12 July 2011

The Offline Lifestyle

As you know, Xbox 360's have failed me for the last time more often than Admirals failed Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. Most recently, after my Xbox 360 Slim gave up its ghost making it the fourth 360 (and counting) to fail me, I tried to suss out a way to transfer my data from the hard drive of my busted Slim to my older model Elite 360.

Realizing that this process was both complex and risky, I decided to plug in the old Elite and simply start a brand new Xbox Live profile from scratch on the Elite's wiped hard drive. With my Gamer Score set all the way back to zero, no friends on my My Friends list, and that dopey golden retriever picture as my default gamer tag photo, I finally--finally--got back to gaming.

I thought: "I have to remember to let people know that I'm over here, temporarily at least, at this new Xbox Live handle."

But I didn't. Instead, I eased into a few races in Midnight Club: Los Angeles, starting the entire game over again from the beginning. The next night, I powered on the Elite again--man, this damn thing wheezes and gasps at start-up like an emphysema patient--to play Ms. Splosion Man, again planning to friend a few people.

But I didn't.

Nearly a week has passed now. And I still have yet to friend anyone.

It's oddly refreshing to look at my Gamer Profile and observe that I have exactly zero points. I had no idea the degree to which I was using my Gamer Score as a measure of personal self-worth. Like a Stockholm Syndrome survivor, I puzzled over how I ever got seduced into thinking of it as some kind of important metric in my life.

But an even bigger part of the appeal of my new XBL profile is the hermetically sealed isolation of it all. The most indelible gaming memories that I have from the last three decades aren't centered around that one time I pulled off a headshot on Crazzzy8888s1989 in a Wager match on the Silo map in Black Ops. My fondest memories historically involve long, drawn-out single-player games like Shadow of the Colossus, BioShock, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. My favorite games have always been very quiet, private, and personal journeys away from the sturm and drang of the rest of my life.

I've never been a fan of turning games into social, people-oriented experiences. Exhibit A: the multiplayer in BioShock 2. Games, of course, can be a conduit for social experiences, like the aforementioned headshot moment on Crazzzy8888s1989. But when I game, I'm not looking for way to connect with other people--I already do enough of that throughout my workday. What I want to do, more than anything, is to connect with the people who created the game.

Same way that I enjoy locking psyches with an author when I read a book, when I play BioShock my greatest desire is to connect with the very people who made BioShock. I want to understand how their brains work, what their aesthetic values are, and what their sense of logic is. (Or, in the case of Resident Evil 4, another terrific and completely isolating experience, the developer's complete disregard for logic. Exhibit B: killing a snake leaves an egg behind which you can eat for a health boost.)

In the old days, whenever I would power up the 360, which has been in my life since launch in late 2005, I was in the habit of doing two things: 1. I'd check to see who was online at the moment, and 2. I'd then check to see what those people were doing or playing. I'd study the row of dancing, preening (or, in most cases, napping) avatars. I'd notice things like this: my friend Steve who lives in New York, which is two time zones away from me, is still awake at 3 a.m. playing Trenched. I'd sit on my couch here on the West Coast, thinking to myself, "Huh. I wonder why Steve is awake at 3 a.m.? Did he wake up to feed the baby, then wander into the living room and decide to play Trenched? Is he fighting with Margo again? Maybe she made him sleep on the couch. They have been fighting a lot these days. Man, I hope he's not drinking. He really shouldn't be drinking anymore..."

At this point I inevitably have two further thoughts: 1. I hope that my friend Steve is OK, and 2. why must I go down this sort of digression hole every goddamn time I look at the dancing, preening row of avatars? How did real life and all of its concerns and complications and brow-furrowing and messiness and crying babies and fights with Margo get jungled up with my gaming?

Often I'd observe still other online friends who were, like good gamers should, consuming quality content that I should probably also be consuming. Friends always seem to be playing literate, artful offerings like Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age II, and Red Dead Redemption night after night after night. And I'd experience hot-faced shame knowing that they'd be able to see whatever lowbrow tripe I had selected to play for the evening, like Bayonetta (again), or The Bigs 2 (again), or Vanquish (again). "Good for you and your terrific taste, everyone," I'd think bitterly.

I have actually received messages via Xbox Live from online friends--or rather, "friends"--asking me, "Why on earth are you playing THAT shitty game again?" Which only makes me want to bellow the following three words directly into my TV screen:

LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But with my new, completely anonymous profile, which no one, no, not even Victor Lucas, shall know the name of, I can now game again in complete, people-free privacy, with no worry whatsoever that I'll be interrupted mid-game to be informed that, yes, glory be, "Crazzzzy8888's1989 is now online." Worse still, whenever Crazzzzy8888's1989 loads up a game in need of a programming update or patch, Crazzzzy8888's1989 will be booted offline for the update, then ushered back online once said update takes, which means that I'll get a second, even less welcome notice that, yes, Crazzzzy8888's1989 is online, at which point I will usually once again bellow at the TV screen one of the following three things:

1. "I KNOW!" or,

2. "GOOD FOR YOU!" or,

3. "F*** YOU, CRAZZZZY8888S1989. I RUE THE F***ING DAY THAT I EVER ACCEPTED YOUR XBOX LIVE FRIENDSHIP REQUEST." (By the way, Crazzzzy8888s1989 is Steve.) (Hi, Steve.)

