#laura michet

[forestambassador]

Swan Hill is a game about brothers by Laura Michet.

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Why Try It: An evocative, atmospheric fantasy story about family, distance, sacrifice and class.

Mood: Introspective

Author’s Notes: “Swan Hill is an interactive story about brothers who have grown apart. It has multiple endings.”

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[jooliefiveash]

So my friend with amazing writing talents got me to do some story art for her latest project which you should all read 'cause it's set in space and has awesome alien interactions and feelings of being lost and not sure who you are anymore.  IT'S GREAT. READ THAT SHIT.

[blorpy]

"I severely dehydrated myself while trying to live like a character from a book."

In college Laura Michet, of Quora, did something a little weird.

See, I once wrote a "gonzo journalism" or "immersion journalism' (the term the professor used) piece for a Creative Nonfiction writing class while in college. For my project, I tried to live like a character from Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece of post-apocalyptic-fiction, The Road, for three days. This meant:

Wearing raggedy, dirty clothing, and not changing my clothing or taking a shower. To get the clothing right, I had to take it outside and stomp on it in a dirty puddle.

Carrying everything with me that I would need for the entire time, including food, tools, things I needed for class, etc. I carried three days' worth of canned food in my backpack for this project.

Never going out after dark (to avoid cannibals, of course). Whatever building I was in when the sun set, I would have to stay there

Carrying a weapon with me at all times. I went down to the corner hardware store and bought a hammer for this purpose.

Not interacting with strangers. All strangers could be cannibals.

Not using chairs or other furniture since it all would have been chopped up for firewood during the apocalypse (as it is in The Road)

Not turning on the lights or using computers or any other electrical devices, including heating

Making my own drinkable water by boiling snow

Oh, yes, did I mention this was in the middle of a raw New Hampshire winter? So I devised this set of rules for myself, bought a journal to take notes in, bought all my tools and supplies, and started the experiment. The first morning of the experiment, I woke up on the floor in my freezing cold dorm room. I didn't have a sleeping bag, so I'd been lying on a blanket and covering myself with another blanket. I stumbled to the window to get some of that grey New Hampshire December-dawn light, pulled out my utility knife, and opened a can of baked beans. Apparently uncooked baked beans are the MOST DISGUSTING thing in the world. I hadn't exactly known this, since every time I'd eaten baked beans before, I'd been dumping them into soups or cooking them immediately after opening the can. Not now! I had to shovel greasy, lardy, fat-and-salt-coated beans into my mouth with one of the least-sharp implements on my utility knife, which was pretty hard. It was a terrible start to the day. Later I tried to go outside and start a fire to boil some snow to get drinking water, but was informed by an anxious security guard that I couldn't light a fire there. Or anywhere on my college campus, actually. So I checked my food stores: I had lots of canned fruit in juice. I figured I'd live off that stuff instead. I went to class, hammer in hand, and sat on the floor for the whole thing, since in The Road every piece of furniture anyone encounters is always immediately chopped up for firewood or something. I took notes in a notebook by hand-- something I hadn't done in almost two and a half years-- and had to sharpen my pencil with my utility knife. Luckily, my professors all thought this was hilarious. Later that day I had a can of mixed fruits for lunch. There was a lot of liquid in the can, but it was very syrupy and sugary, and not particularly refreshing or hydrating. I began to notice that I was feeling exhausted and headachey. I know this feeling well: I knew I was getting pretty uncomfortably dehydrated. However, I still couldn't figure out where on campus I was allowed to light a fire. I was too busy with classes for the rest of that day to figure it out. I opened another can of fruits and just drank the juice out, but it didn't help. That night I went home early and tried to get some sleep. The next day I was in even worse shape. Some parts of my plan-- like carrying the hammer everywhere, getting home before dark, not talking to strangers, etc-- were pretty easy. Other parts, like sitting on the floor for class, were not comfortable, but were pretty simply to do. I was getting itchy in my dirty clothes and from not having taken a shower. The worst part was the dehydration, though, and I knew it was going to be a problem. I'd started off on the wrong foot by eating those goddamn baked beans-- there was so much salt in that can that it had put me into dehydration much sooner than I normally would have with the fruit juice to drink. That day was kind of a mess. I began to feel a little crazy and had a hard time concentrating. In fact, I screwed up and lost track of time while studying in the stacks in the library and didn't get home before the sun set. Now I was fucked. By the rules of my experiment, I had to stay in the library all night long. It wouldn't be hard, of course-- anyone can hide out in the library all night if they know the place well enough to avoid the janitors-- but I was beginning to completely come apart at the seams with dehydration. My notes about this time are all about how uncomfortable and unhappy I am. Finally, around 3 AM, I gave up. I knew I was in a lot of trouble medically if I didn't break the rules of the experiment and drink water, so I wrote "FUCK IT" really big in my notes and went downstairs and drank out of the water fountain for about 5 straight minutes. It helped to clear my head. The rest of the experiment went easier after I started actually consuming liquid. When I finally wrote the paper about my experiment, I wrote it as an account of how hard and ridiculous it would be to live in a post-apocalyptic environment, and how hard I'd failed at actually doing what I set out to do. My professor found it hilarious. She said it that it was pretty unusual I'd been able to tell a good story about failing at "immersion journalism." I wish I still had the time and resources to do crazy stunts like this. College certainly gives you a wonderful chance to do truly weird things with the establishment's blessing, and it's a shame I didn't take advantage of this more often.

[gamesjournalism-blog-blog]

Still, industry-shaking trends aren’t what everyone sees when they play games. Sometimes they play what they like, and they stick with that, and when people stop caring or talking about the games they adored, they have to move on, play catch-up. Maybe go back and play the games that really mattered. This kind of industry whiplash – this being-left-behindness – is simply part of what happens to us as consumers of a changing medium. Is it important that everyone has a grand birds-eye-view of games, that they see games from space the way we see a coastline or a continent? I’m sure it’s not. Not for regular consumers, anyway. For critics and journalists, for developers, yes. But not for the kid I was 12 years ago, and not for the guy living down the hall from me. I can hear him playing Army of Two through his door. It sounds like he and his friend really love it.

Laura Michet, Resolution Magazine