Gaming Memories Helping to Heal Katrina Wounds 152
waterlogged writes "Lara Crigger writes a compelling account of the effects of hurricane Katrina on a person's sense of videogames in The Escapist. From the article: 'Hurricanes destroy more than just property; they destroy the sense of property, as well. They smash that universal belief that objects intrinsically carry some emotional gravity or weight. Acts of destruction remind us that physical substances are only equal to the exact sum of their parts: Plastic and cotton, metal or wood. What's left over is a painful buoyancy, an unbearable absence of feeling; you mourn not just your lost PS2 games or your Xbox controllers but also the fact that these once precious things have been proven completely meaningless. Even if they do remain intact after the storm (like the Samus poster), the only entity that really survives is you.'"
Being illiterate is fun (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Being illiterate is fun (Score:1)
Sucked? You got that right. (Score:1)
Re:Being illiterate is fun (Score:2)
Yup..it sucked...and seems weird, here we are almost a year later, and still so far away from having a *normal* life again.
I was lucky...I was renting the top floor of a house at the edge of Lakeview...got 7ft. of water, but, I only lost a car and motorcycle. My stuff was spared the flood and wind damage, and somehow, I didn't get looted. I got everything moved out safely, but, have been living in fri
Awakening (Score:3, Insightful)
Some damn guru tried to tell me that once (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awakening (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no self. (Score:2)
Re:Awakening (Score:1)
That's a pretty ballsy thing to come out and post directly, even if it's true. Problem is, there are a million ways to interpret that statement and some of those interpretations are pretty fucked up/nonsensical. I like this subject though, so here's one interpretation that I think makes sense:
You do exist, of course. What doesn't exist is the idea of you. To put it another way, your identity doesn't exist. This identity begins when you're born and your
XBox? (Score:5, Funny)
If they had any of the original controllers they could have climbed on them and floated to safety.
Re:XBox? (Score:2)
Good joke though.
Katrina's influence on gaming (Score:5, Interesting)
Deep. It makes me think that the lawless, gangbanging aftermath of Katrina in New orleans would make a compelling Grand Theft Auto scenario.
Re:Katrina's influence on gaming (Score:2)
OMG (Score:1, Funny)
Re:OMG (Score:2)
Re:OMG (Score:2)
Re:OMG (Score:2)
I agree 100% (Score:1)
And that is why I play NetHack [nethack.org].
Imagine that.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Imagine that.... (Score:1)
Re:Imagine that.... (Score:1)
Re:Imagine that.... (Score:1)
Re:Imagine that.... (Score:1)
Re:Imagine that.... (Score:2)
Exactly!!! I've been reading articles about the scads of people that have moved from the public housing, a virtual dead end for life in pre-K NOLA...they are seeing what real education is, and what a life apart from thugs and dope dealers is like.
For the life of me...I cannot fathom why some are making such noise to rebuild those blights on the city...why would they want the projects ba
Old words but still very true (Score:1)
Re:Imagine that.... (Score:3)
Dugald Christie died on a years-long mission of conscience drove him for years
He bicycled to work. He lived in a rented basement suite. He was a transplanted Scot who eschewed scotch but drank hot water with cream and sugar. A devout Anglican, he kept his offices in a church, arrived for work at daybreak and left, usually, 12 to 14 hours later. He could have made lots of money in his lifetime. He chose instead to make a difference.
Dugald Christie was a
Wake up, Neo (Score:1)
Relevant Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Where have I heard that before? (Score:3, Insightful)
--Janis Joplin
Re: the correct citation (Score:4, Informative)
Re: the correct citation (Score:2)
This idea goes at least as far back as the Greek stoic philosophers, and probably further. It didn't make it's debut in Fight Club, and no, the hippies didn't invent it in the 60's either.
Cheers,
IT
On Freedom (Score:1)
We're best friends as friends should be!"
- Richard M. Stallman
Re:Relevant Quote (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Relevant Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Relevant Quote (Score:1)
Yup, anyone who's played Eve Online and lost a full set of +3/4 implants knows this is true...
Games are merely copies of bits. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why if a hurricane comes and crushes my console and sweeps away my games, I've lost nothing. The atoms don't matter -- I can buy another plastic console, and buy another piece of plastic and aluminum with some bits on it. I've lost nothing. The long numbers (a DVD with a game on it is just a multibillion-digit-long number) that, when read into a properly-configured piece of plastic and ceramic (say, an XBox or PS2), come to life as video games are of no consequence because they're easily replaced.
