I exist in conflicting times

     The table is slightly too small. We huddle over it and think about how it’s perhaps cosier than we were planning. The game is new to all of us and I am ill-prepared. I guide everyone through the rules, reaffirming the homework I did the day before in the process.

     Brindlewood Bay has an amusing premise: In this tabletop roleplaying game, we all pretend to be grandmas solving murders. Its simplicity is inviting. There are no spells to learn, no complicated combat, just characters, danger, imagination, and dice.

     It’s welcoming. So, we take tentative steps together, and slowly

     things come to life.

     The first time I saw Half-Life was in the age of dial-up internet. I opened an issue of PC Gamer magazine, and it featured in a list of highly anticipated games. I pored over the text and images for days, nurturing a billowing sense of anticipation. I was young and unfamiliar with first-person shooters, but it felt like just the right one for me. I bought into the hype.

Still I struggle

     with the

overlapping clocks

     At that time, my calendar was structured around the school term and the next big game releases I was anticipating. I remember wishing I could compress the days, to skip ahead to the next big game release on the horizon. I wanted to experience new stories, new worlds, new ideas. I was up for any challenge.

     only one can make sense at a time

     One day, I’ll grow too old to function on this type of clock, to have my days charted by the gravity of anticipation. One day, even the games will stop making sense to me, become too much of a challenge to play, my reaction times ballooning to the point of absurdity. One day, perhaps, the years will become too few, or life will no longer interest me. I can see it already. I can see myself burning out, my moment already passed.

     Half-Life is a first-person shooter with a pulpy sci-fi setting, telling the story of a scientific experiment gone awry at the underground Black Mesa Research Facility. Players step into the shoes of always-silent Perhaps all I seek is a reckoning protagonist Gordon Freeman and become responsible for this dire turn of events, as aliens begin to breach the facility across intergalactic portals. Freeman makes his way through the facility, picking up a variety of weapons—some real, some fantastical—and surviving a gauntlet of challenges, as a cleverly told story of invasion and conspiracy unfolds.

     I’m not a good game master, but I keep trying because the idea that you never really know what you’re going to get is fascinating to me. I like the uncertainty, even if I don’t manage it well. It is odd to me that this should be the case. In my everyday life, I crave certainty of outcome, or perhaps simply assurance, the notion that things will not go wrong. This is an undercurrent in the game as well. I get overly concerned about not wasting everyone’s time, that I didn’t do a bad job or misrepresent the game. Still I keep going back to it, seeking the stress of uncertainty.

     It’s the chemistry that makes things work, the suggestion that in this small and welcoming space, isolated from the moments of life, the delicate can be allowed to breathe, and some semblance of human connection might be found.

     I clear my throat and get the game going. The first moments are always the most nervous, sitting at the precipice, waiting to be surprised. I tell myself that all it takes is a little dialogue, a little conversation, and sometimes, not even that. Sometimes all it takes is to stop and listen.

     The Half-Life games are games about time. In particular, pacing is a crucial factor in any Half-Life experience, with narrative events carefully designed to unfold at just the right moments like a finely tuned amusement park ride. Revolutionary at the time of its release, the original game would aspire to be more than just a carousel of monsters or enemies to gun down, employing scripted sequences in combination with environmental cues in an immersive setting. This mode of storytelling would come to redefine video games.

The franchise thrives on this narrative armature, driving players from one action set-piece to the next, with numerous events carefully primed to give the illusion of arriving at just the right time. This has since become commonplace, but few games have done it as well as the Half-Life games, where the player is kept in a consistent flow state, incessantly propelled forward by the precisely tweaked stream of happenings.

In Half-Life, every moment is tuned to make some coherent sense, precisely measured to have meaning on this linear journey towards saving the world, a subjective clock that never once falters.

     At some point, the emails began to frighten her. That is, she would delay opening them, afraid to learn what awful knowledge each contained. To be fair, it never transpires that a single email would be powerful enough to throw her completely off-balance, but she still remains anxious about checking her unread messages. Perhaps for this reason she is sometimes tempted to let the number of unread emails climb into the hundreds.

     constantly changing gears

torn in different directions

     drawn and quartered

     Half-Life 2 takes place about two decades after the first game. Players once again step into the shoes of Gordon Freeman, having been placed in some kind of suspended animation at the end of the original game. The time skip is a narrative convenience, leaving enough mystery about the world for the player to unearth.

     Yet, Freeman’s condition says something about the meta-experience of playing video games as well. “The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world,” says his enigmatic retainer, a sinister character known only as the G-Man. Indeed, players of the Half-Life games buy into this conceit, the conceit of every action movie and game, to be able to play the hero, to be the sole agent of change—all possibilities concentrated onto a single body.

