Theory

[icycalm]

Bottom line is that the extreme emotions that the internet neckbeards are clamoring for are perfectly achievable in videogames -- and in a far more extreme manner than the neckbeards themselves could ever have hoped for or imagined, even -- but, as is only fitting, you'll have to go to some pretty extreme lengths yourself, as either a player or a designer, in order to achieve them. And the question now becomes -- a question that no forumroid or blogoroid has so far managed to conceive -- would you really want to?

[icycalm]

Maybe the internet shut-ins would, since this would be their only way of experiencing real human emotions, but for the rest of us? For me? I am not so sure. Videogames will eventually take "health warnings" to another level. A Total Recall-like James Bond videogame would be fine, since no one ever died of driving fast cars and fucking sexy women. But a VR Schindler's List? At the very least, I would limit such games to one a year or so. And even that may be too much. I am 37 years old, and I've had maybe three or four massive depressive experiences in my life (from one of which I still have cut marks on my wrists...), and though I've learned a lot from them (I am practically human BECAUSE of them), they have cost me dearly in terms of health. The heart palpitations I mentioned earlier? I actually have them, and have lived with them for over half a decade now. The last thing I need is to play a game that will exacerbate them. If I have any amount of emotional strength left inside me, I'd much prefer to spend it on a real event, rather than on a manufactured one.

So this stuff is definitely possible, and even inevitable, given enough time, but the question we should be asking ourselves until that time comes is, "Do we really want to go there?" But of course there's no "we" since there is no "mankind" but a "multiplicity of inextricably intertwined ascending and descending life-processes." Huge tracts of the population will inevitably eventually invest all their efforts into shutting themselves up in Vanilla Sky-like and Matrix-like life-support machines in order to dream their perfect dreams and, for better or worse... to disappear.


"But I want to make them bolder, more persevering, simpler, gayer. I want to teach them what is understood by so few today, least of all by these preachers of pity: to share not suffering but joy."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

[icycalm]

[I am not done, there's also a lengthy epilogue, but that should be enough for today.]

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[I replaced the part 2 opening quote by Jack Handey with one by Nietzsche that's more appropriate. I'll use the Handey one for the epilogue where it'll be a lot more fitting.]

[icycalm]

Part III: The Uncanny Valley of Interactivity

By the way, I started out by trying to explain to you why it's so hard for games to make the player cry. I showed you that it's not hard at all, as long as you are willing to go to some extreme measures, such as placing your life in danger, and so on. But it's worth mentioning that, throughout this discussion, I have assumed that we are talking about well-adjusted, emotionally mature adults. Because if we aren't, things change a great deal. After all, neckbearded weeaboos cry with Final Fantasy or Metal Gear Solid games all the time. So you don't really need to do anything special to get them bawling: any random animu schlock will do. And that is understandable enough; after all, wanna know who cries all the time for no reason? Babies. In other words, the easier it is for you to cry, the weaker and more emotionally immature you are (women are another good, if less extreme, example). Those who say (inc. journalists), therefore, that they cried or "were emotional" all the time with the latest "indie" shitpieces may as well be advertising that they are retards (in the journalists' case usually liars -- they claim they cried to pander to their internet neckbeard audience, otherwise they'd be crying every day with the neverending flood of "indie" garbage that they are forced to slog through all the time). But none of that concerns us in the context of this essay, because we are discussing the emotional responses of proper people here, not those of newborns or of retards. Young mothers and psychotherapists can deal with the latter demographics; I lack the maternal instincts and the training.

[icycalm]

What's extremely interesting, however, to get back to our subject, and try to understand things at an even deeper level, is that it's easier to believe in the reality of what your TV is showing, than in that of your computer game, even though the latter is, undoubtedly, a far more immersive medium than the former. Of course no one believes that the actors are actually inside the TV, but movies have attained such a level of lifelikeness (for lack of a better word) that they seem more realistic than the news: than actual reality recorded by a camera. So even though we know that the actors are not inside the TV, the illusion weaved by a great film is so realistic that we almost feel as if these things have actually happened in some other corner of the planet, and were somehow recorded by someone, and we are merely watching them now at a later time -- which is also the attraction of the "found footage" genre pioneered by The Blair Witch Project. In a sense, we treat ALL great movies as "found footage" (which is why, by the way, the found footage genre is superfluous and shit. It merely restricts the director's means of expression in terms of cinematography and so on, without providing any benefits to the illusion). Good movies pull us in and engross us to such an extent, that these actors seem to us to act more lifelike than the people we know in real life. People believe more in Friends than in their real friends. Your real friends don't seem like friends anymore after you've been watching Friends for a while (this is what Baudrillard meant by "hyperreality", the more real than the real; not a virtual reality like The Matrix's, which was The Wachowskis' misinterpretation of his work, but the reality in which real people act like the characters of Friends because they deem their fake behavior more natural and realistic than that of their real friends).

