A Lonely Heroism: The Fundamental Importance of Single-Player 1

Cool breeze flows in through the screen door, the glass part­ed to allow the air inside the liv­ing room to stir. It’s just the right tem­per­a­ture: 55 degrees Farhenheit. No more, no less. My ideal. The smell of slight­ly stale pizza com­min­gles with the lin­ger­ing scent of friend-who-has-been-in-my-house-recently. It is October of 2006, and I am alone. Alone in my par­ents’ home, and alone in the Rogue Encampment, a few miles out­side of the fall­en town of Tristram. I am happy.

For me, gam­ing has most­ly always been a soli­tary activ­i­ty. Meant to be shared with friends when the time is right, cer­tain­ly a favorite social entan­gle­ment of my peer group.

Videogames are kind of like booze to an alco­holic: usu­al­ly con­sumed in tem­per­ance while with com­pa­ny, and taken in great, bliss­ful­ly melan­choly draughts when alone. Just like the bot­tle, though, games don’t ever make the lone­li­ness go away. They make soli­tude tol­er­a­ble for mis­placed socialites, for sure. But at cer­tain times, with the right game, in the ideal envi­ron­ment, with an amenable per­son­al­i­ty (I con­fess that I do rather well by myself; I’m lucky in that way), they can make lone­li­ness sub­lime.

The most impact­ful moments are frozen, locked in mem­o­ry by par­tic­u­lar­ly brac­ing rush­es of dopamine through my trou­bled ado­les­cent brain, one already packed full of enough rag­ing pitu­itary hor­mones to stun a Kilwala.

I have my favorites of these immor­tal­ized (though not immor­tal) tran­scen­den­tal moments of soli­tude. I can remem­ber that sen­sa­tion, the tin­gling in the chest, my total cap­tiv­i­ty in the moment.

That haunt­ing riff that plays as you depart for the Den of Evil.

The video from the future, reveal­ing the apoc­a­lypse which was, and is to come.

Catching Mewtwo with an Ultra Ball (I actu­al­ly accom­plished this feat in my child­hood. My par­ents wept for my social life.).

I used the word “tran­scen­den­tal,” not in a lit­er­al sense, or even in the strict­ly metaphor­i­cal. Even now, as a fair­ly entrenched sec­u­lar­ist, I’ve had my share of what might be called “reli­gious” (I’d rather say spir­i­tu­al) expe­ri­ences. Most of them out­rank, by a com­par­i­son of per­son­al grav­i­ty and emo­tion­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, those “peak expe­ri­ences” (as neu­ro­sci­en­tist Sam Harris is fond of call­ing them) obtained through game­play. But the same mech­a­nisms are at work: the heady dopamine shot to the appro­pri­ate cra­nial recep­tors, the sub­se­quent flash-camera inscrip­tion of the moment in per­ma­nent mem­o­ry.

There’s a dis­tinc­tion here, though, in the envi­ron­ment of the expe­ri­ences. See, most of the religious/spiritual/whatever moments I’ve had have taken place social­ly. As in, among a crowd of peo­ple. These were cor­po­rate jour­neys. Rather than find­ing myself indeli­bly immersed in the fic­tion­al world of a game, I was drawn in to the com­pa­ny, the cul­ture, the con­for­mi­ty. The sym­bols of these com­mu­ni­ties were most impor­tant; they pro­vid­ed that cru­cial feel­ing of being a part of some­thing greater than myself, los­ing my mor­tal­i­ty by sac­ri­fic­ing my iden­ti­ty. Whereas, though the “peak-ness” of the expe­ri­ence was in every case only slight­ly mit­i­gat­ed, my most impor­tant gam­ing moments have all taken place while I’ve been alone.

Stranger still, even in the midst of a great bat­tle with an ogre, a heart-wrenching denoue­ment of a cliff-top show­down, or the dan­ger­ous­ly dis­ori­ent­ing clam­or of a Reaper inva­sion, I never lost the aware­ness of soli­tude. Somewhere, in among the noise and the lights, I still felt lone­ly. The weight of lone­li­ness wasn’t at all unpleas­ant, either. I was fac­ing tri­als only I, through my unique expe­ri­ence of the game­world, could ever under­stand. I have been a hero in my own mind. And I have known peace.

Pictured: Zenlike calm.

Wild, ain’t it? Hidden trig­gers of med­i­ta­tive moments ensconced in a vir­tu­al hero­ism. Bizarre.

