My first time on GTA

A few weeks ago I was proven right. I didn’t like it.

When I was young I played video games a fair amount. My history with screens started early on, when I watched TV in the morning before going to school. One day, I found an old Game Boy Advance with a cartridge in. I don’t remember what the game was, though it might have been Super Mario Advance. The screen was hard to see. After struggling with it for a while, I asked someone to help and they changed the batteries. After that I did see the screen better.

It’s hard to even think of what other games I played. I remember playing a lot of Pokemon on the DS and some Minecraft. I had a PS2 for a while (with an Eye-Toy!) and I remember that time fondly, but then I got a Wii and from that point my memory is fading. In particular, I never had a strong affinity for beefy PCs and later gaming consoles, perhaps because of the cost and also because when I played with my friends who had such devices, it was often competitive games and I never won.

However, before all this, I used to make my own platformer games on paper, usually sticky notes. I’d draw pipes and imagine I was entering the level and would have to follow the drawn path to the end.

These days I look back to those times and try to remember what it was like to be more spontaneous and creative. I seem to have very well integrated the rules and will generally refrain from activities that don’t have a plan. I guess many people are like that as well, to a certain extent.

The other day, I was staying at my friend’s house and he offered to play Grand Theft Auto V, as he had recently re-discovered it with his brother. I’d heard of the series but hardly knew anything about it beyond the memes. He handed me the controller and went “Go to town!”. The first thing I did was get in my car and start driving. A red light showed up; I stopped. After a few seconds, my friend told me that I didn’t have to stop, that it was okay. I was floored. For a few more minutes, I could feel how difficult it was to have both of the objectives “always follow the rules” and “do anything you want in GTA V” active in my mind at the same time. It is scary to me.

That reminds me of an “experiment” I did on the internet where my mouse pointer’s direction was inverted for a few minutes (i.e. moving the physical mouse right made the pointer move left), then it was inverted back and it felt all weird: my brain had adapted to the inversion quickly and somewhat durably. The experiment was meant to inform users of how your behavior can be influenced by social media. I’ll link it here if I can find it.

More generally, I am not surprised that most people take the Good Guy option in games, when given the choice. By the way I know that last tweet from Hbomberguy’s video on Fallout: New Vegas.

I think gaming could be a good way for me to obtain more agency and curiosity. Just need to buy the whole setup…

This is post number 004 of #100daystooffload.