....LMB: "Insight Through the Barrel of a Pixelated Gun"....

June 07, 2002

I have always found that the bastardized, marginalized genres of entertainment are the ones with the most opportunity for subversion. If you're not a fan of science fiction, you wouldn't know that a huge number of sci-fi novels are about violent overthrow of governments (oppressive ones, of course). Comic books like The Invisibles and Preacher assault mainstream cultural and religious values. Horror movies like Dawn of the Dead ruthlessly mock consumer culture and make eerie statements about the human capacity for violence.

It goes on. Transgressive social commentary can be found in gangsta rap, punk rock, public access television, even personal websites.

I'm not saying that these entertainment forms are always rebellious and insightful. Probably 90% of the time, they're crap. But it seems to me that since the mainstream turns up its nose at these "immature" or "low" forms of culture, that the authors of these projects can get away with saying bold, controversial things without facing harmful consequences.

Which is why I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find bits of radical political philosophy buried in a sci-fi video game. I shouldn't have been, but I was.

In most ways, Deus Ex, originally released in 2000, was both a video game and sci-fi cliche. It's 50 years in the future (yawn), and you are a bionically enhanced (yawn) secret agent (yawn) fighting terrorists (yawn) in a Blade Runner- type cyberfuture (zzzzz...).

So after you complete some missions for your UN anti-terrorist task force, you begin getting clues that you are working for the wrong side. Your character realizes that the "terrorists" are actually working to counteract the oppressive plans of your employers at the UN.

It wasn't till my character ended up in a Hong Kong bar plying a barkeep for information that I realized that something unusual was going on. Every time the bartender spoke, you could choose a response from several provided for you and your character would reply. The conversation was made up of these exchanges. I barely noticed when my search for clues had turned into a debate about the nature of democracy... Yes, while the bartender was arguing for safety and security, my character was offering counterarguments for the freedom of man like he was Locke or Rousseau instead of a sci-fi action hero.

The conversation eventually ended, and my character again began shooting at villains and sneaking into enemy strongholds. But I continued to be impressed that the game had snuck this intellectual discourse into the middle.

And I would be even more impressed by the game's conclusion. The game approaches climax as your hero has managed to enter the inner sanctum of the villains, Area 51. But you are given three different options on how to conclude the game, none of which is "correct" or better than the others, each of which will radically change the life of every person on Earth.

One of your allies tells you that you should simply kill the main villain. Once destroyed, both you and this ally can use the powerful resources of Area 51 to rule Earth from the shadows, corrupt elites giving the illusion of freedom to the masses. People would have order and security, but not power or self-determination.

Another ally is an advanced AI, poweful enough to control every electrical and telecommunication network on Earth. It wants you to flip some switches to give it access to the world, which it will then rule with cold computer efficiency. It offers you the chance to merge with its systems, so that its efficiency will be tempered by human sensibilities. Basically, it proposes benevolent totalitarianism. Order and security, tinged with fear and powerlessness.

And finally, a third ally instructs you to utterly destroy Area 51. The base is a hub of all the world's communications and electricity. Destroying the base will lead to a "new dark age," but one in which people will not be controlled by plutocrats or dictators. People will create their own societies, not on a global scale, but on a local scale that they can actually comprehend. Technocide for democracy.

"My god," I realized, "this video game is forcing me to think about the nature of government, and which form I think is the best: the corrupt corporate 'democracy' of the modern era; totalitarianism; or anarchy!"

Beat that, Pac-Man!

Each choice has its own ending, which concludes with an interesting and appropriate literary quote.

• Totalitarianism: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."- Voltaire
  
• Corrupt democracy: "Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heaven."- John Milton, Paradise Lost
  
• Anarchy: "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love."- Kahlil Gibran
  

Of course I had to try all three finales to see what happened. But what was my first choice? What would Jake the Super-Cyborg have done if forced to choose among the three?

Area 51 was atomized in a cataclysmic fusion reaction. Electric lights winked out across the globe, as final radio transmissions fuzzed out into static, and then silence. No guarantees, no happy promises. Just rebirth, and the opportunity to build my own world, our own world, from the ground up, with our own hands.