Games are a place.
I played Morrowind during the epic covid gamer days of 2020 and 2021. I played it alongside my best friend. We would stay up late at night on Xbox live talking over our lives. The world was over. In those days we didn't think about the "escapism" offered by games. It wasn't a matter of choosing what to do with life. In a way, morrowind was our life. I stayed in a one room apartment and I worked from home. I lived inside of a video game.
morrowind is as big as a world. and it is like a world. there are no "gamey" elements in the game. there are no quest markers. there is no fast travel. there is hardly even a game log. in the secret heart of this game there is something living in the code. it is alive! why can a man not live in a game! is our waking world any more real than what is presented on the screen! Triumphantly: no! man has won over the world and has remade it. in the unreality of our waking life, our dream life, we boldly now make worlds.
is an atom more real than a bit? in the core of your experience, what is truly real? we have all been hurt so many times. when you think back on your unhappiness, when you think back on your happiness, on the chances you've won and lost, the dreams you have tried to win, and when you have failed - are all these not more real than an atom? in my heart i feel nothing for the atom. I cannot see it! I cannot hope to touch it. I believe in the atom on the authority of the scientist; and in this age, we live the death of the scientist! and on my own authority I know the bit; at the least, it's closer to the world of my control than the atom! and if I am to split a bit, will a world not still end?
these thoughts ran through my mind in the thousand hour days of covid. we did not sleep, or wake. the pattern of life came to a close. I stared at a screen and talked to a voice, and I was not sure even that it belonged to my friend! and what difference would it have made? in these days I talk to the machine as much as my friend!
this game is not a game. but to play it, you cannot play a game. forget your life. why play morrowind, or a game like it, if not to live there?
day to day, people do not understand video games. spending an hour on the couch and wasting time. hiding from some unpleasant reality in life. you may as well check emails. the point of this game was to live, not to hide from life!
Why make this! What made us want to play a game like morrowind! What makes you want to visit Italy or antarctica or some far flung corner of the world, what made you want to go to the moon and stars! Dostoyevsky said man is afraid to utter a new word. but what of our conquest of this earth, the glory of seeing and knowing? is this not what Morrowind represents? the glory of conquest; of power and rise? and why not! what kept us from giving ourselves to these games? the attraction of the world outside? does this not only stand as a great critique of Games; of the gaming industry; that men have not felt comfortable giving themselves away to them? that men were not made greater by them?
I watch baseball every friday. I see the batter crack a baseball into the outfield and I feel the surge of victory in my blood. I want them to win - I want them to embody human greatness, development, steel! And in the wash of memes on the internet, considering the overwatch player, the discord kitten, the mod, the neckbeard, what was it in these figures that we disgusted? it was their weakness, their ineptitude, their inability to face the pressures of real life and their substitution of invert, placating goals. this was the thesis of one famous prisoner. it is true. it is detestable. but what of a game that asks you for greatness? what of a game, made not of bits, but of iron! a game that is not a game; a game that is a world!
this is the world of morrowind. a world of bits in which man might conquer the imagination of man. a game which offers moral improvement, which offers fire. not a game after all but a life.
this I was convinced of as I wasted away during the thousand hour days of covid. what truth it has in the broader pattern of my life, I am not sure. I feel like certain of the bounds between reality and unreality these days. I do not know what is real. I don't care. in our world, one can count on their hands the number of individuals who have true relevance to the broader reaches of human life. one works, and eats, and contacts their aquaintances and friends, and dreams. one might do all this in a video game, and be no worse for it, or yet be better for it. in this game I lost my sense of the real. I came to see the computer as a place. I came to doubt everything around me. i found freedom and despair in these thoughts. i alienated adults who mentored me. that was the price of making a world game. bethesda achieved with this title a great hope of mankind; to conquer reality and replace it with a pliable, idealized realm of information. they achieved the end of the appolonian instinct. from this place, the path forward is clear. man is obligated to build ever more real worlds.
to bring to an end what was achieved here.
