Recently, I had the opportunity to read Ready Player One, which had the benefit of not only being extremely engrossing, but also jam-packed with 80's pop-culture goodness which I love soooo much. This isn't a book review though. This is a continuation of the in-class discussion we had about the issues of avatar identity, definitions of reality, and the phrase that Anorak/Halliday uses at the end of the book, "After all, reality is real".
In the book, that takes place mostly in a virtual environment called, OASIS, the main character Wade (through his avatar Parzival) goes on a quest. By the end of it, his avatar has a supreme administrator status (basically making him godlike within the confines of OASIS), he's rich beyond his wildest dreams, and he found a life-long friend and a girl who he loves. It's your standard happy ending, but there was a lot of discussion in class regarding virtual spaces as "real". By which we mean, are interactions that happen in a virtual environment considered a real interaction? I'd always be the first to argue that they are, of course. Whether I talk to someone in World of Warcraft or if I talk to them over the phone, I'd consider the interaction to be real. Very much in the sense that it was an exchange of information that happened.
The problem, however, is how real is that virtual space that those interactions take place in, and how does it compare to the "real life" space of, well, reality? This is something that I apparently don't see eye to eye on as the book is concerned.
To set up the scene in the book, reality (the world outside of OASIS, known hereafter as RL) has gone to shit. The fuel crisis came and went and left the world as we know it destroyed. Around that time, the OASIS was created. A fully-customizable "Second Life"-esque game that, by the time the book takes place, has supplanted RL as the main venue for daily life. People go to work, commute, and earn money in the OASIS. What started as a game became a hyper-real simulation, to the point that the in game currency is the world currency because it's the only thing that has a set value. (Despite the fact that it's still obtainable by killing mobs, which is a huge financial loophole in the book.) The creator of the game, Halliday left behind a message to whoever solved his riddle and that person happens to be Parzival. Halliday's avatar tells Parzival to not put too much importance on the OASIS and not experience life. Because, "After all, reality is real."
In class we discussed it, and the overall sentiment in class was, "How dare Halliday imply that all of what Wade/Parzival did and all the people he met not be real?! He made a best friend and love interest and those relationships are definitely real!" This upset me. Not because I don't think those relationships weren't real, but the reality of those relationships were skewed greatly.
Aech, Parzival's best friend, turns out to be a different gender, race, and sexual orientation than what was depicted in the game. Now, the relationship persists since they'd been best friends for years and that friendship still existed. But there was a moment of unveiling that is a telling point of how "real" that relationship was. Or rather, the moment that it stopped being one kind of real, and entered into a whole new level of reality, like waking up from a dream. Parzival falls in love with Art3mis who has been distant in their entire relationship because in RL, she has a large port-wine stain that covers half her face, and she's been bullied to the point of seclusion because of it. Wade is able to over come that since he fell in love with Art3mis, the girl behind the avatar. It's a touching story of falling in love with someone sight-unseen instead of basing it off of physical appearance.
But the OASIS is not real. By which I mean, the girlfriend-boyfriend relationship Parzival and Art3mis had wasn't a genuine one. The feelings were there, but Wade, at no point, had to deal with Art3mis when she was sick. At any point, Art3mis could pull away for days by simply logging off, and Wade could deal with it, because that's the reality of an online environment. When they break up, Wade is crushed, but in a virtual environment the break-up doesn't happen like it would in RL. Art3mis can block incoming messages from Wade. She can filter emails. Even if Parzival found her in the OASIS, she can block his speech from reaching her. This is a level of isolation that is impossible in RL without staying inside the house and never leaving. More importantly, the minutae of being in a long term relationship has never been put to the test. While, to be fair, this is portrayed as the first stage of a relationship. The falling in love part. But it's stated that they dated for months. So at the end of the book, Wade and Art3mis have had a long-term relation going for months. But it's by fighting through the worst parts of life, the mundane aspects that make life miserable on a day to day basis that really try a relationship. This is something that Wade has never experienced. Because the OASIS isn't real. Not like RL.
