Death by Video Game: Tales of Obsession From the Virtual Frontline by Simon Parkin Page B
Authors: Simon Parkin
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of us still enjoy the challenge of figuring out a game and getting to the top, but we no longer desire the stagnant gameplay of remaining there.’
Today Boyle warns others away from this mode of play. But Edmond is more pragmatic.
‘Don’t listen to all those horror stories about people who ruined their lives this way,’ he says. ‘People ruin their lives with partying. People ruin their lives by trying to be professional athletes. You can find scare stories about people destroying their lives doingalmost anything. Setting a goal and accomplishing it is one of the greatest things a person can do.’
For each of these players around the world, video games provided a clear and, crucially, an achievable goal—one that came with the promise of peer approval and kudos. Whether you’re being applauded for your performance on the Dance Dance Revolution machine, for your world-record-breaking high score in a thirty-year-old arcade game, or for your character’s hard-won cloak in an online game, these video games provide an accessible route to glory. In reality, success is rarely reported so straightforwardly. Virtual attainment is an illusion we willingly serve, sometimes at the cost of genuine personal, professional, financial, social, or spiritual progress and, more pertinently, as a dependable stand-in when those things prove elusive. Video games give us a sense of achievement that is, in the moment at least, indistinguishable from success outside the game.
And on the leaderboard, that semi-permanent record of a person’s achievements, there is a kind of immortality, a reassurance that, contrary to what many might believe, this wasn’t a waste of time, an endeavour that will be lost the moment the machine is switched off.
Video games record our achievements (the modern consoles even use the terminology, recording in-game achievements as part of an enduring player’s profile that, presumably, they will carry throughout their lives). We talk of ‘saving’ our progress in a game, making a permanent record of what we’ve done within their reality. Video games are perhaps a kind of immortality project, a way to save the memory of our progress in life, a way to find glory through victory in competition and, ultimately, a way to somehow endure.
3
LOST IN THE SYSTEM
The man approaches the booth, his face a scrawl of worry lines, his eyes determined. He slides papers across the desk.
‘What is the purpose of your trip?’ I ask.
‘Today is a beautiful day, my friend,’ he replies, ignoring the question with the amiable defiance of the octogenarian.
He and his wife have, he explains, fled the tyranny of their home country, Antegria. They have come to seek asylum, here in Arstotzka.
His story is affecting, but largely irrelevant. In Papers, Please , a video game set in a fictional (yet historically realistic) 1980s-era Eastern European communist country, would-be immigrants are assaulting the border. Many are just as deserving of refuge as this man and his bent-backed wife, who shifts her weight between her feet as she waits in line behind her husband.
My job as the immigration inspector at the Grestin Border Checkpoint is not to weigh the truth or worth of these stories. Rather, it is to check that each person’s papers are in order and, ideally, to find them lacking and deny entry. It pays to make snap decisions: the more people I process in a day, the more money I take home to my family.
But the bureaucracy is chaotic: every day a fresh set of rules and checks is sent from the capital, new knots in the red tape designed to make access that much harder for the asylum seekers at the gates.
Mistakes are costly: my pay is docked for each person I let through in error. My wages do not cover the food, heating, and medicine I need to feed, clothe, and heal my family, so the more mistakes that are made, the starker my choices become. When there’s a limited amount of money in the pot, you must decide which loved
Today Boyle warns others away from this mode of play. But Edmond is more pragmatic.
‘Don’t listen to all those horror stories about people who ruined their lives this way,’ he says. ‘People ruin their lives with partying. People ruin their lives by trying to be professional athletes. You can find scare stories about people destroying their lives doingalmost anything. Setting a goal and accomplishing it is one of the greatest things a person can do.’
For each of these players around the world, video games provided a clear and, crucially, an achievable goal—one that came with the promise of peer approval and kudos. Whether you’re being applauded for your performance on the Dance Dance Revolution machine, for your world-record-breaking high score in a thirty-year-old arcade game, or for your character’s hard-won cloak in an online game, these video games provide an accessible route to glory. In reality, success is rarely reported so straightforwardly. Virtual attainment is an illusion we willingly serve, sometimes at the cost of genuine personal, professional, financial, social, or spiritual progress and, more pertinently, as a dependable stand-in when those things prove elusive. Video games give us a sense of achievement that is, in the moment at least, indistinguishable from success outside the game.
And on the leaderboard, that semi-permanent record of a person’s achievements, there is a kind of immortality, a reassurance that, contrary to what many might believe, this wasn’t a waste of time, an endeavour that will be lost the moment the machine is switched off.
Video games record our achievements (the modern consoles even use the terminology, recording in-game achievements as part of an enduring player’s profile that, presumably, they will carry throughout their lives). We talk of ‘saving’ our progress in a game, making a permanent record of what we’ve done within their reality. Video games are perhaps a kind of immortality project, a way to save the memory of our progress in life, a way to find glory through victory in competition and, ultimately, a way to somehow endure.
3
LOST IN THE SYSTEM
The man approaches the booth, his face a scrawl of worry lines, his eyes determined. He slides papers across the desk.
‘What is the purpose of your trip?’ I ask.
‘Today is a beautiful day, my friend,’ he replies, ignoring the question with the amiable defiance of the octogenarian.
He and his wife have, he explains, fled the tyranny of their home country, Antegria. They have come to seek asylum, here in Arstotzka.
His story is affecting, but largely irrelevant. In Papers, Please , a video game set in a fictional (yet historically realistic) 1980s-era Eastern European communist country, would-be immigrants are assaulting the border. Many are just as deserving of refuge as this man and his bent-backed wife, who shifts her weight between her feet as she waits in line behind her husband.
My job as the immigration inspector at the Grestin Border Checkpoint is not to weigh the truth or worth of these stories. Rather, it is to check that each person’s papers are in order and, ideally, to find them lacking and deny entry. It pays to make snap decisions: the more people I process in a day, the more money I take home to my family.
But the bureaucracy is chaotic: every day a fresh set of rules and checks is sent from the capital, new knots in the red tape designed to make access that much harder for the asylum seekers at the gates.
Mistakes are costly: my pay is docked for each person I let through in error. My wages do not cover the food, heating, and medicine I need to feed, clothe, and heal my family, so the more mistakes that are made, the starker my choices become. When there’s a limited amount of money in the pot, you must decide which loved
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