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.

Portal and Inception

Yes, that Inception. Get out your mammoth horns and spinning tops, because we've got to go deeper. Toss in thinking with portals, and we've got today's topic.

As any Internet cynic will tell you, the term "inception" actually has nothing to do with dreams, much less the act of entering one. In fact, the movie dedicates a whole scene to establishing the true definition of the word. Simply put, inception just refers to the point in which something begins. In the case of the film Inception, this thing is an idea. The goal of the movie is to change a person by planting an idea in their head by going into his dream. The inception of this personality change is the point in which he sees this planted idea.

Are you following me so far? If not, that's okay. All you need to know is that in the movie Inception, the characters manipulated a person by planting an idea in his head without him knowing. When this idea came to his attention, he felt like he came to this idea all on his own. As a result, the idea feels like his own and he has no instinct to resist it. He doesn't feel like he's being told what to do. As I watched this movie and heard these concepts explained, I wondered why this felt so familiar. Naturally, my answer ended up being the same old: video games.

In particular, I thought of Valve's mega-popular and memetic Portal. You see, the goal in a typical game is to present challenges to the player and lead them to overcome those challenges. Therefore, the inception of victory will occur while the game is being played. Portal is a great example because the very structure of the game is to undergo this process of challenge, discovery, execution, and victory over and over and over and over again. Really, I could use any game that involves puzzles or strategy. Portal is just easier to talk about and more well-known.

Your first experience with portals may be disorienting, but you'll get over it quickly.

In Portal, you play the role of a human "test subject" who must solve puzzles. The puzzles are solved when you manage to reach an elevator somewhere in a given room. This elevator is often placed out of reach and locked behind some door. You are armed only with  a portal gun and knowledge of how to use physics to your advantage. This portal gun literally shoots portals that you can set into walls, floor, and ceilings. You can only have two portals out at a time, colored orange and blue, and they only lead to each other. Thus, if you want to go somewhere far away, you can just shoot one portal ahead and one nearby. Walk through the nearby portal and you'll be wherever your further portal ended up.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg for Portal's complexity. However, it's enough information to pursue my topic. You can probably already see how Portal can be clever, even devious, with its puzzle designs. In any given puzzle, you already know all the information you need in order to solve it. Say, for instance, you need to place a block on a button in order to keep a door open. However, the block cannot reach the button. Then you may wonder: Since you can pass through portals, can you carry the block through with you? You can! You drop the block on the button and you're free to the elevator.

These moments of epiphany and triumph are common in Portal. You'll find yourself often saying, "Maybe I can... aha!" All it takes is for you to remember one little thing, try that little thing, and you come off with a great and revitalizing victory. Jane McGonigal refers to that feeling as a "fiero moment." "Fiero" is an Italian word loosely translating to "Pride." I suppose there's a cultural wiggle room there that allows us to define fiero also as a realization of one's own potential. The closest we have in the English language is the concept of not knowing one's own strength. But let's combine this with what we already talked about. You only came to this feeling because the game herded you to that victory by handing you everything you needed to succeed.

So, do we feel "played" by the game and its manipulation of our feelings? Or do we consider that our effort and problem-solving are still worth something? It doesn't help that the tests are overseen by a snarky AI who tries to mess with our head the entire way through. Well, it wouldn't be me if I didn't take the rosier approach. You still had to figure out your situation, you still had to make the most of your abilities, and you still had to execute the problem-solving. Sure, it's a video game, and problem-solving in a video game isn't exactly like real life, but that goes both ways. In real life, you might end up not prepared enough to solve a puzzle. On the other hand, a problem in real life might have several solutions, some of which easier and better for all involved. And to be honest, I'd rather feel prepared and wrong than in over my head and wrong. For all we know, "being prepared" can translate to one's ability to improvise. And you will be shocked at how well anyone can improvise.

The sequel adds even more complexity to the mix.

Now I'll turn it over to all of you. What stories do you have of great success and realization of your potential? This applies for in games and off. Successes outside of games, more importantly. If a success in a game can remind you of a success in real life, well, chalk that up as a game learning experience.

I really do hope that this discussion can help you rediscover something awesome about yourself. There needs to be more awesomeness going around the world. And if it does so happen that this post leads to some great revelation, you can thank inception for that. If you can't tell, I want to make the world a better place, one person at a time, starting with fans of games. If and when I accomplish this positive change, the inception of that change will be you reading these posts and being prompted to think on them. I've probably harmed my chances by admitting to it, but it's all for the sake of another point.

"Performing inception" is a real thing. It might not be as direct as in the film, but it happens any time anyone tries to be persuasive. The key is to be discreet, agreeable, and not have the other party feel like they're being told what to do. Think of one standout time that a game performed inception on you. Further, one time you may have performed inception on someone else. It's more common than you think.

I do apologize for the brevity of this particular post. I really did intend on just talking about Portal and Inception. My mind just goes wherever a deeper topic may present itself. In this case, talking about fiero moments. Look on the bright side, you got two posts today.

A discussion within a discussion.