Worldcon Good Bad Ugly.

19 years ago I went to my first ever Worldcon. It was in Scotland. It was amazing!

A few days ago I went to my 7th Also on Scotland. This time I decided to get a hotel a little more convenient for the convention.

The Good

The Dark Room! Stage show where we play an interactive videogame. It's an improv thing. Lots of fun.

Met up with my Aussie friend! And my German friend. Only seem to see them at cons. Saw people I hadn't seen since they left to go to the other side of the world.

They seem to generally have a good idea of room size. Occasionally couldn't get in but only a couple of times.

Was really pleased that Moderators were mostly strict on the rule that a question is not a comment and has a question mark at the end.

Volunteered to people wrangle at the Hugos.  It seemed a bit disorganised. Still, I got to wear a nice hi-vis jacket! The feeling of power!!! I appeared to be primarily a traffic cone. But they seemed to appreciate our help. And I directed a lot of people to the right place for the cermony so I feel useful.

The talk on "Are you smarter than a monkey" was great. Apparently very few of us are. We all have misconceptions about scientific facts.

Enjoyed the talk on 80's fantasy. Although someone needs to tell Seanan McGuire that Fiduciary responsibility doesn't work the way she thinks it does. These myths really need to die. Someone else nearby muttered about it so I vented with them a little.

Chris Baker did some really great presentations on his art. For those not in the know, he was the concept designer for a bunch of films including AI. He also illustrated Redwall (wish I'd brought books to be signed), and is a very skilled sculpter.

Really liked the panels of costuming. Costume people are so lovely. One of them was about finding patterns.

Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre was as hilarious as ever. It overlapped with Masquerade. As it happens, Masquerade was running late. What a shock!

Costuming - I tried to resurrect my greyscale 1930's adventure hero costume. Some people liked it. I don't think I really quite got it right though.

Pleased they streamed the Hugo awards. I really wasn't feeling like sitting in a hot auditorium. And I wanted to go to the talk on the mathematics of games. It was a good talk. I now know how to win at certain forms of nim. So I saw the talk and caught up later.

Regarding the Hugos - always nice to learn about sea cucumbers. I think at a previous one I learned about whales or something.

I'm now left with a hankering to do more costuming. And a slight disappointment there's not a lot of opportunity to do so.

Batmobiles in the main hall!

I remembered to sleep.

The Bad

A friend got Covid. That was a bit of a downer.

Mobile phones have changed the feel a lot. Once upon a time people who had nothing to do sat and waited and you could just randomly talk to them. These days people will go to their phones when bored. It means there's a shield of "do not disturb"

As always, video games only get a vague mention. While they did have a couple of video game panels, their knowledge of the scene is about 10 years out of date.

I was hoping to try out the escape room. This was underadvertised. In the end I didn't because the person I wanted to do it with caught Covid.

They had the bid parties in the main hall. Typically at Worldcons there are room parties in the main hotel. This involves a whole bunch of people pitching their cons and bids for future cons as well as fans just wanting to have a party. Can easily flit from room to room, and avoid the overcrowded rooms. The main hall in contrast is a dreary place. The parties were only in a small segment of a massive room which ruins the atmosphere, and only a handful of groups decided to run something. 

Many people I wish I could have seen weren't able to come. I think my fandom tribe is Redemption and I think I met about 3 people I know from those conventions.

The Ugly

I still find this level of fandom feels impenetrable. There are a lot of in-fandom culture things that aren't well explained, but not really a lot of opportunity to actually become part of fandom.

For example, the opening ceremony included the "First Fandom" awards. I've looked it up. I still don't really know what they are. So who are these people and why do we care? Are they part of the WSFS? Do we get to vote on this? Feels like a small subgroup giving out awards to other members of their small subgroup and using Worldcon as a platform.

They sell "memberships" - it was a really complicated system this year - but there isn't really a lot of outreach to get people involved in fandom. So it still feels rather like a ticketed event. Would be a lot better to have a bunch of icebreaker events, some round table discussions, discussion on how to be involved in fandom - I remember a great talk on creating a podcast; but I think that was at nineworlds.

Okay; that last bit was something of a rant.

I really wish that there was a reasonably large annual fan convention in the UK. Sure there's Eastercon but it's not very big. And it's always been rather literary focussed. Despite my rant above, this event was a lot of of fun.

Video games as an artform.

It's often been asked "are videogames art"

It seems an odd question because the answer is very obviously "yes".  Art requires creativity. Games require creativity. Art demands an audience. Games demand an audience. Art evokes emotion. Games evoke emotion. Gamers have been treating games as an artform for as long as I can remember. Reviewers went into detail about the components of the games. The Last Of Us was converted to a crttically acclaimed TV series virtually unchanged. By any test that matters, games are art.

Outside of gaming there are a lot of outdated notions of what games are. For a lot of non gamers, the term "video game" conjures an immpression of something like Mario, or perhaps a first person shooter. Of course these still qualify as art. Even if you strip away the interactive elements, you have a plot, you have music, and a visual component. The interactivity adds an entirely new element, and the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Doom were iconic examples of the medium.

However games have never been limited to twitch based action games. Even way back in 1975, we had Adventure, or Colossal Cave Adventure - the first text adventure. Games were in their infancy but we already had a game with a clear plot. Here you're an treasure hunter exploring a cave system. It wasn't long before the concept was expanded with Zork, giving a definite story with descriptive text showing us the world we're experiencing.

These later evolved into the modern role playing video game. These games take the player into a fully realised world. Here we see detailed worldbuilding and complex interwoven storylines. This gives a platform to discuss complex moral issues; see the issue from both sides and make a choices balancing our views of justice, morality, and often practicality. The issues to deal with are elements on the way to solving the major crisis threatening the world. Is it justifiable to sacrifice one innocent person in order to save millions? Do we let a brutal criminal escape justice for the stability of a kingdom? Not only do we have to consider these choices, we actually have to make them. No other artform can be so personal.

If we head away from the mainstream we see a burgeoning indie scene. Many of these address more real concerns. Papers, Please puts you in the role of an bureaucratic official in a 1980's communist dictatorship. Some people are desperate to get in. Perhaps you want to be kind, and you let them in, but mistakes like these result in fines. You have a family who need food and heating. Perhaps you feel we should follow the rules as written. That is a choice you can make. Of course there are opportunities for making some side income by breaking the rules.

Games tackle complex social issues such as environmentalism, loss, even cancer. Unlike other artforms we're usually put directly into the situation rather than simply watching others suffer.

Even without plot. In fact without most of the elements of other artforms, games can be a thing of beauty. Mini metro simply requires you to build a public transport system. The trains are rectangles. The stations are geometric shapes. The passengers are smaller geometric shapes. Conceptually this is almost childish. Yet the game provides a relaxing, almost zen like experience. Dorf Romantik requires connecting forests and villages together to earn points. The result is a massive nation, and even the lose condition results in a beautiful landscape ful of forests, rivers and railways.

Games contain not only the elements that make other artforms work. they add interactivity. In other mediums, interactivity is avant-garde. An element of post modernism. In games it's fundamental to the experience.

So games are art. Those who say otherwise - they're simply wrong. It doesn't even matter that they're wrong. Those of us who now the medium can enjoy it for what it is.