virtually yours

(c) Olafur Eliasson (2010), Your uncertain shadow

I sent out another one of those round-robins with which I fish for large identity statements from my friends. This time: "if you were a computer game, what computer game would you be?"

I meant the question metaphorically ("what game has features, broadly construed, that you also have?") but people took it literally ("what game world would you like to be in?") as often. Making this latter interpretation is itself a Statement of sorts.


CR: "On a good day, Grand Theft Auto - popular because fun to mess around with, but equally if not more more rewarding when engaged with more deeply. On a bad day, Metal Gear Solid - pretentious, talks too much." [Metaphorical, and received within 5mins of my sending the challenge.]


RM: "Haze. Never great, never popular, pseudo-intelligent, made by better people capable of great things. Desperately trying to escape its British origins. Not quite finished." [Metaphorical]


JH: "Zoo Tycoon with a bit of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass thrown in." [Both?]


MB: "Lineage 2." [Literal.]


CK: "A zombie RPG, defo." [Literal, unfortunately.]


SK: "Portal." [Literal.]


CW: "Ooh, dunno. Something dire that knows it's dire. Brütal Legend." [Metaphorical.]


BL: "A non-game, Vib Rabbit or Ecco the Dolphin." [Metaphorical.]


NS: Mystical Ninja Goemon. [Literal?]


NS on BL: "Any game with confusing inverted controls. Any game you play once but never again because it's so bad." [Metaphorical]


MJ: "Prototype." [Literal.] "You get amazing abilities to do anything, a blurred past, moral codex to choose to be good or evil, in a world in chaos where it only matters to you."


KU: "Some multidimensional version of Conway's Game of Life, perhaps." Asking which mode of reply this is meant as is "Irrelevant. Both [literal and metaphorical] fit in this case. In case of stetching it, metaphorical implies literal. Now that is interesting." [Aporetic polysemy, as usual.]


IL: "What are you even saying?" [...] "Super Smash Bros, N64. Both literally and metaphorically!"


MB: "All the Final Fantasies put together into an endless cycle." [Literal. This is actually what he does with his life, too.]


MR: "Minesweeper." [Metaphorical, presumably. maybe meaning dull, repetitive, lo-fi, which he is not.]


Me: I'd like to be Disgaea - a nested system of complex numbers and dick jokes obscuring a sincere core. But I am actually Fahrenheit: glitchy, contrived, and crudely experimental.

Also, the actual answer to the literal reading of the question is of course camp Japanese sticky ball sim Katamari Damacy.