Semi-Open Thread: Future of Video Games and the Fusion of Gaming and Meta-Universe

 Here is the horrific new Metaverse ad if you haven't seen it, and I don't mean horrific because of Le Uncanny Puppet.�

In lieu of any fulfillment or meaning in your real life, you can retreat into our digital mindscape where you can pretend to have it. pic.twitter.com/LdapEsl6Aj

— ʀᴇᴍɴᴀɴᴛ. (@remnantposting) February 14, 2022

My view on videogames is much like Maude’s reaction to Harold’s penchant for visiting auto scrapyard for fun in the film HAROLD AND MAUDE. What’s the attraction? On occasion, I check youtube on the best videogames of the year, and despite advance in graphics and the like, they seem the same old same old, mostly about blasting everything to smithereens or hacking enemies with axes and swords with bloody abandon. But videogames are huge and, being so integral to high-tech, their implications are huger yet. The only videogame I really cared for and mastered was Flicky back in the 1980s, though Bobble Bubble was okay too.

Personal preferences, the likes and dislikes, are cause for blind-spots. Something could be fashionable and ‘happening’, but one could be utterly oblivious to it, especially in the internet age with availability of countless niche interests and subcultures. Still, some things are so big that they merit attention regardless of one’s personal feelings. One such subject is video games, surely one of the biggest beneficiaries of the computer age as it is essentially the most popular interface of advancing technology. While some things are enhanced or eclipsed by technology, the video game IS technology.
The video game industry is said to be much bigger than Hollywood. Indeed, the biggest movies these days are hardly distinguishable from video games. A kind of convergence has taken place, with videogames becoming more realistic and narrative-oriented while movies becoming more effect-driven and videogamey.

Everyone I know has video games, and many are immersed in the attendant culture of hype and anticipation. It used to be videogames were for kids, something one grew out of sooner than later, but over the years they’ve become a permanent fixture among adults as well. Video games are a key indicator of the state of culture from US to Japan to China to Europe and the rest of the world. Its importance is such that ‘culture warriors’ of ‘wokeness’ clawed into the industry to mandate ‘progressive’ themes while purging ‘problematic’ elements. That so much of the ‘culture war’ is fought in the arena of entertainment, gaming, advertising, and recreational activities suggests the prevailing view among the commissariat is ‘popular is political’. In our post-ideological age, power is about who controls the idols and icons than the ideas and principles.

The Game Wars and so-called ‘Gamer-gate’ made for strange political dynamics. Given the attacks from the Politically Correct faction, it became de rigueur for many on the Right to defend the gaming community when, if anything, its gaggle of geeks have precious little to do with conservative values or cultural traditionalism or even simple maturity. They’re just hooked to mindless shooting at objects and ass-kicking hot-babes.
There was also the issue that too many creators and programmers in the gaming industry are men, especially ‘cis-gender’ white men(though I’m sure there are plenty of Asians as well). A convenient way for untalented female hacks and grifters to sound off on yet another manufactured hot-button issue in their roles as would-be reformers and ‘social justice warriors’. That such inane nonsense became a sensation in political circles and even intruded into mainstream debate now seems quaint in the aftermath of the George Floyd BLM riots and Covid nuttery that shut down economies wholesale and enforced all manner of social control mechanisms. Gamers defending ‘hot babes’ in their favorite games now seem utterly trivial when the Power, with deep state collusion across the board, purged the very president of the US from internet social platforms.

