Dude... I gotta say: I've never related to a Substack post as much as this one! And I'm saying this as a guy who writes about business insights drawn from games and as someone who owns 7 different copies of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War just because each translation is unique. The way you draw parallels between how people had different experiences with manuscripts chopped from the same book and the game versions we play is fantastic. Really impressive stuff!
The only downside to your message is that I now have to choose between playing both versions of Link's Awakening back to back for the tenth time or diving into Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose for the third time. Choices, choices...
I really appreciate that, and I'm so glad you related to it, M! I am absolutely with you on translations; we've got several copies of Virgil, Homer, Dante, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Beowulf, Bible, and more. Some translations are definitely better than others (I'm always going for the NRSVUE for the Bible, or the First Nations Version), but it's always cool to see different perspectives if you can't speak the language. Just make sure you know what ideologies the translator brings to the text.
Who would have imagined that I’d pick up so much about typos too! It’s really interesting stuff, especially the part about the Wicked Bible. It brought to mind the English translations of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which is a whole different mess on its own, thanks to a mix of missing words and the author tweaking the same text, altering the meaning of certain sections without any explanation for those changes.
As for Pentiment, I’ll definitely check it out when I get the opportunity!
If you really liked Name of the Rose, you should check out Pathologic - ah, but which of the many versions would be best? Certainly not the original, unless your first language happens to be Russian. And not the re-release and/or sequel, which is a different game entirely and also only a third of it. Though as Moore points out, there's no true canon for videogames that get updates of any kind, the Classic HD version strikes the correct balance between comprehensibility and complexity, conveying best the story of ideological factions trampling the truth the protagonists are chasing ephemeral wisps of.
I've thought about this quite a bit - every game, like every place, evolves over time, in a way unfamiliar in most media [the modern spate of Director's cuts and rereleases aside, anyway] and revisiting a game is a lot like visiting your home town. There are always differences, some too subtle to really put your finger on immediately, that make it substantially different than the version frozen in time in your memory. And sometimes the changes are so radical that you have a completely different experience than someone showing up later. I'm glad you brought up Cyberpunk - I played it at release, and gritted my teeth through insane bugs, quest breaking glitches, and truly obnoxious problems with level scaling, the skill tree, and equipment mechanics. Then after a few years my brother played it and thought it was the best thing ever - he didn't even believe me when I told him about things like the knife throwing skill actually consuming melee weapons from your inventory. Then when 2.0 came out I played it again and actually enjoyed it.
The game that always comes to mind on this topic, though, is Souldiers. I picked it up at release after really enjoying the demo, and was gripped by a Metroidvania that actually had teeth - was challenging, had tense and difficult boss fights, massive, imposing dungeons, and felt like a real accomplishment at the highest difficulty level. But a lot of feedback from people struggling seems to have caused the developers to overreact, and they announced that they were going to do a massive rebalancing patch as soon as they could. I was most of the way through the game, but only on one of the three character options, and I really wanted to experience the game at that level of difficulty before it got revised, so I wound up marathoning it more doggedly than I usually do a single game. In the end, the rebalance was pretty spotty and heavy handed - a lot of systems got hit, some of them in a bit of a knee-jerk way, applied to every difficulty level, and though the devs later attempted to create a 'classic' difficulty option, it didn't actually revert a lot of the changes. Since then, I've had people hit me up asking if I know a way to revert to or find a prior version - certainly not possible on Steam, and unfortunately you'd be reverting every bugfix too. It's a bit sad that nobody I recommend the game to now will have anywhere near the same experience I originally did, but isn't that always the case?
This was such a fascinating read! I only had a very baseline knowledge on how medieval texts were copied and preserved, so it was eye opening to see just how fragile and fraught the entire process was. It's kind of a miracle any copies still exist today when you think about it - but it's obviously great they still do!
As to your discussion about video games being fluid texts, Twilight Princess is one of my favourite games of all time--a game I have poured dozens of hours into playing--yet, anytime I see the Gamecube version, my mind starts doing somersaults. I'm familiar with the Wii version which mirrored the entire game to compensate for most players using the Wiimote (Link's sword) in their right hand, but kept the Gamecube version as it was originally designed. So even though I am so familiar with that game and its map, there exists an entire version of it that feels like stepping into bizzaro world every time I see it. Yet, both are still technically Twilight Princess.
Oh man, that is a perfect example! I had no idea those versions were mirrored. I've gotta go back and play that one as an adult still
Dude... I gotta say: I've never related to a Substack post as much as this one! And I'm saying this as a guy who writes about business insights drawn from games and as someone who owns 7 different copies of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War just because each translation is unique. The way you draw parallels between how people had different experiences with manuscripts chopped from the same book and the game versions we play is fantastic. Really impressive stuff!