But if a hurricane sweeps away my only copies (and my not-remote-enough backups) of the somewhat shorter numbers (million-digit-long strings of bits) that represent my digital photo archive, and then we can talk about pain.
All numbers are unequal. But some are more unequal than others.
Re:Games are merely copies of bits. (Score:1)
Things like Working Designs closing up shop is another issue. They were also in the business of making their games rare.
Re:Games are merely copies of bits. (Score:2)
Isn't it strange that pirating a song costs the record industry thousands of dollars in lost sales, yet a file sitting on your hard drive cannot be insured for a single pe
Those aren't wounds (Score:2, Insightful)
Katrina destroyed PS2 and Xbox consoles (Score:5, Funny)
It's because George Bush doesn't care about black game consoles.
Re:Katrina destroyed PS2 and Xbox consoles (Score:2)
wow (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole article is like that!!!
wow. seriously someone should tell this chick that not everything is an emotional rollercoaster. I get it, hes stoic marble man and your the sensitive girl that brings out his soft side, while probing his mysterious ways. just wow. This puts some of those homoerotic slashdot trolls to shame.
Re:wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Seriously though, I think the poster was just a focus for all the emotion the guy was feeling - the writer was expecting him to be as excited about the poster as he had been when he was a pimply teenager and first bought it, but the guy himself saw the poster and realised how much they had lost, both prop
Re:wow (Score:4, Funny)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just one more person who tried to convey what it was like, and ultimat
Re:wow (Score:1)
(yes, I encounter too many people who go on and fucking on about some trivial event)
Aaand the Mr Insensitive prize goes to... (Score:2)
Aaand we have a winner. The Mr Insensitive prize goes to noidentity (188756).
Now on a more serious note... Dude, do you even have a fucking clue what you're talking about or asking for there? Some
just games? (Score:1)
Re:just games? (Score:2)
It would be signifigant to golf to Golfers.
Since this is slashdot, then the games angle is probably more on target.
And having everything gone is a lot different then the inconvience of needing a battery.
Re:just games? (Score:1)
it is only significant to owners of possessions.
anyone else would be a subscriber to philsophies of certain buddhist or taoist sects and probably wouldn't have possessions to begin with. Besides, you can buy a new XBox, it is a lot more difficult (and expensive) to duplicate the physical terrain of a destroyed golf course.
And having everything gone is a lot different then the inconvience of needing a battery.
I suppose I should have verbalized the concept more clearly:
Re:just games? (Score:2)
Even though the data is more valuable.
Even people of those sect you mentioned would learn this lesson if there temple was suddenly destroyed, and had not experienced similiar destruction before.
People get bound to things, even when they know better, or try not to.
Games are such a part of some peoples life that complete removal of the devices is shocking.
I was thinking golfing clubs, more then a course.
Re:just games? (Score:2)
People are funny. I could hear about a suicide or sudden death on the television and experience a sort of distant sympathy, but with the internet age when they have a significant online presence the death becomes magnified for me. Things like reading transcripts of their last conversations on IRC, looking at the profiles on their still-
Re:just games? (Score:1)
I can relate to what you are describing about witnessing the remenants of a life from their activity on the internet. There is a certain black irony to that as well, given the topic of the article... in the opposite case where piece of media/game/account/data/etc survives and a person does not, that media gains an "emotional gravity
Uhm, duh? (Score:1)
Re:Uhm, duh? (Score:2)
News for Nerds: Stuff Doesn't Matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, I guess we all need that reminder one way or another and great disasters have a way of giving us that reality check...but Katrina linking us to reality through ownership of Video Games? How frickin shallow are we?
Just to get it over with, here are a few things to remember:
Material posessions don't mean jack in the long run.
Your SAT score doesn't mean jack in the long run either.
Your high score in Tetris, your Super Mario Brothers speed run, and your 100pct completion rating for San Andreas...all insignificant.
Really, when it comes down to it, stuff doesn't matter much at all.
Re:News for Nerds: Stuff Doesn't Matter (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters to you isn't the same thing that matters to me and vice-versa. To answer your question, we're really 'frickin' shallow.