Some years back when Roger Ebert was alive, he stirred up a bit of controversy with a throwaway comment that videogames are not art(somewhat echoed later when Martin Scorsese opined that superhero blockbuster movies aren’t quite cinema). He was rebuked by many of his adoring fans who insisted videogames, or at least the best of them, do qualify as art. Perhaps, the opposing sides would have understood each other better with a clearer definition of art. Gamers seem to think art is anything that is engaging, immersive, or have narrative potential. Contra Ebert, they argued that videogames have grown in sophistication and even allow ‘characters’ to go on journeys, like in movies. And, video games now have graphics more advanced than some of the most renowned science fiction movies in the past. Still, it isn’t necessarily criticism, let alone a put-down, of videogames or any kind of game to say that they aren’t art. While videogames can involve creativity in design, or what is called artistry, they function differently than art, which is a finished product based on the artist’s vision, understanding, or worldview. The artistic process may be game-like in that the artist goes on an adventure of discovery(or self-discovery), but art is the conclusion or summation of his journey brought into creative focus. Thus, art exists to be inspected and interpreted. Art is about the artist creating something and the audience responding to it. And, even though the audience’s response is crucial in the appreciation and interpretation, the artist is always at the center of art. He is the creator.

In contrast, games are about players, not creators. Even the creator of a particular game provides possibilities for the players to fulfill on their own. The game-designer could be a man of brilliance, and players can play the game with finesse, but none of this is about art. Games are like sports. Dance, at least the choreographed kind, is physical art; sports are physical games. While videogames can be artistically designed, much like a chess set can be artfully crafted, the essence of the game is about the play, which has so many variables and possibilities; artistry is a mere backdrop in games. To play THE GODFATHER video game means anything is possible, nullifying any possibility of thematic consistency or unified meaning.

None of this is to suggest art is superior to games, only that they’re different creatures animated by different logics. Writing a drama is art, playing scrabble is a game. Art shapes chaos and endless possibilities into a particular vision or narrative, whereas games, despite the primacy of rules, thrive on the chaotic anarchy of endless possibilities. Of course, certain works of art can be approached like a mind-game, sort of like the Mandala in Buddhism, but it’s still a matter of interpretation than interaction. No matter how one interprets a work of art in his or her own way, its form is a constant, whereas virtually every game play ends up differently from other plays. The difference between art and game would have been obvious at one time, but post-modernism’s ‘deconstruction’ of art and ‘intellectual’ engagement with popular entertainment were a recipe for confusion that followed.

One of the interesting prospects(with profoundly dire consequences) seems to be the convergence of gaming culture and lived experience. While Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse isn’t exactly gaming, the concept owes much to the development of gaming technology. Increasingly, the distance between the player and the game has closed. Thus, the player doesn’t so much play the game as enter the game, become part of the game, is the game, in which case, he faces the danger of being played himself, like in David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ where the players can no longer tell reality apart from unreality. (One wonders if dystopian visions are really cautionary tales or fantasies of power in morality’s clothing. Franz Kafka’s novels might as well serve as the manual for Jewish Supremacist Power. And as Cronenberg outed himself as an ardent ultra-Zionist, perhaps eXistenZ is a mind-game on how to control goyim by trapping them in the Jewish Maze.) Zuckerberg markets Metaverse as a reality away from reality, or reality within reality, where people can interact in amazing ways of sights and sounds, associations, travel, purchases(for items real and virtual), and probably love too.

Technically, it isn’t gaming but operates on much the same principle, especially as virtual reality sphere invites people to try out things they wouldn’t dare in the real world. Risk-taking is a big part of video games one’s avatars get destroyed but never oneself. In cinematic reference, one might say the virtual-reality future is like the dream world in Chris Nolan’s INCEPTION. Its ‘psychomotional’ twist owes to the tragic fate of the dead wife: She became so immersed in the lucid dream world that she not only came to prefer it but mistook it for reality(and conversely came to regard the real world as a dream from which she had to awake). Something along those lines is suggested in the interview below: MILLENNIYULE 2021: HAPA PERSPECTIVE

