Fez Notes Fixed Me
Every few years, videogames gets on some real sicko stuff over a particular videogame and the people who are sickos for the really specific menu the videogame is serving end up fiercely loving it and it comes much to the confusion of everyone else who might muster an āeh, itās alrightā at best or yāknow, bounce really hard off the thing.
This is a perfectly normal state of affairs for things. In fact, Iād argue itās one of the healthiest signs for videogames. Itās one thing to make a game lots of people enjoy playing, itās another to write a game that utterly and profoundly connects with the things a handful of people really, really, want from their games/media/whatever. We need both and everything inbetween, and yes, even stuff that repulses people because its design is just so abrasive that only four people on the planet think itās beautiful. Certainly, for me, this was everything I wanted to see with increased access to the tools to make games (however small those works might be) being handed to a more diverse group of people. Itās the dream.
And, of course, even with a century and more of other media having to deal with the same routines, people being people, capitalism being capitalism, brains being brains, itās not a thing you can just settle. People given something they intensely love will be absurdly enthusiastic about that thing, people who arenāt will continue to be nonplussed or baffled by it all. Sometimes, people get fucked off with each other over these things. Itās unfortunate but itās a thing and one deeply, deeply encouraged by a lot of the pressures of existing and getting by that we all live with.
Is that another round of āare you saying itās structural?ā here? Yes! It is. Itās also very, very human and, well, itās sort of how taste works. What Iām saying is that you aināt āfixingā this one in a hurry. People have tastes, humans are weird, capitalism exerts a whole bunch of aggravating pressures. Oof.
Iām old and Iāve been through this sort of cycle with so many different games over the years, finding it especially jarring sometimes because whilst I love videogames, most big budget fare over the past 30 or so years - a whole bunch of incredibly mainstream and popular videogames? Theyāre lost entirely on me. I want to flash lights at myself, climb a virtual hill, read a little poem or something. I donāt really even know what Final Fantasy or PokĆ©mon or any of hundreds of other big games really even are because I donāt care about them, donāt want what theyāre selling. Theyāre not to my taste.
But yes, I havenāt always been this chill about it and it took Fez Notes to fix that for me. Fez is a layered game, Fez is also one of the most inspiring games made in my lifetime for me too. Yet I have only ever played Fez up to the point where you get an ending, not THE ending. Because all the layered stuff, the puzzles, the translations, all that stuff is not my bag. I just want to meander round some pretty spaces, chill with some of my favourite videogame music since the C64 and enjoy that part of Fez. I do not have the kind of brain that sees the appeal of digging into this particular game at any more profound or substantial level. Itās not where my taste lies.
It was āone of those gamesā for me, then. Why would you like this? I donāt know. I do not get it, do not understand it. I didnāt then, I donāt now either, over a decade on. But what I do understand is being an absolute sicko over a game. Pity my eldest kid who got a half hour unloading on why I love the new Minter take on I, Robot which began with me saying āitās a fucking assault and it should be illegalā earlier. In my defense, they were arguing their own long term love of the Sonic The Hedgehog games to me so they got what they deserved. As did I. I will never understand that damn hedgehog. Heās alright but heās no Spiky Harold is he?
So Fez Notes - a tumblr log that collected pics of peopleās notebooks where theyād gone full sicko on Fez? Beautiful. The scribbles, the marginalia, the graph paper, all of it is full sicko and fully brilliant. Thatās the stuff, yeah? I never want to do this stuff myself but how can you not love people falling so immensely in love with something that this is where it leads?
And sure, I should have connected the dots sooner. I love reading game diaries of games Iāll never play, someoneās tale of drama, comedy and woe in Dwarf Fortress - a game that gives me a headache just looking at it - is catnip. Later, itās gifs of machines built in Zaktronics games, its Dark Souls doodle as you play stuff, itās the joy someone is getting right now out of Blue Prince, a game I cannot stand to play and yes, even your Wordle score youāve been posting since the pandemic began. Itās that compulsion someone had to map a game in 1983, to send playing tips and solutions into magazines. To love something and to connect, even in a distant fashion, with other people into the same thing. To even want to keep notes because youāre that all in on it! Fucking fabulous.
I donāt have to like a game to appreciate that. Itās so intrinsically human, so intrinsically wonderful. Thatās taste. Thatās how it works.
Thatās what Iām here for.