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You can see, by the way, how mentally unstable and stunted people would be affected far more by such art than healthy mature people, and that's what's happened when you hear of someone sending letters to the producers of a TV show asking about what's happening to the characters between episodes as if they were real, or crying about their fate on YouTube and so on. If we are talking about very young children, some of this is excusable, but past a certain point whoever acts this ways is mentally, at least, still a child, and that's precisely what it means to be retarded, i.e. "behind"; behind the adults who have mentally and emotionally matured. I remember crying to my parents in the '80s after watching The Omen films, and agonizing over days about what could be done to save them from the Antichrist's apocalypse, but I was a fucking 8-year-old. I obviously don't act this way anymore, but a small part of the population does, and they tend to be very vocal on the internet, and are thus overepresented on it, because that's where they spend most of their time.

[icycalm]

In contrast, then, to a child in a great movie with an expert cast portrayed by a convincing actor, it is impossible to be taken in by the illusion of a child in a videogame, ironically, precisely because the digital child responds to our input. This is the uncanny valley, not of animation, but of INTERACTIVITY. The closer we get to perfect simulation, the less immersive it actually seems to be. And traditional videogame conventions such as selectable difficulty levels and saved games (more on which later) merely compound the problem. The only solution is hardcore: the very LAST step to perfect simulation -- total identification with the avatar, by messing with the player's ability to tell the difference -- whereby the uncanny valley is definitively crossed and we at last arrive... at the promised land: perfect simulation.

[icycalm]

It doesn't matter if the child looks perfect. It almost doesn't even matter if it responds perfectly either; the mere fact that the child is responding to you AT ALL prevents the illusion from working at the same level as the movie's. In the movie, as I've explained, there is always the chance that the people and events depicted are real and have simply somehow been recorded and are being viewed by you at a later time. In the novel (and especially the first-person novel), there is always the chance that the author did indeed have these experiences and wrote them down for others to read. But if the illusion is responding to you at the precise moment when you decide to sit down on your computer, there is not the slightest chance that anything in it is real. You see, it is YOU who is preventing the illusion from assuming the force of reality, and until you yourself have become entirely convinced of the reality of YOUR OWN ILLUSION (which is to say until the fusion between you and your avatar has become so complete that you can no longer tell the difference between them), the stronger, deeper emotions inside you have no chance of being aroused -- AND WITH GOOD REASON, as we've seen, because they are dangerous. Remember: the emotions, and especially the stronger, more extreme ones, were evolved in order to serve you in times of extreme need. It is part of their utility that they include measures and failsafes against being aroused for no good reason (measures and failsafes which have failed to be developed in emotionally retarded and stunted people...) And mucking about with an artwork in your spare time IS NOT A GOOD REASON to arouse powerful emotions that come with huge physical health costs.

[icycalm]

And thus we arrive at the last piece of the puzzle of interactive simulation, and by far the most important one: the protagonist. I.e. YOU. It is YOU who is holding back the illusion from "closing", from achieving complete integrity and internal consistency. It is YOU who will not play by the rules and fucking treat that child as if it's your own. Game designers have long known how impossibly hard it is to make the player act in any kind of reasonable manner in their games; how the players will do every stupid thing they can think of apart from what they are supposed to do. Non-interactive arts may be weaker, but at least they regularly achieve perfect integrity, and that's why their effect can often be superior to interactive art, which is far more powerful, but in which the most important piece of the puzzle -- you -- refuses to cooperate and play his part properly. I am not saying that you are doing anything wrong either. It's not like you have a CHOICE of whether to believe or not the illusion. This incapacity has been well pointed out by Nietzsche. You can't say "I will believe this". You either believe something or you don't. Belief is not a choice; you can't make yourself believe something. Belief must come from elsewhere... in this case, by the game's designer forcing it on you. Yes, the director of an interactive artwork has to go THAT far to achieve the maximum effect he can achieve: beyond even your consent (which is why the players of the most immersive artwork ever regularly ask themselves, "Why are we even here?" You are here because the Director brought you as he needs you to complete his game, the one in which He is the star and you're an extra -- wink wink -- as in the ultimate game star and director -- or player and director, if you prefer this terminology -- have become one).

[icycalm]

Bottom line is that you can't behave towards your on-screen child as if it is your child, if you don't believe that it's your child. Any attempt of yours to approach such a behavior would be acting, in which case you DISTANCE yourself from the protagonist, by PRETENDING to be him, instead of simply BEING him, as you are supposed to in an interactive work, and THAT'S what causes the uncanny valley of interactive simulation.

In contrast, behaving towards your on-screen car as if it is your car is a whole lot easier (because it's far simpler and far less emotionally demanding), with no acting on your part required or extreme directorial measures, and that's why racing games and the like are more immersive (=more enjoyable) than anything that works -- or TRIES to work, unsuccessfully -- on a deeper psychological level. If you want a game that works on a deeper level with any degree of success, you'll have to be prepared, as a player, to immerse yourself deeper into the game... with all the drawbacks and dangers to yourself, on top of the technical/technological difficulties, that we've seen that such an immersion would entail. Hooking up a loaded gun that's pointed at your head is the easy way to achieve this, in the context of a simple game that simulates some sort of life-and-death struggle, but if you want any kind of more complex drama, the only option would be complete and total -- perfect -- simulation.

[icycalm]

[I renamed the Epilogue to Part III: The Uncanny Valley of Interactivity, and moved the Jack Handey quote to the real Epilogue, coming up soon.]