The Third in a series of discussions about games with Gods
Starting the trail was not easy. The high winds and dense fog were the beginnings of a storm rushing over the foothills, but I wanted to talk to Prometheus today. I’m not sure why - just felt more necessary. This is the first time I’ve walked up to visit him twice in a week. The snow started with small blades of ice that melted on contact feeling like a light drizzle, but in the freezing cold. Which, by the way, is a ridiculously annoying feeling like having having sand in every place you don’t want.
While I stumbled up the trail constantly pulling my hat farther down my head and over my ears, the weather was actually letting up. Strange. The higher you go the worse it usually gets. When I found Prometheus’s rock it was bright, sunny, warm, and looking around I swear we were in our own bubble. The fog stopped around 100 yard radius around where we stood like some invisible force field holding back the storm below.
“Well that’s at least top 3 coolest things I’ve ever seen.” “I thought you like it.” “Why’d you do it?” “I figured you were coming by again and with the weather down there, I didn’t think it’d be very comfortable talking for so long.” “You get your liver eaten every day. Is comfort really a concern?” “Hey that eagle left a while ago. I still like the sunshine too ya know.” “Ok. That’s fair….hippie.”
It was so quiet up there. If one of us wasn’t talking, the air so still, you’d think nothing was alive, not even the earth. So I was startled easily. I heard a small crack of branches and a rustle of small rocks tumbling behind me. I turned quickly and wouldn’t you know it, jumping down from a small tree (I didn’t even realize I passed her), Athena.
“Uuh. Hi.” What else do you say when you feel about as smart as a door knob?
A: “Hello to you. Prometheus told me these conversations could be fun. So I thought I’d join you. Surprise.” She raised her arms to shrug her shoulders as if to say, “this is what you get.” It was fine by me. “Really? Well, this is quite the cameo. Are you a gamer too?” A: “Well, sure. I hunt. That is all a game - tinged with a little necessity. Well, for humans. I don’t really need to eat. But you get the idea.”
“Sorry, P. You just got bumped to 4th place.”
He smiled and jumped down from his rock, swung his hands and clapped them together.
P: “So, what’s on your mind today?”
“Nothing too particular. There is so much going on with normal day-to-day thinking from work to what to read to what to play - it gets difficult just to make a choice. And then there is so much nay-saying about technology and our kind of, ‘high intelligent’ thinking that some believe we are all loosing our humanity - of sorts.” A: “Sorry, but I can see that a bit. But I don’t think the argument is coming from the right place. It’s not the stuff’s fault. Zeus didn’t have a problem with the fire that Prometheus stole…” P: “Um, I eternally beg to differ.” A: “Let me finish. Zeus didn’t care about the fire. Fire is everywhere. It’s how people use it that scared the crap out of Zeus. And I don’t mean humans use it to cook or burn bridges. The ideas, given, were dangerous. Prometheus gave humans the ‘means of life’ and that pissed Zeus off something awful.” P: “Yeah. My bad.” He chuckled rolling his head because he actually didn’t care about Zeus one bit.
A: “It’s always easy to see the tangible pieces and blame them. Violent video games make kids aggressive. Not playing outside is somehow less human or less childlike. Hello! I hunt. I gave you hunting. How violent is that?”
Prometheus laughed out loud and I couldn’t help but see her point. Plus, I couldn’t stop staring at her and listening to anything she had to say. I guess gods have a way of entrancing people.
“What is strange is that I have so many things I want to do in a single moment, that I don’t choose anything. Or I choose the most passive one - watch a show, fall asleep. It’s kind of pitiful.” P: “Agreed. Sorry.”
I smirk at him and I think I did the one eyebrow-up-thing. I didn’t think I could do that.
“But look what happens anytime someone’s engaged with an activity. Suddenly the world is full of interesting things. I get opened up a little, ready to absorb more. I start looking at the world differently. Isn’t that strange? Games do that.”
A: “You know, when ever we used to meddle in terrestrial affairs we always turned it into a game. But we actually all had so many places to go and people to see, that games became, um, what’s the word?” P: “Repetitive?”
A: “Yes, but that’s not what I’m looking for. But man humans are SO alike.”
P: “Monotonous?”
A: “Way to go thesaurus boy.”
P: “Unimaginative?” A: “Yes! We all starting realizing that the stories were the same. That really nice old blind man, Homer, kind of solidified all we did so there wasn’t much more to keep on and on. More of you started to read and write - stories were passed down and always retranslated and retold and just like that funny game, Password, everyone got their own version in the end.”
P: “Close your mouth man.”
“Sorry, I’m just not sure where this is going.” A: “Right. I forget humans are on schedules.”
