Audience, purpose, onward.

We've been sitting on this blog now for a few weeks, with its handful of entries. Clair and I have basically foregone any real work on it for summer related activites, along with our mutual playthrough of Majora's Mask, for the Vintage Game Club, as I mentioned previously. I suspect that once the fall hits, we'll try to update a couple times a week. We'll have a HD camcorder to post some little video reviews and things, maybe once weekly, although with law and art student schedules, that will remain to be seen.

Clair and I had a discussion about the point and audience of this blog, and more particularly, whether our friends would have any interest in what we're talking about. At some point, I'm going to start linking to this blog, whether it be in forum signatures, or on my Facebook profile, or elsewhere. But, for whose benefit, aside from my own?

For the great majority of the non-gaming population, particularly those in an older generation than mine, video games are toys, a perspective that is personified in my mother. I do have fond memories of her manipulating a controller violently while playing Super Mario Bros. on my old NES, but generally, she is rather disdainful of my hobby. She often asks how, and why I can spend so much money on what she feels are essentially children's playthings. While I know most of my peers do not share that viewpoint, I fear that most people, upon hearing that I've decided to devote a portion of my time to a blog about video games, would just consider me immature, or maybe just foolish.

How then, to justify that I want to write, at least somewhat intellectually, about games? Do I even need to justify it? It's pretty clear to me that video games are just as important a medium as television, film, or music; artistically, culturally, or otherwise. As someone who's got more than a casual interest in games, then, I guess I feel compelled to babble on about that interest, but also, to maybe dig deeper than mere "this is fun, I like the graphics" in terms of what I want to say about them. I want to take this concept seriously. I'm pretty sure Clair does, too.

I'm aware that we're a little late to the blog party, but I'm looking forward to being able to actually articulate what I think about when it comes to games. Maybe even to a (small) audience. That audience will likely not include most of the people I know, because a lot of my friends aren't really gamers, as I am. I would like to think that what we write here could potentially appeal to even the most casual of gamer, but the reality is anyone who devotes this much time to thinking about video games is far from casual.

I guess the bottom line is this: the possibility of legitimate and intelligent discourse about games in any aspect is what has got me excited about this blog, and determined to make it worth reading.

In any case, with an introduction and a statement of purpose out of the way, I can focus next week on actually outputting some of the (actually game-related!) ideas I've had for posts. Stay tuned.