     The right person, the right place, the right time. It’s like destiny. Every instant was made for us. We are heroes in these games, the ones for which the moments exist. Everything in this virtual world exists to account for our one heroic story. There is a linear path to one resolution. We do not play as people. Our experience is devoid of parallel narratives or conflicting priorities. We have a singular purpose and a single path forwards, and so does the entire reality around us.

     Only under these very particular circumstances, it seems, can we have agency, the belief that it is within our power—and solely within our power—to make things right.

     In a few months, one of these friendships will crumble unexpectedly, when an 

Play puts me in touch with the moment

     Keeps me honest

     Keeps me accountable for the experience of living

          Ensures that I attend to the moment

in any limited way

unexpected confluence of emotions and adversity causes us to silently reevaluate our friendship. I think back to that moment at the table. There’s only regret.

     I’ve always felt that we had mismatched rhythms. Perhaps the games were the only space in which we managed to, temporarily, find ourselves synchronised.

     Sometimes

It’s the only way to be alive

     I play the game like an utter coward, compulsively hitting the quick-save key every so often like some kind of protection spell. I’m driven by the constant anxiety that I might put myself in a bad spot with too few bullets or too little life. I reload the game if things go even slightly awry. This constant rhythm of incessant saving and loading defines the game’s time, a repeating line where none of the consequences are permanent, except the ones I want to keep.

     Fittingly, I mirror the game’s right-place-right-time conceit in this way. Being able to return and fix the problem, the whole crisis becomes a puzzle I can solve with enough determination, wits, and attempts. The right person at the right time, but also a person who does not adhere to the rules of time—to be just in time is also to exist outside of time.

     Perhaps this is the most powerful fantasy of action video games, that we could all save the world if we had the ability to save and the reload function, if we had continues or extra lives, if we had the ability to disrupt the unceasing flow of time.

     I struggle to reach out again. A calm silence fills in the space that used to be. I don’t want to shatter this. No need for agitation. Life takes over, and we seem happy to let it. We don’t have to deal with whatever we should be dealing with. We are content with the daily grind.

     As time passes, it solidifies. Reality crystallises into a new, unexpected shape. It becomes hard to tell what’s missing. Or rather, was anything really missing in the first place? Perhaps it is okay to be without each other’s company.

     The moment when certain things can be said passes. Maybe there can be no return.

I would hate for our friendship to end like this, and yet,

something

     remains

something remains

     unsaid

          promised

Things could be worse, I guess

     for now

I am still waiting to speak

What will be the first new word?

Will there be a first new word?

     Across subsequent sequels, expansion packs, and episodic chapters, the franchise expands on a remarkable sci-fi apocalypse, where the interdimensional Combine empire takes over the Earth and a global-scale disaster unfurls.

     In Half-Life 2, the effects of the Combine takeover are more closely explored, with peeks into everyday lives as Freeman makes his way towards his heroic destiny. It is hard to imagine what comes next. Even if the rebellion succeeds, even if Freeman’s actions liberate the city, what sort of shape will lives take in the aftermath? Disaster is the absence of future and the impossibility of returning to a better past. Things collapse into one moment, a distortion in the experience of time, a gravity that tugs at our ability to understand and to speak.

     Three months into her new job, she begins to arrive early to work. She doesn’t enter the office immediately. Rather, she finds a quiet corner somewhere nearby and completes a crossword or a game of Wordle. She wonders if this is an act of avoidance, if perhaps it’s a sign that she’s one of the bad apples who has trouble facing up to the work. All she knows for sure is that something about this ritual calms her right before she embarks on the new workday.

     We are sitting together on the floor as we begin to work out the rules of the game. The set-up for Daybreak is moderately complicated, and we spend some time arranging the components. There is always trepidation when introducing a new game to someone. I wonder if it’ll be to their liking, if the rules will make sense, and if I will make a mess out of presenting it.

     I explain that the game is about solving the ecological crisis. We’ll play as a global power implementing policies and developing technologies that will form cohesive climate action. I bought the game purely on this basis, to introduce my friends to games that weren’t just about slaying monsters, deception, or greed. Yet, as we go through the rules, I second-guess myself.

     The questions begin to surface in my mind. Is this actually fun? Without drama or traditional tension, without competition or conflict, Daybreak’s optimistic outlook stands out. On the flip side, its choice of subject matter also works against it. Can there be anything fun about climate change? Do games have to be fun? Do movies have to be entertaining? It feels disingenuous to call something a game if it doesn’t provide entertainment, but games can aspire to artistic goals as well. At what point does a game stop being a game?

