Delirium Companion
If there was any game that would represent the ethos of what I've been 'trying to do' recently, it would be the indie super hit Among Us, which recently has been far less about reccomending a work, and far more about an attempt at an experimental knowing with games. Among Us is an assymetrical deduction game in which the killers try to pull off a murder plot on a group on people, and those people have to work together to deduce who within them is the killer. Among Us as a concept is not new, and is in actual fact quite late to the 'deduction game' party. For instance games like SS13, the 'open world sandbox MMORPG' of open deduction games have been around since 2003, 15 years before development, and also games like GMod's Trouble in Terrorist Town (2009) was not only out almost a full decade before Among Us but had a very similar level of 'voyeuristic entertainment value' (Twitch streams, Youtube content, etc.) . Even games that would even compete in a more 'closed loop' sceneraio, wherein all the suspects you've seen and known at the start, prove that Among Us is not particularly unique on a base level either here. The similarly well loved Town of Salem released 4 years prior. More to the point, Among Us trades the role complexity of other games with a vision cone, top down action character, and mobile game styled task management (brushing a bunch of leaves out of the way)....Or at least, it did. This is the first spot in which Among Us actually exists to perturb the public conciousness, what its like now vs. how it was in its haymaker era is very different. While I was away for the past couple years that game has had several updates, new maps, roles, and so on. It's not a totally different game when you phase into it now, but especially if you're playing with randoms you'd be blindsided by the amount of new stuff to keep track of. This experience is not even universal, some people are probably aware of the complexities of contemporary Among Us and can speak to that surely, but its the fact that there is a contemporary Among Us grafted onto the previous version at all that should give us pause.
The designers instead of making a new game with the knowledge they have, threw a bunch of modded content that is optional (but that random lobbies will naturally choose) into a game that they already made, rather than trying to risk on a new IP under their indie company. I bring this up because I believe it reveals a peculiar ennui of indie game design, a feeling that you have to buckle down and continue with what is already there and successful because the physics and assets are already distinctive to your ideas. This makes it so that rather than any successful game being able to be an 'independent success with indentifiable characteristics' with a timelessness of its representation. Instead its constantly being tweaked everforwards to cater to either a live service audience (which among us has via cosmetics) or just mass appeal. We only need to look at a 'success story' like Minecraft to see this. Minecraft in 2011 functions nothing like Minecraft 2023, and in a way we've taught ourselves this is acceptable but theres almost something kind of, tragic about it? Like rather than letting a success story reap rewards, an IP becomes a modder's business, and you update the IP constantly to reproduce more sales until you absolutely definitively can't anymore. Even if we choose not to be so cynical, then just on a base level a successful development team with a vision will feel an urge to endlessly tweak their own project up to a state of perfectionhood. If you graft a holistically new experience onto the name and face of what already exists, its not a robbery, but a painful 'postmodernity'. Mark Fisher questioned our own hauntological relationship with art as a startiling artifact beyond ourselves with the opening question to his thoughts on The Caretakers Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, in which he bluntly asks us "Could it be said that we all now suffer from a form of theoretically pure anterograde amnesia?". The rest of that essay winds itself in a direction of hopeless confusion and a sense of loss from a placehood in the present, in a way that is actually not very typical of philosophers or theorists. Philosophers are not supposed to appear as upset or 'lost' people to us, so when you're hit with a noire-esque delirium of confusion, its an upsetting read no doubt, self questioning.
"You find yourself in a grey black drizzle of static, a haze of crackle. Why is it always raining here? Or is that just the sound of the television, tuned to a dead channel?".
This 'acid trip' with the present is becoming more and more delirious not just with age, but with the temporal movement of object meanings themselves. Among Us in 2018 to 2021, represents a covid time capsule of what we think it was, the memetic cozy humorousness against isolation. The desire to 'be' with others and have comical hijinks around them. Yet the game and the designers on top of that are only optimistic towards the next update and release, Among Us is just a congress for suspecting in, its indifferent to your feelings.
Which is what makes this weird, Among Us represents a type of fun I was trying to have, I spent a good 50 hours hunting for this fun but the whole time I was miserable and there never 'was' a holiness of the game, in its primal state of enjoyment. If that state existed it was as a publicly voyeuristic second hand enjoyment which was likely a farce as well from the production side (ie a bunch of streamers admitted to 'knowing' who the killer is but pretending not to for the camera). I needed the game to prove to me that I could function and enjoy 15 minutes of deduction with my friends guilt free...Just as I mentioned in my League of Legends post, on the topic, I think some games take to form of slightly invisible 'misery simulators'. Contemptous impulses of man refracted back at themselves. League of Legends did this with its constant information milling via how the complexity and volume of challengers would mean even the smallest update to the game would shift the meta and how people thought about it. Among Us did this by showing us a halcyonic improbability of maintained friendship joy, how any one moment of positive memory declines towards a rote 'method' of being known. Spontaneity and erratic play was not appreciated to much in my games with it at least.