 Video Link

Personally, I haven’t played a video game in eons and never used a virtual-reality headset, but the interviewee(who goes by ‘Hapa Perspective’) seems well-informed and well-versed in the technology. At any rate, he says the technology has gotten so good and real-looking(or maybe more real than real) that his immersion in virtual reality became total and, if anything, he felt as if detached from true ‘reality’ when he took off the set and returned to his mundane surroundings. Sounds like a drug high, one that makes everything seem more intense, but then, there have been reports that micro-dosing on certain drugs is commonplace in the high-tech sector.
It seems virtual reality is intensified in ways subtle and unsubtle to engage one’s senses to the fullest, possibly similar to effect of cocaine: a sense of being boosted. This sense of intensity could be cerebral and/or sensual, the looks, sounds, and even the ‘feel’ of things. One of the appeals of games is the mental engagement in an activity at once escapist and challenging. Most people’s minds and bodies are under-utilized in day-to-day business of living. So, people go to the gym or ride a bike to work the body. Most jobs hardly engage the mind much at all, at least in a truly challenging way. Most people aren’t in the scientific/mathematical, entrepreneurial, or creative fields that require the full use of brain power. They aren’t qualified for highly cerebral work, but their brains are nevertheless more capable than for the day-to-day exertions of routine work. Then, it’s understandable why people need to expend some of this excess energy, and games seem the natural outlet. The minds become more fully engaged but without the anxiety of failure and endangerment.

Technically, gaming means play, a recreational activity, but it can also be a way of living, even a philosophical outlook whereby one’s every thought, word, and move is calibrated on the basis of game theory. For some, it’s a way to feel more alive, a civilized return to the laws of the jungle where one is predator or prey. ‘Equality’ is for the suckers, the hoi polloi. Whether it’s the brutish thugs in GOODFELLAS, the casino mogul who lives by his wits in CASINO, or the financial hustler in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, it’s about life as a non-stop game of predators and prey, winners and losers, the fuc*ers and the suckers. It’s the only way such people feel alive, even if or especially because their lives are sometimes at stake. Or, consider the cinema of David Mamet, a nonstop house-of-games where individuals are always on the lookout for the take, not only as a matter of gain but habit(and pride), as if the one’s wits must relentlessly be sharpened like the incisors of a rodent.

One problem of the Deep State could be there are too many people with gamer-mentality or ‘gamentality'(alongside gay-mentality, of course). They are more competitive by nature and look to stir up trouble just to play or stay in the game. Crisis in some part of the world is to them like the scent of blood is to sharks. Or, they’re eager to create a crisis where there was none or hardly any just to ramp up the game, what makes them feel alive and worthy.
While only a few at the top(mostly Jewish Supremacists) make the pivotal decisions, the Deep State teems with those eager to play the game, much like athletes in the football field. Jewish Supremacist high-gamers play to gain more power for themselves, whereas the goy low-gamers play just to feel alive, adventurous, special, or ‘heroic’ in some way. Jews, as tribal-players, tend to be high-gamers as it’s not just about being on the winning side but about Jews Winning. In contrast, many goyim in the Deep State are merely team-players. Jews must make sure that Jews win, whereas the likes of Mike Pompeo serve Jews because Jews are on top, but they’d be playing for the Latter Day Saints if Mormons ruled America. Jewish maneuvers against Russia are to maximize Jewish Power, whereas goyim follow and play along because they’re grateful simply to be in the game. Of course, if Jews had swallowed Russia in the 1990s(like they did the US), there would be no ‘new cold war’ between US and Russia as both would be political colonies of the Empire of Judea flying globo-homo flags and kneeling at the BLM altar, like all the Anglo-Cucks in US, Canada, Australia, and UK. With Jewish Power ordering the US deep state to be nice to Russia, there wouldn’t be any drum-beating about invasions and wars. Jews lead, goyim follow.

