Some last words

In October of last year I wrote a review of Mausritter. Sometime earlier this month, someone wrote a response to it in which they pitted me against Mausritter. Pitted my games against Mausritter. They said I claimed that Mausritter wasn’t art and that therefore I thought my stuff was art, and more so that those claims meant I thought I was better than Mausritter. That I thought of Mausritter as a product and I was a “true artist.”

I learned that several other people had felt the same way and encouraged this person to write this rebuttal article. 

That wasn’t the intention of my review. I would never claim a work of art is lesser than my own. I would never claim a ttrpg isn’t a work of art. I would never and have never claimed that my art isn’t a product. The intention of my review was to state that Mausritter is a perfect game book but that it plays it safe and didn’t surprise me at all. While also trying to codify this idea of the Questing Beast School of Design. I did not succeed. 

I’ve understood since I was an adolescent that people read into my words things I never intended nor meant. It’s kind of the default experience of being autistic. And in thinking about that, my previous analytical/review work, and this most recent response to said work, I’ve decided I’m not gonna do it anymore. 

There is no part of my life that I want taken up by people comparing me to someone else. Or comparing my art to another’s. I’m not interested in any of that and I don’t wish to be a part of it. I invited it on myself by writing reviews/articles while I’m still an artist, so to rectify that, I will not be doing analytical/review work any longer.

My initial goal with nerves.games was that I believed I could do analytical work while also being an artist. I believed that I could keep the two separate like others in different fields had. I’m realizing that was rather silly of me. There’s room in TTRPGs for that kind of thing, but I am simply not built for it. Not emotionally at least.

For the sake of clarity, I am not going to be doing reviews or articles anymore for nerves.games because I am simply not built for it. It’s not the fault of anyone but myself. If people read the Mausritter review and believed I thought Mausritter wasn’t a piece of art, that’s my fault. Not theirs. 

Thanks for reading.

John