I'm working on a game& please be patient, those who want more of the Orpheus story

7/19/11

       I'm trying to invent a video game that is, at best, a very exciting and ambitious project and, at worst, gave my therapist a feeling of nausea when I was explaining it to her. It's called Pacifism, it's set in a militarized fantasy world with swords and "monsters" and wizards and so on, and although it's easiest to solve problems violently in the game, it's not always as good an idea as negotiating, haggling, begging, running, etc, and you really get rewarded with both experience points and gifts and so on if you can put your character's life on the line to work things out in a win-win way, though at the lower levels of character ability the chance of succeeding in this is slim. I've made kind of a list of skills a negotiator character has (which are more like just another part of warfare and not pacifism) and also a set of skills for the peacelovers which you learn by biting the bullet and trying them out. I'm trying to make it just as good both as a fighting game and as a non-fighting game and I think it's successful, though I really need to learn what format a video game company might want it's unsolicited scripts to be written in before they're sent in for the reading.Advice, anyone?
      One more thing, Readers. If you've been in confrontations you were able to survive non-violently and you feel like it's not such a sensitive subject for you that you would mind me discussing it on this blog or incorporating its lessons in my game, then please write me a comment here or email to congertimothy@yahoo.com. Likewise if there's anything, good or evil or whatever, you wish you could see in a video game, but it hasn't happened yet, or at least you haven't seen it yet, and you don't feel like writing up in a video game script of your own. As for fiction ideas you'll never write yourself, you should write them! But I'm really in need of brainstorming and if someone can actually be a consultant for me we can talk about what's a fair and legal way of divying up the loot if this makes money. But I can't guarantee I'll work with you closely unless we can play well together on a brainstorming level. I think I can see this through without any help at all, except just evaluating for myself people's reactions to these ideas I'm throwing out there.
      Anyone who wants to use ideas or text I've posted here, consider it like anything else that you've seen published somewhere. Use it, give me credit for what you used, and we're good.
                     Signing off for today, Tim Conger

On Work

       I used to hate work, but I liked to be helpful and to pitch in when everyone was doing something for the sake of the party atmosphere that sometimes happens ( not often enough). I also had hobbies that would absorb me for days if my stepmom didn't scream at me to go get a job. This last bit happened when I was only fourteen and it's a little cheap of me to tell the world now, because she's probably sorry she did that. I guess on the good side is it wasn't hard for my parents to get me to care about not relying on them too much for money, even though I've always relied on them for money anyway. My peer group kind of kept me honest in that way. You know, I really think if a check comes for me in the mail or is given to me or deposited in my account and it's addressed to me, it's good money. It's important to tell myself that because I receive SSI (for the international crowd: SSI is a kind of government money that is given to people with disabilities, including but not limited to chemical imbalances or emotional illnesses that don't require medication) and eveyone in liberal old Santa Cruz is so fond of telling me it's not my money and that I'm "lucky" and I just tell them it's not that hard to get put on medications.

    But I still haven't said anything about work. I always had enough empathy and restlessness to do volunteer jobs after I couldn't do paid work anymore. I have done that pretty damn consistently for the last twenty years and I'm kind of proud of that. Now I do paid work and I really like it and I never would have been able to take the pressure before, but I do all right with it now. I really like to work now and I owe it all to SSI. Thank you, Kind Strangers of the World! You kept me alive in the belly of the Beast! But that's enough for now. Really, if a society can't keep its weaker members of alive why do we even belong to one?

    Tim Conger