jobosno
BACKER
Hypnospace Outlaw 2019
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
1 day
Last played
November 7, 2021
Platforms Played
Recommended by lpslucasps on this list.
I've managed to shoot myself in the foot a little bit by promising to "review" anything on the aforementioned list, as this game has proven to be an especially difficult one. I've got a lot on my mind after playing it and I'm going to have to cheat a little bit with the format, because I don't think I can nicely condense this down into a single review with a coherent theme.
- Loads of nostalgic authenticity throughout the experience. I don't think this comes as a surprise to anyone given that it's the most surface-level observation, but it's true. I was born at the right time and raised by a tech-savvy mom, allowing me to witness the end of this era of the internet, even if I was a little young. There are a lot of details here that are so easy to forget in the era of WordPress and Squarespace sites prepared straight out of the can, adhering to good graphic design principles.
- It's a little uncomfortable seeing how little some things have changed. There are still painfully earnest posts from children and teens trying to figure things out, every new technology is still a fight between little Davids trying to unseat massive, corporate Goliaths before they take over the Cool New Thing™. Communities have always had awful shit that moderators are woefully unequipped to handle, on platforms that the creators don't even fully understand...
- ...and it all reminds me of being at work. I work in IT and found myself slipping into work mode a lot here, forced to emotionally detach myself from the cases/tickets I'm working on. I see your very real, very serious harassment case, and I can't do anything to punish them because I don't have the tools. I am powerless, except when it comes to ruining someone's day because a policy they've never read said posting a picture of a cartoon fish is an actionable offense. New fires will always ignite as you're putting out the old ones, and moderators are given this cruel, Sisyphean task of rectifying every possible issue on a platform using extremely limited tools that are hardly suited to the task.
- I feel like a lot of my enjoyment is tethered to my own memory of the ugly, poorly laid-out webpages of old (complete with horrendously compressed gifs, videos, and music). I can't speak to how it'll play for those without the memories - the memories aren't important for knowledge reasons, but for patience reasons. This game is full of tedium, and while I'm not trying to pitch this as some "zoomers will hate this!", I would personally be a little annoyed by it all if it didn't remind me of times where I was younger and dumber. If you get past that (or don't care), there's a lot of love here - love for technology of the past, and love for the people that use it. It's a pretty little digital diorama, and I like what it represents.
- I stand with Gooper
I've managed to shoot myself in the foot a little bit by promising to "review" anything on the aforementioned list, as this game has proven to be an especially difficult one. I've got a lot on my mind after playing it and I'm going to have to cheat a little bit with the format, because I don't think I can nicely condense this down into a single review with a coherent theme.
- Loads of nostalgic authenticity throughout the experience. I don't think this comes as a surprise to anyone given that it's the most surface-level observation, but it's true. I was born at the right time and raised by a tech-savvy mom, allowing me to witness the end of this era of the internet, even if I was a little young. There are a lot of details here that are so easy to forget in the era of WordPress and Squarespace sites prepared straight out of the can, adhering to good graphic design principles.
- It's a little uncomfortable seeing how little some things have changed. There are still painfully earnest posts from children and teens trying to figure things out, every new technology is still a fight between little Davids trying to unseat massive, corporate Goliaths before they take over the Cool New Thing™. Communities have always had awful shit that moderators are woefully unequipped to handle, on platforms that the creators don't even fully understand...
- ...and it all reminds me of being at work. I work in IT and found myself slipping into work mode a lot here, forced to emotionally detach myself from the cases/tickets I'm working on. I see your very real, very serious harassment case, and I can't do anything to punish them because I don't have the tools. I am powerless, except when it comes to ruining someone's day because a policy they've never read said posting a picture of a cartoon fish is an actionable offense. New fires will always ignite as you're putting out the old ones, and moderators are given this cruel, Sisyphean task of rectifying every possible issue on a platform using extremely limited tools that are hardly suited to the task.
- I feel like a lot of my enjoyment is tethered to my own memory of the ugly, poorly laid-out webpages of old (complete with horrendously compressed gifs, videos, and music). I can't speak to how it'll play for those without the memories - the memories aren't important for knowledge reasons, but for patience reasons. This game is full of tedium, and while I'm not trying to pitch this as some "zoomers will hate this!", I would personally be a little annoyed by it all if it didn't remind me of times where I was younger and dumber. If you get past that (or don't care), there's a lot of love here - love for technology of the past, and love for the people that use it. It's a pretty little digital diorama, and I like what it represents.
- I stand with Gooper