“It’s dangerous to go alone, take this!”
-The Legend of Zelda-
…thanks to for collaborating on the art for this essay…please check out and buy his awesome prints and book at www.stevecandraw.com…you rule brother!!…
My fingers connect with the last arrow nested in a brown leather quiver on my back. In a blinking moment the head and grains of a steel tip pierce the eye of an Octorok as it spits rock at my face. It disappears into death. I walk forward my expression unchanging, and my mom yells “Dinner!”, macaroni and hot dog steaming on our kitchen table.
Game over.
I’ve been Link, I’ve been a Noid, I've been every member of the Addams Family. I’ve been Mario, Luigi, Wario and a Peach. I’ve been dots, lines and pixels. Buttons, knobs and VR goggles. I jump, I stab, I shoot, and I whip. I win, lose, and pour quarters. I take up five minutes of a bathroom break. I put myself to sleep on an airplane.
I’m game, gaming and gamer, the preoccupying distraction of easily abandoned accomplishment. I’m a puzzled role-playing strategy sports simulator and it has been years since I played with myself in a way that had much meaning.
I am a video gamer.
Over 60% of adults play video games and almost 90% of kids. Heck, people watch people watching people play video games. We are rapt in playful rapture. Obsessed with virtual obsessions. Transcended into electronic daydream. And I can’t help but wonder why.
I am everyone. I am anyone. I am no one.
When a professional basketball player picks up the latest NBA2K game, do they choose to play as themself or someone else? Do they create a character? I like to think that Shaq plays as Kobe, Michael Jordan as Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman as a modded inflatable unicorn.
Given the opportunity to play a game version of your life what character would you choose? Would you be yourself? Would you choose to play another game entirely?
I play games to pass time. Put me on a plane and I love to suck at deep sea zombie diving. I’ll take thirty minutes to swing at balls with my thumbs. I’ll twist blocks for four minutes, and shoot popping purple pillows at sloppy sleepy grinning gremlins until I score myself a flight forgotten. The games capture my attention, administer my entertainment, and with just a tiny press of buttons, escape my gaze and leave my mind. I’m no better, no worse, no winner, no loser.
To play a game is to find rules. To live inside constructed other universes. To find a facsimile of my existence simplified to leveling up, beating bosses, racking up as many points as I can all to work my way towards an end screen and scrolling credits. I play the same games as my friends and we see the same endings. I’m one of a million made up names on a leaderboard filled with unending numbers.
What’s the point(s)?
I’ve beaten every Megaman, but never found The Secret of Mana. My Final Fantasy is to never not have one. I dream I’m never beaten and that I always have another game in me. But I'm hesitant to play these games anymore. My time is passing on pastimes. Yet I’ve never felt more firmly and personally playable.
I am endless avatars.
I play concerts and I am a rockstar. I coach and I am a mentor. I manage and I am a leader. “Life” is my stack of cartridges all ready to enter an Atari. I can be all genres on all systems. And while these potentials of possibility are limitless, they are not without consequence.
Choices limit me. I am everyone. I am anyone. I am no one. I am my own distraction, my own forgotten flight. I chose my character from just a simple starting menu. I could have been me or me. Might I become a level 99 mage, bard or cleric instead?
The games that others create define so deeply how I have to navigate my life’s levels. The tasks and errands that pay my bills are games inside of games. There are certain games I have no choice but to play. Work. Taxes. Peggle.
As much as I want to play with myself by myself (eew) I prefer to play with others (eew). My own game defines me, but the games that surround me teach me new ways to play. They give me more game. They level me up.
Life feels like seeing limits but not being limited by them. Seeking out a handful of games I want to play over and over and over. I can get updated graphics, sequels with small tweaks. I can get new play styles. But the value is not the aesthetic improvements. It is the soul of the purpose.
I play for enjoyment. I play for entertainment. I play for accomplishment and memory. But I also play for distraction. I play for forgetfulness. I play to be missing and lost and unseen. Games hide me from myself and others while also defining one of my core values.
Play.
The first game I ever played was called Adventure. I was a box grabbing keys opening gates and dodging six pixel dragons. It felt magical and real, transportative and meaningful. And then I powered it down, boxed it up, and put it to sleep in some basement corner to dream itself to start again.
I am the promise of all these premises I have played. I’ve dashed in the shoes of a thousand heroes. I’ve both beaten and been bad guys. I’ve driven cars, cats and karts. I’ve run restaurants and casinos and simulated spaces in outer spaces and beyond. I’ve quested and bested and been over-invested in endless hours of play for play’s sake. I can’t shake what’s at stake here.
If everything is fair game, I will play or be played. Games are extensions of my existence, tendrils of a confused but awaking light. Each player I have played has played a part of me. This endlessness is its own conclusion. Winning is not the purpose, playing is.
The game is never over.
I put the quarter in my machine. I start up. Level one. I will jump on bad guys. I will get to the final level. I will win. And when I do I won’t walk away. I will start all over again. I need to get a higher score. Or at least die trying. The princess is in another castle.
“FINISH HIM!”
-Mortal Kombat-
…thanks again to
for your amazing artwork…thanks also to & for your editing and feedback…i couldn’t play this game without y’all…
Oooh, such a multi-faceted reflection of video games. What I love about a good video game: feels like life but with the lightness of knowing that you can always start over again when things go south
So good, CansaFis. So good. Like getting inside the hive mind as it plays. A phenomenology of gaming. Well done, a perfect game for your offbeat Whitmanesque genius.