Then again, per­haps it’s not so sur­pris­ing after all. Turns out that sci­ence has some­thing to say about it.

Here at the Ontological Geek, we love invok­ing old dead dudes to jus­ti­fy our per­son­al philoso­phies. And of course, I can’t help but do just that.

Ernest Becker (whom those of you with a back­ground in psy­chol­o­gy may have stud­ied), in his book The Denial of Death (high­ly rec­om­mend­ed, if ever you feel like invok­ing a good ol’ exis­ten­tial coma), frames human behav­ior in the con­text of death aware­ness and death anx­i­ety. He argues that, since we are the only liv­ing crea­tures capa­ble of con­tem­plat­ing our own immi­nent demise, we deal with a con­stant, uncon­scious anx­i­ety about its inevitabil­i­ty. We lit­er­al­ly, accord­ing to Becker, spend our entire lives try­ing to repu­di­ate, con­tra­dict, for­get, and chal­lenge this latent ter­ror. Therefore, all of human behav­ior can be viewed through the lens of an immor­tal­i­ty project (which he calls casua sui). Without being able to keep our­selves occu­pied in this way, we will become over­whelmed by the ter­ror of real­i­ty, and be unable to func­tion.

The empir­i­cal school sprung from his work, called Terror Management Theory (or TMT), attempts to test Becker’s explana­to­ry claims about human behav­ior, and apply it to the phe­nom­e­non of self-esteem. TMT defines self-esteem as a tem­po­rary suc­cess of the immor­tal­i­ty project. In other words, the more that you’re able to deny or sub­vert your death anx­i­ety, the bet­ter you’ll feel about your­self.

There are many ways that we go about doing this: cul­ture, sym­bol­ism, reli­gion, cer­tain func­tions of lan­guage. The one that’s most impor­tant to this dis­cus­sion, how­ev­er, is hero­ism.

It does­n’t take a lot of imag­i­na­tion to see that, in light of death, asso­ci­a­tion with the human species, and self-identification as but a sin­gu­lar indi­vid­ual there­in, is a threat. To feel spe­cial, unique (in a sig­nif­i­cant sense, alone) is a basic human need. We all must strive to become heroes in our cul­tur­al envi­ron­ments: our schools, jobs, reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, hobby com­mu­ni­ties. Not least, we also need this sense of hero­ism in our imag­i­na­tive play.

Let’s face it: mul­ti­play­er, though increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar, is usu­al­ly seen as an addi­tion­al func­tion of a game pro­gram (an excep­tion may be made for MMORPGs). The main, core expe­ri­ence – even if played less often – is single-player. The mul­ti­play­er capac­i­ty is most often born from that, in terms of both story and game­play.

Armed with this infor­ma­tion, we can hope to explain what makes gam­ing so attrac­tive.

By its very nature, the single-player game­world gets us right into the “hero” frame of mind. When you begin a single-player game sce­nario, you’re a lone oper­a­tor, in a world whose threats only you can com­pre­hend well enough to com­bat effec­tive­ly. Generally, every­one and every­thing that isn’t scenery (here I’m think­ing of NPCs and even the UI) serves to help or hin­der you on your quest. It’s all about you.

Selfish prick.

Those peak moments that you remem­ber for decades, that feel-good chem­i­cal rush? That feel­ing of “this is some­thing extra­or­di­nary?” That’s your brain telling you “pay atten­tion, this is real­ly impor­tant!” And it is. You’re achiev­ing hero­ism. You’ve tran­scend­ed your­self. You’re fear­ful­ly and won­der­ful­ly awe­some. You’re spe­cial.

And you’ve achieved your break with the rest of doomed human­i­ty. You can sep­a­rate your­self from the mass­es now. You’re free.

There are those who say that single-player is on its way out for good. That multi-user vir­tu­al real­i­ties are the wave of the future, and there’s no stop­ping it. Those peo­ple may be right. But there will always be that yearn­ing inside every gamer, young and old. The need to stick out, prove one­self, build and bom­bard, achieve and ame­lio­rate. Doing it all by your­self.

Already, single-player fea­tures are becom­ing more and more mud­dled, inun­dat­ed with frus­trat­ing and illusion-collapsing breaks from the nar­ra­tive. Those who will notice these advanc­ing breach­es, should they con­tin­ue, in the new world of per­sis­tent con­nec­tions and com­pul­so­ry social net­work­ing, will be us. Those who recall the days of secret sto­ries, thrills of dis­cov­ery, and mem­o­ries of those per­fect moments in which we felt we became our­selves.