People with competitive personalities naturally have more of a gamer-view of the world. They tend to see the world/humanity in binary terms of winners and losers. Gamer-view comes more naturally to capitalism/individualism/nihilism/globalism than to humanism/socialism/nationalism(the anti-imperialist kind). (Communism, though about equality and the brotherhood of man, is very much into game-theory as its ultimate objective is to convert all the world. It’s about winning. Only after total victory will it give up on the game.) It isn’t difficult to spot people with gamer-outlook-on-life. Even in mundane situations, much of what they say and do is about gaining an edge, if only for egotistical or psychological edification, a sense of “I know more than you, or I’m smarter than you.” It seems such traits are more pronounced among Jews than among easier-going goyim. Notice how Jews are the drivers of tensions with Russia, whereas Russians would rather have all sides just calm down. The rodent-like mentality of Jewish Power ceaselessly gnaws away whereas the Russian bear wants to return to hibernation. Even goyim with game-mentality care more about the fun of play(even if it means losing), whereas Jews tend to be ruthless winners and sore losers(with a vengeful streak, indeed of Yahweh Himself). It’s like what is said of Ace Rothstein in CASINO. He wasn’t the type to bet just for fun. He had to see all the angles and calculate a winning strategy every time. He reduced chance to a minimum whereas the element of chance is what makes gambling fun for most people. Most people play just to play, whereas some play only to win. The latter rules over the former. It’s like most Americans take part in elections with the understanding that their preferred candidates might win or lose. Either way, they accept the outcome and get back to living. But Jews cannot tolerate losing. After the 2016 debacle with Donald Trump, they had to use whatever means by hook and by crook to ‘fortify’ the election in 2020. And Jews just can’t let Russia go. They must heighten tensions out of revenge(for having lost what isn’t even theirs) or the dream of ultimate takeover. After all, even a tireless rat can kill a slumbering bear.

Some people take umbrage at the notion that a movie is just a movie. They believe that the impact of cinema(and entertainment in general) is far profounder than its commercial purpose or fun element. Movies serve to normalize certain attitudes, endorse certain behaviors, encourage certain biases, and instill certain outlooks. A movie with Muslim terrorists may be shallow entertainment, but they do ingrain certain feelings about Arabs/Muslims that may be characterized as ‘Orientalist’, useful to Zionists when Israel wants to drag the US into another war against the ‘Muzzies’.

In EYES WIDE SHUT, the couple learns that a dream is never just a dream. In a similar vein, it could be said a game is not just a game. (What seems like play among kittens is actually a honing of their fighting and hunting skills later in life.) In the simplest terms, the notion of game-isn’t-just-game explains why there are videogames with Nazis as the bad guys(to be shot at and blown up in endless ways), but no one dares to design a game where Zionists or IDF are the bad guys. A game called INTIFADA might go well in many parts of the world, but forget about Silicon Valley creating one.

But in more complicated ways, the gamer who plays the game is also played in ways he or she doesn’t even suspect. Consider the character of Jack Torrance in THE SHINING who nurtures dreams of being master of the castle with an eagle’s eye view of the maze, yet he too is a figure in a bigger maze, the one he is incapable of noticing or seeing through. He is a player who is being played. Win or lose, who owns and controls the game? People win and lose at casinos as players, but who is playing them? It’s the House that, in the end, plays them and rakes it all in because the odds are gamed in its favor.

Or, take the so-called democracy which is supposed to be Rule by the People, but the actual republican system of government means the vast majority of people are resigned to leaving matters up to their elected representatives who, however, are really controlled by donors and hemmed in by the media(owned by billionaires). It’s a rigged game than a ritual of liberty.
For many gamer-minded folks, politics absorbs much of their attention because of its sports-like qualities of win-and-lose, rise and fall, brilliant maneuvers and lucky breaks. Pat Buchanan’s autobiography RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING details how he got hooked to the Washington D.C. culture of politics, something he came to relish like a blood-sport. Buchanan certainly developed a game-mentality early in life, especially through his father who introduced him to the writings of Westbrook Pegler and through old school Catholicism that pit the righteous against the wrong.

But politics in its official capacity seems less interesting than the power behind the scene, especially with the rise of Jewish Power. Even though athletes play for super-rich owners, they really do play the game. In the heat of competition, it is really up to them to win or lose. But politicians, more lackluster than ever, hardly make for an exciting spectacle these days — a book about the current period might be called PROFILES IN COWARDICE — , though the Donald Trump phenomenon certainly ruffled a lot of feathers as something finally came along to threaten the well-established arrangement among the allotted players, leading to derangement among so many. As things turned out, Trump was more bluster than bunker-buster, but his rousing up of populism, a variant of which recently shook Canada, came to be regarded as much bigger than the man himself. Even if the Deep State sees Trump per se as no big deal, a clown really, his playing with matches with populism offended the professionalist conceit of the managerial class and its cozy servility to the Jewish Supremacists above it.

