Video Games Are Surfing the Algorithm
Dale Cooper believes he’s on the brink of concluding his investigation of Laura Palmer’s death. In a climactic moment, however, it’s revealed to him that the person currently inside the prison cell isn’t the killer. But it takes me a while to watch this unfold — I paused this episode of Twin Peaks over 20 minutes ago to read a notification on my phone.
I have a new DM on X, but I don’t read it right away. First, I catch up with Instagram, where I watch the Reels that a few friends sent me throughout the day. I reply with variations of “hahaha” at two of them and react with a laughing emoji at the third. Back on X, I get distracted by clips of increasingly bizarre music choices for the DNC roll calls as well as nine or ten NSFW reactions to Greta Lee’s Calvin Klein photo shoot. I switch to the “For You” timeline and scroll down long enough to find memes to send to friends over Discord. They reply with variations of “lol” and “me asf.”
Finally I check the DM. It’s from a bot account (that has seemingly changed hands in the time between writing and publishing this article), which follows a handful of NFT and cryptocurrency accounts and has posted exactly three thirst traps with motivational phrases. It’s just one drip in a slurry of AI spam that has slid into my DMs in the past month alone.
In recent years, some video games have implemented sardonic interpretations of our current media-consuming habits and the algorithm-driven tidal wave we’re all submerged in. In Death Stranding, you may return to find that dozens of anonymous players have left likes on a ladder you built to get across a ravine. In Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, your quiet moments web-slinging through Manhattan are constantly interrupted by faux-podcast transmissions.
Most of these in-game mechanics are meant to riff on familiar formats to tie in story elements without much player agency involved. Some developers, however, are emphasizing that precise aspect as a core gameplay mechanic, inviting the player to take control of a narrative to please virtual audiences. The goal is to gain viewership — essentially, to see a number go up.
Not for Broadcast, which was released on January 25, 2022, after two years in Steam Early Access, has you commanding a live news channel. You’re free to choose which camera feed to show to the audience at any time, featuring FMV footage à la Immortality. You’re also in charge of bleeping swears, cueing ads, and, ultimately, driving the conversation in favor or against political parties in a dystopian climate.
Originally, the team intended to design the experience as a constant plate-spinning with multiple events keeping the player distracted and active. During play tests, however, the developers discovered that most people were happy just switching between feeds continuously. In a similar vein to using your phone if you get bored by what’s on TV, this resulted in the command room’s buttons becoming a fidget spinner of sorts if you feel a similar need to distract yourself with something.
These habits, stemming from our ever-shortening attention spans, informed the game’s narrative commentary on how we inform ourselves of what’s happening daily. Jason Orbaum, creative director at Not for Broadcast developer NotGames, emphasizes how more people are getting their news through nontraditional news sources that deliver them in rapid-fire form often without proper research, such as YouTube Shorts. Orbaum cites the general election in the United Kingdom on July 4 as a recent example. “Although the mainstream media or whatever you wanna call it has its flaws … it also has fact-checking and legal teams, which TikTok does not,” he says. “People are believing different realities right now through a lack of a consensus on what the truth is, and that is insanely dangerous in a democracy.”
“It kind of feels like, in a lot of ways, everything is reality TV,” Nicole He says. She’s the director of The Crush House, a reality-TV-inspired “thirst-person shooter” developed in collaboration with Nerial, which was recently released on Steam. In it, you assume the role of a producer who has to record characters in a reality show, meeting the demands of different audiences in real time about what they want to see on the screen.
The Crush House carries inspiration from the Japanese reality-show series Terrace House as well as similar influences like Survivor, Big Brother, and Love Is Blind. He argues that much of the media we consume is further blurring the line of what is real or not, from staged performances that TikTokkers want to pass as legitimate moments to the increasing presence of AI in every aspect of our digital lives. Reality TV, then, is in an in-between place where audiences know that there’s a degree of fiction involved. But they still can, say, go on Instagram and see if a couple from Love Is Blind is still together after a season finale.
Amid so much artificiality around us — while writing this piece, a company announced an AI wearable “friend” that can comment on your day-to-day activities and conversations — there’s value in power fantasies where you can take the reins of a narrative directed to an audience, interrogating your actions in the process and, as a result, what you see every day. Even if people don’t have experience as a content creator or camera crew, the concept of doing things that aren’t 100 percent ethical to meet viewership goals and not get fired is something players quickly understand and latch on to.
Content Warning, released on April 1 on Steam, has players assume the role of content creator. The goal is for a group of players to venture inside eerie alien facilities and record their misadventures in the name of Content™. The closer you can get to the creatures lurking in the dark, the higher the viewership of the final video will be. Even better if you can film a dangerous pursuit or, well, somebody’s death. It’s an iteration of the concept that’s taken to its extremes but still remains resonant despite its absurdity. “Scroll through TikTok or YouTube and you’ll see straight-up public harassment sold as ‘pranks’ or ‘social experiments,’” game developer Harris Foster, who’s shared some of the funniest clips of Content Warning I’ve seen to date, says. “Content Warning imagines the next evolution of this. ‘What if a bunch of Jackass wannabes had access to intergalactic space travel? What if poking at dangerous alien lifeforms was the next viral trend?’”
Foster’s take on the absurd and sometimes unethical efforts that streamers go through to gain viewership rings different for actual content creators, who face a meta-level question on how to perform for a virtual audience while there’s a real audience watching on the other end. Streamer Mar Katoto says that there’s always an element of “playing it up” for the camera that Content Warning rewards. With mechanics such as text-generated comments about the final recording from fake users to the pursuit of views as a means of game progression, there’s an inherent motivation to act out the role of a stereotypical content creator in the vain of a vlogger. Playing outside of streams, their goal is less about making multiple strangers on the internet laugh but making their group of friends laugh instead.
Katoto believes that this trend of games where in-game audiences control the pace of game progression is a response to a primal need. “Sometimes you want to make things and get that dopamine hit of people’s approval, especially if you’re making something creative for folks to witness,” they say. “You put all that time and effort and, ultimately, want to see the return investment in the form of positive reinforcement. Then that’s how the cycle keeps on going and going.”
It’s a small comfort to know that the people behind these games, and the ones who play them, are aware of their habits. NotGames CEO Andrew Murray carries his phone around the house listening to YouTube videos while brushing his teeth or doing the dishes. Co-worker and creative director Alex Paterson has found solace in a movie theater, which forces him to sit and watch a movie “completely engrossed” without pausing to go and get a drink or flick through his phone, something that he “can’t feel anywhere else” at the moment. “I do often reflect on how I’ve started to need content buzzing around me at all times,” Harris says. “I can’t go to the gym without a new podcast episode. I play Hearthstone on my iPad during baths. I turned on the TV as I sat down to reply to this email. It’s alarming.”
As our attention spans get shorter and our search for the next dopamine hit does nothing but extend itself, video games that force us to confront our compulsive behaviors can be paradoxically cathartic. There’s solace in having some agency over artificial scenarios where you play the gallery — even if, inevitably, your hand is forced to navigate unethical practices and bad habits to achieve your goals. It’s almost as ironic as pausing a show where the characters communicate via letters and to-the-point phone calls to check how many people have viewed your Instagram Story in the past hour.
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