     What does it mean to play?

     There’s no time to care about anything. She lives in an age fraught with global emergencies and crises, and all she can worry about is the meagre salary that goes into her bank account every month. Her calendar is framed by the yearly circus of the annual review and the dispensation of her performance bonus. Life is a constant distraction. That is, life without living. An endless series of to-do lists and a constant state of being in evaluation. It is alarming that this is the only thing that makes sense. This life is the only one that makes sense.

     Like Bartleby, she’d prefer to just say no to it all, to just abandon this current state of affairs, but there is no right of refusal in the capitalistic machinery. Making a living is hardly living.

     I think over these questions as we play. I think of the guilt that is inevitably attached to the indulgence of such frivolous pastimes. One day, she receives an email from the team director praising her for her recent work. She skims through the first sentences but stops when she sees the phrase “helpful tips for productivity.” She hesitates to read on. What could possibly await her? Her stomach begins to churn. She decides not to read on. What if she’s beyond help? What if something is broken in her? What if she is unable to align herself to the shape of the world? Surely we should not be playing as the environment enters a state of emergency. And to distil something as serious and urgent as this into a light-hearted bit of entertainment feels irresponsible. Besides, how could a game possibly carry the immense weight of the issue?

     Yet perhaps this is all we can do, like Didi and Gogo, who can only engage in amusement in the face of the enormity of the tragedy. To play is our only recourse. It is how we can begin to speak.

     In the fiction of Brindlewood Bay, life and death are mere amusement, a way of passing the time before the finality of a journey’s end. This coincidence of the severe and the silly propels such fiction forth: life and death are gravely serious, but they are also a source of joy and comedy.

     Much like the television series Murder, She Wrote or Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories, players play elderly ladies overly interested in solving murders. To me this peculiar fascination comes across as a morbid hobby, a way of keeping occupied in one’s twilight years, almost like some absurd parody of staying active to stave off the onset of dementia.      She doesn’t want to find out. More generally, the fantasy is that there is dignity at the end, that we won’t have to succumb to the rot of time, that we can be as cool and capable as these senior citizens even as we barrel towards the end.

Like Didi and Gogo, resorting to

amusement

In the enormity of absurdity

     There is something almost naïve about Daybreak, staunchly refusing to descend into the same discourse of panic and apocalyptic pessimism that pervades discussions about the environmental crisis. This defiant quality must be a deliberate part of the design. We must first believe that we do in order to have conviction in our actions. With every round of the game, it seems to affirm that every single decision we make is a positive step towards a possible future.

     Each card includes a QR code that leads to a page of relevant information about a particular technology or policy. It is my first time seeing a feature like this in a game. This educational feature gestures towards the optimism that characterises Daybreak, but also grounds it in real-world significance. That is, the game extends beyond mere fantasy, underlining the fact that such things are possible, if only we can find it in ourselves to try.

Something comes alive in moments of play

     liveness

a chance

to attend to the moment

     Possibility is true to the promise of Daybreak, the idea that we still have enough time, that it is still within our power. Integral to the experience is player agency. That is, the unspoken contract between any game and its players is the promise of the ability to participate, to make decisions, to be able to effect some kind of change. Essentially, this is also the promise of the uncertainty of the outcome.

     Games are about this uncertainty. Games are about futures.

     In university, she read about corporations and governments undertaking various initiatives to “gamify” everything—productivity, health goals, retirement plans—turning these discrete aspects of life into some perverse parody of a “game.” Everything would be measured according to achievements and scores. She always found it perverse, a misunderstanding of what games were.      We would all like to age like this, almost dead, somewhat decrepit, yet somehow surprisingly spry and sharp. We would all like to believe we will have fantastical interior lives, friendship, and the attention of the world in our old age. We would all like for time to be nothing more than a narrative trope.

     The commonly proffered wisdom is that it is important to stay intellectually active in old age, which is why seniors are encouraged to play mahjong and socialise with others, to keep the mind limber. I don’t look up the scientific research behind this, but I know it to be true. I think about it constantly, not least because, in recent years, I’ve seen my father ageing noticeably before my very eyes. I know I’m running out of time.

     It is a constant source of guilt. It never feels like I spend enough time with him. There are too many competing interests, too many things to work on. But there is also the sense that there is a gap between us that I cannot cross. It feels as though we’ve slowly fallen out of sync, and that we will continue to do so, drifting further and further away from each other.