As important as politics(or those who really control it) is, the fact remains a lot of people don’t pay much attention to political issues and races. Half the nation doesn’t vote, and those who do must wait four years for the next big election. So, the real control over the masses isn’t through politics and has to be through other means. With the fading of traditionalism and culture of community, just about the only remaining culture for many is entertainment, celebrity gossip, and various other diversions. No wonder then that so much of the ‘culture war’ has been waged in these fields. It’s come down to the control of idols, impacting even videogames.
Still, gamer-gate and related controversies seem like small potatoes compared to what the likes of Mark Zuckerberg have in mind. Metaverse would allow Zuck to game the masses in a manner that they don’t even realize what’s being done to them. That is real power. Facebook was a service, a platform. People joined and ‘friended’ people they knew personally or shared similar interests with. Facebook rigged news and search results, but otherwise, it left the interactions up to the users. There was a limit to which Facebook could manipulate and control its users. One became reliant on Zuckerberg’s service but not caught up in his web. And there was a clear distinction and distance between the user and the service.

In contrast, Meta-verse is meant to envelope and absorb the user into the Zuckotopia. Sure, there will be the illusion of choice, a semblance of shaping one’s own space based on personal preferences, but the user will be swallowed into a world designed with the purpose of conjoining his mind to the hive. One’s choice will be limited to what is offered and what is allowed. This is true of any service, but this will be more than a mere service or product: it will be a ‘world’, one meant to be preferred over the real one.

In the interview with Millennial Woes, Mr. Hapa Perspective says one of the first things he countered in the virtual world was Anne Frank iconography. Now, what does Anne Frank have to do with recreation, entertainment, or escapism? Nothing, of course, but it reveals something about the ulterior motive embedded in the commerce. Apart from the obvious greed for profits, there’s the obsession to convert and contain the masses within the Judeo-centric power agenda.

Jewish Power has been doing this for as long as we can remember. Indeed, even over the many centuries of ‘Anti-Semitic’ Christianity, goyim were under the Jewish spell as their God, iconography, and narratives were drawn from Jewish Biblical texts. Unfortunately for Jews, European Christians were under heretical Jewish influence(that of Jesus and early Christians) against the core of Jewish community and tradition. This state of affairs finally ended with World War II whereupon Jews propped up ‘antisemitism’ as the gravest of all sins, something Christianity must answer for. Thus, Jews not only elevated the Holocaust as the new faith of the West but subverted the moral-spiritual prestige of Christianity and guilt-baited it into what it is today, a globo-homo BLM faith that preaches in favor of the Great Replacement.
Jews also shaped white minds with their control of History and Entertainment. With control over History Departments in academia and publishing, Jews have increasingly pushed a mono-narrative for both the elites and the masses. It’s mostly about ‘white guilt’ about blacks, Western guilt over the Holocaust, and the thought crime of ‘homophobia’. And Hollywood produced a slew of movies about Negro Nobility and how white ‘racists’ used to lynch and slaughter countless pure-as-snow innocent blacks. Under Jewish Power, US is a place where Emmett Till and George Floyd are bigger than jesus and where MLK is bigger than god. Also, Jews control advertising and bombard viewers with endless images of interracism favoring ACOWW(Afro-Colonization-of-White-Wombs) and globo-homo-tranny degeneracy.

