I didn't choice "Lost in the Funhouse" randomly as the title for the blog. I narrowed it down to two short-stories: "To Build a Fire" by Jack London and "Lost in the Funhouse" by John Barth. Some of you may be asking why choose a short story title for the name of a video game blog? Since what I plan on doing with this blog is based in critical analysis of the games we play, it made sense that I would choose a work that I had analyzed in the past that fit with my goal in starting the blog.
"To Build a Fire" appealed to me for the imagery of starting a movement; the name sounds powerful and epic in nature. It would be great if my blog actually did change the industry. However, the content of the story didn't match up with the feeling evoked by the title: it is the story of a over-confident man that trudges out against an indifferent nature and dies (sorry if I ruined the story for you, I may be doing a lot of that here). Because my blog is about creating a unified whole between story and game it would have been a bad idea to break the unity of the blog carrying the message.
"Lost in the Funhouse" is a unique story that depicts Ambrose's travel through a funhouse on the broadwalk. But as the story tells its self, it analyzes itself and its techniques to the reader. Since I assume most of my readership won't have degrees in English Lit. I will have to do much of the same. But also there is the critical awareness that game makers need to recognize before they can actually achieve the legitmization of the genre. Knowing what your doing, how your doing it and how it all plays into creating art is what "Lost in the Funhouse" is all about and what I hope this blog will achieve.
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