     There are no real turns in Daybreak. Instead, the game proceeds in rounds, with players acting collectively like one global hivemind. This is also a gesture towards the optimistic future that the designers have imagined, that different people, each with their own self-interests, can be in perfect dialogue and perfect communication, that the nations can be united so purely by one common cause.

     While optimistic, this also testifies to the impossibility of the task. Human history has rarely shown such exceptional levels of cooperation or noble intention. I think about the ecological crisis constantly, and how it is associated with pervasive inaction. There’s only overwhelming guilt, pathetic pretences at accountability, and a sense of dreadful inevitability. We know how urgent it is. We know it is an emergency, and still we are addicted to our ways of life, our creature comforts. Still, we refuse to come together, let ourselves be driven by self-interest instead of the ethical imperative.

     Not to mention the loftiness of such aspirations. As it is, I am already struggling with more mundane concerns. I must make sense of my own chaotic life, chart a sensible trajectory for my career, take care of my parents, find things to aspire to and look forward to. I must attend to life and living, to death and dying.

     Sometimes, this aspect of Daybreak frustrates me. I cannot decide if it is a useful fantasy that compels effective action or an affirmation of the pessimistic truth that we can never find a way forwards.

     Every fortnight, she runs a tabletop roleplaying game with a few friends. It used to be a weekly endeavour, but no one has time for work, life, and imagination all at the same time. Even as players drop in and out of the group, she dedicates herself to running a regular campaign and imagining new dungeons for her friends to explore. This is a creative outlet for her, a safe space, in which she can indulge in something creative and social. She tells herself that it is the thing that keeps her sane.

     This, to her, is what a game should be. To see the creativity of the players, to be surprised and enthralled by their imagination, to see her own work cause their eyes to light up—it sparks something in her. She wants to continue to create as long as someone still wants to play—a pathetic vow, but it is all she has.

     But in the end, I want to believe.

     I think of the openness of tabletop roleplaying games like Brindlewood Bay, where there are moments when it feels like anything can be possible.

     I think of the heroic story of Gordon Freeman, my multiple saved games, my erased mistakes, my perfect outcome. Heroes are an improbable trope, but they appeal because we are inherently hopeful.

     I think of the discourse of ecological crisis, of the constant ringing of alarm bells and the rhetoric of guilt deployed in trying to incite action.

     Yet, alongside the grand narratives of apocalypse, alongside fire and brimstone, there must be the imagination of a future. Catastrophe immobilises us in anger and regret, reduces us to emotional logics, inhibits aspiration and optimism.

     But these moments of play, they are an affirmation that if we tell our stories well enough, if we find courage enough to imagine, we can create the spaces in which we can nurture fragile hope, seek the modes of time that make human sense again.

     It was my father who got me into games. He never played them. Rather, he always ensured that we were early adopters of technology, even if he didn’t use the desktop computer, dial-up internet, or game consoles much himself. I wonder if I will fare better than him in my twilight years, simply because I’ve spent more of my years engaged in acts of play.

Let us
escape time      Play is a resistance, a way for us to imagine common ground, possible futures. It is a way to reorganise our narratives and incite action. It is a promise we make to ourselves that there will always be time, a form of time, for something more than the relentless flow of life.

     We can have agency. No We can have control. We can have cooperation. We can have moments where things make sense again.

Let us seek a different time

     Will my father play? Is it already too late? These days, he plays simple word games and Bejeweled clones on his phone every morning. He likes how they are low-stress, free of thinking. It feels like the opposite of what he should be doing. I look at him from across the breakfast table and see his distracted gaze, his frustrations when he gets stuck on certain puzzles or fails once again to claim a new high score.

     Would it have been different if we had spent more of our time together engaged in play? When it still made sense in our lives? Would we have been more in sync?

     The morning descends quickly into something anonymous and unmemorable. Another day passes.

     It is night, and she is at her desk, typing an email. Her fingers are cold, drained of feeling. There’s more to do. There’s always more to do. She stares at the clock at the bottom of the screen. A fear of the next day creeps into her. It suddenly seems like she is simply waiting for tomorrow. Another sordid day.

     She makes the choice to stop. She closes the window and takes out a sheet of paper. Slowly, she sketches the layout of a dungeon. The minutes feel like minutes again.

This is an invitation

     To find me in the moments

     and seek me

A game is the conscious experience of a moment, the recognition of possibility

Let us play once more

To resist

To heal

To synchronise

To disrupt

To connect

To escape the violence of time

To forgive

To build anew

To speak to our pathetic lives

To speak to the other

To speak to futures