Indie Game: The Movie

[h1]On Vulnerability and Video Games—What a Review Cannot Measure[/h1] I was on the beach; it was either dawn or dusk, as though time itself had finally managed to coalesce. The air carried that rare breath we so desperately lack after everything we have done — after a long day, an explosion of emotions, of unexpected resonances. At last, one can breathe a little more easily through this day, just one more day. When I listened to Edmund McMillen speaking to us, addressing us with such earnestness, he seemed thrilled by the reviews from gaming magazines. It brought back memories of my university years, even my postgraduate studies. I achieved good marks. Yet does obtaining a 10, or an A+, truly tell me who I am? Do I know what I know? Am I genuinely capable of claiming, through a grade alone, that I have mastered something? At first, I did not fully understand McMillen’s words. When such marks fail to define who I am, then perhaps what I have achieved carries no greater weight than my resonance with others: the willingness to share knowledge, or the hope that, should I create something, it might endure in some fragile guise of eternity. And yet, along this journey, there is something a grade — or a handful of likes — simply cannot bestow, and cannot reveal. I sat there listening to what each developer had endured through time. I have not yet inhabited all of their works, but I listened carefully. Jonathan Blow remarks that the video game is a commercial product, or something close to that. But then, how does Braid distinguish itself from everything else? From those works that appear to be mere commodities? Even without having inhabited it, I can already discern Braid from Super Meat Boy. A walk through the city brings tranquillity. It soothes something inward. The mist that rolled in during the convention carried a coldness that settled deep within me, yet it also brought an opacity that prevented me from seeing beyond this place itself. This city, with its timid amber lights illuminating the streets. This sea, expressing everything it carries, everything it leaves upon the shore. As I contemplated that stillness, it seemed to me that the calm these developers reach finds its true culmination when their work — not merely a commercial product — achieves something far greater than success. It becomes openness. Refuge. An expansion within those of us who look upon it. What a review cannot measure is the thing that continues to resonate within us, that which continues to connect us. Even here, in this place where one can hear the beating of sincere yet shadowed hearts: fear, despair, joy, exhaustion, hunger, and above all, joy for the other. A joy that is not merely a smile. No. It also makes me vibrate alongside them, laughing with them, as though inhabiting their works gave me the breath to laugh at my own mistakes as well; or to feel moved, deeply stirred somewhere within the soul. It feels like being at home with my sister. We hold the controller and begin to inhabit that space together. We grow angry, we laugh, we weep — and surely the developer too, if they realised their work was truly habitable and cherished, would laugh as well. I agree with McMillen and Tommy Refenes: words are not the only means of expression. If something can express what is so intimate, so painful, so exhilarating, so full of laughter and tears, then why should we hesitate to call it art? I think back to my dance classes, and to how seldom people truly supported me. Yet there will always be someone nearby who remains present; witnesses who marvel at the work itself. At the very least, I feel grateful that each developer has found some connection with others, whether face-to-face or from afar, as in the case of Jonathan Blow. That is another thing a technical review — useful for corrections, perhaps, but never transcendental, never intimate — will never be capable of holding. It is overwhelming. Like McMillen’s wife, gentle and devoted, helping him immensely. Or Phil Fish, who often seemed alone, though perhaps without realising how many people truly surrounded him. Even when comments rain down in grey and black drops full of malice, there will always remain some kind of umbrella to protect us: one’s dignity before the other, just as the other already exists within us. The convention itself feels like one such sanctuary. I should like to inhabit Phil Fish’s Fez. To feel the fresh air there, and marvel at every shifting dimension that reveals itself. The perspective through which we see the world does not always need to remain flat, nor uniform. Where does the ivy lead me, growing upon the wall beneath that diaphanous blue sky? And what is time — and my relationship to others — within Braid? Even if they claim to be alone, the mere fact that there are witnesses watching this documentary renders their struggles comprehensible. They must believe this remains true not only for small games, but even for colossal ones, though that is something we seldom witness openly. Granted, I cannot speak to them face-to-face. Yet through this journey across the city — through the mist, the convention halls, the streets, the shoreline — I was invited, however briefly, into their rooms, allowed to look with a discreet and respectful gaze at what dwells there. And so I can be present. I can say that when a developer pours themselves into their work, rather than merely receiving a score, and when I feel what they have achieved — the joy and profound emotion it awakens in me for them — what they truly reveal is vulnerability. Video games express vulnerability. They express the accumulated weight of emotion contained within the act of creation itself. And though I may not be a skilled reviewer, I still make my attempt: not to imprison the work within technical terminology, but to understand what a video game truly is — and whether I have managed to understand even the vulnerability of the game itself. Phil Fish, I tell you, it is not that they reject your work, but rather that some of us ask ourselves if we are worthy of understanding what lies within it.