My other least-favorite Xbox Live moment is whenever I receive notifications that "friends are playing this game." This can actually sully a game for me before I have even started to play it. Suddenly, this "friend" (Steve) is showing up in my leaderboards. Suddenly, I'm simply doing something that Steve already did last night at 3 a.m., and who, according to the extremely helpful leaderboard, apparently did it 8.2 seconds faster than I did it. It's akin to finding a lost, lonely cave that you assumed was unexplored and that you briefly considered naming Scott's Cave for all of posterity, only to realize that someone has already opened up one of those weird KFC/Taco Bell hybrid counters inside. Whatever mystery, and more importantly whatever anticipation of mystery, there might have been for me has already been drained out of the experience.

Another thing: Why must I be informed that other people are using Netflix whenever I'm using Netflix? (Exhibit C: Friends using this App.) How is this helpful or useful information? If I'm in the middle of watching a blurry stream of David Cronenberg's The Fly, why is *that* designated as a fine time to notify me, usually mid Brundlefly transformation, that Crazzzzy8888's1989 is online yet again? (F*** you, Steve. Try playing less Xbox and kissing your baby and talking to Margo more. Seriously, man.)

Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that I can switch off all notifications. But Microsoft clearly does not want me to do this, as navigating the murky fathoms of menus and sub-menus is a very long way from being as transparent as it could, or should be.

Right now, it's really quiet where I am. The blinds are drawn. The outside world is where it belongs: outside. I'm gaming these days with a new-found sense of focus and passion that I haven't felt in ages. When I click over to the My Friends section of Xbox Live, I see nothing but that non-dancing, non-preening, grayed out ghost friend thing with the plus sign on its right shoulder.

And I'm feeling pretty good about that.

11 comments:

  1. You know, considering that I infrequently play multi-player games with people I know (few exceptions), and gamerscores are starting to lose meaning for me (after you reach X0,000, the marginal benefit is nil), the friends feature really isn't useful, is it?
    Huh. Fancy that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I considered making a comment about how this is the first step in you becoming a hermit. That it's only a matter of time before you'll show up for a taping of Reviews on the Run in ripped jeans, grunting profanities while combing your scraggly beard with your disgustingly long fingernails.

    But I agree, gaming's best moments are when you're sucked in by the atmosphere of an incredible world and you're able to let your mind drift into a place so far from the annoying trivial matters provided by our everyday reality.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've never plugged into Xbox Live, despite all the peer pressure I've gotten over the years. Simply because the act of playing video games was always an introspective experience for me, and I'm just not a multiplayer type of gal. I'll save my neuroticism towards people through all these social media outlets, but for the love of god please don't interfere with my gaming. Thank you for writing this and giving me a more eloquent justification for why it's acceptable to remain unplugged.

    ReplyDelete
  4. the next thing to go is crackbook and google+ acocunts.

    then you'll feel much much better.

    My wife bought me a 13month sub to live gold and I activated it to play 20minutes of G.R.A.W.2 .. then let it expire without ever using a gold feature again.

    Is this what "growing up" is? Is this what our parents and teachers always told us to do? Are we just not "hip enough" or "with it" anymore??? The grouchy narc who tells those punk kids to get back to school on a friday afternoon?

    who knows? I see someone with a gamerscore of over 100,000 with every game maxed out with every dumb little achievement done and I think they need a life.. badly.

    of course it seemed to coincide with having kids and getting married....

    ReplyDelete
  5. Another great post, Scott-- you got me really thinking.

    I find the online gaming world and my own relationship with it deeply complicated. I've played my share of multiplayer games from Pong through the most recent Portal. And yet the current generation of online gaming experiences is largely absent from my repertoire.

    For me, video games have always been an intensely personal experience, a sense of "me versus X" where the quest to conquer X is a journey for me and me alone, often leaving me with lasting sense of satisfaction (sometimes decades later). Like you, gaming is not the deeply immersive experience that I crave when I'm wondering what my friends are up to or engaging in that sort of social play-- in fact I'd go so far as to say that I consider online gaming a different form of entertainment than solo gaming.

