By Kieron Gillen on April 23rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm.
Old comrade Oskar Skog mentions that his Swedish bunch of readers have done an pile-on interview with RedLynx about recent RPS-celebration subject Trials 2. It’s answering a bunch of questions from their readers, and – in the spirit of international goodwill – it’s written in English, not Swedish. To reciprocate next month RPS will have Swedish Posting Week, where we’ll have a shot of doing likewise. No, really. Some of the answers are fun. For example: Why Finnish games involve hurting.
Finland was still a bit over 100 years ago one of the poorest countries in Europe. Before that, even poorer. And when the country was underdeveloped, and poor, and climate is cold as you know, life most likely was far from easy. You had to face risk, danger, things we would nowadays see as very dark sides of life – maybe that started to develop a base for very sarcastic humor. It is easier to handle the negative things, if you can see some humor in them?”
I dunno what our excuse is.
23/04/2008 at 15:56 Simon says:
“I dunno what our excuse is.”
Except for music, everything you did went wrong.
23/04/2008 at 16:19 Jochen Scheisse says:
Simon, I think Kieron’s not Dutch. But I know what you mean.
23/04/2008 at 16:27 Espy says:
That one tag, the long one… what on earth does it mean?
23/04/2008 at 16:32 MPK says:
@Espy: Keiron’s referring to State, a games forum-cum-site-cum-webzine started by Oskar Skog. It was the breeding ground for New Games Journalism amongst other things.
@KG: I have most, if not all, of the StateMag content on an old HD somewhere. Dunno about all the site stuff mind.
23/04/2008 at 19:13 Dez says:
I live in Finland and i can say we have been doing well financially for much longer than a 100 years.
Our population is low, so even if in sometime there was not that much in goverment treasury, there was no large famine or anything like that. So we have never really been a developing country.
Fact is that Finland is still in some remote place quite backwards, there is only couple major cities and back 100 years ago even less. We lived off the cold and bitter land and still do in some places.
23/04/2008 at 20:23 OS says:
To clarify my countryman above, it would be fair to note that a country named Finland didn’t exist untill 1917. So saying that we did financially well back in the good&old 19th century would be quite a nod towards our great leaders from the past, the
swedesrussians.23/04/2008 at 20:49 Lucky says:
Oh Finland WAS horribly underdeveloped hundred years ago, even compared to Sweden. We hadn’t really industrialized outside those aforementioned major cities and most of our population consisted of farmers.
23/04/2008 at 21:51 Khab says:
Svenska poster? Jag kan inte bärga mig! :D
23/04/2008 at 22:32 Wholly Schmidt says:
Long live State! Long live Oskar Skog!
23/04/2008 at 23:03 Lucky says:
Oh no no no. Finnish. You Swedes were building a social welfare system while we still ate wood.
23/04/2008 at 23:29 eoy says:
<– Yet another Finnish RPS reader. It’s very true that Finns have a generally more sarcastic humor than other people.
24/04/2008 at 01:37 Lh'owon says:
Now that’s what I want to hear! I’m always let down when I only feel extremely pleased with a game.
24/04/2008 at 05:53 oskarskog says:
“Wholly Schmidt says”
Now there’s an avatar I never expected to see again.
24/04/2008 at 06:03 Joonas says:
I love it that the guys took the time to answer the question on hurting ourselves. I disagree to some extent, though – having worked with lots of other Europeans lately, I judge that we Finns have the lowest self-esteem (for no good reason). We don’t think we’re worthy. Thus it’s easier to ridicule ourselves than to risk someone else doing it for us. Add this to the melancholy of an isolated, sparsely populated country, and you get the kind of humor that’s witnessed here.
24/04/2008 at 06:38 Flint says:
I’m just posting here to participate in the Finnish RPS Readers Convention that’s taking place in this topic.
24/04/2008 at 08:01 Quinns says:
I’m just posting here to point out that it’s outrageous how well Finnish people speak English.
I conjecture that Finland is a made-up country and ‘Finnish’ is actually a trait you guys picked during character creation. Plus 15% Ability To Handle Negative Things, -20% Self Esteem.
EDIT: Fuck I’m thinking of Finesse
24/04/2008 at 08:31 Winterborn says:
Hahahaha.
24/04/2008 at 08:56 Jarmo says:
1) We subtitle our TV. Instant language lessons every night.
2) We have the best school system in the world.
Now if I only had the prerequisite skill to use self-deprecating irony in this post…
03/09/2008 at 00:02 Mathmin says:
Finnish people are seriously horrible at handling negative things, that’s one trait that is shared by everyone here. As the first example that comes to mind are the suicide statistics, huge amount of alcoholism -which is problem handling correlated- and of course a my personal experiences.
Anyway It’s also true that Finns have low self esteem, but I find that to be a good trait rather than a bad one. Sadly the handful of people here who have good self esteem stand out, not in negative light but positive. Meaning that all the self centered pricks usually get noticed above the more humble masses. Well enough with my very random rambling.