Gamelife: A Memoir
by Michael W. Clune
First Posted Oct 2016
The construction of my website feels a little slapdash. I have five broad categories for reviews written after launching, and one big dumping ground for anything I’ve archived from goodreads (which, honestly, was the impetus for the website. I didn’t want to lose all that writing!).
Before I codified the system for myself, I used to cross-post on the big tab page and in each genre breakout. Sometimes I would migrate from goodreads into the individual topic links.
I think Gamelife, a book that I found excellent and which touches significantly on what it means to play video games, should be in the game tab, even if I read it eight years ago.
I was actually surprised I hadn’t moved this over already.
If you are thirty-four and still playing a number of video games, then Gamelife: A Memoir might slow you down for a bit. To this I can personally attest: Overwatch agents went uncalled; Geralt of Rivia paused in his search for Ciri; Tokyo’s struggle fell silent in the shadow of Mikado.
If you are thirty-four and do not play computer games, Gamelife might help you understand what you, unaided, cannot. Your kids are heading to the Mulberry Street Public Library to play MineCraft after school, begging you for a Nintendo Switch, draining your iPhone battery to hatch a Pokemon egg; Why?
If your life doesn’t intersect with games, you have no cause to read Gamelife. There would be no connection to what you see on the page if you were to even bother.
No. I do not believe that. There are a thousand things I am not. There are a hundred books I have read that contain experiences far removed from my own. These books have given me glimpses of what it means to be someone else. To live a different life.
I do not know what it would be to read Gamelife without also having lived a life of meaningful games. Childhood is long, we have all shed potential lives that didn’t quite fit. Games fit me. The life I settled on, the one that Gamelife rips into the open air, is Secret of Mana: The way it felt to pull the rusty sword out of the stump; to be exiled from your village; to find the seeds; to revive the Mana tree. It was not the first game I loved, but it was the first game that no one else at school talked about or cared about. The first game that was just mine.
Gamelife puts you back there, if there exists as a place for you to return. Who can say what unsummoned memory might pierce you if Secret of Mana was instead filled with football practices or piano lessons? Game memories flood back not as diversion or waste but as hobby, habit, real experience. Your limited time on earth was spent non-frivolously, seeing and touching and being other than you.
Here is my request—read the following long excerpt. I won’t have so much to say after—no closing puns or clever tie-ins—so there isn’t much to gain by skimming it or jumping to its end. Simply read the whole thing and think about it for a minute or two or three:
It’s not always easy to know when you’re ready for a new game. It’s like changing a habit. Let me explain. Most of what computer games do they do through habit. Computer games know that something that happens only once doesn’t mean much to humans. Once-in-a-lifetime events tend to bounce off us. We’re pretty hardened against rare occurrences. Blame evolution. If we changed our whole setup in response to every single new stimulus that came along, we’re never have gotten out of the swamps. Something that happens ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times. That kind of thing gets through to us. That kind of thing matters. Something that happens ten-thousand times? It penetrates our innermost layer. It becomes part of us.
And that’s how computer games work. Everything that happens in a computer game happens ten thousand times. Because computer games mimic habit, they get through to us. They teach us about the big things in a way nothing else can. They teach us about death, about character, about fate, about action and identity. They turn insights into habits. The habits bore through our defenses. Computer games reach us.
And conversely. If an insight can’t be made into a computer game, it can’t reach us. It’s not for us. It’s not real. It’s not true. A lot of smart people have spent the past quarter century trying to turn any and every idea into a computer game. So there’s a good chance that all possible true ideas are already contained in the history of computer games. That the history of computer games is also a philosophical encyclopedia containing every important truth available to our species.
That’s my opinion, anyway. You think I wrote a book about computer games for fun? If I want fun, I’ll play a computer game.
But the same thing that makes WAD [space] such an effective pirate ship for exploring the seas of truth also makes it hard to know when you need a new computer game. I mean, the game has gotten into you. It’s just what you do. You don’t think about whether or not you want to do it. You do it. So it can be hard to know when a game has worn itself out in you.
Sometimes, of course, you’ll just get bored. The habit will no longer put you in touch with life-giving fun, with soul-sustaining truth. It’ll run dry. It’ll start to feel like Nintendo. Like unpaid work. When that happens, it’s obvious. Time for a new game.
Sometimes, though, it’s not so obvious. Sometimes you have to listen deep down into yourself. Listen. You’re not bored. The game is still fun. It’s still pretty fun. But if you listen deep down into yourself, down into the depths where WAD [space] is busy rearranging your senses...Wait. There’s something wrong.
What is it? It’s hard to put your finger on. Okay. Play like a doctor. Something feels wrong. What does it feel like, exactly?
I know what it feels like for me. But maybe it feels different for other players. I’ve done a little research.
Q. What makes you decide to stop playing a certain game?
A. I don’t know. I just get bored.
Q. But do you ever decide to stop playing a game when you’re not bored with it?
A. Sometimes, I guess. Sure. Sometimes.
Q. What makes you decide to stop?
A. I don’t know. I just get, I don’t know. I get tired of it?
Q. Tired of it. But not bored?
A. I guess.
Q. What does that feel like?
A. I don’t know! Jesus, Mike. It’s just a game, okay?
When it comes to probing questions about their intimate life as computer-game players, most people don’t have much to say. They’ve never thought about it. Or they’ve repressed it. Or they’ve forgotten. Or they’re embarrassed. Society has convinced them that computer games are a trivial pastime and there’s no reason to think about them. So when I talk about the feeling that let’s me know I’ve played a game too long, I can only speak for myself. Here goes.
Do you see yourself there, reflection patina-warped but real? Does it mean anything to you, does WAD [space] strike your very core?
It does not matter. Not yet, not until you read Gamelife. Then it will. Matter. Strike you. Both.
It should. It might. It must.