Life ain’t simple, and anyone who tells you otherwise may just be unintentionally telling on themselves in the worst way imaginable.

Where there be dreams, must also exist nightmares

Much like the game, my articles about Mixtape have been non-traditional, not as much a dictation on a game, but more along the lines of the culture that surrounds it. This would only be problematic if I myself were working some regular gaming stooge journo gig, rushing towards a deadline full speed, attempting to solve for X, in equating an entire emotional experience into a god damn number, the stuff anxiety nightmares are made out of. Which is why I think talking about Mixtape possesses more than just a quota filled, box checked, bullet pointed list of bullshit that translates into a Metacritic score of worth. You tell me what review score Mixtape got from any given outlet, I‘d disagree with any number you gave me, cause I think they’re all as worthless as the marketing math that lubes up the whole machine of consumerist nonsense that keeps the whole trash pile reeking.

But we gotta start somewhere, and a rejection of standards is a great place to start when speaking about Mixtape.

I think the game drags up from the depths some excellent musings I’ve messed with in the past, and that’s the lines of value that jut out from the proverbial nether that represents the bottom line or essence of games as a concept. What a wildly chaotic conversation it becomes when we consider how to define those lines. I’m not much of a fan of regulating standards to a binary, so perhaps by the time I’m finished with two of these sentiments, a third will emerge. I think a lot of people end up viewing a game as either a consumer product or a piece of art. Not that the threads can’t get tangled, of course, interwoven and otherwise mixed up with both regards intact, but there is definitely a duck like definitional standard we use in defining the quacks that emanate from within.

For example, when you take something like a concerted effort of a product placement like the title Sneak King, a stealth game released in conjunction with Burger King and Xbox to sell fucking fries and pad gamerscores, there’s no one stopping anyone from identifying such an idea as art, though one has their work cut out for them in describing just how such a thing is elevated beyond the metrics of its collaborative advertising efforts within the realm of marketing. When we take another example, let’s pick…Shadow of the Colossus (SotC), as that ended up being the title Ebert famously conceded after a long standing dialogue with the gaming community of whether or not the game was art. A conversation that I feel has sadly died in recent years, though why that may be; such a message slipping through the cracks of the culture war madness that drives so many clicks, perhaps is worthy of an article all on its own. To digress back to my point; to look at something like Shadow (SotC) and say it is merely a consumer product, or just some financial hodgepodge of Sony’s bottom line…you’d have to muster the same kind of energy the very same lawyer that is mounting the argument that Sneak King has artistic relevancy is, to have a chance of convincing others of those same quaking qualities that define the conceptual ducks of our time.

These all seem like quite absurd posits, I’m sure, seemingly nothing to do with Mixtape. Maybe.

I have to hold myself accountable here, in approaching Mixtape in such a way. I deconstruct this game much like I *didn’t with Death Stranding. I never “reviewed” that game, much like I didn’t “deconstruct” it either, as I was exiled into my own sanctuary of thought at that time, having forgone games writing entirely, and only creating poetry I’m sure would make my head hurt reading it now. But that was the place I was in, there was a time and space for it, whether or not it was appropriate, prescribed or recommended.



However, I did play Death Stranding in that time, and during those moments, I saw it as something that changed my opinion on the definitional standard of what games could be, ironically from the man who did the exact same thing for me 22 years prior with Metal Gear Solid. Only this time, it wasn’t necessarily in helping to feed the egotistical machinations of a mad man gone rogue, one who helped to prove the artistic standard of an entire medium, but the fallout of which generated a butterfly effect, one that would in some absurdist fashion, help to contribute to an industry that would both, for better or worse, be impacted deeply, touching an audience and inspiring developers to travel down a similar primrose path of well-intentioned destruction, one filled with hypocrisy and hubris, a cinematic treat and a conceptual standard that hypocritically etched out a savage ideological mentality of a deeply corrosive nature. Two disparate ideas can be true at the same time, and even something like Metal Gear Solid, eventually helped pave the way to dictate a standard, some good and some bad, that eventually gave way to a rampant state of metaphoric violent reprise in the form of growing pains and confrontational ire that created an endless war of cultural shit flinging.

I looked at Death Stranding and thought- if I were to judge this experience, based on whether or not it was a “video game,”, I think a deep resentment begins to propagate within me, nothing but self-entitlement and pointless standard erupts, burning every sensible thing in its path, as if the universe was in some dire need of more corrosive bullshit to burn itself. However. If I looked at Death Stranding and judged it as “an interactive experience”, I walk away emotionally touched. Not all good, not all bad, but a piece of something that made me think, feel, be real. Do I like it? Not at all. Do I think about it, quite often. It maybe helps to frame that trinary standard I thought would eventually pour our of a self-investigation of emotionality and perceptual recall, a certain moment of humanity felt that eclipses the basic standard of something as silly as either a reductionist sense of distillation that either a video game or a piece of art can fulfill.

Mixtape represents this absurdist other, where I think time and place both betrays it, while allowing it to erect this irrational sense of punk dynasty that inspires anger and generates feels among those who are touched by it. Some absurdist existence betwixt code and imagination, forever doomed by its own abstract qualities.

Mixtape makes one feel, and I’m wondering if we have reached the crossroads of darkened reality where we confront the notion gaming’s foremost ideology is not of emotion, but of a transactional standard, what one is able to buy and sell, and whether or not with our own wallets, we’ve condemned ourselves to the worst timelines of financial bankruptcy that matches the empty bottom line that ends up defining us.

I feel like the ending of this article is beyond me right now, at least within my own standard, one of my saving graces usually involves wrapping up my conclusion in a nice pretty, concise bow, fully understood with nothing left to dictate upon.

Much like Mixtape, the feels complicate the standard.

-Pashford