In honor of my Xbox, allow me to speak epicly for a moment.
I celebrate my console, and sing my console.
The gate to many worlds, the projector of many dreams, from the juvenile to the complex, from the violent to the serene, my console is a thing of great power. But his end is nearing.
(Despite the common nautical tradition of referring to beloved inanimate objects as if they were female, my console is a dude.)
My Xbox flirts with death. He has the unmistakable marks of a piece of hardware in its final hours. His CD tray, when commanded to open, half of the time simply shudders and wheezes. The console’s cooling fan roars as though it is a World War I fighter plane. His exterior, once immaculate white, is now discolored and blemished.
Most worrying, most suggestive of doom, is the one quadrant of the infamous red ring that on occasion will engage, an ill-omened crimson star rising in the night sky. The first time this happened I nearly bid farewell to the ancient warrior right there.
Yet ever onward he trudges. A few days later he returned to the world of the functional, but despite his phoenix-like return from the netherworld, I am not deluded. I know that soon my first next-gen console will have expired. And so, as people are wont to do when faced with the end of an era, I look back in appreciation.
In the years before my Xbox 360, I wandered the wastes of cheap laptop gaming. I ran games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 with foolish, futile hope that they would go faster than two frames per second. I delved into outdated titles and relished them even in their antiquity. But I found that there was a joy I was missing – the joy of playing the games of now, the games of here, the games of this time.
Before my Xbox, the last time I had felt that was as a teenager, watching with my family as our new Dreamcast jolted to life, displaying some of the most mind-blowingly vivid images I’d ever seen. These same images now look clunky and garish, but the memory is undimmed. I was constantly ready to be shocked by the universe my console was generating.
So when I received my second-hand Xbox almost a year ago to the day, I knew some bit of what was to come. But even knowing this, the present astounded me.
My 360 is large, it contains multitudes.
We can coax such beauty from this generation of consoles! Even the likes of the first Mass Effect or Gears of War, even BioShock with its carnage blurred by running water everywhere… The uncanny valley, that visceral distaste at seeing facsimiles of humans too close to ourselves but not quite right, is somehow untrod. The images my 360 has shown me have been so many things; ugly is rarely among them.
The breadth of our games is mammoth. Once, genres were steel walls. In platformers you jumped. In RPGs you leveled up. With a few transcendent exceptions, titles stayed within the conventions of their genres. How charming those games still are, but how small as well.
Now, genres are not walls, but curtains of beads. Games can skirt between them at will. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was one of my first ventures into this-gen. One could choose what genre it fit into: FPS, stealth, cover shooter, RPG. I exalted in the pathways that were no longer blocked, the openness of a world that had so much room for seeking and uncovering.
And thus, each game I encountered inspired a distinct feeling. Each game is whatever it wants to be, even when the result doesn’t work. Mirror’s Edge is a first-person adventure title that makes guns less interesting than jumping. Invigorating! Frustrating! Or the original Borderlands, its chimpanzee compulsion and stockpiling ad infinitum? Ingenious! Idiotic! I am awash in the complexity of play, a sandbox where your fun can be past the sand. Past the box itself and out into the grassland that crawls out beyond.
So, my Xbox, I salute you in your last hours. I buy new games and shove them into your decaying disc tray. I ignore your gasps and your failures, I squeeze from you every cutscene I can.
And when you do cease to be, when you lose the power within you and become one more scrapped machine in a world crowded with such, I will remember what you have shown me. You made me yearn again for the future of gaming. You took gaming from behind me and planted it here, fresh and vibrant and an unknowable challenge. You revived the world beyond the screen for me, and I thank you for it.
Urge, and urge, and urge;
Always the urge of the simulated world.
With thanks / apologies to Mr. Walt Whitman.
Filed Under: Editorial Humor Reflections
About the Author:
Aaron Matteson is a stage actor in Brooklyn, a Seattle native, and an alum of Village Voice Media's Joystick Division.
7,869 Responses to “The Ring’s Edge”
Leave a Reply
The Latest:
Originals
Swan SongThis is a tough one to write. For those of you who know me, in person, by my writing, or…
Originals
The Fool and the Villain, Part II(Warning: In Second Life, pixelated tits and dicks abound. Abandon all hope, all ye who enter this article at work.)…
Commentary
The Edge Of The OceanThe problem is to plot the map. My sense of geography is spotted with black holes. There’s the Chinatown and…
Originals
Play EverythingPlay everything. No, I’m serious, play everything. Play that game of hopscotch those kids drew up on the sidewalk with…
Commentary
Genre In QuestionWhy are there so few video game comedies? At least twice in the past year I’ve bumped into conversations trying…
Taxi moto line
128 Rue la Boétie
75008 Paris
+33 6 51 612 712
Taxi moto paris
Hello Dear, are you really visiting this web page regularly,
if so then you will without doubt take fastidious know-how.
I’m commenting to let you be aware of of the amazing discovery my child developed browsing the blog. She came to find a good number of details, including how it is like to have a great coaching character to get a number of people clearly completely grasp a number of advanced issues. You actually did more than her desires. I appreciate you for churning out such beneficial, dependable, edifying and cool guidance on that topic to Emily.
Good blog post. I certainly love this site. Continue the good work!
This is a great tip especially to those new to the blogosphere. Short but very accurate information… Thank you for sharing this one. A must read post!
I want to to thank you for this fantastic read!! I definitely loved every little bit of it. I’ve got you book marked to check out new stuff you post…
Hi, I do think this is an excellent website. I stumbledupon it 😉 I’m going to revisit once again since I bookmarked it. Money and freedom is the greatest way to change, may you be rich and continue to guide others.
Good article. I will be going through a few of these issues as well..
Spot on with this write-up, I honestly believe this website needs a great deal more attention. I’ll probably be returning to read more, thanks for the advice!
I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! I absolutely enjoyed every bit of it. I have got you book marked to look at new stuff you post…
Very nice post. I certainly love this website. Thanks!
Your style is very unique compared to other people I’ve read stuff from. Many thanks for posting when you’ve got the opportunity, Guess I’ll just book mark this page.
This page definitely has all the information I wanted about this subject and didn’t know who to ask.
After looking over a handful of the blog articles on your site, I truly appreciate your way of blogging. I book marked it to my bookmark website list and will be checking back in the near future. Please check out my web site too and let me know what you think.
I was able to find good information from your blog articles.
I love reading through a post that can make men and women think. Also, many thanks for permitting me to comment!