I Survived, Now It's Time 4 Bed

12/5/2008 7:39 PM | 3 Comments | Page 2 of 2

But as long as I'm plugged into its other space, removed from my own surroundings, I want to be able to retreat into the game's depths, too. I want to relish being in my new body, to listen to its grunts and footsteps, to creep and jump through the digital dirt of the new world. I want to pause and admire the way a street corner suddenly reminds me of a place I might have been, or how the inside of an apartment building resembles one I've seen with my own eyes. These details are only incidental to the game proper, but they're instrumental in letting me live in the world.

The seamless AI in Left 4 Dead pushes me out of it. Zoey, Louis and Bill, who follow me everywhere like lemmings, armed with one-liners that make us laugh at just the right times during our plight, prove that this is more act than experience, more setup than story, that my friends are fake, my gun is fake, the zombie holocaust is fake, and my escape is only virtual. They are so good at their jobs that I'm left cold in their company; they're the best actors in the business and I'm just posing. Single-minded, relentless and perfect in their purpose, they also make me realize that a game world is so full of fragile life, full of sights and sounds -- all of which can be silenced and gone in the blink of an eye, mere figments of my imagination.

If stories in most games were more earnest, and were intended to be truly valuable to the gamer, then maybe I wouldn't so easily feel like I was just play-acting. Maybe the astonishing vividness of the game environment wouldn't so often feel at odds with its programmed underbelly. In a game like BioShock, whose every pixel feels meaningful, I feel no existential crisis; I love being with the Splicers in their dank hell-hole, even though they all want to kill me. It's because I actually believe that the city of Rapture existed before I arrived, and that it'll always be there for me.

Games like Left 4 Dead and Portal, which tell comparatively thin stories while also telling us about what makes them into stories, are charming and smart. Like Portal, where you literally open up and step into new worlds, the cinematic Left 4 Dead is clearly meant to show that when you interact with a videogame, you create a story for yourself that's never quite the same twice. But aren't the designers jumping the gun a bit? Now that designers have the technological means to build games that envelop us like a film, why shouldn't the stories more often do the same? As disquieting as it feels for me to come back home after ending a game, I think it's much braver for a game to deeply want to bring the player into a new place, rather than to ruminate about how it's still just a game.

If only the Director had instead been called the Artist; then Left 4 Dead might have tried to inspire real, abject terror that lasted beyond the confines of the game rather than provide a commentary on gaming backed with a list of B-movie citations. Instead, after a few chapters of survival theatrics, the new eyes I'm staring out of start to feel as lifeless and tired as the zombies, and I'd rather have my old ones back.