The most important things that influence what we know lie beyond the realm of our current comprehension, thus, it is what we don’t know that shapes our reality more than what we do.

We are often our own biggest victims

My playthrough of Metal Gear Solid: Delta, the remake of MGS3: Snake Eater, has been absolutely rife with the casting of bitter resentment I have at the human race in general. Not really off base stuff, though not excessively scraped from the greatest sources of hard data, either…with me sharing anecdotal observations of dreadful reprise, involving the sad machinations of man, leading me to a regularity of excess in the way of expulsing a robust amount of pent up energy at eye rolling behavior, sadly predictable standards, and habituations both dictating and falling prey to the status quo in a marvelously paradoxical moment of abject insanity, and the failed pretenses it misguidedly upholds.

I don’t always sit down to start writing with a plan in mind, so if the current vibe that guides my hand feels so inclined to yammer on about the sorry state of the world and the people helping to create the atmosphere that perpetuates the existential nightmares haunting the realm, so be it. While I use to write in a far more traditional sense, launching out quick news articles when I lacked time, or larger writeups involving straight gameplay analysis, I’ve been attempting to be more experimental with my approach, and speak more about the human condition, mostly within the pretense of how it relates to the gaming industry and design methodologies as well, and I feel as if we are uncovering some great truths on the matter at hand, which has maintained my interest quite effortlessly. I stand by the notion that too much of writing involving video games is too straight laced, wound up, rigid, and restrictive in scope for my tastes, and anything anyone can do to broaden the horizon of appeal, by injecting some well needed spirit into the fray, with the desire of helping to intellectualism the playing field at bit more, has my seal of approval.

I’ve made the point before that I don’t believe that video games first priority is merely to be “fun”, and that this kind of expectation and or distilliment of what any single video game can be, possesses a tragic morbidity about the perceiver in question. I would argue, even in the earliest moments of the medium, whether we are talking about Tennis for Two on an oscilloscope, Shooting Gallery on the Magnavox Oddyssey, Combat on the Atari 2600, Space Invaders in an arcade cabinet, or Super Mario Bros on the NES, just to name a few of some of the earlier starting points for many who started gaming in the 20th century, games have always been about more than just “fun”. This is one of those moments where I clarify this reality, not because I have first hand accounts of people being deluded about such a notion, but one that doesn’t seem to get discussed enough.

I suppose this propositional metric springs from a mode of thought found within philosophy called phenomenology, and largely has to do with how we experience the world, and how different levels of consciousness and contexts, can fundamentally alter our understanding of any single vector of existence, in essence. So yes, as I even type this now, to provide (kind of gratuitously so, but whatever) a devil’s advocacy against my own premise, maybe to some, video games are about fun, because there worldview and or perception of what a video game entails doesn’t spread beyond the concept of fun, in a possible moment in time where they have not yet conceived of any other way to understand video games through a different mode of thought, or context of being. However, and adjacent to that parallel, in a hypothetical example of phenomenology, just because a baby sucks on a gavel, as the only value proposition the child has need for is in relation to a binky, that doesn’t mean the gavel is unmade in that moment, and ceases to be a tool with which a judge decrees the law with, it just then becomes an unintentionally multi-faceted object of utility, now also a binky through phenomenological circumstance.

This thought experiment does prompt me to consider just how one can understand others, by decoding their own interactivity and perceptual understanding of the world, as defined by phenomenology, as this interaction does help to frame how they understand the world around them. This related to many things at large, one of which is the long, on going debate of whether or not video games are art, something I’ve gone on about in the past. I think an interesting thought relevant to that matter is how this rooted itself into the zeitgeist of the gaming collective, and why some within the industry, who likely never regarded artistry with any seriousness, would want the identifier tied to video games after the fact, but even within this speculation, I am waxing curiously about a subject too vague in theory for me to posit on with any seriousness.

I’ve been thinking about the notion of surviving vs thriving recently, in how sometimes, we are only able to survive in the everyday, but it is when we get to a place of stable stasis, we are able to have a chance to thrive, which gets us all much closer to the idea of self-actualization, which is in theory, the greatest ideal one can reach….the most you that can possibly be attained, so to speak. As I’ve regularly gone on about here on Active Time Event, about critical thinking, self-discovery, identity, deconstructionalism, experimentation etc, through the act of gaming itself, it is likely because I am one who is able to thrive within the realm, giving me ample opportunity to self-actualize in the process. Maybe perhaps, where others are disadvantaged, relates to the notion they never successfully found their footing within the virtual, and are always stuck in that surviving mode, not even realizing there is another way in continuing to exist, as opposed to disadvantaged and ignorantly suffering, woefully unaware of something more grand, as it is an experience that is completely foreign and totally alien to them as a result. To put it another way, phenomenological speaking, they are still in the equivalent of Plato’s Cave, remaining as captive to the shadows that bind them to the figments of forms that dance on a wall, but that which makes up a far richer reality beyond their scope, ruled by the influence of light as they suffer in the darkness.

They do not even know what freedom is, unless one truly believes ignorance is bliss.

-Pashford