Maybe it is just because I do not have time to play video games any more, but so far the poems on the Game Poet Society site seem, well, how shall I put it…lame?
Take for example:
Not sure what is worse about this poem. The fake-L337 speak or the attempt to show real feeling for a virtual fire-fight in a fantasy first-person shooter world. Then again, many poems are based on imagination induced by drugs, alcohol, endorphins, etc. so why not video games?
Each shot fired sang its own noise;
A forced cacophony of mottled sound.
Cracking the wood of his crate,
Squishing as they entered flesh,
Pinging high and low off concrete,
Echoes of gunfire pierced his skull,
And dulled the noise of men cursing their God in vain.
Dulled noise, mottled sound? The real meaning of this poem is that it is time for a sound-card upgrade. A little more power in the sound department could change this poet’s lament from “forced cacophony of mottled sound” to “full cacophony of crystal-clear sound”.
In fact, a true game-poet would upgrade this poem to “109dB SNR audio quality 64MB X-Fi Fatal1ty cacophany of CMSS 3D sound”. Yeah, that’s more like it. Now we’re talking game poetry!
And that’s just one line.
Oh, and I’d change the last line to “Game over” if not “Upgrade time”. I swear that the phrase “terrorists win” is becoming so sadly common-place that I am no longer surprised to hear it around American children who are playing. One day while I was launching my boat off the beach I was near a few kids kicking around sticks and stones in the water who said “Oh, no, the terrorists have blown up the tunnel, killing all the civilians. Terrorists win.”