“You gotta remember you have enough gold rings inside of you to survive any sort of tragedy that’s going to come up. And remember that, like Sonic, even if you get knocked down, you have a chance to get those rings back.” - Doctor Edward Salazar, Sociologist

The soft sciences. Like, that’s what they actually call ‘em. And nobody disputes that. Psychologists. Sociologists. Philosophers. Like, how serious could you be about what you do if you let somebody call your life pursuit ’soft’ without jamming a napkin holder across their jaw. These people- they want you to look at the events surrounding you and draw conclusions, about life, the human spirit, whatever- the inside of your mind- whatever. And they say this is the purpose of art, these soft scientists. Well, I say ‘where’s the gameplay?’

When I hit confirm with a jumping medium, that’s physics. When I frame trap some scrub in the corner, because I know his start up frames for any kind of turnaround play are at least two on wakeup, but I have a 1 frame startup overhead that has massive juggle potential OTG, that’s math. And when you get salty, that’s chemistry baby! NaCl! In these games, these aren’t characters with back stories and personalities! They’re instruments. Chess pieces, moving around the board at a million miles per hour. I don’t even see the characters anymore- I see their hotboxes, their vulnerabilities. I know which frames on the startup of Knuckles’ super have priority over EVERYONE. Video games are hard science, and art is for communists. Communists and soft scientists. 

But that’s just my take. Maybe you don’t agree. Whatever. Maybe you wanna tell me all about walking around a house. That’s the shit you like, right? Walking around houses?