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WE'RE ALL HOLOGRAMS AND ONIONS: What Our Style of Gaming Says About Us by Mr Biffo

7/10/2015

11 Comments

 
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How do you play your games? You've probably never thought about it... but we all play differently - and it matters.

I've got a friend who'll obsessively scour a map for every last collectible, and try to play through GTA without killing anyone, and following traffic laws... just to see if he can.

That's fine and valid, but it sounds like my idea of a nightmare. I tend to want to rush through the story, and lose interest in the finer details of map-mopping.

Traffic laws? Traffic schplores. GTAV is never better - in my eyes - when I'm causing as much pyrotechnic chaos as possible. ​What does that say about me? And what does my mate's playing style say about him? You might be surprised to learn that it's all about the holograms...

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SMEG
Holograms have been around since the 60s. You're well aware that they're essentially a 3D photograph, taken with a laser. 

But here's a thing: if you somehow cut a hologram in half - and we're talking about real holograms here, not sci-fi projected holograms, like that blue nude woman out of Halo - each half will still contain the whole image. Cut those pieces in half again and each subsequent piece will still retain a complete imprint of the original 3D picture.


And we're all holograms. Not literally - this isn't Red Dwarf, for 
pity's sake - but slice our personalities into smaller pieces and those pieces will still retain the broader characteristics of our essence. For example... does it matter to you how others perceive you, and does that influence your behaviour in any given situation?

Your appearance, your choice of interests, your conversation, whether you support charities, or give over too much of your time to others so that you appear "kind" and "helpful"? Or are you unashamedly you no matter what? Do you put you first? Or maybe you think animals are more deserving of your love than humans - even more so than yourself.

​The possibilities are as infinite as personalities in the world, but while our outward behaviour may contain contradictions, there's always a consistency beneath that. The psychiatrist Eugene Abroms described it thusly: "A hologram is a representation of an object of an event in which every part contains sufficient information to characterise the whole".

And does that extend to our personal style of playing games? Of course it does.

MEET BUMMO
​What names do you choose for your characters, and how much care do you take over your appearance in RPGs? I'm not sure what this says about me, but whenever I get to create a character he's generally as bizarre-looking as possible, and called Bummo...

In know that in life I don't need everything to be perfect - it just needs to be good enough. I'm impatient - I want to rush through any job as quickly as possible to get the ideas out of my head. I'm no fan of repetitive tasks. Same with games. I can't handle Dark Souls or Bloodborne or Destiny, repeating the same actions over and over. I don't need to get 100% in a game.

​And I'm hopeless at stealth, because I don't have the patience for it. I'll storm a base all guns blazing, and set off the alarms, rather than sneak around.

The same could be said for my approach to DIY, or paperwork, or arguments...

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CRY ME A RIVER
I'm not going to be playing Rock Band 4 because - if I'm totally honest with myself - I'm a bit embarrassed and disappointed that I never learned to play guitar, or joined a real band. Plus I sing like a walrus gargling a sack full of burnt kazoos.

Playing with a toy guitar just presses that particular button. I don't want to think about all the people I know who've had the chance to play in real bands, while I'm sat at home playing with some stupid toy instrument. I don't like that implied, and utterly imagined, feeling of being laughed at by them.

And then when you dig even deeper, beneath that there's a resentment of the Bonos and Biebers of this world who get hit with a tsunami of love every second of the day, when they're no more deserving of attention and adoration than I am. Than any of us are. No - scratch that: than I am, for being a good dad, partner, colleague, uncle... etc.  

So there you go. That might be oversharing, but I can only speak about me. We're like peeling an onion, and usually the core of that onion is pretty whiffy, and will make us cry if we sniff it for too long.


​Every single thing we do says something about who we are. Our Facebook status updates. Our behaviour online. Our choice of games. All of it can be traced back to the pure, untainted, essence of who we are at our core. Games feel like a brilliant way to look at that - and to look at ourselves.

Try it.

ATTENTION: ALONG WITH THE OLIVER TWINS, THE BLOKE WHO CREATED Q*BERT, DARTH VADER, DOCTOR WHO AND AN EWOK, MR BIFFO WILL BE AT THE PLAY EXPO IN MANCHESTER THIS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10th.

HE'LL BE ON STAGE AT 1pm FAILING TO LIVE OUT HIS EMBARRASSING ROCK STAR FANTASY.

​COME AND SAY HELLO, AND YOU MIGHT GET A FREE DIGITISER2000 T-SHIRT OR STICKER. TICKETS AND DETAILS
AVAILABLE HERE.
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11 Comments
@Richie_Sombrero
7/10/2015 05:37:05 pm

For example... does it matter to you how others perceive you, and does that influence your behaviour in any given situation?

