In a blog post , dated June 26, 2014 Joakim writes about how his father hanged himself in a woodshed in 2009 and that the smell of wood and resin must have filled lungs in his last breath. Every time Joakim smell of wood he thinks of it.
It is beautifully told, directly and honestly, unsentimental but emotionally rich. In an obvious way, he weaves into external and internal events, his father’s life story portrayed in pithy details along with reflections on death, grief and consolation. The insert is part of an ongoing biographical trip blog shape; he calls the “Press Play On Tape”, and it is an attempt to understand a childhood and a life through video games history.
When Joakim did know that his father had died, he was at home with her little brother . They played “Gears of War 2″ and had just the last opponent left when the phone rang (the game then became associated with discomfort, the brothers played clear it until several years later, together, as a conclusion). He remembers that he played “Command & amp; Conquer “when his mother died in 1995 after many years of severe depression.
-tv- and computer games have been a comfort to me and followed me through life, but I have rarely used them as some sort of escapism, rather the opposite – I have related to them in a way that made me understand and accept life.
He faces me at the bus stop near the University of Karlstad. It’s a muggy, hot summer day and the air is stationary. We walk back to his apartment. Joakim limping, he has a rare neurological disorder that causes him to have chronic pain in my feet. As support, he has his father’s black cane in his right hand.
On the way, he warns me that the apartment is messy, but it is a grave exaggeration. In the living room stands games and movies in neat rows on shelves, on the table, a candy dish, next to the TV and a Playstation 4 to the left of the couch a computer. Outside the window echoes the playground empty.
– When I was little I took frequent until the knee because of pain. I still do. When the games were something that allowed me to move around freely, playing sports, running, without being forced to lie and scream of pain afterwards. Of course it was awesome.
He got caught early arcade game “Pac-Man” at the local diner. He reached almost up to the controls, but was of some obscure reason fascinated with the fascination and never released. Having let Nintendo consoles a period Joakim finally bought a personal computer, a Commodore 64, a friend.
– I really like the consoles but the strongest memories from that time are still computer games. They were so many odd, bizarre game that I appreciated.
Soon awakened love of adventure, especially those produced by the American developer LucasArts.
– I felt absolutely fantastic stories in many of their games.
Joakim’s mother was initially quite worried that he would not spend too much time watching the games. She had some kind of intuitive understanding of the widely-cited Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan 60 talstes that “the medium is the message.”
– She had the shark in any way. That it really does not matter what we play, but that the technology itself is changing our behavior. But it need not be a bad thing.
Many of the funniest memories Joakim has with his parents is in no way associated with the game. He remembers that he and his father worked in the classic boxing game “Punch-Out” on Nintendo and can today play through it and barely get hit a single time. He played “Ice Climber” with her mother, and remember that she was very fond of “Side Pocket”, a “pig boring” billiard game.
– She was less worried about my playing over the years.
Even when Joakim was at elementary school, she had made several suicide attempts. Joakim has read the journals that she during a year tried to kill himself five times. She was temporarily admitted to a psychiatric ward, and at some point he saw that she had big scars, but he did not really understand what that meant.
– Parents are as unattainable in any way when you are little. Therefore, it became confusing. Dad was very stable and I thought he could do it all, but in fact, it took the fatal for him completely.
In a home where depression and threats of suicide were more or less normalized constituted games a constant in life . One December evening, after some calmer years, however, the mother fell asleep with his face in the plate at the kitchen table.
– She had taken a bunch of pills. I went in one in high school.
Joakim says he played much after she passed away. Partly fantasy games, and humorous favorite game “Day of the Tentacle” because it was so merry, it served as a counterpoint to the darkness.
– I’m the “Afterlife” pretty much also.
The “Afterlife” to be you which players manage and organize heaven and hell. On a meta level, it is easy to interpret the game as a satire of these two conceptual worlds because they are so grotesquely exaggerated. Joakim want to accept that his mother was gone, he wanted to see the loss of the eye, without romanticizing or imagining that she was an angel sitting on a cloud.
– For me worked, “Afterlife” as the reality reinforcement. It helped me come to terms with a lot of religious beliefs that I wanted to leave behind me, and was like a confirmation that I was right to accept that she simply was gone forever.
He was too engrossed in game “The Dig”, a dark sci-fi adventure in which you participate in a space mission, stranded on an asteroid. Gradually, it appears that the game in many ways is about accepting
death. In one scene, for example, brought a German archeologist to life after being killed. He gets mad.
– I think it is a clever illustration of that you have to let go, mourn and move on. You can not pretend that nothing has happened.
Joakim trained high school teacher in Swedish and English and works part time at a high school in Karlstad, which allows him to combine it with his role of gaming and music writer. At school, he sees how much young people play today, on their phones, computers and consoles.
He could wish that those who spend a lot of time on it also could try to think more about what they actually do and experience – students are often unaccustomed to organize themselves around their interest. When he tries to draw parallels with the literature he notices that it is difficult to make the connection. For pedagogical reasons, he usually let them play “But that was yesterday” on a large screen in the classroom. It’s a pretty abstract computer game that is about to move on after experiencing something terrible.
– Since we read Twilight’s “To kill a child” and Strindberg’s “A half-sheet of paper” and look at the points of contact these stories have. Then they usually understand.
Joakim says that the game medium is different from, for example, film and literature because it is an interactive experience, you are in control of the game world frames and your choice creates forward movement. In this way, they offer more freedom and to be more empathy-inducing than if you passively reading a book or watching a TV series.
– then it’s often damn fun. You have to play just for fun too.
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