Once, there was a game, a video game, an immersive video game, a game so very immersive that those who played it wanted to keep playing it, and did so, for long periods of time.
Sometimes, they neglected their chores. Or they fell behind in their social obligations. Or became less interested in the outside, real world and more interested in the tiny little megaverse that happened on their screens.
This had never before happened in human history, except possibly with the invention of circuses, organized sports, cinema, radio dramas, calligraphy, cave paintings…
…okay. This had happened before. But not THIS way. Because THIS time, the game was made by a powerful corporation, which had a clear profit motive to make the game as enjoyable and as addictive as possible. And that had never, ever happened—
The point is, sometimes technology can be so addictive, so appallingly and intensely satisfying, the same as visual art, or music, or poetry, or—
…actually, the creation of video games is an art. It’s not always good art. But that’s a characteristic of all artistic endeavor. As a thought experiment, use your preferred method to go listen to Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music”. I love Lou Reed, in general. But even great artists, in great media, make terrible art sometimes.
At any rate, IN A HORRIFYING WAY, humans were (metaphorically) sucked into this video game, never to return, and it took the entire human race into the game, such that they stopped eating or sleeping or…
Not the whole human race. I play the ancient East Asian game “Go”, myself. This is because I am too sophisticated to play video games. Okay, that’s a lie. I am really, really bad at video games. Honestly, I’m not that good at Go, either.
Also, plenty of people already have problems where they have food and/or sleep available, but can’t use them. I’m just sayin’.
At any rate, the point is that someday video games will be so immersive that humans will basically live inside them, rather than living their true lives, because remember, your job doing tech support as an anonymous voice on the phone is true, whereas your time spent painstakingly becoming a better Bard online is all imaginary, for reasons no-one has seen fit to explain to me. I’m not sure how this works. Who’s maintaining the servers (or whatever tech is in use by then) if everyone’s in the game? The metaphysics feel shaky to me. But you get my point: essentially, we’ll all live in the video game, and this will be terrible, because it’s a video game.
And my side’s against that, hypothetically.
You’ve met my people, I think. My side. My tribe. We like art, at least in theory—I mean, I ain’t been to a museum or an opera in forever, and in general, when there’s a concert of a musician I really, really like, I manage to catch about ten minutes of it before I scamper off. (Look. I am busy. Somebody has to make sure that the sound gear for the Main Stage isn’t simultaneously needed at the Other Stage, and if it is, one has to figure out how to improvise, really quickly, and that’s a kind of dancing and a form of concert appreciation in and of itself.) We dislike artifice (have you asked me about the glamour of Elves, lately? Go on, ask me; I might have something to say about it.) So we ought to hate being in the video game.
Only: Why?
See here’s this now-ancient trope, just swinging around the place, this idea that people will get so stuck in a video game that they will starve to death or forget their humanity or lose out on what really matters in life (whatever that might be.) But from where I’m writing, I haven’t seen the sun for more than a couple of minutes in over 40 days, and I don’t particularly miss it. This may be because I am part vampire, or it may just be that I am fortunate to have more than enough bright light and an ample supply of vitamin D pills. …and, of course, I have all these words, and these words are my brightest and most favorite Sun.
No, I don’t use video games; I often have, I just don’t have room for them anymore. It would be easy for me to take a stance that someone who spends all day writing is better than someone who spends all day playing video games, because I happen to do the former. But, outside of the egotism of making this all about my weird, weird life choices, this is like the old joke where you go around thinking that your brain is the most important part of your body until you realize which part of your body is telling you that.
I know. You’re here for the stories. This isn’t a stealth essay. This is totally a work of fiction, written by a savage Dire Wolf with really, really cute fingers at the end of its paws, and that’s the twist ending OH NO I JUST REVEALED THE TWIST ENDING QUICK I’D BETTER COVER IT UP WITH THE MAIN IDEA OF WHAT I’M SAYING:
Realistically, if we can find a video game which is so immersive that it sucks us in and we don’t want to leave, I’m Team Video Game.
Sure, that immersion might indeed be because it is appealing to our baser natures, our lowest common denominators of the mind, our least useful and least interesting pieces of self. But it could also be because the game has a rich and intricate inner life. This is honestly demonstrable by now. It’s not like people aren’t already doing this. Am I saying that someone’s massively multiplayer online roleplaying game experience is better than their experience being a painter? Actually, sure, at least potentially. Why not? I will use myself as an example.
(Not egotism, in this case; I’m using myself as an example, not because I think you’re like me—even I am not all that much like me—but because I know I won’t offend myself, or, if I do, I can always make it better with Scotch.)
So I am a terrible painter. Sure, if you know me, you know also terrible at massively multiplayer online role-playing game. But I spent a couple of months playing one last year, and it was great! Whereas if I’d spent a couple of months painting last year, yes, I probably would have become a better painter. But I also would have created a bunch of terrible art, which is dangerous—not in the sense that it lowers the overall quality of art in the world (that might be a thing, too, but who am I to judge the world’s art?)—but we might run into the Fruitcake Problem, that strange challenge wherein you’re terrible at something, or you make something nobody wants, but you insist on giving it away anyhow.
(Which, in turn, is a corollary to the Monet Syndrome, wherein you have a body of work which is quite desirable, but you just can’t see it.)
(How do you tell if you’re a fruitcake or a Monet? I have a simple method: ask the Internet what it thinks, and do the opposite.)
The thing I’m trying to say is that I keep wanting to write some sort of incisive little story about all of us moving into a video game, but it’s clear that I am incapable, even in theory, of maintaining the lie that I think “human beings end up getting hooked on some super-immersive video game” is automatically bad. Every time I try to twist this trope, the other side ups and smacks me in the face. (How did you even FIND my face? This is a STORY, dammit.)
You see, I live in a dark, alternate reality, the far future, the year 2020. And I have watched our descent into dystopia. I have watched people use increasingly personalized technologies to focus and refocus themselves in what we call ‘bubbles’, though that’s too kind a term; most bubbles are shiny and pretty and they float, and also they’re light, and temporary and they pop. This is more like shutting the lid on a case that’s perfectly hollowed out to fit your body, a selective sensory deprivation. There are plenty of things about the ‘real’ world which seem solid—I place more value in blood, and in sweat, than most people know—but I refuse to believe that the danger of an immersive game is anything more than trivial in a time and place where self-immersion in artifice is not simply a way of life, but a mental requirement.
I’m not convinced that many of the people who claim to live in the ‘real world’ have any interest therein. It’s part of how I found myself becoming a Dark Lord, becoming at odds with most of the rest of the humanity.
I mean:
It’s not that I am particularly superior, or that my models of the Tellurian are inherently better than those of the people around me. It comes down to one point, which I will make repeatedly, in as many different ways as I can, and it’s this:
Any belief system which systematically starves your mind or ability to respond to conflict is an overwhelming weakness.
This is the standard to which we should hold anything: it doesn’t matter whether you live inside a game played by Gods, or a game played by Aliens, or a mechanistic world where everything just is. What matters is how you treat it, how you decide to interface with the input you do receive.
Ice-fishing exists because people were perceptive enough to realize that the wall on the ground was breakable, and underneath it was protein.
If your mind is not where you hoped it would be, check out your mental walls. Some are there to keep you safe. Some are there to make you feel safe, but in reality, they’re just locking you in.
Jailbreaking your head is risky; there are strange and difficult things in your skulls. But it’s still sometimes worth a try.
Lots of things in this world will try to imprison you. Don’t tolerate it from your own brain.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
I write books. You should read them!
My new book, “I Hate Your Time Machine”, is now available! Go pick it up!
