GameGame 2

Content warning - mention of suicide

Thanks to Abramawitz for important writing contributions, editing, moral support, and several amusing complaints.

There's something indie devs can get away with that mainstream studios can't and that's a hidden premise. To take everything that makes your product work and bundle it in something else and sell it as another thing entirely. Mainstream studios, dependant upon their products being bought by many, cannot do this. It doesn't matter if it's the greatest Zelda game ever, if someone buys Mario and gets a Zelda, they will be disappointed and want their money back. But indie devs, often driven by word of mouth and lofty artistic goals, can be more creative. For example, Doki Doki Literature club appears to be a romance visual novel, until it isn't. Undertale uses the trappings of a classic JRPG, but doesn't really play like one. Third example.

This is a technique I want to use more. One of my favourite ideas on my big old idea list is a twinstick shootemup, where using an explosive in the right spot lets you break out of the boundaries and find a completely different game. I wouldn't tell anyone about this. I would let it be discovered naturally. There's a joy in secrecy, one that is often missing from modern games. I often feel that the ability to look things up is bad for modern games, both in design and as a player. Puzzles get weirder and more fragile, reliant on players giving up and using an ad filled guide written by an underpaid journalist. The thrill of discovery is replaced with a tired march along a well-worn track. But my stuff is too small for common knowledge, and that gives me space to create a unique and intimate conversation between player and designer. This is not a speech, this is me whispering a message to you and you specifically.

But that's a tall order. It's a bit like making two different games at once. You know what else sounds a bit like two games at once? GameGame.

Roughly two years ago, I made a game which I titled GameGame: The Movie: The Podcast: The Game. This post is going to spoil it for you.

GameGame is a bit of a dumb meme. It has an itch page that I do think you should read through. I quite like it. It has a certain quirky charm. Throughout the exaggerated drama and parody medical warnings, the core bit of GameGame emerges: a list of "big questions" it purports to ask. These include:

This is the central jest of GameGame, and were I to do it again, one of the many things I would change is the noise of the itch page. While the jokes are okay, they distract from the main thrust, this claim to be asking big questions.

Because rather than asking these questions through clever mechanics or design, it does so literally, using black text on white background. There's a button which displays a new question.

Really.

That's a pretty good bit (in my humble opinion) and that's all there is to the game.

At the time of writing, GameGame has been downloaded 30 times. It has been put into 2 collections (both private), rated 3 times (a 2, a 3, and a 5 star totalling an average of 3/5), and somehow received $5 in payments making it my best earner on itch (disregarding Swordfighting for People Who Are Really Bad at Swordfighting's presence in Indiepocalypse 35, which wins that competition by a large margin).

Of those 30 downloads, I have watched it be played twice. Once in person by a (then) partner and once on Twitch by a friend's partner, to an audience of less than 10 people. The Twitch stream was interesting, for a few reasons.

One of the greatest moments of my indie dev career was watching a different friend of a friend stream (and enjoy) Swordfighting for People Who Are Really Bad at Swordfighting for almost 20 people. I think perhaps if I watched people play my games more, I would find making them more motivating. There is something deeply magical about bringing joy and humour into someone's life, even if it's just for an hour.

The GameGame stream was not really like that. It was funny, sure. There was some laughter. One person in the chat decided I was taking shots at visual novels and (mostly jokingly) got defensive. The streamer laughed at the bit, hit the button until the questions had looped a few times, and then closed it down.

She didn't stop to ask why there was both a forwards button and a backwards button if the questions were on a perfect loop.

GameGame is a game which isn't meant to be played. That's how I describe it most often. There are two meanings to this. One is that it isn't a game, really. I'm not sure it properly has a genre. It has a medium and because of that it could be classified as a video game, but that doesn't sit right with me. The other is that it is, to a perhaps unhealthy degree, very much me. And I don't like to consider myself a game.

GameGame is less of a game and more of a story. I wrote the entire thing in 2 hours, starting at 2 am in the morning, after drinking two glasses of wine. While I did spend far longer editing it than actually writing it (and added two new sections later), it maintained that raw unfiltered edge throughout. GameGame was me, as I was at that time. And because I was not in a very good place, GameGame came out dark and unpleasant and angry.

