Hello everyone! My depth year is half way over now and the current state of the project is a somewhat surprising state of affairs. I haven’t buckled or folded and I wasn’t really expecting to be able to say that. The nly time where I’ve bought anything new in terms of media is when there were tax implications for not doing so. Those games have remained on the shelf and have not tempted me away from exploring the things I already have. They’re like Game Futures, for which I will need to build metaphysical shelves so as to store them as they gradually evolve into actual physical existence. The only other exception has been the new entries in series in which I was already heavily invested – mainly Game of Thrones and the Expanse. For that, it’s not a case of something new. If the new entries in the franchises had existed before my depth year they wouldn’t have languished on a list of things I’d eventually get to. I didn’t read or watch them because they didn’t exist and it seems unfair to delay gratification in that respect when I had no control over the timing of their release.

Other than that, all of my effort has been focused on what I have, not what I want. I feel in other words like I’m still obeying the spirit of this project, even if the rules have been waived in a few individual cases. In every case the decision has not been impulsive or rash or driven by immediate desire. Instead it’s been considered and weighed. I feel good about that – it’s far more mindful than much of my consumption has tended to be.

And here’s what’s encouraging – I don’t really feel like it’s much of a chore at all. I do still spend a fair amount of time browsing the Switch eShop, but only for games I already own that I would like to format shift into something I can play in bed. I don’t actually like the Switch much when it’s a console hooked up to my TV. It’s a portable gaming device first and foremost, and some game experiences are best had in that way. When I’m at my PC and in the mood for playing a game it feels like it should be an experience that gets the most out of it. That means games like Undertale and To the Moon (two I completed this month) lose out on more bombastic fare. The Switch is a device that works better for the flavour of indie games that are as much about intimate stories as they are intricate game mechanisms. So, nothing new ever enters my game library but old things occasionally get recontextualised in a way that lets me experience them in a manner that feels new.

I’m starting to feel like this depth year experience will genuinely change my relationship with consumerism in a healthy way and I’m enthused about that. I thought by this point I’d already have a wishlist of a hundred things that I’d buy on the 1st of January. That has not been the case. What wishlist I carry with me finds things being removed as often than it finds things being added.

This month there have been two main things occupying my attention. I’ll talk about the more positive of these first.

Mrs Meeple and I spent a long weekend in Gothenburg. I was heading there for Reasons and took the opportunity to have a little holiday. It’s a genuinely lovely place, and Sweden is a country with an awful lot to recommend it. We had two and a bit days to explore, and took full advantage of that. We went to the Botanical Gardens and the Natural History Museum. Mrs Meeple described the latter of those as ‘uneven’ but I’d prefer to say ‘comprehensive’. You’d go into a room where every kind of wood-louse was fully documented in unbearable detail and then turn the corner to stare right into the eye of a full sized African Elephant.

The most amazing thing to me though was how well trained every animal was. There they were, in busy and noisy conditions, immaculately holding their poses while excited kids and adults swarmed all around. At one point there was a polar bear posing on an iceberg and it didn’t twitch a muscle for the entire time I was watching. If I was in its position I’d be doing my dinger. The army would need called into to deal with a rogue bear situation. I don’t know how they managed to get them all to stand so still, often in what looked to be quite uncomfortable poses.

I will say though that I think some of the exhibits have been seriously underfed and I’d be appreciative if they addressed that issue with some urgency.

We also went to the Lisberg Amusement Park, although I couldn’t convince Mrs Meeple to go on anything that looked fun. My threshold for adrenaline, by virtue of video games having sanded down my nerves to a smooth finish, is very high. Mrs Meeple reacted with visceral horror to the idea that we go on a rollercoaster that paused thirty seconds over a sheer drop before zooming into a series of spirals that went upside down and side to side. My only worry was where I’d put my glasses. In the end, none of the rides on which we could compromise would let you on with a bag or any loose items and they didn’t seem to offer lockers anywhere except at the entrance. We only managed the Ferris wheel in the end although it was very pleasant.

We also went to the art gallery, which was lovely if occasionally baffling. We visited a game shop recommended to us by Friend of the Show Viviene Dunstan and it was absolutely amazing.

