Choices

 Taken from The Stanley Parable http://www.galactic-cafe.com/

Along with growing my own tomato, slicing it, garnishing with sweet basil (grown on the windowsill) and adding it to a cheese sandwich, week three of my holiday has also seen me take several walks, partake in a little DIY and complete The Stanley Parable.

One of the questions I ask my game students is how they intend to persuade the player to take a predetermined path without specifically instructing them to do so? The Stanley Parable turns this concept on its head in a clever, entertaining and engaging manner.

At one stage the narrator was aghast to see that I had made a “meaningful choice” and that started me thinking. One afternoon this week I listened to a radio show regarding the migrant situation at Calais, a caller announced that “it was their choice.”

Where is the choice when ISIS is chasing you down? In terms of game balance this would be unacceptable, do you head, A: for certain death, or B a safer alternative? You wouldn’t put that in a game, there would be no balance; it would be too obvious.

Taken from The Stanley Parable http://www.galactic-cafe.com/

It was my choice to go to work, was it? Is it still a choice when the only alternative is starvation? Is a choice well taken when only half the information is available? Can you make a meaningful choice when you are only aware of one potential outcome and have not the background knowledge to accurately assess the alternative?

Indeed there is some level of excitement in the unknown; in a little risk taking and not everything can be known ahead. For example you may be in a comfortable lifestyle, perhaps with one child, you might consider yourself well informed on the country’s economic situation and when you discover that you’re pregnant, you might feel that yes this is a baby you want to keep.

How the hell were you supposed to know that there was going to be a massive global recession? Tell that to the people on Question Time.

Your entire life is the making of meaningful choices, but in a game you all start at the same place, with the same information. Some players might put more into it than you, they might read the wiki pages, might play longer, join forums, but all players begin at the same place, the same information is available even though some information needs to be hunted down and sought out.

Taken from Bioshock Infinite

Well I have been seeking out information and still remain directionless. It seems to me that I can, if I choose just get on with it and be a writer. All my research suggests that in order to do this I just have to write. All my reading implies that I don’t even have to be very good at it. I just have to do it, to be it, to believe it, to become it.

So I have a plan: To reinvent myself and make the transition from teacher to writer. I’m thinking this would be an interesting experiment. Could I change the way I think and the way I am perceived and so change the choices available to me? Wouldn’t that be a good idea for a project?

Watch this space.

An Aspiring Writer

Hard work and aspiration: modern day meaningless tag lines. Aspiration can only get you so far. I am dripping with aspiration I have it in bucket loads. I aspire to be a good teacher, to learn new things, to read lots of books, to play video games, to write, to meet people, to win literary prizes and to wear a fabulous outfit at the award ceremony.

Don’t for one moment think I just sit about aspiring all day long, no I am ….pro active in my aspiration. “Pro-active” I despise that word, I remember the first time I heard it at meeting in Staffordshire County Council. I was outraged that "active", a verb, a doing word, required a prefix to differentiate it from doing things and like; you know, really doing things.

So in what way have I been activating my aspirations? Well I have made a commitment. Again everything is beginning to sound so new speak, perhaps I have watched, read and listened to far too much politics, but hear me out please.

I have made a writing commitment and this blog is part of it. Now I am an author I will share my take on life, my thoughts, experiences and hints and tips on a weekly basis.  I could just write these in a diary, but a blog is about exposure and no one is going to read my work unless I expose it to them.

I am an active twitter user and am slowly building a small following in the twitter sphere. 

I have created a J Freese facebook page which I post to regularly.

I use Wordpress as a catalog for my short stories and poems.  Writing new stories then gives me something to read at events.  In the space of a month I have read at three events, that’s two stories Count DireLife and The Light map and one poem My Mothers Land.

On top of the requirement to provide words (what kind of a blog would it be otherwise?) I also need images in my posts to break them up and avoid the horror of a wall of text.  So I take photographs, or screen grabs sometimes edit them in photoshop and finally install them into the blog. Now I can include a photo in my twitter posts, on facebook and on Pinterest.

Get that for aspiration, I told you I have it in buckets. I said to husband the other day that I feel as though after ten years (the child is ten) we have finally come alive again, we have woken up and are doing things. The only problem is that ten years ago I was thirty four and now I’m knackered. Much as I have loved this recent burst of activity I’m simply washed out.

Next weekend I want to stay at home and go no further than the backyard. Tonight my main aspiration is to put my feet up, drink tea and watch a movie or else I fear my candle will be burnt at both ends.