June’s Monthly Musing was about escape — how video games can pull out of the real world, and how they can, metaphorically speaking, remove you from reality. For July, I want to flip that around. Instead of talking about how gaming can help you escape from the real world, I want you to think about bringing one specific thing from a videogame into real life. It can be a character, a location, a superpower, a belief system, a set of laws, a create, a weapon — anything you want.
There are multiple ways to approach this topic. Don’t feel constrained by the suggestions below — write about anything as long as it incorporates the theme of bringing something from gaming into real life:
- Personal — choose something you would most want to see in the real world, and tell us why you want to see it. How awesome would it be if the Floating Continent of Zeal was a real place and you could live there? Why would you want to be able to steal people’s abilities like Mega Man?
- Creative — if there was a Green Flu outbreak in your town, how would you handle the zombies and escape? If Pokemon were real, what would your adventure be like? Want to write a first-person creative fiction piece about Earth after Kefka moves the statues out of alignment? YOU SHOULD! (No creepy porn fan-fiction please.) If you’re really good at photography/photoshop, give us an art gallery.
- Academic — take a scientific approach and analyze what would happen. What would the effect be on our legal system if our courts operated like they did in Phoenix Wright? Give us a scientific paper on Aya Brea’s mitochondria.
- Anything else you can think of that fits the topic
To participate, just click “Post A Blog” up there in the upper right of the screen, title your post “Alternate Reality: WhateverYourTitleIs”, make sure you pick the “Monthly Musing” from the tag list (this is important!), write it up, and set it live. If your article is particularly well-written or sparks interesting discussion, we’ll stick it up on the front page.
As usual, we’ll be promoting blogs all month. To help increase your chances of getting promoted, (and to selfishly make my life easier since I have to edit all these), I’ve whipped up a set of guidelines to make all of our lives easier. A good blog will get promoted regardless, but following all these rules will really help me out, and help get your blogs to the front page faster. I strongly encourage you all to read it.
Get writing!