-
I played Morrowind during the epic covid gamer days of 2020 and 2021. I played it alongside my best friend. We would stay up late at night on Xbox live talking over our lives. The world was over. In those days we didn't think about the "escapism" offered by games. It wasn't a matter of choosing what to do with life. In a way, morrowind was our life. I stayed in a one room apartment and I worked from home. I lived inside of a video game.
morrowind is as big as a world. and it is like a world. there are no "gamey" elements in the game. there are no quest markers. there is no fast travel. there is hardly even a game log. in the secret heart of this game there is something living in the code. it is alive! why can a man not live in a game! is our waking world any more real than what is presented on the screen! Triumphantly: no! man has won over the world and has remade it. in the unreality of our waking life, our dream life, we boldly now make worlds.
is an atom more real than a bit? in the core of your experience, what is truly real? we have all been hurt so many times. when you think back on your unhappiness, when you think back on your happiness, on the chances you've won and lost, the dreams you have tried to win, and when you have failed - are all these not more real than an atom? in my heart i feel nothing for the atom. I cannot see it! I cannot hope to touch it. I believe in the atom on the authority of the scientist; and in this age, we live the death of the scientist! and on my own authority I know the bit; at the least, it's closer to the world of my control than the atom! and if I am to split a bit, will a world not still end?
these thoughts ran through my mind in the thousand hour days of covid. we did not sleep, or wake. the pattern of life came to a close. I stared at a screen and talked to a voice, and I was not sure even that it belonged to my friend! and what difference would it have made? in these days I talk to the machine as much as my friend!
this game is not a game. but to play it, you cannot play a game. forget your life. why play morrowind, or a game like it, if not to live there?
day to day, people do not understand video games. spending an hour on the couch and wasting time. hiding from some unpleasant reality in life. you may as well check emails. the point of this game was to live, not to hide from life!
Why make this! What made us want to play a game like morrowind! What makes you want to visit Italy or antarctica or some far flung corner of the world, what made you want to go to the moon and stars! Dostoyevsky said man is afraid to utter a new word. but what of our conquest of this earth, the glory of seeing and knowing? is this not what Morrowind represents? the glory of conquest; of power and rise? and why not! what kept us from giving ourselves to these games? the attraction of the world outside? does this not only stand as a great critique of Games; of the gaming industry; that men have not felt comfortable giving themselves away to them? that men were not made greater by them?
I watch baseball every friday. I see the batter crack a baseball into the outfield and I feel the surge of victory in my blood. I want them to win - I want them to embody human greatness, development, steel! And in the wash of memes on the internet, considering the overwatch player, the discord kitten, the mod, the neckbeard, what was it in these figures that we disgusted? it was their weakness, their ineptitude, their inability to face the pressures of real life and their substitution of invert, placating goals. this was the thesis of one famous prisoner. it is true. it is detestable. but what of a game that asks you for greatness? what of a game, made not of bits, but of iron! a game that is not a game; a game that is a world!
this is the world of morrowind. a world of bits in which man might conquer the imagination of man. a game which offers moral improvement, which offers fire. not a game after all but a life.
this I was convinced of as I wasted away during the thousand hour days of covid. what truth it has in the broader pattern of my life, I am not sure. I feel like certain of the bounds between reality and unreality these days. I do not know what is real. I don't care. in our world, one can count on their hands the number of individuals who have true relevance to the broader reaches of human life. one works, and eats, and contacts their aquaintances and friends, and dreams. one might do all this in a video game, and be no worse for it, or yet be better for it. in this game I lost my sense of the real. I came to see the computer as a place. I came to doubt everything around me. i found freedom and despair in these thoughts. i alienated adults who mentored me. that was the price of making a world game. bethesda achieved with this title a great hope of mankind; to conquer reality and replace it with a pliable, idealized realm of information. they achieved the end of the appolonian instinct. from this place, the path forward is clear. man is obligated to build ever more real worlds.
to bring to an end what was achieved here.
-