Alfred Hitchcock said that movies are life with the boring parts edited out. That's what any interaction inside the OASIS is. But those boring parts is what make life, life. Wade hasn't had to deal with Art3mis being sick, but having to take care of her. He's never had to rearrange his activities that day because she caught a stomach bug or is on her period or twisted her ankle. He's never had to deal with the fact that she's a physical body somewhere, and that is an (arguably) important part of any reality. We want to be accepted as an entire person, body AND mind. I like it when people like us more for the mind, but everyone gets a little thrill when they're deemed by someone else as being physically attractive. It's important for our egos and our well-being. This is something that is completely lacking in the OASIS interactions. Not that there isn't physical attraction, but even in the basic interactions between Parzival and Art3mis, there's that level of doubt that Art3mis looks anything like her real body. Whether or not Art3mis is just some guy in West Virginia who gets his kicks leading on teenage boys online is a real concern, regardless of how it's presented as a joke.
And that physicality is what makes RL, real. Wade hates his RL life. Why? Because he has to deal with it in order to access the OASIS and stay alive. The OASIS can affect RL, but it can't do several things. It can't feed you. It can't take care of your body. It can't deal with bodily wastes. It can't bathe you. Some of these can be achieved through buying special attachments to the harness you're using, but they're still things that at some point, you're going to have to log out and take care of at some point. Just because you are more engaged in a virtual space than in the RL space, doesn't mean that RL isn't less real than the virtual space you're looking at. And that's what Halliday was trying to get across. Reality is real. First and foremost. Other worlds are real in varying degrees. But at some point, those virtual realities have to end and you have to go home to RL. What you have in that world is reflected by the choices you've made in that world, and by a lesser extent what choices you've made elsewhere. But, people have been complacent to ignore RL for so long that the RL that their bodies inhabit is not a place they want to live. Far from making it better, they run from it. We measure maturity based on how we respond to uncomfortable situations. Running from any situation that is uncomfortable is considered in almost all cultures as childish, something to be shunned. But that's what persisting in staying in the OASIS is.
Now, this has gotten me in a bit of a bother, since as we discussed this topic in class, I felt very emotional. I remember feeling like Wade, wishing that the OASIS was a reality. Only my OASIS was any number of fantasies, either in my head or in video games.
When I was 7, I gained a phobia of team sports, and it led me down a path of self-doubt that made me dive deep into the world of video games to escape the feelings of disappointment I had in myself for letting others down. When I was 9, my parents divorced, and I dove even deeper to avoid dealing with the familial issues that arose around everything. As I got older, my self-perception became more and more skewed. I felt unworthy of life, and I kept diving into the worlds in video games to ignore these issues. I stopped growing as a person socially. And every time I had to not be playing a game, I'd hate who I saw in the mirror, because that was me. Not Link, not Master Chief, not Solid Snake. I was not courageous, or strong, or exceptional. I was boring, plain, disappointing me. And it became a vicious cycle. I kept up appearances in school. I did well because then no one would ask questions. But I was supremely unhappy. Like Wade, I liked a virtual environment because I could overcome any limitation through the equalizer of the internet.
Eventually, I came to understand what I was doing. So I stopped. I returned to reality and faced the pain of being who I really was. I still played games a lot, but I was no longer being more invested in them than I was in my actual life. The next few years were hard. I had to really stretch myself and grow. But I eventually came to accept who I was, what my life was, and accepting that certain fantasies should always stay fantasies. For me, that's what Halliday was saying. Not that what you do in the virtual reality isn't real, but that only by facing RL, would you be able to accept truths about yourself and become a real person. I'm glad to say that I can look at myself in the mirror and feel good about what I see. Not just physically, but mentally and socially. I still play games and interact with people in a virtual environment, because those interactions are real to varying degrees, but accepting that they affect a real body occupying real space was the last step that I didn't want to take. Because for so many years, I'd tried to run away from that real boy sitting on his bed playing games.
Reality is real. When the computer shuts off. When the kill scree appears. When the movie ends and the book closes, this is what's going to be left. And when that happens, wouldn't it be great if we'd made that reality worth experiencing?
April 8, 2015
January 13, 2015
Thomas Was Alone
So, this semester I'm taking a new class to the U, Videogames and Storytelling, which promises to be an interesting class, insofar as I not only have three books to read by the end of the class, but several movies to watch, and a half-dozen games I'll need to buy and play (in addition to a variety of free browser-based games).
Needless to say, I will tackle all assignments with extreme prejudice.