Still, people like Zuckerberg feel that such control over goyim hasn’t been enough. After all, Donald Trump managed to win in 2016 in a country where the white share of the population has been drastically reduced over the years. Quite possibly, Trump also won in 2020, but of course, Jews pulled all stops to ‘fortify’ the election. For all their manipulations over the dimwit goy masses, what if the tide is beginning to go in the other direction? Even among the younger generation, there is pushback against ‘wokeness’, though no one in the mainstream has yet to name the Jewish Power as the mastermind. On some level, Jews must realize that, for all their massive power and control over institutions and industries, they are fighting an uphill battle because so much of what they’re pushing is unnatural and abnormal as the so-called New Normal/Natural. Indeed, the reason for the relentless propagandizing is because most people will revert to natural norms if left to their own devices and leanings. Minus the brainwashing and propagandization, who believes “It’s Okay to be White” is tantamount to ‘white supremacism’ or that George Floyd was some kind of saint or that ‘Rachel’ Levine is really a ‘woman’? Or that homo fecal-penetration is grounds for marriage and association with the rainbow?

Then, it makes sense that Zuckerberg promotes the Metaverse where his control over the masses will be utterly pervasive and intrusive. And paradoxically, people will be less aware of the manipulation precisely because they are so totally immersed in it. It’s like one loses the sense of wetness when one is in the water where wetness is the overwhelming reality than a condition that interferes with dryness.
When one watches a TV commercial, however dazzling and enticing, it retains a separateness from you, the viewer. Commercial is something on TV whereas you are in reality; you can even walk away from the TV and do something else. But in the Metaverse, what is advertised, blatantly or subtly, becomes the very fabric of your newfound ‘reality’, and it’s constantly all around you. The distance between the viewer and the product has dissolved. It’s as if one has been sucked(or zucked) into the ad.

Furthermore, when one considers that the Metaverse will be designed and programmed by Zionists and Zio-compliant ‘woke’ geeks, it certainly won’t be a neutral other-realm where one has agency to discover his own truths and meanings. Rather, even when you’re within what you believe to be your own space with your compatriots, it will be encapsulated within a larger environment designed to push a certain agenda and set of ‘values’ — imagine the flashing billboards within the Metaverse that will be flashing like a thousand Time Squares with ‘woke’ messaging concocted by Zionists who, of course, will suppress anything related to Israel’s dehumanization of Palestinians; it will be about Anne Frank and Emmett Till, and maybe shrines to George Floyd.

Also, think of the possibility of eavesdropping. Facebook has already served as a means by which the corporation and deep state gathered up tons of data on its users. Imagine the possibility with Metaverse where one is likely to be even less inhibited about one’s personal thoughts as virtual reality is accepted as new reality, even as one’s preferred ‘private space’.

Technically, Metaverse experience wouldn’t be a game, but users will effectively be turned into duped players in the grand Jewish Power game. And being Anne-Franked, like Mr. Hapa Perspective was, will only be the beginning. In the movie INCEPTION, what matters in the end is who-is-in-whose-dream. If you’re unknowingly in someone else’s dream(mistaken as your own), you can be manipulated according to the whims of the other. It’s almost as if Zuckerberg created a literal version of this dream space. Countless millions are invited into his dream-universe which they mistake for their own ‘virtual reality’. They are to be exposed to manipulation by Zuckerberg and his Zio-‘woke’ crew of profiteering would-be-prophets.

It could be Zuckerberg has conceived of gaming on the grandest scale, not in the ordinary sense of playing videogames but in drawing masses around the world into his universe to be combed over for every last ounce of data and to be imprinted with sights and sounds amenable to the Judeo-centric globalist agenda.

Then, what is the righteous way? To reject the Metaverse or to create a counter-meta-verse free of globalist mind control? But is there much promise for mankind in being sucked into any kind of false reality(even free of Jewish supremacist influence)? Of course, one could argue it’s already been the case with churches, cinemas, radios, TV’s, and videogames that have captivated so many hearts and minds, so many fantasies and imaginations. Still, with those there has always been the reminding presence of reality, however diminished or peripheralized, between the audience and the product, whereas virtual reality competes not as an enhancement or partial escape from reality but as a substitute reality with claim of superiority in every way.