The Digital Realm of Experience
This is a continually updated post with some of my top picks for digital places and experiences of all kinds, with an emphasis on games. Intended as a helpful guide for newcomers and seasoned digital avatars alike. I practically grew up within vast and eerie 3D landscapes, navigating mysterious and arcane systems before google existed, experimenting with digital avatars as projection surfaces for who I wanted to be, but was unable to in the flesh.
As a labour of love, the list in no particular order:
DEVIL DAGGERS & HYPER DEMON
The digital hellscape, in a cool way. Gorgeous visuals, immersive audio, just overall very, very satisfying. When you need a quick fix of brutal, intense, punishing shooter action.
Lo-Fi Let’s Play
A video series by writer and narrative designer Leigh Alexander. The internet has become such a dystopian, unavoidable, commercialized part of everyday life that I cherrish immensely that which can take me back for a moment to how computers and internet felt in the beginning, filled with wonder and potential. Partly for the escapism but mostly to get some fuel to still dream of a better way to be online, a better way to use computers and navigate this current digital hellscape. Also of course check out all her other work, especially the short stories many of which are available to read online.
Deadly Premonition
Ever wondered what the Japanese version of Twin Peaks would be like, if it was a video game? Well, this is exactly that, and it’s so bad it’s brilliant. It is excruciatingly frustrating at times, but it has moments which really capture the magic which is specific to the medium of video games, and just can’t be achieved any other way.
Write with LAIKA / The Writers Room
This is an “AI”/language model that I’m proud to use, made by a team I trust. What I love most about it is that it makes me believe in the computer as a site of wonder again. Like when I was a child and entered arcane words into DOS hoping that a game would magically start up, or when I play text-based adventure games from the 80’s trying to figure out how to communicate with the program in a way that will take me deeper into its depth. This tool can be used as a fantastic way to see one’s text from new angles, trigger insights and ideas, and generally get un-stuck when needed. Also I love to “ask the team” about hidden wisdom and themes in my texts just to see what happens.
The Dark Souls 3 wiki
Dark Souls is one of the most successful video game series of all time, by Japanese studio From Software. But this is not about the game itself, but the wiki. I think it’s rather wondrous that people are so fascinated and invested in the artificial universe of these games that every conceivable and inconceivable detail gets noted and written down in all sincerity. I also find it intriguing that this nit-picking of details which should unravel the illusion of the game, somehow doesn’t for the people contributing. Every bug, every 3D-texture out of place, every little “tearing of the veil” as it were, just adds to the mystery of this shared digital universe. This is of course in part due to From Software’s understanding of how to craft compelling video games, they understand the medium like few others do. But it also demonstrates the almost spiritual experience that is possible when completely immersing oneself into a digital universe, a contained dream space with its own logic and existential mysteries. The eyes of his corpse can be seen slowly blinking if watched through binoculars…
Mercurial Minutes Substack
Karin Valis is a dear friend and the most exciting voice on machine learning, occultism and the weird on the entire world wide web.
Omikron: The Nomad Soul
Omikron is a vast and complex older game featuring voice, music and motion capture by none other than David Bowie! It takes the idea of a digital avatar extremely seriously, revolving its story around you, the player, literally possessing the main character who in a fourth wall breaking moment pleads with you to enter through your screen and help save his reality. I did not get very far into the very difficult and dense game but I’ll always remember having a conversation with the main characters girlfriend and being prompted to consider the ethical implications of possessing the body of someone’s love interest. (I tried to tell her but she didn’t believe me!) It’s a wonderfully odd, sincere and quirky game, an artifact that I recommend at least trying out.
Disco Elysium
This multi-award-winning role-playing-game is perhaps one of the more mainstream titles, but it’s also one of my favourites in recent years. It is clever, beautifully drawn and, in my opinion, extremely funny in a crude way. A dialog heavy game where the player-characters subconscious makes constant appearances (with different voices for different parts) and I’ve never had a better time failing forward. Most importantly, it awards curiosity and whimsy.
Immortality
By watching, rewinding, fast-forwarding and pausing clips of film, while clicking on characters within them to unlock new clips, a story about a mysterious actress slowly starts to unravel through three separate, intermixed films. A cut up game if there ever was one! I have not played it through to the end so I don’t know if it holds up all the way, but I loved the time I spent with it. More so for the form than the story itself but still fascinating, uncanny and addictive like a good mystery should be.