One of the first games on our list (which we won't be playing for a few weeks) was Thomas Was Alone. Being the over-achiever that I am (and because I wanted a break from Metroid Prime) I decided to buy it before my student loans dried up in groceries and bills, and play it.
These are my impressions.
First of all that needs to be mentioned is the controls. They're incredibly simple. Arrow keys, space bar and two other buttons to toggle the player character. The platforming is pretty tight, but can get a little slippery at times. I ran into some input lag every once in a while which made for some frustrating times having to tackle a jump several times. I kept alternating between the keyboard and my Xbox 360 controller. The keyboard was not as intuitive as you'd think. You can play with both the arrow keys, or the WASD keys. Which means either split the game between the two hands or play with your left hand completely. This normally wouldn't be an issue (I've done that set up dozens of times on emulators, arrows in the right hand, left hand dealing with the twitch-timing button presses) but as far as I could tell, I couldn't change the controls at all. The keys to cycle the characters are preset to the Q and E keys; handy if you're playing left-handed, but a little frustrating to keep my hand spread out on the left side of the keyboard for two buttons. Another thing that was even more frustrating was that while the Xbox controller allowed me to cycle to the right with the right bumper and to the left with the left bumper, the keyboard reversed these keys, with Q (the one on the left) cycling right and E doing vice-versa. It's not a game-breaker, but it did make for some frustration trying to select the right character for the right situation. The keyboard also allows you to use the number row to jump straight to the character you want, but the lack of any numbers on the screen to indicate which character is linked to which key makes this more of a hassle than anything.
Second was the music. Apparently, my music hit a glitch where the previous level's track wouldn't end properly at the end of the level before starting the next track. This caused some issues with an overly-loud background music and some serious audio issues. But, to be fair, I didn't realize that it was something that wasn't supposed to happen until I had almost finished the game. (I actually reset the game to see if that was the issue on what would happen to be the last level of the game.) The reason was because I was getting more and more engrossed in the story and the characters and the music was taking a seriously ominous overtone with the multiple tracks playing over each other, so I thought it was on purpose. At the last level, I remembered how peaceful and nice the music was for the first few levels and thought it strange that it rose to such a cacophony that I figured something must be up. So, I can't really say much about the music other than at times it can be a little grating (even before the glitch) but on the whole is a pleasant backdrop to the otherwise sparse atmosphere.
The real draw here is the characterization. The gameplay is fine and the platforming is fun enough, but you're not going to be engrossed entirely in the game by that. In fact, it would be a rather humdrum game, more akin to a flash game to play when bored, instead of a full release if it weren't for the story and characterization. The game is narrated by a nice, decidedly british voice, which for some reason makes everything more entertaining. The story is about a group of AIs that are slowly gaining sentience. But, they're not robots or anything. They're rectangles of a single color each. (Or, rather, quadrilaterals, since two of them are actually squares) Each one has, as described by their thoughts explained by the narrator, a unique personality. At first, it seems really silly. Thomas is a red rectangle with an average ability to jump (and fall). You think that this is going to be a really dumb kind of gimmick, a narrator ostensibly telling you what a rectangle is feeling... until Thomas meets Chris, a surly orange block who detests Thomas, and who Thomas is oblivious to the growing resentment. Chris' personality comes off in gameplay mechanics, as he's a short little shit who cannot jump very high. He seems like the epitome of the Danny DeVito archetype of grumpy character. They continue finding new friends all the time, including a very tall yellow rectangle who can jump very high, a large blue block (Claire) who cannot jump very well but can float in water, and several others, each with their own unique way of controlling that compliments the characterization provided to them. Claire was easily my favorite, as she learns early on that she can float and decides that she must be a superhero. In fact, she reminds me of Rebel Wilson, in the sense that she's rather oblivious to the fact that she tends to get in the way a lot and isn't necessarily any more "powerful" than any of the other AIs. It's pretty funny, actually, when she gets the lime-light, since she has a tendency to constantly be looking for some sort of nemesis to validate her superhero-ness. (She briefly decides that Chris should be her nemesis, since he's constantly surly.)
The mechanics require each of the AIs to be in a "portal" to end the stage and move on. This also requires them to work together. So you have AIs that have issues with each other having to work together for the sake of necessity. By the end of the game, even Chris' angry and resentful attitude to the other AIs changes.
