"I trusted people who had no right to my trust; they tricked me. I had been elegantly and utterly fooled, because I was told very few (if any) actual lies. Instead, my manipulators took advantage of a core human weakness – the desire to not be alone in the world. All they ever told me was what I wanted to hear.
It is done, the world is ended."
Matt Sakey's "Dark Soul Diaries," at Tap Repeatedly. The quotation is taken from the epilogue of the series; the series in its entirety can be found here. Rather than focus on this diary in particular--though it is very good--I'd like to raise some questions about player's diaries in general. They're very popular, from Tom Francis' Galactic Civilizations Diary to the infamous Let's Play of Dwarf Fortress, Boat Murdered. But why are they popular? What is it about writing a narrative about playing a game that makes it compelling? To paraphrase (or grossly misquote) Markku Eskelinen, if I throw a ball at you, do you get an urge to tell a story about it? Or, more in the line of Mia Consalvo, is it an issue of player capital, where players show off in excruciating detail their connection to a given game, and other players respond accordingly? Or is there something else going on? What about games is suited for a let's play account--and which games are more suited than others, and why?
--Michael
