Rage Quit

I figure since this is my last post of the semester on the last day of semester, it’s appropriate to write a post about rage quitting. I pride myself (somewhat absurdly) on the fact that I very, very, very rarely rage quit. It’s to do with stubbornness in general, but I also feel like once I start a task I must finish it until it’s done.  I can be stuck for hours on a level in Machinerium or Portal without giving up; I can play the same 30 seconds of game play in Hotline Miami fifty times until I stop dying ; I’ve spend a whole day playing one level of Cave Story just to get the run time I wanted.  Basically, I’M NOT A QUITTER, OK?

But one game finally toppled me, and it came from somewhere I’d never have expected. I am sad to say that I rage quit Unmanned. It’s not a “difficult” game, there aren’t really puzzle challenges that you can either succeed in or fail. What broke me down were the seemingly arbitrary decisions you have to make, and the consequences of these decisions.

You are in game. You are shaving. You can either choose to agree that it’s a “delight”, a “tedious duty”, or a “challenge”.  This kills me because there is no obvious “right” answer. No amount of skill that I have, physically or mentally, can help me choose the right answer. But once I have chosen it, and a few similar ones after it, I get a badge! But then I miss a badge. My friend who’s watching over my shoulder, who’s played the game before, tells me I’ve done something wrong to miss that badge. If I want to go back I’ll have to start the game again (which is much easier to do in choose-your-path books or online text adventures, not here). So I carry on. Another, similar “challenge” where I’m driving and am asked questions. I miss both badges.

And then I quit.  For pretty much the first time ever. Unmanned, and how it makes skill irrelevant, its seemingly random outcomes, has bested me.

The mechanics of its agency has done this to me.  For me, agency implies an ability to make informed decisions, and not just meaningful decisions. Walking around the world of Half Life 2 I use agency. However if there was a blackout, and I couldn’t see anything, it would feel like that agency was revoked. And for me, Unmanned feels a bit like a blackout. I may as well be “choosing” the answers blindly for all the good my thinking about them does.  And this structure is diametrically opposed to games like Super Mario where if you try hard enough, if you gain enough skill or muscle memory, you can succeed!

In Unmanned, the decisions are meaningful, but impossible to be informed. And this just kills me.