The point is, we seek to be happy and avoid pain. What matters to us is whatever can help us seek happiness and avoid pain. To that end, owning video game consoles can bring you happiness, but they can't offset the pain brought on by katrina. It's as simple as that. Material posessions matter very much in the long run if you enjoy having them. Your SAT score matters if
Eh? (Score:2)
Anyone can make statements. "The moon is made of cheese", "2+2=5". Easy. What's more interesting is when you make statements that you can justify. Maybe if you bothered to justify what you say it'd sound like more than just trite cliches.
And this one really stands in need of a lot of justification.
According to you, 'stuff' doesn't matter. According to you abstractions like 'high sc
Re:Eh? (Score:2)
I also value physical objects. I value my body most of all because without it I would be nothing. I find it exceedingly strange for someone to claim that physical objects are not 'meaningful'.
I also should point out that that the majority of physical objects that people in our societ
I'd like to thank the Academy... (Score:2)
Re:News for Nerds: Stuff Doesn't Matter (Score:2)
Is your anwer a reflection of the society that you are a part of? If you were born in 2000 BC or spent your entire life wanting for material necessities in the middle of some third-world country, would your answer be the same?
Given a sufficiently long "long run," humanity has become extinct and the earth has covered up all trace of our ever having existed. Unless the answer is preserving the spe
Re:News for Nerds: Stuff Doesn't Matter (Score:1)
You're mostly right, but there are exceptions. Take musical instruments for example. You can get really really attached to instruments and it's different that a computer or xbox. You can buy another xbox, but you'll never find that special guitar again. Sure, you'll get over it, but it's gonna be hard.
Another example is photos. A friend of mine lost almost all her childhood photos when her parents house burned down. It's about the only thing from that house she really misses - even today.
Some _things_
If you're lucky. (Score:1)
Hmm (Score:2)
I dunno why, but I get this same sort of feeling thinking about nuclear war, or just any war really...thinking that the auto shops, the supermarket offers, the little g
It's like the Last Starfighter (Score:2)
Re:It's like the Last Starfighter (Score:2)
Hey Jim, how's the comic book with the rocket-katanas coming along? I want to read it so bad ever since I heard the idea! He can use the katana to fly like Superman, or shoot them like missiles! OMG!
I mean... (Score:1, Offtopic)
You guys are missing the lesson in this (Score:3, Funny)
Then once you get your life back together from the hurricane you can pick up where you left off in God of War.
Backups. The lesson is backups.
Re:You guys are missing the lesson in this (Score:2)
along with our house, possibly our family and our community...
But back to the main point. Yes. Think of all the time spent gathering those experience points, beating that really tough boss and ask yourself if you can go through the emotional pain of starting over again.
ph (Score:4, Interesting)
i remember realizing this some time during my ROM collecting phase -- it didn't take long before i realized that it wasn't the gameplay i craved but the memories of that time of life (childhood).
tell me how one's fond recollections of videogame playing--with brothers, sisters, neighborhood friends--are different from your grandparent's stories of fort building and crayfish hunting?
Re:ph (Score:2)
My grandparents had to do it in foot deep snow, uphill, both ways.
Re:ph (Score:2)
I'm amazed by how many puritans there are on /. for whom game playing is a dirty little sin that "doesn't matter".
Reads like an irritating Livejournal post. (Score:1)
-1, Redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
Big. Fucking. Revelation.
Boy, I was drowning this one time and I sure needed air and not video games. Makes you think LOL!!111
PS: (Score:2)
Gambling your life (Score:2)
- It's been so long since I heard those words, I don't know what they mean
anymore. [...] Gambling no longer have any appeal for me, when every day
is a risk, cards and dices are not quite as interesting as they used to be"
- Vir & Londo, B5:"Darkness Ascending"
I'd like to see more of these articles on slashdot. Linux don't matter by itself, Macs don't matter themselves, Games don't matter by themselves. It's the ideals and values behind the actual physical incarnati
Survival Situation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Survival Situation (Score:1)
Also, "getting Americans to be more self-sufficient in a survival situation is probably a good thing". God knows that if there's a dearth of survivalists anywhere on earth, it's in the USA.
the article's tone sounds familiar... (Score:2)
aka Jon Katz?
I'd like to point out something (Score:1)
The Sims 1 Crowd Sitter (Score:2)
I wrote The Sims 1 Crowd Sitter [donhopkins.com] to simulate the effects of Bush's (lack of) response to Hurricaine Katrina.
