My most Luddite opinion is that you must pick one

a) the ability to connect with arbitrary numbers of people simultaneously around the world

b) rich, multi-modal, interaction that mutually exposes vulnerability among participants

if you want a) and b) simultaneously you get the basis for a science fiction horror scenario and that's a Bad Thing unless you're a Gendo Ikari type
"individuals might experience episodic segments of the lives of other willing participants (locally or remote) to, hopefully, encourage and inspire improved understanding and tolerance among all members of the human family" uh nope sorry
this goes to my periodic complaint about global villages vs. global cities. cities are anonymous places full of wary people that, after certain conditions are met, can become lifelong friends....

https://t.co/hezrdD3GGL
villages are places ruled by grandmas who, whatever the ethnicity or nationality, have intelligence networks that rival the KGB
making a city bigger doesn't make it inherently worse. making a village bigger ALWAYS does
McLuhan meant "global village" to be a caution but no one listened because it sounded like a good buzzword
https://t.co/vh6cl61Ml7

"When people get close together, they get more and more savage and impatient with each other. [Man’s] tolerance is tested in those narrow circumstances very much. "
"We now have the means to keep everybody under surveillance. No matter what part of the world they are in, we can put them under surveillance. This has become one of the main occupations of mankind, just watching other people and keeping a record of their goings on"
"Ordinary people find the need for violence as they lose their identities. It is only the threat to people’s identity that makes them violent."
these are all McLuhan quotes from a 1977 interview where he talks about the global village metaphor and other topics

More from Game

Considering this year I don't have much in the way of game translation to discuss, publicly, I'd say this was a productive year for writing threads on largely neglected and forgotten Japanese games. So if you're looking to learn about some, here's what I wrote about in 2020!


2020 was another year where I talked a *lot* of shop about dating sim history. Much of it was actual dating sims, like in some threads below, but sometimes I went on adjacent tangents, like for the cool Kojipro-developed Tokimeki Memorial adventure games:


I also went down a whole new rabbit hole for Fuuraiki, an open-ended PS1/PS2 adventure game with a cult following about traveling around the island of Hokkaido that's set to real world photography. It's a unique tangent in galge well worth exploring:


I also took a quick jaunt into Michinoku Hitou Koi Monogatari, a spiritual predecessor to Fuuraiki that's about traveling around Tohoku against a backdrop of mahjong matches. It's a rough draft that would get much more refined later, but still worthwhile:


In terms of actual dating sims that I covered, the focus was mainly post-Amagami games released by Kadokawa such as Photo Kano. While I think these games have MANY flaws, they do offer key insight into the state of the genre during its decade-long decline:

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