So then why did most of us end up watching others play it more than play it ourselves? Well in our network of the same 8 people playing it over and over, the game quickly becomes more about deducing the habits of your friends and their social weak points more than it was about the thrill of hanging out together and having a good time. Even right from the beginning, communication within a group would create uncomfortable 'deductive power dynamics'. Wherein a few people would end up dictating the flow of the game at the supression of everyone else. For us at least, that made it a misery simulator. Any strange strategy or goofy remark was outcasted for instead this methodological checksheet for 'solving' the game. The 'fun' of the game never existed, it was always an unserved need because the game itself was a paradox of its own nessecity. In order to bond with my friends, I have to have my habits scrutinized and try to lie to them? And then what then, glorious woman, do you think it just ended at the game? Now you live your life even more at edge with deduction in general, keep to yourself, try to look out from a black tower nobody else can see. Among Us is a time capsule of the hopelessness in group dynamics running towards a win state. We had to watch it instead to pretend the illusion still had a value. The game unquestionably has a memetic quality, the sound design and use of stock effect noises sculpted into the memetic framework of our public conciousness. Among Us because a strange religious ritual towards large friendships and searching for weird habits in others. I think the effect the game has had on how people interact with their real life is misery inducing for me to. Yet I know even as I dig further down into the heart of this visicious memory, a strange futility.
Were they my friends? Is it friendship, to merely play with each other? Does friendship mean anything really, blimp filled haughty? Do we graft belonging onto this airship there? So, is it validation that called me to the party? No, more more, something in the experience. Finding what you wanted and wished you could have. The desires unfulfillable, a wreckage piece of impossible want in the various fragments, a recognition that your experiences are your own, they may apply to somebody else to some extent, but the misery is you only have the ones you had. Loud drunk girls, proudly claiming who the imposter was, the joy of being around a bawdy bunch, the embarassment right after you attempted to impress yourself to them. Although you were only really doing it for some and the expense of the others comfort, chilvaric impression. Creaked femme: 'Milady look how funny I can be'. Quixotic girl you are, me.
You see new party games come out now, and you treat them with suspicion, 'Ive been burned and hurt once before by these toys, the wreckage of private impulse it pulls out of me'. This to is a meaningful gesture, a gesture of healing in caution. The past is not just hard to escape, its also a misery on the present. Misery simulators are simulators of the past. You can't ever escape them entirely, unless you know how to bash your head on a rock incredibly well, but at least you can make peace with your own azure vomity tears...
"I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can
discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of
uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself;
when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region
through which it must go seeking and where all its
equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that:
create. It is face to face with something which does not yet
exist, which it alone can make actual, which it alone can
bring into the light of day. " - Swanns Way, Marcel Proust
If there was any game that would represent the ethos of what I've been 'trying to do' recently, it would be the indie super hit Among Us, which recently has been far less about reccomending a work, and far more about an attempt at an experimental knowing with games. Among Us is an assymetrical deduction game in which the killers try to pull off a murder plot on a group on people, and those people have to work together to deduce who within them is the killer. Among Us as a concept is not new, and is in actual fact quite late to the 'deduction game' party. For instance games like SS13, the 'open world sandbox MMORPG' of open deduction games have been around since 2003, 15 years before development, and also games like GMod's Trouble in Terrorist Town (2009) was not only out almost a full decade before Among Us but had a very similar level of 'voyeuristic entertainment value' (Twitch streams, Youtube content, etc.) . Even games that would even compete in a more 'closed loop' sceneraio, wherein all the suspects you've seen and known at the start, prove that Among Us is not particularly unique on a base level either here. The similarly well loved Town of Salem released 4 years prior. More to the point, Among Us trades the role complexity of other games with a vision cone, top down action character, and mobile game styled task management (brushing a bunch of leaves out of the way)....Or at least, it did. This is the first spot in which Among Us actually exists to perturb the public conciousness, what its like now vs. how it was in its haymaker era is very different. While I was away for the past couple years that game has had several updates, new maps, roles, and so on. It's not a totally different game when you phase into it now, but especially if you're playing with randoms you'd be blindsided by the amount of new stuff to keep track of. This experience is not even universal, some people are probably aware of the complexities of contemporary Among Us and can speak to that surely, but its the fact that there is a contemporary Among Us grafted onto the previous version at all that should give us pause.
The designers instead of making a new game with the knowledge they have, threw a bunch of modded content that is optional (but that random lobbies will naturally choose) into a game that they already made, rather than trying to risk on a new IP under their indie company. I bring this up because I believe it reveals a peculiar ennui of indie game design, a feeling that you have to buckle down and continue with what is already there and successful because the physics and assets are already distinctive to your ideas. This makes it so that rather than any successful game being able to be an 'independent success with indentifiable characteristics' with a timelessness of its representation. Instead its constantly being tweaked everforwards to cater to either a live service audience (which among us has via cosmetics) or just mass appeal. We only need to look at a 'success story' like Minecraft to see this. Minecraft in 2011 functions nothing like Minecraft 2023, and in a way we've taught ourselves this is acceptable but theres almost something kind of, tragic about it? Like rather than letting a success story reap rewards, an IP becomes a modder's business, and you update the IP constantly to reproduce more sales until you absolutely definitively can't anymore. Even if we choose not to be so cynical, then just on a base level a successful development team with a vision will feel an urge to endlessly tweak their own project up to a state of perfectionhood. If you graft a holistically new experience onto the name and face of what already exists, its not a robbery, but a painful 'postmodernity'. Mark Fisher questioned our own hauntological relationship with art as a startiling artifact beyond ourselves with the opening question to his thoughts on The Caretakers Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia, in which he bluntly asks us "Could it be said that we all now suffer from a form of theoretically pure anterograde amnesia?". The rest of that essay winds itself in a direction of hopeless confusion and a sense of loss from a placehood in the present, in a way that is actually not very typical of philosophers or theorists. Philosophers are not supposed to appear as upset or 'lost' people to us, so when you're hit with a noire-esque delirium of confusion, its an upsetting read no doubt, self questioning.
