as soon as we get a coffee and a warm croissant we’ll answer.

We noticed! Kal predicted the 12th, so he was super close. Ironically, when he did, I said to myself, “wow, that seems super soon.” So, take that for what you will.

Oh! Right. That thing. What a timely reminder!

So, I am ambivalent on Chris Metzen himself. Some of the narratives of Warcraft and WoW from his tenure are interesting to me, and others are incredibly, deeply not. It’s impossible in a company like Blizzard to tease out exactly who is responsible for the writing, both in terms of overarching story beats and the details of the writing itself, like specific word choice or even sentence structure, phrasing, etc. Again, some of that writing is excellent and some is less effective. And I’m still uneasy about him in terms of the who knew what when of the ongoing set of sexual harassment lawsuits and other legal actions therein.

To me, Metzen’s virtuosity lies less in his handle on the craft of writing, and more in the fact that he is an unparalleled hypeman. I’m not sure if he’s the one who comes up with all the shouted anaphoric slogans for his keynotes, but there are very few people who could rally a crowd to shout them, all but unprompted. There have certainly been charismatic, likeable figureheads at this studio and others before and since — and I always have a ton of empathy for the nerds who started out coding, worked their way up through the company, and now they have to deliver to an already restless crowd a goddamn Diablo mobile game — but Chris is almost scary in how good he is on stage. No matter what he has to give us while he’s up there, I’m excited to see him in his element again, reveling in the energy of his people.

Unless it’s something like a metroidvania or visual novel, generally I’ll know I’ve crossed over into truly obsessed when I start making (or seeking out) Notion boards to stay organized.

Even games which otherwise seem straightforward tend to have things I need to track over time, like romances and friendships in the case of Hades, or just keeping the various weapon and armor effects straight, like Vampire Survivors. I prefer Notion over a regular spreadsheet because I can add more elements of visual organization without learning a ton of complex formulas. My Cozy Grove board (which I lifted almost in total from this person on Reddit), has an area which is just a screenshot of the wiki with the different things you need to feed the cat generator in order to get a specific type of cat. The checklist on that board is also invaluable, and it can be clunky to create something like that, especially with the tagging functions, on a normal spreadsheet.

This excludes games with narratives that I keep thinking about but haven’t played again, like SOMA or What Remains of Edith Finch, both of which are just rent-free in my head forever. But then, maybe I should.

This is so absolutely true, and it’s one of those lessons I relearn pretty frequently. Anything that has a degree of preference will be subjective, and you will disagree with people.

I have a friend who I enjoy to watch stream, because he loves playing platformers and jump puzzle games, and I completely loathe playing them (watching him yell as he falls down the entire map is okay, though). By contrast, he isn’t generally a fan of “talky” games or puzzle games, which tend to be my personal favorites. I can overlook and forgive mechanical quirkiness and crummy graphics if the story is good or compelling — and even what makes a story good or compelling is subjective. My husband hates The Office, because the humor in it is largely based on embarrassment, and it makes him feel anxious and secondhand embarrassment rather than think it’s funny (see: Scott’s Tots). He loves fantasy fiction, while I can’t resist a whodunnit or thriller. He also hates eating anything with onions in it because of the texture, while french onion soup is a constant favorite of mine.

Even things like “city or country” or “mountains or the beach” don’t have a right or wrong answer, even though people will fight over that in the comments (have fun!). But yes, I feel like keeping this in mind is always a good idea, especially when we start talking about things like different game genres.