Journey

It's been awhile since I last posted. The holidays took up a lot of time and sucked up most of my energy. Directly up to December 24th, my creative pool was dry as a bone. I took those days to completely relax, and with the relaxation came ideas.

I've said before that I have a particular love for video games that convey certain feelings or emotions, and I find aspects of certain games to be inspiring. Throughout the month of December and into early January, I kept myself sane by playing video games. For nostalgia factor, I played Legend of Zelda, but the new and updated 3D version. Then my husband and I played FEAR 3 together (I played Fettel). From the ashes of the holidays came the phoenix known as Boxing Day sales, which led to me buying a copy of the ICO/Shadow of the Colossus collection. I have since gone through and beaten ICO, and it was my first play through of the game.

I'd like to take an opportunity, before I continue, to make a case for video games as storytelling devices. Too often, video games are passed off as merely entertainment. I have to wonder if the people passing off these games have ever really sat down and played a truly good game, with a rich story and characters you relate to. The point of a good video game is to take you and put you directly in the story. You become the character, and their goals are yours. Instead of following along with the character's goals and aspirations, they become yours. That facet of video games has always been one of my favourite parts of playing them.

Because of this love for specific games, I have always had a desire to design and direct a game. This has been ever since I was a child. I remember drawing characters and writing back stories as early as twelve, dreaming up new worlds and levels.

This past week, I've taken a step toward designing one, myself. I drew a scene from a game that I would make, called Thread. Click the image below to see the scene, and to read about my aspirations for the game, should it ever come to fruition.


Thread by ~nekonezume on deviantART

Now that my little spiel is complete, I'm going to update you on a couple of things.

Population 1 is not cancelled! It's postponed. I ended up writing a lot more backstory than I intended, and adding more detail than I had originally even planned. This is a good thing. When Population 1 launches (I'm hoping for a February launch, but stay tuned), it will be complete.

I have been invited by the Moncton Library to give a talk on my book in March. I'll have more information on that when it arises. I'm very excited about it! Thanks to the Library for inviting me.

Next week I'm going to be my theatre troupe's production of Ken Ludwig's Three Musketeers, which is yet another reason the planning for Population 1 has been stunted. Busy busy...

I hope to talk about poetry with my next post, which hopefully won't be another two months from now!