esc! esc! (cheat codes for winter 2021)
in praise of simulation video games
I’ve been doing it again: playing simulation video games. This is a habit of mine when I get burnt out and overwhelmed. Typically, I feel the itch to play when the semester is about to end and the work is piling up; I feel it when I’m tired and frustrated and lonely and procrastinating.
This year, and specifically at the end of this semester, I’ve felt the need to bury myself in video game distraction. In fact, the need is feverish. And there’s nothing to distract me from this itch: no holiday parties to attend; no family gatherings; no work events or safe outdoor activities. My boyfriend, my dog, and I are stuck in our little apartment (which we do love, don’t get me wrong) for the foreseeable future and it had made us stir-crazy. It is harder to spend time safely with friends outside when temperatures have plummeted. Put another way: my extroverted self needs an outlet.
I’m so tired of reading and so tired of writing, so tired of applying to jobs and fellowships for what feels like a very distant, waning future. It seems as though the sun only pokes its head out for 5 hours max each day. This is all to say: I’m sad about the state of the world, plus everyone and everything we’ve lost this year. I’m tired and I want to think about anything but the pandemic. My greatest desire right now: to turn my brain off and play.
I’ve already written about my love of infinitely-running simulation games like Stardew Valley. And it’s also no secret I’m a fan of classic, immersive, narrative-driven experiences like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Right now I crave hunching over my small laptop screen, planting virtual pumpkins and slaying wompers in Littlewood. I want to write letters to strangers in the vulnerable and generous universe that is Kind Words. My friends and I have set up Among Us sessions as a way to catch up (nothing says “trust-building exercise” like yelling LIME IS SUS in the chat 5 times in a row). We’ve exhausted every Jackbox game available. I’ve even begun playing Slay the Spire with my boyfriend even though I’m terrible at doing math quickly and remembering what all of the relics do.
It’s obvious I’m not the only one feeling this way. Plenty of writers have written about video games in far more eloquent and wonderful ways: Grayson Morley’s essay on Animal Crossing and productivity for Catapult touches on the addictive feedback loop of technology, screens, and disconnection; Alanna Okun tallies the hundreds of hours she spent playing video games like Persona 5 Royal in an essay for Vox as well as its ineffable ability to distract from major life changes and COVID-19; even Katie Heaney’s essay on video games as to-do list in The Cut (published in February 2020, pre-COVID) celebrates the extraordinarily mundane pleasures of “virtual errand-running.”
Video games give us the satisfaction of a job well-done, of small tasks performed with pleasing results: it is the illusion of control in a world that always felt out-of-control for those of us suffering from anxiety. Many of these games, as Morley and Heaney in particular point out, aren’t all that different from the go-go-go of our everyday lives. There are still errands to run, tasks to complete, skills to gain, rare objects we want to seek out and collect. But they are engineered to be attainable within the game’s world. Our virtual avatars aren’t held to the laws of gravity, societal expectations, monetary concerns, and lockdown rules that we are. And therefore, in our world right now, they feel all the more freeing.
Look: our world this year hasn’t felt even remotely stable, and it may not again for a long time (despite vaccination efforts already underway), and so for those of us struggling right now, immersing ourselves in something we can control—the delightful distraction that is an all-consuming video game—is perhaps one of the greatest sources of comfort we can find.
All of this is to say that wintertime is usually about hunkering down, and so I’m building a video game bunker to protect myself for the first few months of 2021.
Perhaps the kindest gift we can give ourselves is not so much video game purchases, but the guilt-free time and space for immersing ourselves in other realities when we need to in order to give ourselves a break from the confinement, fear, and grief we’re otherwise struggling with. Or, scratch that—the kindest gift we can give ourselves right now is an immersive experience, any immersive experience, we can engage in from home.
I’m thinking about this as a New Year’s anti-resolution: permission to zone out, tune out, switch into another mode. It’s gonna be all the more important as we enter what is hopefully the last leg of quarantine (so post your favorite video game indulgences below). And I’ll see you all in 2021 (even if it’s just on the internet)!