[bitácora #2] cultural translation

ship's log. entry #2. version 1.1.

[cuaderno de] bitácora (ship’s log)
1. (nautical) book in which ship’s crew members record course, speed, maneuvers, and other navigation phenomena.

Thoughts about translation and reinterpretation of culture, in whatever form, shape, color or smell, if necessary.

saturday, 05.07.2025

There’s a sort of catharsis going on when you see (physicaly see, in front of you), some thing or (even better) place you’ve experienced in fiction.

A whole new layer of meaning pops out of the blue. Both, reality and fiction, gain an extra dimension.

wednesday, 18.06.2025

I’ve just learned that Catherine was a test project for Persona 5, that just got bigger that expected and ended up becoming a game by its own.

And now some things about those game suddenly connect and make much more sense.

It’s interesting, though, how games allow to make “first steps” that have nothing to do -in an artistic manner- with the end goal, as the objective is to test the technology.

I guess that happens in other tech-heavy media, like cinema (specially animation), but I just find kinda funny how stuff like this can remind you how much tools matter in our medium.

friday, 14.03.2025

Humans prefering to deal with a month 28 days long, and counting every four years to add an extra day, is the best live example of why legacy code exists.

tuesday, 04.02.2025

I don’t like the concept of gamification as it’s been popularized —mostly coming from people who don’t have any kind of game design related knowledge.

Almost the entire concept of “gamifying” something is centered around the process of dividing that something into tasks, assign those tasks some arbitrary score, and give people a fancy badge once they’re successfull enough —whatever that might mean—. Maybe with some sort of leaderboard too, so people can get competitive with other “players”.

For hell’s sake, games didn’t invent any of those things.

Games —specially video games- took those concepts and structures from a much more established source. In the attempt of making Fun systemic, video games shamelessly copied all that stuff from… (drumroll) Military services!

So… when gamification tries to copy its pilars from an interpreter, instead of the original source —which, I bet, they’re unaware about-, it’s only logic that everything gets lost in translation.