I mean, look at that selection. For someone on a depth year this is a bit like a newly minted vegetarian being taken to a fine steak restaurant. Or perhaps a newly sober tee-totaler being taken to an upscale bar. There are two storeys here given over to sci-fi and fantasy books, games, and various accouterments of nerd culture. It was absolutely fantastic – a great range, at very fair prices, and I didn’t buy a single thing.

We also took a boat tour and if you are ever in a new city and they have a river or lake I heartily recommend doing this. It’s easily my favourite way to see a new place. We have hundreds of photos from Gothenburg, with which I will not bore you, but that’s pretty much where all the ones threaded through this post come from. It’s a location I recommend, even if I probably wouldn’t recommend you fly there from Aberdeen or with KLM. They managed to herd us from a delayed flight onto another flight on our way there and left my luggage behind. That’s understandable, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of urgency involved in getting it back to me the next day. It contained not just a fresh change of clothes but prescription medicines I need to take daily else I will die.

Okay, probably not but I’m sure those pills aren’t prescribed to me for the fun of it. They did give us an ‘emergency care kit’ but it was notably light on prohibited medications.

So that was nice.

The biggest other thing in terms of ‘occupied mind-share’ this month was the growing unpleasantness of Twitter whenever any remotely contentious topic flares up. I lost a good few Twitter followers, and even some Twitter friends, as a result of that this month. I’ve never quite understood the common refrain that the board gaming community is one of the nicest you can hope to encounter. Actually, I tell a lie – I do understand it. It’s the unjustifiable exceptionalism that you tend to find at the heart of any self-identified community. ‘We are better than them’. I think perhaps a larger proportion of people believe it in board gaming. It’s not really been my experience. I find board game twitter in particular extremely cliquish and layered into what are effectively class strata. I’ve never felt this more so than this month where once again the topic of ethical behaviour in game media came up. The new counter talking point became ‘Even talking about this shows you are racist and misogynist, or that you are willingly enabling those that are’. ‘Everyone is already behaving ethically’, unethical people say as they behave unethically. ‘Block this person for reacting with hostility towards our unfounded accusations’, ‘Unfollow this person, he makes us feel unsafe’, ‘form ranks, defend!’

The only saving grace really is that as a forty-plus year old man I’m not exactly moved to tears by being sent to Coventry. The rough vigilante justice of an Enid Blyton novel doesn’t really have anything other than comedy impact.

The whole new counter-argument is nonsense position. It would be almost comically so if it weren’t for the fact a mere allegation in this vein is enough for many people to cut ties to others. For me, the more I see absurdity like this channeled into a suspiciously coordinated wall of rehearsed talking points the more I wonder what people are actually trying to hide. There is a lot of toxicity in the board game community, particularly on Twitter. Some of the sources of that use their own aggressive and performative ‘wokeness’ to bludgeon well-meaning others into adopting positions that do not stand up to even passing critique or scrutiny. The tribalism on Twitter is stifling, and unfortunately I don’t really see a board game community there that is really worth serious engagement. I have great affection for individual people on Twitter (and all of you reading this are likely in that category if you have an account). People in groups are people in groups, unfortunately, and groups trend towards tribal mindsets. Even groups of people that have ‘make fun with other people’ as the core common ground of their relationships.

I tend to believe that if someone isn’t upset at a position you have taken up, it wasn’t really a position that merited taking up in the first place. Almost every meaningful viewpoint will have people that are on the sharp end of it, because otherwise life becomes an inconsequential series of ‘On the one hand this, on the other hand that’ statements. ‘I really shouldn’t have to say this’ tweetstorms that absolutely didn’t have to be said because nobody seriously disagreed – at least in the tweeter’s own social circle. There’s value to be had in affirmation, and in showing people they have support. However, there’s plenty wrong in this hobby and I see little value in self-congratulatory rhetoric aimed at a choir that has already bought the hymn-book. We’re all brief candles between two immensities of darkness and it’s vital that we use the brief time we have in the best possible ways.

That’s why I tend to focus my attention on areas that I think are problematic in this hobby, and the lack of any real understanding of ethical norms is an issue that I see as being critical because of the structures of how community norms evolve. It doesn’t become a non-issue because serious transgressions are rare. It’s an issue because at some point there is a real chance this hobby stops being so insular and niche. What we do now sets the norms of acceptability for the hobby when real money and influence creeps in.

