Long Tail Gamer

(Not exactly a video game story. Maybe a little.  Not much.)

Seen the trailer for TRON Legacy yet?  Or maybe you've played the classic Light Cycle games -- there's a jillion of them but I'm partial to Armagetron myself.  Or perhaps, like me, you remember seeing the glimmering, hyperangular world of TRON for the first time in a movie theater. 

When I went home, I looked at my Commodore 64 in a whole new way.  (Especially the Activision ant farm that was Little Computer People.  But I digress.)  I love TRON.  I taught TRON over The Matrix in my film classes.  I think it's got that much to it, despite its many warts.

The original movie TRON stands out to me as emblematic of the libre spirit of personal computing.  Oh, the movie is ideologically rigged, no question: it frames the good/evil battle in terms of the free-wheeling ex-corporate hacker Flynn against the restrictive and monolithic Master Control Program in a thinly veiled metaphor of people-as-programs. 

At stake is the freedom of the system.  The MCP wants to absorb and regulate ... well, everything.  Including the real world.  Flynn, as a user of the system, wants freedom and access: the programs must run, the information must flow.  And pay special attention to the arguments heaped upon Dillenger by the kindly old scientist guy.  His psuedo-spiritual rhetoric practically leapt from Richard Stallman's mighty keyboard.

As a metaphor, it works great.  Yay freedom, boo tryanny, right?  Or yay personal computers, boo mainframe.  Whatever.  But add those pesky Means of Production into the mix, take another look, and it becomes a more complicated paradox.

Ever heard of a hegemony?

You may have heard the buzzword "Long Tail."  Economists are involved with that.  Also consultants and marketing guys.  It's about niche interests, lasting popularity, and power law curves. 

Now me, I'm just a gamer, but there are things about the phrase "Long Tail" that resonate with me.
 
When I say "Long Tail Gamer," I'm talking about the games I love to play over and over again.  Some of them are years old, even decades.  Something about those games keeps calling me back and giving me satisfaction.  When I think of buying a new game, I compare it to the old ones, and I noticed a long time ago that the old ones kept winning my loyalty. 

So I started this site to explore how that works.  I also want to share my love of these games in a way that's entertaining, encouraging, and appreciative.

Long Tail Gamer is geared toward personal stories of gaming.  I'm interested in why gaming is valuable to me.  I prefer encounters with the game over time.  My goal is to spread that sentiment to you

I encourage you to reflect on gaming in a similar way.   That's why you can leave comments on every part of this site.  The posts *are* the forums.  I'm excited to find people chipping in. 

These manifestos are as much a road map for me as anything else.  You're invited to read along.  So, in the coming days, I'll wax rhapsodical about my philosophy of Long Tail Gaming and how I try to bring that out in my reviews.  Hopefully, you'll find it stimulating, or at least easily ignored if that's your bent.  Ultimately, I want to celebrate the games I love.