Curiosities for June 2022
Is 2022 the Year of the Games? Interactive Fiction and Narratives, and more!
Howdy,
Oh wow, it's been two months since I last posted. If you're keeping up to date with current events in the Philippines, then you know that April and May were intense. You had a disappointing election result, a looming transportation crisis, and a new COVID strain. Nevertheless, we should still keep writing!
📝 From the blog
I published one blog post for each month. First, I examined how we can train dependency parsers for Tagalog, my native language. It's a nice experiment to acquaint me with standard tools in computational linguistics; pretty cool!
Then, I wrote about a framework for document processing. It gained much traction on Twitter and LinkedIn, so I'm happy that people relate to it. Document processing is a topic close to my heart because it's something that I've worked on before. It's nice to formalize my thoughts into something coherent and valuable:
Recently
🎮 Playing
After Elden Ring, I tried hitting the brakes on gaming. I still played a few games but at a much slower pace. I’ve been consistent with Deep Rock Galactic, though. It’s an excellent game to play in between!
Vampire Survivors. This game is addicting. It’s a rogue-lite reverse bullet hell where you shoot hordes of enemies for thirty minutes. I know I’m not selling it properly here, but it just costs a dollar! This is supposed to be a pick-up-and-play game, but it’s so addicting that I spend 2-3 hours in one playthrough. Trust me, play it.
Dark Souls: Remastered. I enjoyed Elden Ring so much that I started playing other games in the FromSoftware collection. Playing Dark Souls after Elden Ring made me realize how iteration is the key to the latter’s success. The level design, combat, and lore have been refined throughout the years to near perfection. Sure, Dark Souls feels clunky now compared to their newly-released game, but I appreciate how well thought out the level design is. It’s timeless and a classic.
Also, did you notice that 2022 might as well be the “Year of the Games” like 2018? There are a lot of good releases this year (and good re-releases too for PC): Elden Ring, Vampire Survivors, God of War (PC), Persona 5 (PC), Spiderman (PC), and much more! I’m also looking forward to the following releases:
Skate Story. The trailer is a show-stealer in the last Devolver Digital presentation. There have been a lot of skating games recently, but I think this trumps because of its style:
Silksong. There’s nothing more to be said about this. I’m happy they gave us some news! To be honest, after playing Elden Ring (and now Dark Souls), I don’t think I can commit to another soulslike in the next six months. I prefer pick up and play games (am I getting old?!).
📖 Reading
I just finished the first era of the Mistborn trilogy! Man, it was a ride. I think the ending made sense and gave closure to the characters in the series. Sure, the writing still feels very YA (Young Adult), but as of now, I’m a Sanderson fan. Also, he’s active on Youtube and plays a lot of Elden Ring, so what’s not to love? Do I imagine Mistborn as a video game? Definitely. Now that you know I’m a Sanderson fan, it’s apparent that I’m currently reading…
The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive Series). This is the first book for the Stormlight Archive series, another one from the Sanderson collection. Unlike Mistborn, the writing here is less YA and more, Tolkien-ish. However, I think the characters here are much more vivid and real. Speaking of characters, I believe that Kaladin Stormblessed is probably one of the best characters I’ve seen in modern fantasy. He embodies heroism tempered by experience—a truly unique character (almost up there with Aragorn/Samwise!).
Interactive Fiction and Narratives. Recently, I’ve been trying to get into the intersection of NLP and games. This involves story generation, interactive narratives, and game-like interfaces for NLP. It just seems to be a good confluence of my passion and interests! This overview from the Worldplay conference is an excellent summary of what it’s about. I enjoy reading papers such as A Systematic Survey of Text Worlds as Embodied Natural Language Environments and Toward Automated Quest Generation in Text-Adventure Games. Awesome academic approaches to the game design we know and love.
If you’re interested in interactive fiction and machine learning, check out the AI Dungeon; it’s a procedurally-generated text-based adventure!
Gameboy Camera and a Telephoto Lens. I recently got a Gameboy Camera (GBC), and I’ve been having fun with it! It’s an exciting piece of retro equipment because (1) you cannot easily find a GBC in the Philippines, and (2) you need to buy specialized hardware to transfer your photos into your PC. I also like the idea of constraints in pixel art, and applying it to photography is fascinating. Here are some of my photos from a recent trip:
📺 Watching
Aside from the usual Stranger Things and Jujutsu Kaisen 0, I haven’t watched any new series. Now, I’m starting to prefer shorter content—perhaps my attention can’t keep up with longer videos. Here are some channels that I’ve been watching during my free time:
Alpha Beta Gamer. You might have remembered me sharing this channel in a previous issue when I talked about a haunting game in the Japanese suburbs. I enjoy his content of trying out niche indie games; you get to discover weird/fun concepts and betas of games from developers you already know. For example, here’s a game from the creators of the hit card game Inscryption. It’s a virtual pet (think, Tamagotchi) that doesn’t want to die:
It’s terrifying and fascinating at the same time. You can also see similar design concepts with Inscryption: you have a “main” game and a meta-narrative encircling it. Fun!
Super Eyepatch Wolf. This channel started as an Anime channel, but similar to this newsletter, it evolved into any topic the creator liked. I’m recommending this channel just because of the sheer production quality. As an anime fan, I enjoy his reviews of the current state of Shonen Jump:
I also feel like this channel is (subconsciously) my inspiration for this newsletter. Just random things I enjoyed and wanted to share with you!
That’s it for this month! I’m hoping that I can stick to the schedule from now on. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful July!
-Lj