{"id":2267,"date":"2013-02-19T10:01:01","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T10:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2013\/02\/19\/recess-3-rituals-habits\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T10:29:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T08:29:45","slug":"recess-3-rituals-habits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2013\/02\/19\/recess-3-rituals-habits\/","title":{"rendered":"Recess! 3 \u2013 Rituals & Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recess! is a correspondence series with personal ruminations on games.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Dear Alper and Niels,<\/span><\/p>\n

Where to begin? I guess by thanking Alper for kicking this thing off. And to respond to his comments on Proteus<\/a>\u2014yes, Alper, you\u2019re being a stick in the mud. Proteus isn\u2019t a replacement for a walk in the woods, and I\u2019m pretty sure it wasn\u2019t intended as such. The thing that makes it special for me is the responsive audio, and how navigating the space is also an act of tweaking and tuning the soundscape. The fact that it was used in a live musical performance<\/a> is no surprise to me, in this regard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Niels, your exploration of Ni No Kuni\u2019s world<\/a> sounds like a lot of work. And I wonder, really, why not just sit back and watch a Ghibli film, if you\u2019re that much of a fan. What could a game possibly add? I myself prefer Ghibli-esque exploratory worlds such as Journey. I guess what I\u2019m saying is: leave games to the game makers and films to the film makers. I\u2019m a purist that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

What to play? I\u2019ve had the pleasure of playing quite a bit of LUFTRAUSERS<\/a> lately, and it\u2019s shaping up to be a lot of fun. (I guess we\u2019ll need to wait a bit longer for it, now that Vlambeer seems to be finishing Ridiculous Fishing first<\/a>.) I\u2019ve stopped playing it during work breaks though, I don\u2019t unwind, I get wound up. Each time I\u2019m close to killing my first blimp but then crash and burn I nearly rage-quit the game.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve finished VESPER.5<\/a> last week. It took me well over 100 days to do so. Did it turn into a ritual, as Michael Brough intended? I wouldn\u2019t go so far. I would say it got to being a habit. Which, to be honest, is fine. Perhaps becoming a habit is more than enough to aspire to for games. I did however set a recurring to-do in my Things<\/a> to remind myself to take my daily step. Is that cheating? Or is it a wonderful thing, that a game finds it way into my daily to-do list?<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably not what Alper is looking for. This game won\u2019t help you unwind, you can only do one thing a day. It\u2019s very zen in that regard. You launch the game, watch all your actions up to that point, ponder the next step (trading off between admiring scenery or marching on towards the exit), take your step, and then perhaps spend a few moments considering what you might do the next day. Hit escape, and get back to what you were doing.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s also not the fairytale world Niels would like to get lost in. It\u2019s very sparse. There\u2019s a bit of music, low res pixel graphics, hardly any animation. There are still images you \u201cunlock\u201d as you visit certain parts of the game\u2019s world, suggesting a kind of alien landscape. It\u2019s evocative, but in a very different way from Ghibli\u2019s lush works. Perhaps a snow globe is a nice analogy. A thing that sits on your desk or in your windowsill, that you absentmindedly play with occasionally, while taking a break from whatever you are doing. Perhaps it reminds you of a place or time you hold dearly. But it\u2019s not the place itself. It\u2019s a proxy or a totem or whatever the right word is.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m well over my intended 250 words. Don\u2019t read on if you\u2019re playing VESPER.5 and hate spoilers.<\/strong> I\u2019ll just leave you here and hand over to Alper again. But if you don\u2019t care, here we go:<\/span><\/p>\n

The one thing that disappointed me, in a rather unexpected way, is that the game ends abruptly when you get to the end. I thought I\u2019d be rewarded with some nice surprise but I wasn\u2019t. I also thought I\u2019d perhaps done well because I took a lot of detours along the way. But the game did not acknowledge this in any way. What I was left with, was that it was done. I was done. And thinking about it now, that\u2019s a shame. It\u2019s crazy, because the promise of finishing this thing after 100 steps, one step a day, is what got me started, and what propelled be throughout. But now that I\u2019ve gotten into the habit, I don\u2019t think I need that goal anymore. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d like a VESPER.5 that just stays with me, like that snow globe. That I can just go through endlessly. A habit, a good one at least, is something that should continue on indefinitely after all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kars<\/span><\/p>\n

(Read Niels\u2019 contribution<\/a>, and Alper\u2019s post<\/a> before that.)<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recess! is a correspondence series with personal ruminations on games. Dear Alper and Niels, Where to begin? I guess by thanking Alper for kicking this thing off. And to respond to his comments on Proteus\u2014yes, Alper, you\u2019re being a stick in the mud. Proteus isn\u2019t a replacement for a walk in the woods, and I\u2019m … Continue reading Recess! 3 \u2013 Rituals & Habits<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[983],"tags":[259,980,978,975,168,976,979,981,977],"class_list":["post-2267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tumblr","tag-games","tag-habits","tag-luftrausers","tag-ni-no-kuni","tag-play","tag-proteus","tag-recess","tag-rituals","tag-vesper-5"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4633,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2267\/revisions\/4633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}