    But it's more than that, of course. There's the other side that I'm somewhat loathe to admit, namely that I'm probably a touch too insecure in my own abilities as a gamer. I don't like the catch-22 that I feel thrust into-- I feel inadequate and so I feel self-conscious playing. But the only way I can improve is by playing through that sense of inadequacy, publicly sucking for the faceless masses. I've even been known to create "dummy" accounts to protect the integrity of my regular pseudonym. All this is of course exacerbated by the reality of multiplayer gaming today and the "bots" (human or otherwise) that mar what was once a much more visceral, real experience (I do have fond memories of my hours spent playing Goldeneye 64 with my buddies, for example).

    Offline I'm not only free to hone my skills however I see fit (allowing my illusion of digital dignity to persist), but more broadly to have the experience that I (usually) want to have-- immersion without the distraction of the real world.

    All that being said, I'm trying out the Uncharted 3 Beta right now. I suck. And it's hard sucking. But I'm giving online gaming another go. I'm not sure that I like it-- online I'm driven by the desire to be better than everyone else; offline I'm driven by the desire to be better than me. Somewhere between the two lays my poorly articulated explanation for why I've never embraced online gaming.

    Ha, that ended up a bit longer than intended!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks, Kim. Great response, as always. I've also created dummy accounts to protect my identity during online play--I think a lot of us probably have.

    Loved the line, "But the only way I can improve is by playing through that sense of inadequacy, publicly sucking for the faceless masses." Great.

    Also this line is interesting: "I'm not sure that I like it-- online I'm driven by the desire to be better than everyone else; offline I'm driven by the desire to be better than me. "

    I like the "better than me" sentiment, but I also believe that's it's "better than the challenges the developers have constructed for you." As I said in the post, it's in those moments that we're tapping into the logic of the developers. Overcoming the fictional adversity that they've created--that feels like a kind of under appreciated connection to me.

    Thanks for making me think, as always.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I know exactly how you feel Scott, I try to separate my personal gaming with my public gaming. I play World of Warcraft a lot (More then I'll admit to here) And I'm second in command of a guild of over 300 people. That's a lot of gaming with others and very often i have times where i just want to game myself, That's when i switch and play on something else where i can just focus on the more personal experience of gaming (360,wii,ds,psp anything else)

    Maybe that feeling in me comes from the fact that I've always enjoyed RPG's a lot and all of the older rpg's were single player enjoy the story experiences.

    Don't get me wrong i do enjoy some online play on lots of games as well but I'm more the play the game for the story type of girl and so i always feel that some games don't really need online modes (Bioshock 2) and when they do add them it just feels like you should play them just for the point of it being there even though they really don't add anything to the game, but that's a whole other topic.

    I have a few people I've met on xbox on my friends list and i do exactly what you said every time i log on i look and see who's on and what there doing and wondering why there playing certain games, Now that i really think about it I'm sure there doing the same thing to me when they log on.

    To me the great moments in gaming will never be pulling off great head shots on other people, It will be those amazing story twists and boss battles that only come from a good single player game. Those are the times that make a game stick in your mind for years to come. Gaming for me will always be a personal journey one i hope to keep taking for years to come.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks for the reply, Scott. I think you're completely right-- a video game exists for me in part as a conversation with the developer. Your word "connection" feels just right. To take it to my own extreme, in my more abstract and reflective moments I think of it as a window into someone's brain. A chance to live in a world that was once entirely confined to another's headspace.

    I will never be fortunate enough to meet most of the terrific folks who design the games that leave their indelible mark upon me. Yet with each game there is that sense that each challenge was created for me alone. And to conquer such a challenge is to share a moment between me, the developer, and my sense of accomplishment-- a sense that no doubt outweighs the size of the challenge itself, but yet is mine to blow out of proportion however I see fit.

    "Social gaming" takes that away from me.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Upon my first read, I found this subject to be quite profound. Upon a second read, I simply find it to be one of most obvious choices one could ever make, not just in the gaming world, but in many areas beyond. It's just unfortunate that despite its simple concept, it still carries a difficulty in its execution due to the wealth of convictions it takes if one is really serious about its follow-through. Are you authentic in your choosing of this? For those who are, we face the wind with no guarantee of a big pay-off except for having our integrity intact, & sometimes that's all you need.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Who knew that the RRoD could actually serve a greater purpose?
    I feel you, man.. I've stopped my PSN from logging in automatically on startup (although I don't think that the PS3 is as intense as the 360 in their 'social' aspects).

    My gamer-OCD is usually the only reason why I'll play multiplayer (damn you, trophies!), but I never end up sticking around for long on most of them. That and the fact that I don't have many close friends who play the same types of games as I do--aside from Worms Armageddon... for PC... from 1999.

    My movie-watching time is getting cut into as developers are coming up with better stories and are able to tell them better.

    There's a time and a place for multiplayer, and for me it's with people I know because it makes the victories sweeter and the revenge well, just delectable.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Phenomenal post, as always.

    ReplyDelete