Start of the project, the first 18 reviews. (https://kinopio.club/the-end-of-gameplay---every-steam-review-znZp9UO5PoyukxAu_E8vK)
"The End of Gameplay is itself about a shared struggle. I made it BECAUSE I wanted to talk about something important & vital that was hard to talk about."
I would not have made The End of Gameplay without "kill gameplay." I made it because I was no good at explaining or describing or even understanding, myself, what I meant or what I wanted. Now that it's done and out, when people leave reviews of the game & reply to me, it feels like an extension of that larger conversation.
So, I recently received a negative review... on May 21, now it's May 23. I've been sort of obsessively thinking about it for that two-day period. Two days can seem like a short time or it can seem like forever. Of course, I am still living life. I am going on long walks with my partner in the rain. I am cooking and eating food. I am buying groceries. I don't mean to say that I'm sitting in a concrete box alone with nothing but my thoughts and My First Negative Steam Review. But it sits in the mind and lingers. It's easy to have openness and love for positive reviews, to interpret a "thank you" with generosity and kindness, but can I do the same for a review that is, more than negative, sort of insulting?
I think it is possible. I'm making a video on it, and then I will perhaps respond to other Steam reviews without responses. This has been an emotionally productive (and emotionally expensive) side-project.
OK, I made the video.
Then I started replying to Steam reviews again but something felt off.
I think what's off is . . . I'm replying to each one with little messages to the reviewers, but do I actually want to write to them? No, maybe not?
I want to learn. I want to learn. I want to take away. That's what I got out of replying to Telephone: my message was not for you, Telephone, it was for me.
That's why I spent all that time creating a tool for myself for viewing Steam reviews, for organizing them. I wanted to organize my own thoughts. That's what this is all for. That's what I'm doing.
I want a way to process my reaction, my response -- and to integrate it meaningfully into the core of my being. I am not sure how to organize that for myself. It isn't for a visitor, it isn't for the reviewer, IT IS FOR ME.
When I'm selfish I can take anything, because I know the purpose isn't to be of service to others -- it's to fire my next arrow, and my next, and my next, and my next, and my next, and my next, and my next, and... 🏹