It was me. There's no way around that. I put down all my formative experiences, everything that had made me. And it was a fucking mess, both because I didn't know how to write or structure and because I was a fucking mess. It's free flowing and chaotic. Metaphors shift and dance freely. Every part of it corresponds to something real, but in fictionalized ways, coloured by depression and years of repression. People who have known me may see snippets of themselves in there, but only in fleeting ways. "you" is thrown around a lot and rarely means the same person twice. Bodies shift and change, the timeline warps, the present and the past and the hypothetical future all collide, the game talks directly to the viewer often and directly to the universe just as often, and the distinction between the two is poorly defined. The viewer is the universe and the universe is the viewer as far as GameGame is concerned.

It isn't as artistic as it sounds. It's a hot fucking mess. Even 2 months later, looking back, there were large sections I would've changed if I could. The ending, in particular, is self indulgent and unnecessarily long. Something shorter and punchier would be much more effective. Rereading it now, I can see dozens of lines that could be tightened, many places where it feels drawn out and paced badly.

I can't actually bring myself to change GameGame.

On June 15th, 2020, Real Life Comics released this comic, ending a year long hiatus. While I did have a webcomic era, I was never into Real Life Comics, and so I didn't notice this at the time. It wasn't until two weeks later, when this comic was published on June 29th and went viral, that I noticed. What followed over the next two weeks were a set of comics set in a brain space where different aspects of the character discussed her gender and transness.

The comics are good, but what stuck with me was what the author said about them (I think on Twitter X? Can't find it now, it was two years ago. The ephemerality of social media, am I right?). She described writing it as the act of killing herself. And in retrospect, I think that's what GameGame represents to me. GameGame was the act of figuratively killing myself.

I do draw a distinction between the protagonist of GameGame and myself. GameGame is definitely not a work of fact and nothing belies that more than the final sequence, which is mostly fantasized. Representationally, although I wouldn't have said this at the time, it was the act of transfer. That is, the collection of survival strategies and anxieties that pretended to be a person was finally stepping down and giving space for something new.

I cannot bring myself to change GameGame. It is the sole remaining remnant of who I was, a standing testament to my past. A figurative tombstone. GameGame is hidden because I, myself, was hidden, often behind a quick joke or cheap gimmick where that was easier than being a person.

I do not think it was a coincidence that my creative output was approximately 0 until I transitioned. It wasn't until months after I had accepted my transness that I finished my first video game. 3 years later, I'm sitting on over a dozen video games, a bunch of short stories, and an ever-growing blog. There was a deep-set anxiety to being trans and not knowing it, which drained my energy and left me exhausted. The mask metaphor woven through GameGame, while somewhat trite and played out, was an attempt at encapsulating this. Creative output was tricky because I felt so distant from myself. It is hard to make things you do not find fun or interesting and I spent so much energy invested in being what other people wanted to see that I couldn't make anything that I myself, would've enjoyed. That would've been entirely too honest.

There is a paradox there, which is that I did not, in fact, enjoy making GameGame. It was a frankly miserable gruelling process, and came out more like an act of possession. But it was cathartic. The truth I keep coming back to is GameGame was not for anyone else. It is messy and weird and no one but me will ever understand it, because it was me.

And that's why I had to bury it behind a dumb joke about asking questions and make it look like it was a stupid bit. GameGame was me. Releasing it was an act of hubris and I was scared of being hurt. It is rough around the edges and messy and I didn't have to polish my edges because I set it up so that most people would not find GameGame. It's not meant to be played.

There is something to be said for honesty. Hiding my truth behind humour and deflection is appropriate for strangers. I have often considered taking GameGame down. Because of that personal nature, I'm not sure the true GameGame is fit for public consumption. Is it too vulnerable? Vulnerability is something I have always struggled with. While many may miss the core of the game entirely, leaving it public is still a small and deliberate act of vulnerability. Is that good for me? It is unclear.

The second time I watched someone play GameGame, it was with a then boyfriend (now enemy), who I had hinted about what to expect. They very patiently pressed through the forward button like, a thousand times (despite being super impatient), an act for which I will be forever grateful. It was, in some ways, a terrifying experience. They are the best writer I've ever known and this was, to that point, the one piece of my writing I was most proud of. Instead of engaging in critical analysis, we drank wine and cuddled and cried.

Perhaps no other will ever understand GameGame the way they will, because I explained it to them that night to the best of my ability. I drew together the tangled threads and let it fill in my past. And that too was an act of release, perhaps greater than that of the original act of creation.

There are many things I would change about GameGame and some of them are the parts that I missed. Focusing primarily on transphobia and depression meant I missed my other formative experiences. Growing up autistic was hard. I was often bullied, quite badly. While I talk frequently and perhaps uncharitably about past relationships, I fail to fully describe the confusing nature of growing into an uncertain sexuality.