Well, this highlights what Sartre was getting at with his "Hell is other people" quote. The fact that we exist simultaneously as something viewed from within ourselves, but also as perceived by others. This parallax view creates a schism that cannot be filled within ourselves and our attempt to bridge it is predominantly futile yet gives us our essence.

It's like Solaris when the dead wife is recreated from the memories of the Cosmonaut but she is only a single facet of what she was and the dissonance drives her to despair.

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Mr Biffo
8/10/2015 07:57:01 pm

That might be slightly too existentialist even for me.

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Voodoo76
8/10/2015 08:41:55 pm

Woooah back up please. More explanation required re cutting holograms in half!! Re how we play games i really struggle to get hooked now. I couldn't even get into The Last of Us. I want to re-live how I felt playing pacman for the first time or Sonic, or Golvellius, or SF2 or most of all Mario64. It upsets me that I'll never be that into games like I used to be, even though I really want to! Most of these modern games just don't do it for me :-(

Joe Griffin
7/10/2015 06:53:58 pm

mocston-mocca-moc

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LeighDappa
7/10/2015 10:25:06 pm

This is too deep for me; More photos of clowns stuck in badly stuffed animals thank you-please.

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David
7/10/2015 11:22:57 pm

For anyone else who doesn't fancy playing toy instruments in Rock Band 4, get Rock Band 3 and the Pro Keyboard instead. These days the whole package is about as cheap as a plastic guitar, and offers similar button-pressing fun while teaching transferable skills. It even has a MIDI port for use as a real music controller.

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Keith
8/10/2015 06:09:50 pm

A thing I realised I always did inadvertently, but now make a point of doing, is I play the first hour or so of a game, and then begin the game again when I plan to get properly stuck into it : this false start allows me to start my proper play through with a sense of what the quirks and requirements of the game world are, and so I can get more immersed.
I'm totally incapable of playing as a "baddie", unless it's a GTA games where a certain amount of baddieness adds to character. Though Trevor Phillips aside, GTA games of late have been designed in such a way that causing mayhem feels like you've broken the game - a mass murder session as Niko Bellic left me feeling empty.
Generally, I love a side quest, but I really, really hate the way that open world games inevitably end up feeling empty and dead once the side quests start to dry up - it reminds me of when I was 17 and I'd actually camp at Glastonbury until Monday morning and then feel a bit sad when I saw the stage being dismantled as I made my way to the national express coach - the way some NPC's make kind of friendly but closed remarks at the end of games really breaks the illusion and the immersion. More games should end with the death of the players character, I think.

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Mr Biffo
9/10/2015 01:35:32 pm

Yes! I totally get that with open world games. It's horrible when the quests are all done.

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Stay
8/10/2015 10:04:49 pm

I have never thought about this before but I do play modern games in a way that matches my character. In life I like to stand back (read that as linger at the back) and observe before maybe joining in or having a go on something (like a jet ski - bottled it and my wife had a go instead) - this is why I only learned to drive when I was 32.

I games I do the same thing. Take MGSV its the perfect game for me - observe, plan, take it slow and move in (this annoys my wife). I always try to be the good guy so I try as much as I can to tranq or knock enemies out and only use the lethal weapons when everything goes wrong (which is fun but does feel wrong). With Borderlands I like to engage the enemies at long range before jumping in but that game is all about fun fun fun and moment to moment combat and is my go to game. I have put in a lot of hours in to all 3 BL games over PC, PS3 and Vita. I think its a game I go to when I feel down as is fun and comfy like warm pyjamas, a cup of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives.

In Left4Dead my personality manifested itself in a protective fashion as I stayed behind the other characters looking for danger from the rear and covering/saving them while they are focused on killing the hoard from the front. I always had the highest saves in the credits at the end of a successful play through. In real life I do this when out with the family so I feel I am keeping them safe.

If I can customise the character then in most games I choose 50/50 between male and female. If its 3rd person then I tend to go as female because if I am spending 20+ hours play a game I would rather look at a female avatars bum. Although in Saints Row 4 there was a cockney accent so my character ending looking like the bouncers from the end of Target Renegade but with sun glasses and a better nose. In Fallout 3 and NV I played as male as I felt I was playing as myself, again being the good guy, saving world and the people in it (but killing all baddies from long range using VATS and suprise). In NV I gave my character dark skin as I figured a pasty white guy like me would burn to a crisp in the desert in a matter of hours after coming out of the vault (I'm free!).

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Mr Biffo
9/10/2015 01:41:36 pm

Iiiinteresting... <STROKES CHIN, INDUCING PARANOIA IN THE CLIENT...>

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Euphemia
11/10/2015 03:36:54 pm

I prefer to play naked sat in a tin bathtub full of my own filth and sick. I'm not sure what difference that makes to how I play Mario 64, but it gets congealed pretty quick this time of year. Unless I drag the tub back indoors.

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