She walked closer to me brushing my shoulder as she passed and I had to follow her. My eyes followed hers. My head could have turned all the way around and I wouldn’t have noticed. Prometheus hopped around rocks as we all walked through the sunshine.
A: “The reason why those stories survived is not because they are timeless in that they survived for all time. It’s that, even in their fantasy, there are no anachronisms. Humans and their cultural constructs all evolve with you. How can they not? How can someone say, ‘the technology of the time is wrong for humans’, when there could be no other time, whatsoever, that this moment was put there for technologies invention? This is why I don’t ever define games so simply - or anything for that matter. When things all get clumped together they lose their soul.”
P: “Yeah. Remember when we talked about art and how defining it so easily seemed wrong - in your gut? That’s a result of clumping. That’s making the world too easy and then never really thinking deeper about how something is created or what it’s made of. This is why, say, violent video games can be used as a political tool. People stop thinking or really, learning. So, they just listen and react. They are actually much more passive than they realize.”
A: “That’s too bad.”
P: “It is. So when you think to much and you can’t make a choice on what to do, play a game - with yourself.”
“I’m single. I can do that a lot.”
P: “Seriously? Sex jokes. Gods, I wish Athena could still shoot arrows at humans.”
A: “Manners please.”
“Sorry. That’s embarrassing. I’m not used to a third party.”
P: “Ok, back to it. So you play a game. Even if it’s for only half an hour. I know for a fact that you learn something in that short time playing a game as you do when you read one chapter of a good book. In the game you may have learned to problem solve a very difficult task in just the right way, which before, held you up. Something in your brain learned before you even tried again. When you read a book chapter I will bet you’ve imagined places and settings that could never be put into pictures correctly and you got lost in the moment.”
“Well yes. Exactly like that.”
A: “You see? Even in all the distractions, in all the choices, whichever you make seems to benefit you if you stop to notice. Maybe if everyone could perform such a task, then just about anything you do could never be described as ‘less human’ or ‘childlike’.”
P: “When we stopped meddling it was because the fire was a choice. We felt unimaginative because we noticed you were handling life pretty well by yourselves. You were the imaginative ones. Even when you struggle with not knowing or understanding harder and harder lessons, we knew you had to go it alone.”
“That’s encouraging and all. But how can we get value out of things if everything we do is considered, ‘ok’? There has to be good and bad, right? That’s what you said the other day. That’s how you created infinity.” P: “Good memory.”
“Um, you remember everything a god tells you. If Julia Roberts came up to me and told me a story, I tell you now, I could retell that story exactly how she told me.”
A: “Ah, celebrities. Modern day goddesses.”
“Sorry.”
P: “Except for that Julia Roberts thing, you’re right. There has to be good and bad. There is always room for judgement and stereotypes and criticisms. But most people find those words offensive. I don’t. Even the gods form opinions based on safe ways the world works. But to make accurate opinions one must know how things work to begin with. And I find today, because of all the things one can know about, people can’t know everything. They can only comment by comparing something they do know to something they don’t. Hence, the reactions only.”
A: “Prometheus is right….”
P: “Ha Ha. You heard it here folks.”
A: “Shut up. He’s right because games are made of open worlds. When you live in one that is much more ‘good and bad’, games give you an environment to experiment. Maybe slaying dragons isn’t as realistic as showing confidence in your ideas when your boss questions you at work. But when I hunt a different animal on a different day, I remember things - not even consciously - on how to be a better hunter. I learned a strategy I didn’t even know was there. When you play games, you practice. And if you’re constantly learning then all the choices you’ve got at your finger tips can be decided upon as good or bad.”
P: “Stabbing a dragon with a sword is cool. Stabbing your boss with a sword is not. But fainting left, shielding yourself from an attack, turning your head to shout your ideas with magical accuracy might turn some heads and others will get to thinking. And you’ll realize you’ve won the game.”
We stopped right outside the force field holding the fog back. The sun was still out. It didn’t seem to have moved and I was not looking forward to the walk home. For one, Athena was still there. And two, Athena was still there. I said goodbye turning to face the cold mist and they each waved me off. They looked like silly best friends just hanging out casually on a mountain. As I reached the edge of the mist the sky was instantly dark. It was night time. I had been up there all day and they let the lights stay on. I walked very slowly back down the trail hoping a mountain lion was not into a late dinner. But I kept thinking about what Athena and Prometheus had explained to me. They weren’t telling me everything I did was great or good or worthwhile. They made sure I paid attention to the things I want to know about and for the things I don’t - I should learn if necessary. Sometimes I take so much so seriously. I think I need to relax, enjoy the mystery and the evolution of all the choices I have in my life and to let the games begin.