Checkpoint (eBook)

Introduction

A Player Has Left the Game

From the front door, I could hear my mother laughing. Then I realised she was crying. Not only was she crying, but she was also bawling – inconsolably roaring from her bedroom upstairs – as my father greeted me at the door. I stepped into the hallway and he forcefully ushered me into the living room, my mind struggling to comprehend what was going on. Nobody likes to see their parents upset, but there was something particularly unsettling about hearing my mum so audibly grief-stricken from another room. I didn’t see her face, her stare, or her tears, and yet I created an image in my head and I will never forget it.    

Later, I learned that my mum avoided my return home that day to gather some composure while my dad relayed the news to me, but instead of the calm she hoped for, her momentary absence had caused her to break down. She’d received the news that morning, you see, and had to wrestle with it all day. I, on the other hand had been at work, and then up at Strathclyde University to sit an entrance exam for an English Literature degree course I’d later get accepted onto but would never actually start.

My dad sat me down in the living room, the evening sun beaming through its bay windows. He quietly said, ‘Your uncle hanged himself today.’

* * *

On May 12, 2008, my uncle Jim killed himself. No matter how many times I write that sentence down it still shocks me. That moment from twelve years ago, at the time of writing, set me off on my mental health journey, one which has delivered a handful of highs, a fair number of lows, and an inadvertent, but enlightening, degree of self-discovery.

I’ve learned a lot from books, film and television in my quest to understand the depression and anxiety I now struggle with; brought on, so say doctors, by the brutal nature of my uncle’s death. I’m also an avid video game player, and while becoming a fully-qualified plumber and gas-fitter upon leaving school in my late teens, I’ve since retrained as a fully-qualified journalist who once specialised in writing about video games. I did so because the interactive and persuasive nature of video games allows the medium to engage and inform on a level that the traditional media I listed above, simply cannot.

Reading, watching television and listening to the radio are all examples, I believe, of two-dimensional activities. The person on the telly – the newsreader, the actor, the documentary maker – tells you something; you listen, you watch, you consider the information and, most likely, move on with your day and forget all about it. Video games, on the other hand, require you to engage on a multi-dimensional level. Imagine turning your game console on, watching your chosen game load up, and then placing your control pad on the floor. That game isn’t going anywhere without your input, and for that frozen screen move, or to progress through the game’s story, to understand whatever it wants to tell you, you’ve got to make it happen. The game tells you something, you listen, you watch, you consider the information, and then you make it move on. All of which puts video games in a unique position to explore interpersonal themes – such as my focus on issues of mental health, including suicide, depression, and a wealth of other sensitive and complex subject matters – by virtue of player agency.

Before we continue, let me first ask you a question: are you a gamer? You might be, you might not be, and you might not realise you are. If you play video games, you’re a gamer. Simple as that. Maybe your Friday night consists of a few beers and a game of NBA 2K20 on the PlayStation 4 with some basketball-loving pals; or perhaps you play Fortnite: Battle Royale on your PC with random folk online. Perhaps you play Super Mario Odyssey on a Nintendo Switch handheld while sprawled out on the couch after a hard day at work, or maybe you’ve scouted every noteworthy rising star in Football Manager 2020 on your dad’s work laptop. (Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I’m not a grass.) Maybe your game of choice is animated cooking simulator Overcooked, which you play with your significant other on Xbox One. I mean, I say “play”, but if you’re like anyone I know, I bet your sessions end with you screaming at one another in real life, as your on-screen avatars set fire to the room around them thanks to a neglected pot of overboiled tomato soup. Seriously, if your relationship can survive half an hour with that game then you’re in a good place.

Maybe you don’t play games on a console, a handheld, a PC or a laptop, but you play Candy Crush on your smartphone or you are a Farmville veteran. Maybe the effortlessly addictive Angry Birds is more your cup of tea, or you’re hooked on playing Coin Master, Texas HoldEm Poker or 8 Ball Pool on Facebook – the latter of which welcomes 10 million players every month to the game via the social media platform.1

If any of this applies to you, then you’re a gamer. The internet likes to apply distinctions regarding how serious you take gaming, but luckily most of them are pedantic and don’t matter. The most common is the perceived difference between “casual” and “hardcore” players, where people who play games on their phone tend to fall under the former grouping and those who commit more of themselves to the activity land in the latter. Elitism isn’t uncommon among those who identify as hardcore gamers, but in 2020, I find the distinction to be false and tired. It’s also worth pointing out that just about everyone with a mobile phone – be that a smartphone or anything less sophisticated (I adored Snake 2 on my Nokia 3310 back in the day) – is a gamer.

One distinction which I would say is relevant, however, is the one between professional and non-professional gamers. Esports – also known as electronic sports, e-sports, or esports – is a form of sporting competition tied to video games. Esports take the form of organised, online multiplayer video game competitions and tournaments, contested between professional players, individually or as teams. It’s a billion-dollar industry,2 a huge part of modern gaming, with events watched by millions around the world with competitors play for multi-million-dollar prize pools. Naturally, the most successful esports players take video games very seriously. Those people are, to be fair, pretty hardcore.

Besides the pro versus non-pro distinction, though, I don’t care much for separating casual and so-called hardcore gamers. Video games should be fun, informative, and inclusive, no matter how often you pick up a control pad, sit in front of a mouse and keyboard, or tap the screen of your phone. And even if you don’t feel you fit any one of those profiles, nor consider yourself a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, I bet you know someone who does. I also bet you’ve crossed paths with video games, inadvertently or otherwise, while consuming other media. In the last decade, video games have improved at exploring the real-world themes covered in the usual media – politics, love, lust, relationships, friendships, depression, suicide, you name it – yet when traditional media aims at video games it can be hit or (a big) miss. For every charming and endearing Wreck-It Ralf, there are video game tie-in movies like Hitman: Agent 47, Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft waiting to spoil the party.

Perhaps the most interesting depiction of video games in television in recent years is Charlie Brooker’s science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. Before his TV writing and presenting days, Brooker wrote for the now-defunct video games magazine PC Zone in the mid-’90s so he understands the landscape and nuances of video games more than most. To date, the show has aired four episodes that are explicitly about video games – Season 3’s “Playtest”, Season 4’s “USS Callister”, Season 5’s “Striking Vipers”, and a one-off special named ‘Bandersnatch’. The latter is a choose-your-own-adventure-style endeavour about a young programmer named Stefan Butler (played by Fionn Whitehead), who dreams of adapting a choose-your-own-adventure book called Bandersnatch into a revolutionary adventure video game.

In doing so, ‘Bandersnatch’ turns the TV show itself into a fully-fledged video game. By inputting binary decisions via their television’s remote control, users (players?) can shape the show’s outcome via a network of branching narratives. This format of storytelling is synonymous with video games, but, having played it for the first time as it launched in late 2018, it was the first time I’d seen a gaming-like function executed with such finesse on ‘traditional’ TV. I won’t spoil the specifics of the plot because you should try it for yourself (‘Bandersnatch’ is available on Netflix), but ultimately the user’s choices begin pretty lightweight – the first decision to made involves breakfast: Frosties, or Sugar Puffs? – and gradually begin to weigh heavier with each plot twist and fork in the narrative road.

In pursuit of five different endings in ‘Bandersnatch’, it’s possible to make mistakes in your choice selections, which can ultimately drive the story to a dead-end – just like the books that it draws inspiration from. Anyone who grew up in the ‘90s, like me, will remember the...