Domestic City, Part Eight

When Nina told Anthony that their marriage of eighteen years was coming to an end, Anthony wanted two things. First, his wife back. Then, to lock himself in a hotel room for two days with a dozen video games. One of his wishes came true.

In preparation for his lost weekend, Anthony walked through a game store picking up a variety of titles which he selected almost at random and without regard for cost, like a shopping spree of the super-depressed.

Stationed at the foot of his single hotel room bed, he loaded the new Grand Theft Auto. His intent was to steal a sports car and drive it straight down the sidewalk in a violent kaleidoscope of property and bodily damage. Anthony hadn't touched a Grand Theft Auto since college, and was surprised by how easily the motions of play returned to him. He was diving out of moving cars and steering helicopters as if no time had passed. It felt like coming home, which was lucky for him now that he didn't have one.

Anthony looked, for what was really the first time, at all the games that he had bought that day. Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Mario: all new versions of things that he was playing eighteen years ago. It occurred to him that if developers kept remaking and revising these franchises as they evidently did, then he could have been playing these same games all his life. He tried to imagine what it would have even been like, always having a current generation Tomb Raider or Sim City waiting for him, no matter who or where he was.

He'd made himself learn how to balance spreadsheets in Baldur's Gate, how to cook in Order Up, how to handle sports cars in Burnout Paradise, how to arrange furniture in the Sims, how to putt in Wii Golf and how to enhance his awareness of current affairs with Global Conflicts: Palestine, but in retrospect couldn't remember if he had enjoyed doing any of it.

From where Anthony was sitting, stability had its merits.

Domestic City, Part Seven

Weeks after the death of Emily's father, she was persuaded by her therapist to attend a bereavement group. Plainly dressed for the first time in twenty years, Emily joined eight other people in a church basement decorated by plastic chairs and posters about gambling addiction.

The man leading the session spoke about grief and coping with loss. Emily found herself nodding along as he described the death of a loved one as a sudden absence of structure in one's life. It was normal to feel without guidance, like you're stranded in the world with no clue where to go next. He said that people in mourning commonly lose interest in their routines, that they feel alone and afraid now that someone they relied upon for direction was gone. Emily thought about her father always insisting what was best for her and a lump formed in her throat.

There was a television in the corner of the room, and the man flicked it on with a remote. "It can feel a bit like going from this," he said, and the screen showed an excerpt from a Final Fantasy game, with the player character running back and forth between clearly-defined objectives and cutscenes, "to this." He pressed a button again and the television now displayed a game of Far Cry 2; the player standing unguided in the epicentre of the massive African savannah. "Look at this. No one's telling you where to go. You have so many choices. You can feel anxious. It's normal to feel overwhelmed when you switch from some very prescribed JRPG to a big open-ended, hands-off Western game like this. The differing approaches in design can result in a very abrupt adjustment. Where are you supposed to go from this point? Why isn't there someone telling you what to do?"

Emily, confused, turned to a elderly woman who had interjected, nodding vigorously. "After my husband died I started playing Grand Theft Auto, which was unusual for me, I never do that. I play Persona and Metal Gear mostly, it was like I was in a trance. But playing that game was a revelation for me: the openness of the world, it spoke to me. It knew exactly how I felt."

She collapsed into sobs and a sympathetic teenager sitting beside her held her hand tenderly. Emily got to her feet. "What the fuck is going on? Stop talking about video games!"

Domestic City, Part Six

Given the demands of his office job, Anthony needed to blow off some steam occasionally, and so had organised an informal golf game with three of the other managers. On Sundays the regular four convened in Anthony and Nina's living room, uniformly dressed in polo shirts and khakis, and lined up in front of the Wii.

Jason erred on the third hole with a wild swing that sent his ball flying into the ocean. His friends laughed at the apparent ineptitude but Anthony, as the senior manager, secretly wondered if this was Jason letting him win. Anthony did win these games an awful lot, and he was a casual player at best. If it was true, he considered, at least he was getting some respect.

An hour passed, and Greg was first up on the ninth hole. He asked his caddy to hand him the Wiimote, and the fifteen year-old boy standing behind him passed it over from his shoulder bag. Greg stared at the proffered controller and said "if I wanted the nunchuk, I would have asked for it." As the boy rummaged deeper into the bag, Greg shook his head at the guys. "Unbelievable."

After a sandwich break, Paul asked Anthony if he had any other games: "maybe something by Rockstar?" Anthony explained how, with his job and everything, he didn't have much time to play video games for fun. He indicated his entire game collection present on the living room bookcase.

"I mostly play these now, these are what's called 'serious games'. This one," he said, pulling down a shoebox-sized DVD case, "is about managing your stock portfolio in an economic crisis, and this follow-up by the same developer is about controlling inflation. We're saving that one for the kids."

"That's a pretty big case," said Paul.

"Well, this is the collector's edition, it comes in this cool tin box and it has a little figurine of an investment banker."

"That's cool, can I see it?"

"No, nobody's allowed to touch it."