2020: Communal Play and Being Alone
When I first pitched this end of the year list, I had a certain idea in mind. I played a lot of PlayStation 2 games this year so I was set to write about how I found comfort in a fractured past while living through our broken present, and while that is true, none of those games are my games of the year. The sheer act of playing them helped ground me as my life hit some potholes again and again as 2020 rolled along, but the games themselves paled in comparison to the relationship between myself, the PlayStation 2, and all of the games I played on it. They are all fun, but none of them stick in my mind as much as the system itself. Thus, I thought a bit more about what I played this year, how certain games spoke to me, and why they spoke to me in the ways that they did. I’ve come to some conclusions.
Three games got me through the year that was 2020. A year in which things grew apart, fractured, and we learned to live with new affordances to an old, dying world. The flicker of the candle is dwindling but we are still here. We have each other. That is why two of the games below are communal experiences while the other is solitary. In a year where seeing others grew genuinely dangerous, finding solace in other forms of communication helped get me through the year in ways that I cannot even begin to describe, but being alone is good too. Sometimes it is okay to look inward and reflect. I reflected through skateboarding, both in reality and virtually. Here’s to skateboarding, the friends that keep us going, and finding peace in uncertain tides.
Halo 3: ODST
Playing through Halo 3: ODST with Grace was one of the best cooperative experiences I’ve ever had in a video game, and it is one of my highlights of 2020 both as a game and as a collection of memories that I recall fondly. We played on a harder difficulty and thus had to really communicate to make our way through certain battles, and sometimes we’d fumble comedically through them, fueled by sheer luck and laughter. But it was most fun when the game was quiet—we’d pretty much do close readings of the game in real time and work through what the game was doing thematically, formally, and mechanically together. And few things are as rewarding as doing critical/media theory with a friend. Hopping in a tank and going on a mad dash across a bridge while fending off legions of Covenant is pretty rewarding, too.
I graduated college in May of 2020 with no ceremony or anything. Class was virtual, my diploma was mailed to me, and I know it doesn’t really matter, but it all felt so anticlimactic and not being able to celebrate with friends I’d made along the way of my academic journey broke my heart. In a weird way, our time with Halo 3: ODST made up for that. It was the closest I’ve felt to that feeling of working through things with peers at the university library since January 2020. It meant a lot to me then and it still does today.
Prey
For those that know me well, this is probably an unexpected choice. I rarely spoke publicly or to all of my friends about Prey, and the fact that I finally beat it last year. I’ll probably never write about it more than I do here, but a close friend of mine and I played Prey alongside one another this past summer. We’d set specific benchmarks each week, reach them, and then talk over FaceTime about what we experienced, how we went about things differently, and what the game was doing to/for us. I used to play a lot of single-player games with friends in this format, but in-person. We’d either watch one person play or do the whole “lug two TVs into one room and go full Gamer Mode” and it is something that would happen pretty often; especially with AAA releases. Sadly, AAA games have grown more and more stale over the past generation and, well, COVID hit. So, we looked into the past for games we’d never played, and there sat Prey, just waiting for us. It worked so well for us mostly in part to how malleable the experience of playing Prey is. In our conversations it seemed like we were playing two different games. I was hacking and sneaking my way through the space station while they were shotgun-blasting their way through every room. But we both had super compelling stories, and there really is no wrong way to play that game. At times, it felt like we were together while talking about Prey. Hearing a friend’s voice grow passionate as they explain why the storytelling of Prey works so well made me so happy, even if it was only over the phone. Relationships span time and space and this year has put that to the test. Prey helped my friend and I realize how much the simple act of just playing the game together can get us through the week. We always had that call to look forward to.
Skater XL
Skater XL is the most solitary experience I’ve ever had with a video game. It is also the game that meant the most to me in 2020, and in many ways it helped me get through my toughest days this past year. Empty, silent bits of urban sprawl became a reality when the pandemic hit. It was a free-for-all for street skaters. Skater XL exists within this headspace. Players can skate across multiple urban maps, from schools to city blocks, where it is just them and their skateboard. And Skater XL asks nothing of the player. There are no challenges and objectives because to have them would be placing limits on an artistic expression that is effectively limitless and undefinable. Everybody skates differently, everybody sees a ramp or set of stairs or a rail differently, so why hamstring skateboarding with goals and scores? This simplistic sense of freedom is why I kept returning to Skater XL throughout 2020 and I still do today. I play it everyday, if only for 15 or 30 minutes. 2020 asked so much of me professionally and personally to the point where I still feel burnt out, but Skater XL was just there. I could hit some rails or just do tricks on flat ground, and the game wouldn’t think anything of it or assign me new tasks. It just was. After another shitty day at work, I could just hop into the game and get lost in the sounds of four wheels rolling across concrete and of metal trucks gliding across concrete ledges. To call Skater XL my personal bliss would be an overstatement, but no digital recreation of the wonders of skateboarding has gotten as close to what makes skateboarding meaningful as this game does.
I’ve been skateboarding for over 15 years. It is as much a part of me as anything else is. I fell in love with it all over again in 2020, and Skater XL has been an extension of that. And in a year where it felt like everything was asked of me despite everything and everyone being distanced, Skater XL was just there. It didn’t tell me to do anything specific, it didn’t make me depressed, it didn’t ask me to hop on a Zoom call, or anything like that. It was there and that was enough.