by Andrea Phillips, 26th July 2001

WARNING
Get out.
Deep water.
You would drown.

These are words from a game, a story, an experience that thousands of people around the world will cherish for years to come. We've entered a joyful honeymoon period of self-congratulation. We love each other, we love the PuppetMasters, and gosh, we're so sorry it's all over. Tears have been brought to many an eye.

Now take a minute to step back from the post-coital glow and look at one last puzzle: What price have we paid for this game? Well, nothing, right? It was free! The answer is self-evident, so obvious it wasn't even worth asking.

Let's look at it another way. How much would you be willing to pay for a game like this? A one-time $50 fee? $10 or $15 a month? $3 an hour? How about your health? Your grades? Your job? Your marriage?

I can see the expressions of irritation out there even now, through my monitor. "I see what she's getting at," you're telling yourselves. "But this is one of the mods, here - I thought she liked the game. How can she be saying these things?" Please, don't get me wrong. I, too, love the game, and have devoted just as much time and energy as almost anyone. Maybe even more than most. But I think the time has come to honestly assess what we have done to ourselves.

It's only natural, of course. Human beings have a deep-rooted need for stories. We are so compelled that the drive to hear a story to its end can supplant even basic needs like food and sex, at least for a while. Don't believe me? These words, then, might ring a bell: "Let's wait until the end before we go eat - I'm watching this."

Perhaps in a time long past, when our oldest ancestors crouched around a fire gnawing on the remains of a successful hunt, the story of the antelope's capture was a critical piece of survival information. Perhaps we evolved to have a ferocious thirst for tale-telling because those who listened best learned best how to turn hide into fine leather, or what kind of leaf whispered of the tastiest berries hiding beneath.

Not even then were all stories so immediately utilitarian, of course, but knowing how thunder is born is just as crucial, in its own way. Through these stories, we learned how to find our place in a world beyond our understanding.

Skip ahead several thousand years and the picture changes dramatically. What valuable survival lesson did you learn from the last episode of "Friends"? …Yeah, that's what I thought. Our crucial survival trait has turned into a whole new beast: Entertainment. But the need is still there, howling in our hind-brains where those deepest ancestors still look through all our eyes. We have to listen just a little while longer - we can't help it.

In most cases, this is not a problem. So you lose a few hours' sleep. So you didn't shower one day too many. You turned a paper in a day or two too late. This is no crime!

Push it just a little further. Maybe you ate McDonald's a few too many nights in a row. Maybe you spent a few hours at work catching up on the latest spec instead of returning phone calls. Maybe you blew off a friend's birthday party because it happened on an Update Tuesday. Well, nobody's perfect, right?

Ah, but take it to the extreme. You ignored the special loved one in your life for three entire weeks. You snapped at your children for wanting to play with you. You used up all your sick days or never even went to take your finals.

So now you find yourself at the end of the game, waking up as if from a long sleep. Your marriage or relationship may be in tatters. Your job may be on the brink of the void, or gone completely. You may have lost a scholarship, or lost or gained too many pounds. You slowly wake up to discover that you have missed the early spring unfolding into late summer. You wake up to find you have been drowning. You wake up.

There is a long and well-documented precedent. This is, after all, the traditional lifestyle of gamers the world around. I have fallen into this pit time and again, starting most notably with "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" when I had my very first computer. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep; I would sit for hours in the dark, hungering to see how the story would unfold one more time. I did not lose interest in the game until I was so familiar with each predetermined twist in its path that it held no new mystery for me.

Better, still: examine the phenomenon of EverQuest (or Ultima Online, or any MUD at all, for that matter - choose your poison). This is a type of game designed to have rewards directly proportional to how long the game has been played. The longer you play, the more experience you get, the better your skills, your loot, and so on. The (perhaps unintended) effect of this is that the average player devotes several hours of every single day playing, whether or not it is immediately fun or interesting, just to keep up with his friends. And the story does not end. The story will never end.

The players themselves ruefully talk about the neglect of their bodies, personal lives, and obligations of all kinds. Real Life attains a near-mythic status as something profoundly wonderful and mysterious that may never be truly achieved. Sure, at any point, the players could walk away, but oh! we are so completely at the mercy of the storyteller that just going to bed at night takes a heroic mustering of willpower.

We stand now at what could be one of the most significant crossroads in the history of storytelling and gaming. A new way to tell a tale has tested its wings. Where one has flown, others will surely follow.

Here we are, every one of us excited at blurring the lines between story and reality. The game promises to become not just entertainment, but our lives. But where in the story is there room for the too-mundane matters of our actual lives that must be attended?

I would ask the PuppetMasters to take my words into account if and when they embark on the hinted-at heir to our story. Please, if it is possible, design the game in a way that does not need to consume the very lives of the audience. But if we are truthful with ourselves, we all would know the Puppet Masters are not to blame for giving us what we want. I know that I will more likely than not be just as passionately embracing the new story as I did the first. I can expect no different from anyone else.

So instead, I ask every one of you, the players, to take care of yourselves at least as well as you play the game. Take a weekend off to disconnect and rediscover the joy of being alive. Let the sun shine down on your face in one of these endless, golden summer afternoons. Find a friend and a park with ducks to feed. Go out dancing. Remember what it is to be awake.

We will plunge into deep water again. Maybe we can learn how to swim.

Andrea Phillips is also known as Rhiannon on #evanchan, and she can be reached at andrhia@hotmail.com.