Real Life: Not A Game

          We are a society addicted; a society disconnected. We don’t want to face reality. Alcohol, drugs, gambling…and the (usually) false hope that that provides for a better future; we ruin our lives trying to escape them. Now, more than ever before, the video game is stepping onto the list of possible addictions. Video games began as light diversions, Duck Hunt and Tetris were (and still are) undoubtedly captivating, especially to players at the time. However, today video games are continuously evolving into more convincing alternate worlds, where players can enter and become something new. Video games create new worlds that allow some players to forget the real world.

          Video game and computer/technology addictions are a growing concern in the public sphere and media. According to a CBS news story, most individuals that succumb to video game addiction are teenagers (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/21/health/main2965003.shtml), although adults are also affected: “mostly men, who say that video game addiction cost them their jobs, family lives and self esteem.” A news story from 2006 states that a father beat his 17 month old child to death after she broke his video game system (http://www.olganon.org/?q=node/4855), thus enforcing the fact that the reality of the video game world has perhaps already (for some) overcome the reality or appeal of the real world. So much so that people are sometimes willing to destroy their real lives for their artificial ones.  As further proof that video game addiction is increasingly a public concern, that news story was taken from the website “Online Gamers Anonymous,” run by gaming victims for gaming victims. The horror stories on the site are endless, but what is clear within them is that a disconnection from and disconcert for the real world is prevalent in each video game addict. They favour and choose the artificial world of the game, which for them, may not be artificial at all. A news story posted on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8hfK3RQs2g) features a young British boy, who when asked why he speaks with an American accent when he plays his online game replies “it’s like when you move to a new country or something, you just end up picking it up.” The game world is likened to real world experience; entering the game world is compared to physically moving to a new country.

          Cyberpunk predicted a similar (albeit more advanced) future. As Lia M. Hotchkiss describes in the article “Still in the Game,” “cyberpunk expresses ambivalence toward technological transcendence: over and against the thrill of escape lies the fear of being absorbed by the very technology facilitating that escape from the body.” Thus, the dystopic future that cyberpunk often describes has, at least in this way, already been realized. The body has yet to physically join machines in game play, at least on a massive scale, but it would seem that that development is right around the corner. As in Project Natal, as the Youtube video states, “You are the controller.” Thus, the player is effectively a part of the game in previously unprecedented ways. The binary of game/player is already becoming blurred as we enter further into the realm of the postmodern. The player is now a part of the game. As escape from the body becomes more of a reality, so does the fear of being absorbed in the technology facilitating it. As I’ve discussed above, people are absorbed in and addicted to the escape that video games provide. Even if the future has yet to be fully realized, and we have yet to physically enter an artificial reality, some people are already absorbed to a point where (I reiterate, for some) fear may be justified.

          As cyberpunk and our own developing games suggest, more realistic games featuring more realistic worlds are right around the corner. eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999) offers up a future where the game literally plugs into the body, and the player literally enters into the game world. The film suggests through the lethal protests of the realists that game culture has in fact started to step in for the real world on a massive scale. People who are unhappy with their real lives no longer have to escape while simply being immersed into the flickering lights on a screen (however realistic the graphics may seem), they can literally and physically become a part of a new and different world. Of course, the consequences are dire. People are killed left and right in the film, even if we’re never certain whether they’re being killed in ‘real life.’ However, they’re killed in so many realities that one of them will eventually be real. In a classically cyberpunk manner, reality and the game become blurred together. Not to the mere point where a player acts as a controller, but where real life can no longer be recognized. The last phrase uttered in the film is, significantly, “are we still in the game?”

          We are on a path that leads to eXistenZ. We will put our actual existence aside in favour of something new, and seemingly better. For some, this is already happening to varying degrees. People are addicted because it’s an escape. People are addicted because they want something better. People are addicted. As video games continue to develop, we should perhaps take these issues more seriously; because the more realistic the artificial comes, the more people are going to lose themselves to it.  As was also discussed above, loosing yourself to the artificial seems to be, more often than not, a bad thing.