Form Over Function: I’m Going to Buy Video Games a New Vacuum Cleaner

The day I bought my Playstation 4 I also became the proud owner of a Dyson DC49. It's their - possibly the world's - 'smallest, quietest vacuum cleaner'. You can almost fit it in the palm of your hand. Now, I’ve always wanted a Dyson, let us make that clear from the off, lest I build up the following introductory anecdote to an unfairly inflated stature. For me they are the perfect product for our consumption-led society: functional to a fault and reassuring expensive. They are the kind of thing even an aged Yorkshireman could get behind, such is their exquisite balance of monetary outlay and usefulness. Upon returning home I carefully laid both products beside one another on the sofa and quietly surveyed the fruits of my wanton spending. I then gleefully opened up my new vacuum cleaner, pieced it together and cleaned my flat. I got to the PS4 an hour or so later.

Dysons are great.

Mordor Could Still Use More Shelves

I’ve recently moved house and spent a lot of time doing DIY. I’ve also been playing Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. DIY is full of intricacies and I’d go as far as to say these are pretty much limitless. The “Nemesis System” featured in Mordor - which generates unique foes for the player algorithmically - is full of intricacies, though these eventually run dry. That about covers the majority of the content of this aborted missive, which is far too unwieldy for me to ever hope of bringing under control. While I was lost in the maze of drivel, I kept bumping into myself asking the same question: why, when the differentiation between ‘story’ and ‘other’ content in open world games is often so slight, can I spend many, many happy hours labouring repetitively, only to lose interest in these same tasks the moment I’m not being pushed through by a narrative?