Life on Repeat

                Gaming is a huge hobby of mine and I do it virtually every day given the opportunity; however, many of the games I play don’t always resonate in an emotional way with me.  Oh, they can be exciting, terrifying, heart-warming, or even thought provoking but a game that draws on the player’s pathos is unfortunately not easily found.  Luckily for me, James Portnow, a video game design consultant in the industry and one of the members of the superb web-series Extra Credits, created a list of 5 “games about the human experience” and posted them on his “Games for Good” Rockethub.  (Side note:  The “Games for Good” goal is to be proactive and open up a positive discussion with United States politicians about the good games can do instead of always just defended games when they get lambasted by said politicians in the wake of some tragedy.  I definitely recommend reading more about it here.)

                The first game on the list was titled Every Day the Same Dream designed by Paolo Pedercini, and after briefly scanning the rest of the titles, I decided to play this game first, with every intention of going on to play the subsequent games as well.  As the saying goes, even the best laid plans often go awry...

                As the game begins the player meets their avatar, a middle aged man standing in his underwear in a two-dimensional world.  The only instructions given to the player where the simple words, “arrows+space to play”, so as is the case with most video games, I pressed the right arrow key and began to walk forward.  However I was also told that the spacebar was utilized in the game, so anytime I would step in front of something of interest, I pressed the only other button I could.  Sure enough, as I stepped in front of my wardrobe and pressed space, my character got dressed.  In the next room a woman, whom I took to be my wife, greeted me.  I pressed space by her for additional conversation and she warned me that I am already running late. So I hurried along, and stepped into an elevator with an old lady who cryptically told me, “5 more steps and you will be a new person.”  Unsure of what that meant I continued on, always to the right.  After making my commute to work I was chastised by my boss for being late before making the long, arduous journey to my personal cubicle in a sea of similarly dressed men in cubicles.  After sitting down the screen faded to black, and for a second I thought, “Was that it?” A moment later I got my answer.  The game appeared to have restarted.  Once again I was in my room in my underwear.  Confused, I went back through the motions.  Got dressed, talked to my wife, took the elevator down (the woman said the same thing), drove to work, was late again, and sat down to work.  Once more the game faded to black, and once more it restarted.   I didn't know what to make of it.  The title of the game suggests a repeating loop, but I still felt like there was something more to it than that.  So on this third day, I vowed to see if there was anything I could do to break out of the cycle.

                When I made it to work and to my cubicle, I realized at the end of the room that there was an exit sign.  I followed it and on the next screen I appeared to be standing on the roof of my office building.  Continuing to the left, I made it to the edge of the roof and a single word flashed along the bottom of the screen:  Jump.  I stopped for a second. Was it worth it? I took a few steps back to the left.  Was my character’s life really that bad? 
                In that moment I experienced something that I never had before in my 22 years of life.  For the first time in my life I contemplated suicide.  It hit me like a ton of bricks that after playing through this short little game and repeating this “man’s” dreary existence only three times that I was seriously considering ending it all for my little avatar.  What surprised me even more was that I did jump.  Not necessarily because I figured that would be the end of the game, but because I imagined that is what my character would have wanted.  I watched my character climb up on the rail and then fall to his death. 

                As the moment sunk in, and the screen went black once more I felt that I had experienced a video game that truly had something real to say.  Before I could even gather my thoughts, I realized that I was once again staring at my character standing in his room in his underwear.  What?!?  Nothing had changed!  I literally killed myself, yet here I am stuck in this groundhog’s day loop.  I did everything the same, clothes, wife, elevator, but at that moment I realized something had indeed changed.  The old lady in the elevator had changed her story, “4 more steps and you will be a new person.”
                My mind immediately switched gears at that point. From that point on I realized that in order to get out of the cycle I had to do things out of the ordinary, change up the routine if you will.  The gamer in me came out and I began experimenting within the world of the game.  “4 more steps” quickly became “3”, which in turn soon became “1”. One more change in my life would allow me to break from the monotony.  What could it be?  I’d already gone to work naked and played hooky from work, and stopped to enjoy the beauty of nature, what else was there to do?  I must have tried a half dozen times in order to finally discover that last thing that I could do to change my life, yet it constantly eluded me. 

                Some of you may have already realized what I was about to learn about the game, but I was playing this late at night and I was a little bit slow on the uptake.  No matter what I did, there was no way I could escape having to once again wake up in the morning and suffer through yet another day of the same, boring life that had become my normal day. It was at this point that I understood, and I immediately stopped playing the game.  

                Now, I don’t know whether or not my experience with this game was the intention by the designer.  For all I know there may actually be a way to discover the fifth and final way to change your life within the game, but honestly I don’t care.  This game made me realize something that no after school program could ever teach me; That I need to find a job that is fulfilling, to do work that feels like anything but a chore, and to live each day to the fullest and not fall into any routine that cannot be broken. Because if I don't I will find myself living in a world that is grey, boring, and soul-sucking.  

                This is the power of games at their best.  Within one ten minute experience I had two deep emotional moments.  I learned what it felt like to seriously consider suicide, and also that it is important to fill your life with work and hobbies that are fulfilling.  The protagonist’s face is left blank in order to allow the gamer to project their own image onto the character; I encourage you to take the time out of your life and live within the world of Every Day the Same Dream.