I think the key premise that emerged, as my ex-boyfriend and I read my work, was the lack of specific future in it. GameGame is fundamentally a game about the past. While it is arguably hopeful at the end, it refuses to be specific about what happens next. And there are two reasons for that. One is that it is about putting the ghost of my past self to rest through acknowledging his regrets and fears. The other is that there is no future in this. I need to reject this sort of disguised emotion and become more honest about myself. In a way, that's the purpose of this post. To confess that once, I did this and that it doesn't have to be hidden anymore.

I have grown a lot in the 2 years since release. I'm happier. I'm more confident. I have close friends and partners and people who care about me. It is comforting to look back and see how far I have come, especially in regard to gender. GameGame focuses on what I'm moving away from, when I prefer to try to focus on what I'm moving towards.

This is problematic, because I don't really know what my gender is anymore. It feels too complex and too deep, arcane and vast and impossible. I try my best to feel the shape of it by touching what it hates, but I often feel at a stalemate. I merely avoid that which disgusts me enough to survive, never enough to derive joy. I have moved past the problems of GameGame, in some ways. I no longer doubt whether I deserve to be trans. I doubt how best to act on being trans. And that too is a contradiction, because I am a Braitenberg vehicle, running away from the light of an unpleasant gender. While I would describe them with more nuance and understanding today, these fears are reflected in GameGame as it was. It is threaded through with a sense of wrongness that still feels familiar to me today.

Perhaps the lesson here is that I need to be more vulnerable and honest to be happy. Perhaps the true euphoria is being seen by your friends as who you are without reservation. So here's a good one: contrary to popular belief, I am not a trans woman. I identified as such when I didn't really know of any other options, and then when it was convenient for explaining myself to the cis, and then out of force of habit.

I often wonder about if I failed to find community among trans women because I am not one or if I don't believe I'm a trans woman because I failed to find community amongst trans women. But I don't really think it actually matters. I am something else, and that's okay.

I play these kinds of deceptive premise games often. For one example, see my game The Exact Same Level 1000 Times Over With No Variations. Sure, I was honest about the premise. There is, in fact, the exact same level 1000 times over with no variations. But the text between the levels is not randomized and if you play for long enough, patterns and stories and complaints will emerge. I challenge you to find them.

For another example, I recently changed all the pronouns on my internet accounts (Discord, this site, itch, Twitter) to say they/them. I only told a few people about this, mostly the people who are most important to me. I wanted to see how long it would take to spread. No one really noticed, I think. I'm nonbinary. I'm currently existing outside of the space of gender. Maybe someday I'll reenter it.

I don't actually have pronouns listed on my Mastodon. While I'm confessing things, here's another one: this is because I'm using the obvious slot (the field space) for something far cooler. The non-link field slot on my Mastodon changes once every half an hour. I made a bot to do that for me and have been quietly running it for months. I don't think anyone noticed. And there is a joy in that! There's something deeply fun about secrets and having them.

I think that writing GameGame freed me, much as writing this piece has. There is no possibility of failure here. Friends won't look at a coming-of-gender story, full of vulnerability, and reject it. And stranger's opinions have no hold over me, so far from ever understanding what I actually meant. The ending of GameGame failed in regard to gender, then. It drew me a woman, as though that would fix me. Is she still with me? Is there an aspect of me that she represents? Everything that I create is a snapshot of myself in a moment. Perhaps this blog post is hers. Perhaps it is a bookend to another era of my life. Perhaps it is to free me from another burden.

Maybe in another two years, I'll tell you if it worked.

Today's link of the day is me, because I feel I deserve something nice after being all vulnerable like this. All my games are on my itch and it would make me so happy if you played them. I'm a big fan of numbers going up (and I completed Antimatter Dimensions to prove it). If you like them, I have a kofi you can use to pay me because I probably should get to a level of confidence where I feel like my creations are worth money. You can also pay me through itch. It's your call. If you want to fund other devs too, buy an Indiepocalypse. I get a cut if you buy issue 35

Also deserving of attention is Abramawitz, who read this piece, gave me some good feedback, and then (for the bit) wrote several paragraphs for this post that were absolutely incredible (way better than anything I wrote). I feel awful about cutting them from the piece (they didn't fit! I'm so sorry!). Some of their words remain and they deserve all of the credit. You are, in fact, super smart, bestie.