Game Taste List
I got to admit, I have an immediate aversion to the phrases “content creation” and “creating engagement.” It is why I am terrible at leveraging social media for my own ends, despite spending significant amounts of my career working in digital marketing. It sours me almost immediately.
My least favorite has to be the “for every like I will give you a nugget of bullshit about something” mode of posting. It smells too much like the behavior of the orange menace that haunts the world for my taste. This weird combination of insecurity and ego wrapped in the flavorless skin of content creation.
And yet, I saw someone use this one and I got intrigued. I was particularly caught up by the number of old ass games people posted in their socials in response to this.
Caught up by the narrative that I was seeing form. By the exploration of the idea of taste, be it games or music or whatever. I got an itch in my brain because of this bullshit.
Personally, I have this theory that the things we liked or enjoyed in our past leave a mark that influence the things we like or enjoy now. The past isn’t prologue, but it is that loud relative at the dinner table you can’t really ignore. That friend who texts you stuff all day that you should ignore until later, but they rarely send dumb shit.
This inevitably got me thinking of my own notion of game taste and my own past in gaming. My tastes have certainly evolved and been honed with time and experience. Happens to everyone about everything.
But what are those games that left a mark? That take up the role of the mirror you hold the new things up to in comparison?
I was too far down the rabbit hole to ignore this brain worm. I knew I wanted to write about what games make up my taste. What games influenced me in such a way they are omnipresent when I see other games.
So I made a list, as one does. Sort of.
I actually started with creating some guide rails. The influence had to stand up to scrutiny and had to be specific. There had to be enough meat on the bones to comment on. I had to be able to draw a line from the game in question to choices I make or conditions I react to, either good or bad.
Even then, this list is fucking long.
- TMNT and Other Strangeness
- AD&D 2nd Edition Players Handbook
- Battletech 2nd Edition
- Dragon Magazine
- Birthright (kind of a cheat)
- Ravenloft (another kind of a cheat)
- Baldur's Gate 2 (yes, a video game from the 90's)
- Werewolf the Apocalypse
- Inquisitor the Dark Age (another kind of a cheat)
- Sorcerer
- Skyrim (another video game)
- The Riddle of Steel (sort of)
- My Life With Master
- Analise
- The Burning Wheel
- Torchbearer
It is a long list. Probably too long. And yet, when I think of games that I measure other games against, these are always creeping around the corner.
Also, lists are boring. So fucking boring. They are the least of the social media dopamine hits. The bottom of the barrel.
That is why I am looking at this as a table of contents. There are at least 10 articles I could write on these various games. Which, of course, now I am going to do.
It wasn’t in the plan, but plans change, so here we are. Interspersed with articles about the Sanctum of the Serpent Vault will be self indulgent articles on why these games make up my gaming tastes.
Self importances is a very human trait after all.
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