But then the story and characterization takes a strange turn. The last "World" of the game loses the AIs that we've come to love and replace them with a handful of gray ones, which are still characterized, but make the story harder to coincide with mechanics. You play as Grey, The Old One, Jo and John, and Team Jump. During this segment, they introduce a new mechanic: power fields. When any one of these AIs pass through a colored power field, they gain the special ability that the previous group of AIs had. If you pass through a purple field, they gain the power of Sarah, which is the ability to double-jump. This makes the gameplay different enough to be interesting, but the characterization starts getting this dissonance. At this point in the narrative, all of these AIs are sprinting towards a light at the end of the program. Grey is determined to get to the light first, and he becomes the closest thing this game has to an honest villain. The Old One is trying to stop him. Grey enlists the help of Jo and John to get to the end, by tricking them and exploiting them. The Old One teams up with Team Jump, a group of five very small but high-jumping squares. The last level that the Old One and Grey are on have their portals right next to each other, but the narrative has painted a climactic confrontation is in store between these two, which doesn't ever happen. The issue isn't that they don't have this confrontation, but rather, on that level, I got them to their portals first and they sat their, inches from each other, peacefully, until I got the other AIs to their respective portals. This is pretty much the only time that there's a gameplay dissonance from the story. Most levels have been cleverly designed so as to necessitate placing certain AIs last for the narrative to work properly. The reason why they didn't do it in that instance is my only complaint I have on that front.
All in all, I felt that the step away from the original group of AIs that you spent 90% of the game building and learning how to use was a poor choice. The game is centered around the titular character for the most part, and for him not to even be there at the end seemed strange. It actually reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2 in some respects. How you start with Snake, then move to Raiden for most of the game. Only imagine that you played most of the game with Solid Snake and then only the climax is carried out by Raiden. It leads to diminished satisfaction with the outcome of the story.
All in all, I was surprised at how strong the overall narrative was painted with only the narration of the feelings or thoughts of each AI to tell the story, and a small blurb at the beginning of each World explaining a little bit about what was happening in the real world. It shows that character-driven gameplay can be applied to anything. Even a handful of colorful shapes moving in a sparsely decorated world.
Needless to say, I will tackle all assignments with extreme prejudice.
One of the first games on our list (which we won't be playing for a few weeks) was Thomas Was Alone. Being the over-achiever that I am (and because I wanted a break from Metroid Prime) I decided to buy it before my student loans dried up in groceries and bills, and play it.
These are my impressions.
First of all that needs to be mentioned is the controls. They're incredibly simple. Arrow keys, space bar and two other buttons to toggle the player character. The platforming is pretty tight, but can get a little slippery at times. I ran into some input lag every once in a while which made for some frustrating times having to tackle a jump several times. I kept alternating between the keyboard and my Xbox 360 controller. The keyboard was not as intuitive as you'd think. You can play with both the arrow keys, or the WASD keys. Which means either split the game between the two hands or play with your left hand completely. This normally wouldn't be an issue (I've done that set up dozens of times on emulators, arrows in the right hand, left hand dealing with the twitch-timing button presses) but as far as I could tell, I couldn't change the controls at all. The keys to cycle the characters are preset to the Q and E keys; handy if you're playing left-handed, but a little frustrating to keep my hand spread out on the left side of the keyboard for two buttons. Another thing that was even more frustrating was that while the Xbox controller allowed me to cycle to the right with the right bumper and to the left with the left bumper, the keyboard reversed these keys, with Q (the one on the left) cycling right and E doing vice-versa. It's not a game-breaker, but it did make for some frustration trying to select the right character for the right situation. The keyboard also allows you to use the number row to jump straight to the character you want, but the lack of any numbers on the screen to indicate which character is linked to which key makes this more of a hassle than anything.
Second was the music. Apparently, my music hit a glitch where the previous level's track wouldn't end properly at the end of the level before starting the next track. This caused some issues with an overly-loud background music and some serious audio issues. But, to be fair, I didn't realize that it was something that wasn't supposed to happen until I had almost finished the game. (I actually reset the game to see if that was the issue on what would happen to be the last level of the game.) The reason was because I was getting more and more engrossed in the story and the characters and the music was taking a seriously ominous overtone with the multiple tracks playing over each other, so I thought it was on purpose. At the last level, I remembered how peaceful and nice the music was for the first few levels and thought it strange that it rose to such a cacophony that I figured something must be up. So, I can't really say much about the music other than at times it can be a little grating (even before the glitch) but on the whole is a pleasant backdrop to the otherwise sparse atmosphere.