"You find yourself in a grey black drizzle of static, a haze of crackle. Why is it always raining here? Or is that just the sound of the television, tuned to a dead channel?".
This 'acid trip' with the present is becoming more and more delirious not just with age, but with the temporal movement of object meanings themselves. Among Us in 2018 to 2021, represents a covid time capsule of what we think it was, the memetic cozy humorousness against isolation. The desire to 'be' with others and have comical hijinks around them. Yet the game and the designers on top of that are only optimistic towards the next update and release, Among Us is just a congress for suspecting in, its indifferent to your feelings.
Which is what makes this weird, Among Us represents a type of fun I was trying to have, I spent a good 50 hours hunting for this fun but the whole time I was miserable and there never 'was' a holiness of the game, in its primal state of enjoyment. If that state existed it was as a publicly voyeuristic second hand enjoyment which was likely a farce as well from the production side (ie a bunch of streamers admitted to 'knowing' who the killer is but pretending not to for the camera). I needed the game to prove to me that I could function and enjoy 15 minutes of deduction with my friends guilt free...Just as I mentioned in my League of Legends post, on the topic, I think some games take to form of slightly invisible 'misery simulators'. Contemptous impulses of man refracted back at themselves. League of Legends did this with its constant information milling via how the complexity and volume of challengers would mean even the smallest update to the game would shift the meta and how people thought about it. Among Us did this by showing us a halcyonic improbability of maintained friendship joy, how any one moment of positive memory declines towards a rote 'method' of being known. Spontaneity and erratic play was not appreciated to much in my games with it at least.
So then why did most of us end up watching others play it more than play it ourselves? Well in our network of the same 8 people playing it over and over, the game quickly becomes more about deducing the habits of your friends and their social weak points more than it was about the thrill of hanging out together and having a good time. Even right from the beginning, communication within a group would create uncomfortable 'deductive power dynamics'. Wherein a few people would end up dictating the flow of the game at the supression of everyone else. For us at least, that made it a misery simulator. Any strange strategy or goofy remark was outcasted for instead this methodological checksheet for 'solving' the game. The 'fun' of the game never existed, it was always an unserved need because the game itself was a paradox of its own nessecity. In order to bond with my friends, I have to have my habits scrutinized and try to lie to them? And then what then, glorious woman, do you think it just ended at the game? Now you live your life even more at edge with deduction in general, keep to yourself, try to look out from a black tower nobody else can see. Among Us is a time capsule of the hopelessness in group dynamics running towards a win state. We had to watch it instead to pretend the illusion still had a value. The game unquestionably has a memetic quality, the sound design and use of stock effect noises sculpted into the memetic framework of our public conciousness. Among Us because a strange religious ritual towards large friendships and searching for weird habits in others. I think the effect the game has had on how people interact with their real life is misery inducing for me to. Yet I know even as I dig further down into the heart of this visicious memory, a strange futility.
Were they my friends? Is it friendship, to merely play with each other? Does friendship mean anything really, blimp filled haughty? Do we graft belonging onto this airship there? So, is it validation that called me to the party? No, more more, something in the experience. Finding what you wanted and wished you could have. The desires unfulfillable, a wreckage piece of impossible want in the various fragments, a recognition that your experiences are your own, they may apply to somebody else to some extent, but the misery is you only have the ones you had. Loud drunk girls, proudly claiming who the imposter was, the joy of being around a bawdy bunch, the embarassment right after you attempted to impress yourself to them. Although you were only really doing it for some and the expense of the others comfort, chilvaric impression. Creaked femme: 'Milady look how funny I can be'. Quixotic girl you are, me.
You see new party games come out now, and you treat them with suspicion, 'Ive been burned and hurt once before by these toys, the wreckage of private impulse it pulls out of me'. This to is a meaningful gesture, a gesture of healing in caution. The past is not just hard to escape, its also a misery on the present. Misery simulators are simulators of the past. You can't ever escape them entirely, unless you know how to bash your head on a rock incredibly well, but at least you can make peace with your own azure vomity tears...
"I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can
discover the truth. But how? What an abyss of
uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself;
when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region
through which it must go seeking and where all its
equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that:
create. It is face to face with something which does not yet
exist, which it alone can make actual, which it alone can
bring into the light of day. " - Swanns Way, Marcel Proust
Erato_Heti
4 months ago