The old way

I don't know why I don't write here anymore. For a while, this blog was quite a big thing for me as I could put all kinds of nonsense and random thoughts in here, but it would seem that I haven't had the urge to do so lately. Maybe it has something to do with not writing anymore for Playstage.

I have to admit that my lifestyle hasn't changed in the way I wanted it to change by leaving Playstage temporarily. A week without lessons has passed and the only thing I did for school was reading The Great Gatsby, instead of trying to catch up some stuff that I missed earlier this year. Perhaps Playstage wasn't as bad for me as I thought it was after all. Time consuming without a doubt, but at least I had fun chatting with the crew about games, beer and other things that most of the 'cool' people find tremendously boring. Screw them.

In one of my previous posts, I said Playstage was the main reason why I spent way too much time on the internet. Although that is true to a certain extent, the last few weeks 'without' Playstage (I don't write articles anymore and I can't visit the forums since I asked to be banned to focus on my studies) have only led to the conlusion that I spend as much time online as when I still worked for Playstage. Now I just visit the other Belgian gamesites and I post some more on their forums. But it ain't the same. The Playstage forums were fun to visit, because you knew most of the people there. After all, I had kicked their arses without mercy on our previous crew meetings and I had amazed everybody with my Donkey Konga skills and my interest in the toy crane from BM's sister. Someone (say: me!) would post something like 'Look, Nintendo announced the Nintendo DS Lite' on Playstage and inevitably, Indy would go 'ZOMFGWTFBBQ, that thing is ugly!' and so another pointless discussion started, every post in it reduceable to 'No, I think otherwise.' But they were fun because I realised it was completely ridiculous to discuss a matter like the newest redesign for a Nintendo handheld with such compassion. Or anything game related for that matter, video games just shouldn't be important in anybody's life. Yet it's still quite fun to talk about them, share experiences and defend your own view on things, even if you know the other person in the discussion isn't going to back down.

Of course, other forums also have people whose opinions about certain games are different from yours and I guess in a way it makes sense to discuss with them about it, but it's just so boring. I don't know about other gamers, but when I talk about a game to a person I don't know and that person doesn't share my opinions and isn't afraid to tell me so, I start hating them immediately. 'If you don't think like me, you have a bad taste for games', that's how I think in that kind of situation. 'It's useless to argue with you since I'm really the only one who makes sense here!' and other stuff like that. Ain't that some piece of pure egoism. I'm very complicated about matters like this. Sometimes I say stuff like 'You can't argue about tastes, it's a personal thing and nothing you say will change my opinion' and then there's times when I completely forget about that and just keep going on and on, saying the same thing over and over again. Well, forums would be quite boring if people didn't have different opinions, so I guess it's natural to start discussing about things that need not be discussed. In the end, everybody just ends up being right since objectivity doesn't exist and everything we say is just personal.

I don't know where I'm going with this post since it seems to lack a decent structure. But then again, none of my previous posts really had a decent structure to them so I guess this isn't really a problem. Or is it? Let's discuss. I will be right in the end, so please do your worst.

Yesterday evening, the movie Dogville (witch Nicole Kidman, yummeh) was on and I decided to watch it. Like everybody who has seen the movie, I was seriously WTH-ed the first ten minutes but then nothing seemed to matter anymore and I just decided to enjoy the movie, even though it looked ridiculous. And my god, did I enjoy it. It has become one of my new favourite movies, the previous one being Walk The Line. Man, I'm a huge fan of Johnny Cash since I saw that movie, but that doesn't matter right now.

I hear the train a comin´
it´s rolling round the bend
and I ain´t seen the sunshine
since I don´t know when

Ok, that was the last of it.

Now back to Dogville. I absolutely loved the movie, the characters Tom and Grace in particular. I can't say that I could identify myself with them completely, but they sure had a lot of interesting thoughts. I should probably watch the movie again to figure out what thoughts I'm talking about, so I'm not going to talk anymore about that. During the movie (or afterwards, the boundaries of time are confusing) I suddenly thought 'Why not start writing for Playstage again?'. Before I had the chance to react myself, the second voice was up and about and was screaming 'Get yourself together man! You quit Playstage to concentrate on your studies because they are way more important. You haven't changed your lifestyle, you haven't even tried to work more for school. You promised to yourself and to the others you wouldn't come back until you had figured out a way to organise your time and let me tell you one thing: you certainly haven't done so yet.'

... Well, that certainly shut the first voice down.
I guess he went to get some beers and get drunk.

I have to agree with voice two, although voice one sounds more tempting. Indy told me this evening that the old Belgian gamesite BeGN would be started up again under the name TEN and that the guy who manages things over there has asked the Playstage crew to join up with them on this new project. TEN has to be one of the most suckiest website names ever, but I have to admit I was tempted by the offer. I'm not sure I like the whole 'not just games' thing (TEN stands for The Entertainment Network, so they will probably cover movies and the like too) and things would probably be a lot more severe (and boring?) compared to Playstage. But I liked the website BeGN and back in those days, I thought about how great it must have been to actually work at a site like that. Now it seems I have that opportunity. If TEN can get their old community back in business (I guess most of them stay at Bloh.org now) I think it could become of one the better, most visited Belgian gaming websites. I like writing articles for Playstage, but at the same time I feel that only few people are ever going to read them, considering the number of replies and our statistiscs about daily visits to the site. At TEN, more people would read my work (if it ever becomes as big as it was in the BeGN days) and that's something I've always wanted.

At the moment, I'm confused about what I'm going to do. Will I decline the offer and try to focus on my studies (and maybe join the TEN crew later this year or just stick with the kick ass Playstage guys) or should I go after one of my smaller dreams and actually become a member of a big gaming site with quality articles right away? I have to sort things out over the next few days. Maybe Wednesday will bring some answers.