The only downside to your message is that I now have to choose between playing both versions of Link's Awakening back to back for the tenth time or diving into Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose for the third time. Choices, choices...
I really appreciate that, and I'm so glad you related to it, M! I am absolutely with you on translations; we've got several copies of Virgil, Homer, Dante, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Beowulf, Bible, and more. Some translations are definitely better than others (I'm always going for the NRSVUE for the Bible, or the First Nations Version), but it's always cool to see different perspectives if you can't speak the language. Just make sure you know what ideologies the translator brings to the text.
If you're interested in more on the errors creating new meanings, check out this Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographical_error
If I were in your boat, I'd play Pentiment, but that's because I'm weird (it's partly inspired by Name of the Rose)
Who would have imagined that I’d pick up so much about typos too! It’s really interesting stuff, especially the part about the Wicked Bible. It brought to mind the English translations of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which is a whole different mess on its own, thanks to a mix of missing words and the author tweaking the same text, altering the meaning of certain sections without any explanation for those changes.
As for Pentiment, I’ll definitely check it out when I get the opportunity!
If you really liked Name of the Rose, you should check out Pathologic - ah, but which of the many versions would be best? Certainly not the original, unless your first language happens to be Russian. And not the re-release and/or sequel, which is a different game entirely and also only a third of it. Though as Moore points out, there's no true canon for videogames that get updates of any kind, the Classic HD version strikes the correct balance between comprehensibility and complexity, conveying best the story of ideological factions trampling the truth the protagonists are chasing ephemeral wisps of.
I've thought about this quite a bit - every game, like every place, evolves over time, in a way unfamiliar in most media [the modern spate of Director's cuts and rereleases aside, anyway] and revisiting a game is a lot like visiting your home town. There are always differences, some too subtle to really put your finger on immediately, that make it substantially different than the version frozen in time in your memory. And sometimes the changes are so radical that you have a completely different experience than someone showing up later. I'm glad you brought up Cyberpunk - I played it at release, and gritted my teeth through insane bugs, quest breaking glitches, and truly obnoxious problems with level scaling, the skill tree, and equipment mechanics. Then after a few years my brother played it and thought it was the best thing ever - he didn't even believe me when I told him about things like the knife throwing skill actually consuming melee weapons from your inventory. Then when 2.0 came out I played it again and actually enjoyed it.
The game that always comes to mind on this topic, though, is Souldiers. I picked it up at release after really enjoying the demo, and was gripped by a Metroidvania that actually had teeth - was challenging, had tense and difficult boss fights, massive, imposing dungeons, and felt like a real accomplishment at the highest difficulty level. But a lot of feedback from people struggling seems to have caused the developers to overreact, and they announced that they were going to do a massive rebalancing patch as soon as they could. I was most of the way through the game, but only on one of the three character options, and I really wanted to experience the game at that level of difficulty before it got revised, so I wound up marathoning it more doggedly than I usually do a single game. In the end, the rebalance was pretty spotty and heavy handed - a lot of systems got hit, some of them in a bit of a knee-jerk way, applied to every difficulty level, and though the devs later attempted to create a 'classic' difficulty option, it didn't actually revert a lot of the changes. Since then, I've had people hit me up asking if I know a way to revert to or find a prior version - certainly not possible on Steam, and unfortunately you'd be reverting every bugfix too. It's a bit sad that nobody I recommend the game to now will have anywhere near the same experience I originally did, but isn't that always the case?
I love this! It's so thoughtful. I hadn't heard of Souldier, bit that's exactly the idea!
That was an interesting history lesson, and gaming comparison!
I'm so glad you liked it, Mark! It seems to be my sleeper hit 😂
This was such a fascinating read! I only had a very baseline knowledge on how medieval texts were copied and preserved, so it was eye opening to see just how fragile and fraught the entire process was. It's kind of a miracle any copies still exist today when you think about it - but it's obviously great they still do!
As to your discussion about video games being fluid texts, Twilight Princess is one of my favourite games of all time--a game I have poured dozens of hours into playing--yet, anytime I see the Gamecube version, my mind starts doing somersaults. I'm familiar with the Wii version which mirrored the entire game to compensate for most players using the Wiimote (Link's sword) in their right hand, but kept the Gamecube version as it was originally designed. So even though I am so familiar with that game and its map, there exists an entire version of it that feels like stepping into bizzaro world every time I see it. Yet, both are still technically Twilight Princess.