(The Cartridge Lit blog.)
I don’t want to not learn. I make it an effort to learn all the time and to try new experiences. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go base-jumping, but it does mean that I try foods I think I hate regularly, I read a new book every few days and I play video games that I am bad at until I become not-bad. Small, incremental victories keep my brain as nimble as possible and stave ennui away. Madden is the latest attempt.
I miss two things. I miss consequence-free diets (a single carrot is not a satisfying snack and I resent the implication that it is) and I miss friends coming over and playing hours of video games.
There’s, like, ten million versions of Pokémon. It’s sold millions of copies. There are half-a-dozen movies about it, and a television show. The gear is everywhere. I played for ten hours because there had to be something there, some quality. Sometimes three billion smokers are right.
Each of the sprites in these games took up precious memory, and had to be drawn by hand, pixel by pixel, one variation for every frame of movement, so what makes your enemies unique is not graphical differentiation but context and imagination.
Between July 1 and December 31, 2015, Cartridge Lit will be accepting submissions of chapbook-length collections of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and hybrid work inspired by video games for its first contest: The Push [START] to Begin Chapbook Contest.
We think video games are literature, and so why shouldn't there be literature about video games? That's the question we're hoping to answer here. Read more.
