So I wrote a thing for Unwinnable. You
can check it out here. It's a personal reflection on one of my
favorite games of all time, Ion Storm's 2000 PC masterwork Deus
Ex. The article doesn't really
critique the game itself. It has more to do with coming to terms with
how the game may or may not have informed my political identity and
susceptibility to real-world conspiracy theories—namely those
surrounding 9/11.
It was published last Tuesday to
coincide with election day, but in reality I finished the article in
early September—and I'd been trying to write it since early May.
The piece was partly inspired by a
previous Unwinnable article written by Owen R. Smith—an old friend
and coworker at my former newspaper job—in which he talks about how
the ending of Metal Gear Solid 2
made him reconsider his former adulation for the ending of Deus
Ex. I had already been
toying with the idea of trying to write for Unwinnable for a number of months, so
I decided to see if I could respond in my own way to the game that
had occupied a similar space in my own mind for so many years. I
submitted a pitch to the site and then promptly failed to get my idea
off the ground for months.
To be
perfectly honest, I'm still not entirely satisfied with how the
article turned out. Did I communicate what I had wanted to
communicate? Sort of. But I only had a very nebulous idea of what I
thought I had to say in the first place.
One of
the things I found so interesting was how the choices I made while
playing Deus Ex in the
year 2000 felt more
meaningful and predictive of my political identity than my actual
voting choices that same year. Granted, I think that's more of a
testament to the sad state of our present democracy than anything
else. I really don't think the makers of Deus Ex were
trying to make any kind of overt political statement—and my article
basically suggests as much. It's more interesting to see how the
choices of Deus Ex serve
as a sort of personality test for the player, which—again—is not
necessarily profound in and of itself. Nevertheless, I wonder
if video games like Deus Ex—through
their very emphasis on player freedom—lend themselves to a sort of
libertarianism. Even when I listen to the rationale that Tracer Tong
gives for destroying Area 51 at the end of Deus Ex,
it's not a far cry from the rationale that someone like Ron Paul
would offer for dismantling large segments of the Federal Government.
For
better or for worse, I think there also seems to be a correlation
between libertarianism and the conspiratorial outlook. In other
words, people with a predisposition toward one have a tendency toward
the other.
Obviously,
a lot of people would consider this a negative trait. My feelings are a bit more ambivalent. I came to the conclusion long
ago that I know very little about what actually goes on in the
world—beyond what I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own
ears, that is. There is a lot that I can choose to believe based on
empirical evidence, popular opinion, and authoritative assurances. But I
think it's probably just as unhealthy to subscribe to any old
conspiracy theory as it is to write them all off just because they
might be labeled such.
At the
end of the day, my writerly feelings toward my own material
notwithstanding, I did work very hard on the piece and I did manage
to make a number of significant content revisions that made it stronger in the end.
As a
matter of fact, it's a pleasure to be able to announce the article
here at the two-year anniversary for this blog (see here and here). I feel very
privileged to be able to share my writing with a larger audience,
especially on a site that I truly admire and that has such a respect
for the work of the writer to begin with. There's a good possibility
that a second article of mine might be going up there in the near
future, too. So … stay tuned?
