Gaming – The Implausi.blog

Exit from Eden: Virtual Retreat

What if you achieve the future you always wanted, and find it empty?

The advent of Generative AI, with the new* video models able to reproduce video at scale is bringing with it an unexpected reaction from the digital native generations (Millenials and Gen Z): retreat.

The erosion of trust that has come from the rampant use of GenAI in a post-truth era that was already struggling to reflect objective reality has resulted in a rejection of the online devices and smartphones that they have grown up with, taking up analog pursuits – some of which were cultivated during the early stages of the Covid-19 response – along with a desire for the Dial-Up Pastorale (from back in Episode 34).

It isn’t a full blown retreat from the virtual just yet, but the signs are there. Those most sensitive to the coming changes taking the first steps away from online life.

It is a rejection of the “Exodus to the Virtual” that was anticipated back in 2007 by Edward Castranova, and similar observations that were echoed during that era of massive growth in popularity of MMOs and virtual worlds.

Exodus to the Virtual (2007) was Castranova’s follow-up to his work on Synthetic Worlds (2005) which was an analysis of the MMORPG Everquest through an economic lens. In Exodus, Castranova positioned himself on the crest of the wave of the hype cycle for MMOs, hypothesizing that the economies of these places, built on fun, would be attractive enough to entice people to migrate to them and spend most of their time online within these environments.

There are many ways that this hypothesis was colossally wrong.

Eighteen years later, that projected exodus is all but gone. Even though consumer VR hardware is more available, accessible, and consumer friendly, the desire to take that path has withdrawn for more of the population, either no longer having the means to undertake the exodus or rejecting it wholesale.

Where can this rejection be seen? It’s there, on social media, in the subtext of the wry comments of those claiming “the internet was a mistake” with every new “advancement” in technology or viral trend that escapes containment. But it is also there, more explicitly, in the claims and calls to action of the Digital Natives, TikTok posts steadily gaining more views and likes, claiming that they’re done and walking away from the internet, a claim they assert will definitely happen if they can no longer discern truth from unreality thanks to the next iteration in generative AI.

There’s a paradox here, where those who have already noped out of the virtual won’t be posting about it too much on social media (obviously), but there is a brief window where they may leave traces – evangelizing about their choices the way only a vegan crossfitter can, or talking themselves up to final leaving it behind, and trying to convince others to join them.

This rejection of a future imaginary – even the few drops that are starting now, signs of the damn beginning to leak, sweating through before it buckles and breaks unleashing the torrent that bursts its way through – is rare, though not unknown, as we have collectively stepped back from other imagined futures before, with the waning of the nuclear age that dominated half the 20th century.

It’s also a pitch correction, or rather pitch rejection as the sale of the commodified self loses its luster and sheen, only begrudgingly uptaken by those who need it for work, or those too young to recognize the gilt for the thing covering of glitter that it is.

So the retreat is underway, those stepping away from the din and fray of the online battledomes quietly slipping out, and others starting to notice them in their absence. And much like in a battle where it only takes a few to break before a full on rout is underway, we may soon see this happen en masse. It may not take an oracle to predict it, but an Oracle may be involved all the same.

*: as of October 2025 – Google Sora 2

Gaming Machines: Gaming as Allographic Art

(This post concludes the set of examples we began with the Cybernetic Machines and Science Machines over the last few weeks.)

We might call a gaming machine as something where a “game” is a set of instructions written by a “developer (or designer)”* fed into an assemblage (or cybernetic bio-technical machine) called a “studio” that outputs a “program”.

Hmm, that doesn’t quite work.

We need to spend a little more time with our construction here, to figure out what the roots are.

The generic version breaks down to: a Machine is a given Input (written) by a (Creator) fed into an assemblage called a (Mechanism) that produces an (Output).

If we were to extract those terms from the examples in our previous posts, we’d get this:

Machine, Input, Creator, Mechanism, Output
Science, Method, Scientist, Laboratory, Experiment
Game, Game, Developer, Studio, Program
Film, Script, Director, Production Company, Movie
Music, Composition, Composer, Orchestra, Symphony
Building, Blueprint, Architect, Construction Company, Building
AI, Context Model, Prompt Engineer, AI, Virtual World
AI2, Prompt, Prompt Engineer, AI, Experience

So now a gaming machine looks like this:

A “game” is a set of instructions written by a “developer (or designer)” fed into an assemblage (or cybernetic bio-technical machine) called a “studio” that outputs a “program”.

And we can talk about…

Gaming as an Allographic Art

Back when we started with Cybernetic Machines, we brought up the concept of an “allographic art”, from Nelson Goodman (1962). An allographic art is an art that is crafted by others based on a set of instructions. The artist in this case is the creator of the work that is replicated, like a composer or architect.

So by this definition, a game – either tabletop or electronic – would fit as an allographic art form.

Granted TTRPG rules rarely rise to the level of “art”, often seeming content to aim for “technical manual”, but things are improving. A lot of smaller indie games, have been focusing on the presentation and the while package – games like Root, Mork Borg, and others – to say nothing of the beautiful games released within the boardgaming space (Canvas, Sagrada, Azul, Hues and Cues, and a host of others).

But there are competing visions of “art” here, as art in game design may occur irrespective of the aesthetic appeal of the components, and a dry technical manual with pretty pictures may still not make for an engaging or artful design. However, there is no reason why a black and white typed zine might not contain artfully designed gaming systems either.

And while we previously also discussed how a scripted performance like a symphony or ballet would count as an allographic art, gaming as performance – again, either tabletop (e.g. Critical Role, Dimension 20) or electronic (e.g. Twitch, YouTube, etc.) is a different form of art.