-Don
Reading between the lines... (Score:1)
Didn't the Author... (Score:1)
No fun at time of disaster (Score:2)
Re:What the !@#!?? (Score:1)
. .
But she's not quite there yet.
What the hell is this crap doing on
The current crop of geeks think that stuff is the stuff that matters.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, but lay up treasures of knowledge so that even though moths and rust doth corrupt and
Nah... (Score:1)
Wow, you're fucked up in the head (Score:5, Insightful)
For starters even if you make everyone who voted for Bush personally responsible for all of Bush's idiocies, only slightly less than half the votes went to Bush. So what's your problem with the other half, then? You're willing to dance on someone's grave just because they were born in the USA, or what? How fucked up is that?
And at that point, how does it make you any better? If you're willing to cheer for destruction and suffering inflicted upon civilians, just because they're in the USA, then how does that make you better than those who wish the same on people just because they're born in Iraq? No, seriously. What moral high ground can you claim, from which to look down on them, when you're as big an idiot as the most retarded bible-thumping rednecks they have?
And I'm serious about the "people like you" part. The whole vicious circle of inflicting nasty stuff upon each other is based on people taking the whole Us-Vs-Them thing too seriously. People willing to wish you a flaming death just because of where you were born or who your grandparents were. It's _precisely_ such people who thought it would be a great idea to fly an airplane full of innocent civilians into a building full of innocent civilians, or anything of that calibre. All the way back into ancient history, when an army entered a city and proceeded to rape, kill and enslave just to show them who's the new boss, it was just that mentality that was the problem. That it's "Us" vs "Them". That if you happen to be born in Carthage, you're personally to blame for what Hannibal did to Rome. Or that if you were living in Jerusalem, you're personally responsible for the Muslims' being in command there. (See the Crusaders slaughtering a ridiculous number of the very Christians they were supposedly trying to save.)
And you're willing to cheer for... what? For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, i.e., for permanent psychological damage? Because under the whole bullshit philosophy angle in the summary, that's the cruel reality. It's not that those people had a flash of Nirvana-like enlightenment that material possessions are worthless. It's that those people had the trauma of seeing everything they owned turned into junk or washed away, and went through some hell just keeping onto their very life. A lot of them are probably _affraid_ to get attached to any item any more, and are looking forward to a life spent in fight-or-flight mode, and of waking up in cold sweat after a nightmare about it.
PTSD is a bitch. Your brain gets switched into a semi-permanent mode of trying to learn how you should have dealt with the horror where you actually had no control and no way out. There is nothing to learn, but that's the only thing that would naturally end it. So you're stuck re-living it over and over again. And yet avoiding anything that reminds you of it. So, yes, a lot of them will be stuck fearing the very notion of ever getting attached to something or someone ever again. It's not just their gaming life that's taken a change, it's that their whole _Real_ _Life_ is fucked up now. Including any hope of a meaningful family life, social life, etc.
Yes, it's not fun for the people who got it in Iraq. (Both American soldiers and Iraqis.) But it's not fun for the poor buggers that got it from Katrina.
And frankly, I find it distasteful to use someone's hell to make some personal political point with. That goes for both you, and the pseudo-philosophy in TFA. Those people didn't reach some Zen enlightenment, they were scarred for life. And if all someone can think about is how it affects the gaming habbits, that someone is either a prick or completely out of touch with reality.
Re:Wow, you're fucked up in the head (Score:1)
Re:Wow, you're fucked up in the head (Score:1, Troll)
And w
Re:Wow, you're fucked up in the head (Score:4, Insightful)
Israel's action in Lebanon is no more an action against Lebanon than the thousands of rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon represent Lebanese foreign policy. This conflict has two well defined opponents, Israel & a vastly uderestimated microstate, Hezbollah. I'll leave it an exercise for the reader to determine the side which most indiscriminately chose to establish base-camp amongst non-partisan, civilian population centers on its eve of battle.
Imagine for a moment you lived in a high-density urban area. How would you feel if neighbors you had never met suddenly initiated a wholesale assault on a neighboring country without your government's knowledge or consent?
Re:Wow, you're fucked up in the head (Score:1)
And I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which side most indiscriminately chose to destroy said high-density urban area with missiles instead of using any kind of useful strategy.
Re:Wow, you're fucked up in the head (Score:1)
Re:Wow... (Score:1)
Re:enlightened (Score:2)
You really should credit your quotes.