I want to talk about something called the nit-picking. Recently, in my effort to waste as much time as possible on the internet, I found myself examining a couple different things that were evaluations of video game mechanics. Not necessarily the programming aspect; rather, the overall design, taking notice of inconsistencies, superfluous elements and more. This may sound incredibly boring to you, but I when I discovered these, I thought to myself "OMYGODDDDDD I LOVE THIS!"
Why? Because I am a prick about that sort of thing when it comes to everything, and these were evaluations of the design aspects of the games, while at the same time focusing on nit-picky little details! I found myself enchanted!
Admittedly, it's nearly 20 minutes long, but that fits in well with my afore-mentioned goal! Also, he says "fuck" a lot. Seriously. Not just a shit-ton. Like 10 shit-tons.
In contrast to that glowing praise of Megaman X, I read myself an article criticizing one of my favorite video game series, and more specifically a game that I have played through numerous times, on interface flaws present almost in every aspect of the game. I am going to use this entire sentence to link to that article, because I loved it lots.
Why did I love this? Because it's interesting! It's not talking about the jargon, it's talking about how stuff should be according to these basic rules of design!
All this being said, I have no intention of becoming a designer.
But this same sort of system, of having "proper rules", also extends to the English language. I am an absolute asshole about this sort of thing. Recently I was reading an essay my younger brother wrote, and it basically took all of my creative writing abilities, threw them on the ground, and stomped on them a bunch. What did I say while reading it though? "You spelled assistant wrong. You spelled it "assisstant"." That's right. I criticized his English.
This relates to the video game stuff above because it's those little things, those errors of the basic rules, that get to me more than anything else. To some extent it's an annoyance, but to be honest I actually love correcting other's stuff as well. I'm fairly terrible at evaluation when it comes to emotional or creative quality in works, but goddammit I am going to make some comments about your English, or little inconsistencies. Wanna know another thing I noticed in his paper? One word, just one out of the who knows how many, was a different font.
Dammit, Janet, this post sort of went off on a tangent and stuff. Oh well. I'm a judgmental person, and I will rant and rave about it.
I hope you all don't mind.
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