The real draw here is the characterization. The gameplay is fine and the platforming is fun enough, but you're not going to be engrossed entirely in the game by that. In fact, it would be a rather humdrum game, more akin to a flash game to play when bored, instead of a full release if it weren't for the story and characterization. The game is narrated by a nice, decidedly british voice, which for some reason makes everything more entertaining. The story is about a group of AIs that are slowly gaining sentience. But, they're not robots or anything. They're rectangles of a single color each. (Or, rather, quadrilaterals, since two of them are actually squares) Each one has, as described by their thoughts explained by the narrator, a unique personality. At first, it seems really silly. Thomas is a red rectangle with an average ability to jump (and fall). You think that this is going to be a really dumb kind of gimmick, a narrator ostensibly telling you what a rectangle is feeling... until Thomas meets Chris, a surly orange block who detests Thomas, and who Thomas is oblivious to the growing resentment. Chris' personality comes off in gameplay mechanics, as he's a short little shit who cannot jump very high. He seems like the epitome of the Danny DeVito archetype of grumpy character. They continue finding new friends all the time, including a very tall yellow rectangle who can jump very high, a large blue block (Claire) who cannot jump very well but can float in water, and several others, each with their own unique way of controlling that compliments the characterization provided to them. Claire was easily my favorite, as she learns early on that she can float and decides that she must be a superhero. In fact, she reminds me of Rebel Wilson, in the sense that she's rather oblivious to the fact that she tends to get in the way a lot and isn't necessarily any more "powerful" than any of the other AIs. It's pretty funny, actually, when she gets the lime-light, since she has a tendency to constantly be looking for some sort of nemesis to validate her superhero-ness. (She briefly decides that Chris should be her nemesis, since he's constantly surly.)
The mechanics require each of the AIs to be in a "portal" to end the stage and move on. This also requires them to work together. So you have AIs that have issues with each other having to work together for the sake of necessity. By the end of the game, even Chris' angry and resentful attitude to the other AIs changes.
But then the story and characterization takes a strange turn. The last "World" of the game loses the AIs that we've come to love and replace them with a handful of gray ones, which are still characterized, but make the story harder to coincide with mechanics. You play as Grey, The Old One, Jo and John, and Team Jump. During this segment, they introduce a new mechanic: power fields. When any one of these AIs pass through a colored power field, they gain the special ability that the previous group of AIs had. If you pass through a purple field, they gain the power of Sarah, which is the ability to double-jump. This makes the gameplay different enough to be interesting, but the characterization starts getting this dissonance. At this point in the narrative, all of these AIs are sprinting towards a light at the end of the program. Grey is determined to get to the light first, and he becomes the closest thing this game has to an honest villain. The Old One is trying to stop him. Grey enlists the help of Jo and John to get to the end, by tricking them and exploiting them. The Old One teams up with Team Jump, a group of five very small but high-jumping squares. The last level that the Old One and Grey are on have their portals right next to each other, but the narrative has painted a climactic confrontation is in store between these two, which doesn't ever happen. The issue isn't that they don't have this confrontation, but rather, on that level, I got them to their portals first and they sat their, inches from each other, peacefully, until I got the other AIs to their respective portals. This is pretty much the only time that there's a gameplay dissonance from the story. Most levels have been cleverly designed so as to necessitate placing certain AIs last for the narrative to work properly. The reason why they didn't do it in that instance is my only complaint I have on that front.
All in all, I felt that the step away from the original group of AIs that you spent 90% of the game building and learning how to use was a poor choice. The game is centered around the titular character for the most part, and for him not to even be there at the end seemed strange. It actually reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2 in some respects. How you start with Snake, then move to Raiden for most of the game. Only imagine that you played most of the game with Solid Snake and then only the climax is carried out by Raiden. It leads to diminished satisfaction with the outcome of the story.
All in all, I was surprised at how strong the overall narrative was painted with only the narration of the feelings or thoughts of each AI to tell the story, and a small blurb at the beginning of each World explaining a little bit about what was happening in the real world. It shows that character-driven gameplay can be applied to anything. Even a handful of colorful shapes moving in a sparsely decorated world.
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