To be clear: both design and performance can be art. Both count.

In the same way that Mozart of Composer and the London Symphony Orchestra as Performer are artists, in different ways, of the same work. And while this is commonly accepted in those art forms, in others it rarely occurs.

Take film for example: one of the very instances of this in film is Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Here we have the same script, and much of the same direction, attempting to remake a film in much the same way that we would see with other allographic art forms. Psycho (1998) is a performance of Psycho (1960). Or rather, both Psycho (1960) and Psycho (1998) are performances (or interpretations) of the original script. I.e., allographic art.

But it is so rarely done in that medium. What would it look like if it happened more often?

This discussion of film brings us back to gaming, hopefully. Here we can have artistry in the play, of the code or rules created by others for the gamers to showcase their interpretation to the world, and we can have artistry in the design, in the instructions as they are created, with the elegance or aesthetic appeal of the rules and their presentation showcasing that form of art.

Which leads us to the implied question: is gaming art? Of course!

Though there have been many arguments that video games aren’t art (with some stating that they are incapable of becoming so), these arguments have been always been false. Gaming is art.

And gaming machines can make it.

Dredge (2023)

In a rare turn of events, I recently completed a video game. This happens much less often than one would think (and not counting the recent Half-Life playthroughs I mentioned a little while ago). This is partly due to time, and perhaps partly due to engagement, as the pacing of many games, once the “gameplay loop” is firmly established is some combination of slow, boring, or frustrating.

But there’s something zen-like about a good fishing game. Enter Dredge (2023):

This is a boat-based fishing game with a dark plot, where you start off with a simple boat, not a lot of memories, and a fishing village with more going on behind the scenes. The gameplay is relatively simple: sail boat, spot fish, get fish, sail back, sell fish, try not to lose your mind.

This is the dark twist behind the game: a lot of the fish are Weird, and the locals too, and the various setting elements would seem right at home in an expansion for the Arkham Horror board game. As you continue fishing to fill your hold with the various species for cash money, more and more of them start turning up wrong.

And as they get weirder and weirder, and you progress through more of the zones of the game, the story builds up as well. I really liked the different places to fish, the relative ease of following along the main storyline, and how I was able to complete the main arc of the story at about the same time as I had gotten (most) of the unlocks. It never felt too grindy, and if there was a grind, well, I was just doing some more fishing.

I guess the lesson here might be that it’s not a grind if it’s a grind that you like.

Anyhoo, the game never outstayed it’s welcome, and progress was enough to make me feel like I was moving forward, even when I was a little bit stuck. I finished it, and went back for the alternate endings, and enjoyed how they got to the finish. Bravo!

Recommended to check out if you see it on a sale. I got it off Epic, and enjoyed it a lot.

Half-Life 2: 20 years on

2004 was as pivotal a year for the video game industry as 1999 was for film, and two of the titles that had the biggest impact have been getting an extended retrospective. While World of Warcraft wasn’t necessarily my favourite MMO, I can’t deny the larger impact it had on the MMO market as a whole. (I wrote at length about this impact in my first peer-reviewed academic article back in 2009 too. Hopefully one day I can share that with you).

The other game with a massive impact was Half-Life 2, and there’s an extended documentary about it up on Youtube to look back at how it changed video games:

Like many gamers of the early 21st century, I played Half-Life 2 on release, playing through the full campaign, stealthily and working through every nook and cranny

Watching the clips hit me right in the feels with Nostalgia, so I fired up the install and started another playthrough. The game came back to me fast, the keys are instinctive, and the maps well worn in my memory. I moved through quickly too. The names of the various chapters of the game evoked memories: Water Hazard, Ravenholm, Nova Prospekt, each with their identifiable sections and set-pieces: the chopper fight, the flaming traps, deadly snipers along the rail line, swarming ant-lions and more.

The sections proceed naturally, a testament to the storytelling by the creators of the game. As I’m playing through, each part has me wanting to see what’s next, even though I’ve played this at least a dozen times. (Twenty years ago, I’d restart the game shortly after finishing it, as I wanted to replay some of the early chapters again. It speaks to how dynamic the gameplay is, with very different feels between the foot, jetboat, and buggy sections).

It’s not a perfect game, but it’s close. There are occasional parts where you can see some of the rough seams, and not everything is interactive. It’s fairly linear, without the dynamic ways of working through situations that can be seen in some of its contemporaries (Deux Ex, Thief, and System Shock 2 come to mind, but again, those are exemplars of the genre, in the pantheon of all time greats).

And while the graphics looks a bit dated compared to more modern games, they’re still fine: with a great view to the distance, and so fast on a modern machine that gameplay is smooth and seamless. But I don’t find the “date” on the visuals a negative either: it’s still clearly a game, and the low-fi version of it allows for a certain amount of projection to take place. It’s “cool” media, to borrow McLuhan’s parlance, or how Scott McCloud wrote in “Understanding Comics” (around the same time this game was released) of how the less visual information conveyed on the panel allowed the audience to map themselves on to the figure on the page.

Gordon Freeman becomes Everyman, in this lo-fi version.

The amount of influence this game has had is also evident in the playthrough. I’m not a video game historian (well, I haven’t been for a while), but the entire Call of Duty / Modern Warfare section of the games industry draws a line through Half-Life 1 and 2 (and Counter Strike and Team Fortress more specifically). The design language of modern gaming can be seen here in the simple and direct playthrough, the embedded tutorials and tooltips throughout, the smooth ease of use of the various elements of the game.

For anyone who reads this who has never played Half-Life 2, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. Its iconic for a reason, and any history of the video game industry needs to spend a few hours racing along the canals or walking through Ravenholm. It holds up remarkably well.