Borderlands and Media Intimacy

Game trailer for mature audiences

I have a friend who is an absolute Borderlands nut. He has internalized all of the lore, all of the characters and settings, and I'm pretty sure he knows every line of dialogue in the second installment. So naturally, during the run of the first Borderlands, he one day gifts me the game over Steam with demands that we play together. It's a big-name game and it has my good friend so riled up to play it, so I gave it a shot.

For the uninitiated, the Borderlands series is of the first-person shooter genre. You assume the role of an adventurer exploring the world of Pandora. The goal of the first game is to find a mythical stash simply called "The Vault," so adventurers of your kind are known as "vault hunters." You have four vault hunters to choose from, each with distinct weapon affinities and abilities that make their play styles very unique. It's a completely different game to start a new file as another vault hunter. As for the world of Pandora itself... well, the only way I can put it is "violently quirky." Imagine wild west with alien creatures, some future technology, and some of the most endearingly shameless dark humor I've seen in a game. Add in roleplaying elements and an impossible amount of weapon varieties, and you have a game formula that can last the avid gamer a very long time.

So I play Borderlands in a group of three. I had fun, but I really wasn't feeling the game. I was the only person playing for the first time, so the other two just tore through knowing exactly where to go and what to do. I meandered behind them by comparison and maybe got a few shots off. I was basically dragged through the game without any chance to catch my breath and try to get a feel for the game. I should have said something, but I was expecting to pick it up along the way. Coming off from these play sessions, I found Borderlands to be merely a solid shooter with a nice animated design and a sense of humor. For some reason, having this lukewarm response to the game didn't sit well with me, so I played some more. My friends were busy at the time, so I started a new character solo.

The original four vault hunters - Roland, Brick, Lilith, and my man Mordecai.

My friends, the difference was night and day. Playing the game at my own pace allowed for me to truly have a personal playing experience. I could slow down and take in the scenery without anybody having to wait on me. I could actually explore around the landscape and go off the beaten path to see what was over there away from the objective. Without my friends acting as a combined shield and battering ram, all the enemies shot at me and I had to fend for myself. I got to use different weapon types and see which ones suited my playing style and my skills. Heck, I even became aware of an entire aspect of the game.

You see, weapons in the original Borderlands came plain or in one of four "elements." Your weapons could simply cause damage, or also light an enemy on fire, destroy shields faster, destroy armored enemies quickly, or simply have their bullets explode. In a group, I was completely unaware of this because everything died so fast. But alone, I was forced to experiment with elemental weapons. Through my own trial and error, I saw which situations called for which types of weapons and I was able to build my own assembly of weapons that I switched through and used.

Furthermore, I got to learn about my character. I simply picked him because I liked his design, but I came to realize he was perfect for my play style. I tend to favor the handgun weapon types in shooters, and it turns out my character, Mordecai, had skills and abilities dedicated solely to this one weapon type. By building Mordecai into his "Gunslinger" abilities, I became my own wrecking ball of quick reflexes and precise shots. I was finally having the immense fun that was expected of me when playing this game. Nothing against my friends and their most well-meaning approach, but I only could have reached this level of intimate familiarity with the game playing it by myself.

A typical weapon in Borderlands. These things are as plentiful as rain and their attributes are almost always completely randomly generated. You will have lots and lots of guns pass through your hands.

And that brings me to the topic of this article, a concept that I have preliminarily dubbed "media intimacy." I would have called this "game intimacy," but I have realized over time that this concept applies to more than just games. In fact, oral tradition may have the honor of being the first media to engage people in media intimacy. The idiom "curling up with a good book" is a great example of media intimacy as well.

So, what is media intimacy exactly? As I define it, media intimacy is the connection between a person as an individual and any sort of media. If you've ever "gotten into" a movie, TV show, book, or even a live performance, you've experienced media intimacy. You're more than just a consumer. You feel like you're part of whatever it is that you're watching, listening to, or playing. A "fan" of something is a person who is intimate with the media that they are a fan of. Even if all of someone's experiences with the media have only been as with a group, it takes just one individual thought or interpretation to spark an interest. And when this person engages in just thinking about the media on their own terms with nobody else to influence it, media intimacy begins.

Thus, when I played Borderlands by myself and engaged with it on my own terms, I became intimate with the game. The gameplay was more significant to me. The characters were more significant to me. The story, the setting, the individual events and lines of dialogue, all significant. I could more appreciate the game as a sum of its parts and not just as another example of its genre.

The most recent game that showed me a good time via media intimacy is Bravely Default. Such a deceptively complex game, but the most rewarding when you put in what little effort is needed to learn its ropes.

When I came back to playing Borderlands in multiplayer with my friends as my custom-built Mordecai, I was far more proactive. I got right into the fray and knew what weapon to use against which targets. I knew what events were happening, so it didn't bother me when we glazed over the cinematic sequences. I knew what went into a good weapon, so I didn't just pick up and drop anything just because it had an impressive design. We finally were all playing the same game. I was truly a vault hunter and I couldn't be happier.

And by all means, if we can be intimate with our media, why can't we be intimate in other areas of our life? How about business intimacy, or professional intimacy? Art intimacy or, hear me out, social intimacy? The common thread here is you engaging with your chosen topic on your own terms. You need to want it for reasons all your own. That's not to say you can't be influenced by the ideas of others, but the way you process those ideas need to be yours and yours alone. Thinking or acting some way just because someone else said so isn't intimacy. Or at least that's how I see it. After all, if you're taking any of my words to heart, you're engaging in media intimacy right now by taking in my words and processing that information.

Case in point, I am currently taking classes to learn programming. And as it stands, I'm hard-pressed to really get into programming when I just think about it in terms of assignments, grades, and lectures. But when I'm by myself and think of programming languages as fun tools with which to build fun programs, I find it much easier to learn and love programming.

Now I'd like to hear from you. Now that you have some idea of what I'm talking about, what are your experiences with media intimacy? What are you a fan of? Has a game, book, movie, TV show, etc. really made an impact on you? I want to hear about it.