{"id":5299,"date":"2014-09-03T23:45:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T03:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=5299"},"modified":"2014-09-03T23:45:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T03:45:57","slug":"reference-boundaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2014\/09\/reference-boundaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Reference Boundaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

A notion on which I’ve often dwelled of late (and may well have discussed here or on some social media outlet) is that when I was young I had no concept of a bad videogame. Games that today carry a reputation as horrible, poorly designed duds — Deadly Towers<\/em>, 8 Eyes<\/em>, Dr. Chaos<\/em>, Hydlide<\/em> — just seemed to me, at the time, as if they were above me somehow. I didn’t understand them, much as I was unprepared to understand much of the world. In that, they held a certain mystique. <\/p>\n

I didn’t play them much, as I couldn’t get far and I got frustrated — but I never blamed that on the games. It never occurred to me to pass judgment. I just figured they were made for someone else, or for a time when I was older and prepared to understand them. <\/p>\n

Even today when I look back on these games I get an intriguing sense of cognitive dissonance. I understand that they weren’t altogether successful creative efforts, for one reason or another — but they challenge me to look at things in ways that I otherwise wouldn’t, to try to understand how and why they are as they are. <\/p>\n

In that, I find these games endlessly fascinating — whereas my fascination with more accessible, clearly well-designed games ended long ago, once I got everything that they had to say.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A notion on which I’ve often dwelled of late (and may well have discussed here or on some social media outlet) is that when I was young I had no concept of a bad videogame. Games that today carry a reputation as horrible, poorly designed duds — Deadly Towers, 8 Eyes, Dr. Chaos, Hydlide — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1053,992,158,27],"class_list":["post-5299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-bad-games","tag-game-theory","tag-nes","tag-videogames","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5299"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5300,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299\/revisions\/5300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}