To that end you may have noticed I spent a lot of time this month working on a generalisable code of ethics for hobbyist media outlets. My original expectation was that only Meeple Like Us will be an adopter but there’s already a second and some suggestion more might follow. I’ve been pleased with the (largely private) support I’ve had for this initiative, but disheartened by how the current climate online makes people feel it’s risky to be more vocal. In any case it’s available under a CC-BY 4.0 licence for anyone that wants to adopt and adapt it. At this point though I feel like I’ve said everything I need to say on this topic. I’ve outlined the problems, the reasons those problems come about, and put together an actionable set of principles to avoid the largest manifestations of these issues. From now on my focus is simply living up to the standards I’ve now formally set for this site.

The response certain elements on Twitter have to this topic every time it comes up though has made me deeply cynical of the motivations underpinning their behaviour. Never trust anyone that tells you it’s in your best interests for them to sell their opinions, or that they should be trusted to be authentic even if they’re being funded directly by publishers for their viewpoints. I understand that’s the only way a lot of people can make money from the work they do, but the lack of an ethical way to make money doesn’t justify adopting an unethical way. Society is not set up in a way that people can necessarily get paid ethically for pursuing their passions in the way they want. That doesn’t make ethical behaviour optional, or a mere ‘nice to have’. Sometimes you just can’t make money doing what you love and have to live with that or simply admit you are not behaving ethically.

Or burn the whole system down to the ground, which would admittedly be my preferred option.

That’s not a depth year observation, but one that is generally true.

I mentioned my wish-list earlier, and here’s how it stood at the start of June:

• World War Z, the Video Game
• Observation, from No Code
• The Terror
• Red Sparrow
• The Wandering Earth
• Avengers Endgame
• Bonding
• Baba is You
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Good Omens
• Captain Marvel
• Into the Spiderverse
• Sex Education

Whittling that away in the usual fashion that has become the norm for these posts, we end up with a shorter list. The interest in WWZ has passed, largely in line with it disappearing from my Youtube subscriptions. Red Sparrow is no longer something I’m particularly keen on checking out but if it floated in front of me in an idle moment I might give it a go. I’d watch Jennifer Lawrence read out a phonebook. I had forgotten completely about Bonding, so that’s also something that I can clearly live without. Sex sells, but clearly more than that is needed to make an infatuation last. Baba is You likewise. Looks like a neat puzzle game but honestly I’m not short of those already.

Those have floated more into a kind of ‘neutral’ list. I won’t go out of my way for them, but I wouldn’t necessarily turn my nose up if I remembered them in an otherwise unoccupied moment.

The prohibition on watching Good Omens continues to sting – people seem to love it and I’m convinced I will also. There’s also a less edifying reason that I am sad to be missing it – by the time I watch it I’m going to fall into that category of ‘Johnny Come Latelys’ that are ready to enthuse at the same time everyone else has grown bored. I refused to read Harry Potter for years because I was so sick of the constant chatter about it. I was so tired of hearing the name ‘Harry Potter’ that if anyone even shaped an ‘H’ sound with their lips I’d cut their conversation short. And then when nobody cared, I read the books and loved them and unsurprisingly nobody was interested to talk about them. Here it’s especially bad because I had multiple reads of Good Omens under my belt long before it had become an online darling. There’s a kind of Hipstery pride in me that when it comes to the work of Terry Pratchett people need to know that I’ve been in this fandom for decades. It’s not a good look, I know. But still. I knew this book before everyone involved totally sold out, man and nobody is going to believe me.

I know how that makes me sound. The absolutely only thing I can say to that is, ‘there’s only so much you can hide your true nature in a diary series’.

Everyone has been talking about Chernobyl this month too and as you might imagine that has ended up on my wishlist as a result. It is apparently amazing, but I guess we’ll see if I even care come January.

So, the wishlist as it stands at the start of July is thus:

• Chernobyl
• Observation, from No Code
• The Terror
• The Wandering Earth
• Avengers Endgame
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Good Omens
• Captain Marvel
• Into the Spiderverse
• Sex Education

Of the five things I had on my wishlist at the start, only one (Sex Education) remains and even that is because of who is involved. It might not even make it to the end of the year. Already it feels like this process has been worth it. I might even just do this going forward in life – a patient media approach that curtails my consumerism before I ever let it take control of my life again. I can focus on ‘what do I still want after a year’ as opposed to ‘what shiny thing do I want now, just because’.

We’ll find out I guess.

See you all next month!