Metal Gear Solid was a stealth game, which meant it was strategically advantageous to avoid being seen more than it was to engage someone in combat. The player spent a great deal of the game bored—hiding and waiting. Sadie found the relative boredom of Metal Gear Solid comforting. As Sadie made her character crouch and hide behind boxes or walls or doorways, she realized stealth would be a good strategy for her, in this particular moment. She would be here, in this room with Dov, but she would not provoke him or engage him unless she absolutely had to.
Sadie had reached a part in Metal Gear Solid where the player character was spying on a female non-player character exercising in her underwear. The NPC’s name was Meryl Silverburgh, which also struck Sadie as ridiculous.
“Come on,” Sadie said. “Meryl fricking Silverburgh in her underwear.”
“Maybe Kojima’s into Jewesses?”
Sadie wondered if most gamers would be turned on by this. She often had to put herself into a male point of view to even understand a game at all. As Dov was fond of saying to her, “You aren’t just a gamer when you play anymore. You’re a builder of worlds, and if you’re a builder of worlds, your feelings are not as important as what your gamers are feeling. You must imagine them at all times. There is no artist more empathetic than the game designer.” Sadie the gamer found this scene sexist and strange. At the same time, Sadie the world builder accepted that the game was made by one of the most creative minds in gaming. And in those days, girls like Sadie were conditioned to ignore the sexist generally, not just in gaming—it wasn’t cool to point such things out. If you wanted to play with the boys, they couldn’t be afraid of saying things around you. If someone said the sound effect in your game sounded like a queef, it was your job to laugh. But on this evening, Sadie wasn’t in the mood to laugh.
“I don’t want to play a game that’s a collection of some guy’s fetishes,” Sadie said.
“Dude, Sadie, you described ninety-nine percent of all games. But the boobs are a bit much, I’ll give you that. How does she not topple over?” Dov said. “Kojima’s brilliant, though.”
“Yes,” Sadie said, wedging her character into an air vent.
The Thai food arrived. Dov made conversation as if it were a normal night, and not their last supper. She didn’t have much of an appetite. She drank a bit of the wine he poured her—she would never be much of a drinker—and she felt light-headed, distantly nauseous, but not drunk. She felt too light-headed to make any of the clever comments about wine she’d learned.
“You look beautiful,” Dov said. He leaned across the table and he kissed her, and she felt too tired to insist that if he was breaking up with her, the least he could do was let her go without a final fuck. Because she was cool, but she wasn’t sure she was that cool. But it was hard for Sadie to talk without being angry or sad, and she’d come this far without being either of those things.
“Dov,” she said. She wanted to say no. But her mouth didn’t make the words, and in the end, she decided, what was the difference? She had had sex with him many times before. And she had liked having sex with Dov.
He took off her tights and her dress and her underwear, and he ran his hand up and down her body, in an appraising way, like a farmer inspecting land he was about to sell. “I am going to miss you,” he said. “I am going to miss this.” She imagined she was not in her body, but back in the world of Metal Gear Solid. The character you play in Metal Gear Solid is called Solid Snake, whose main antagonist is Liquid Snake, who is constructed from the same genetic material as you. The profundity of this struck Sadie in this moment—yes, what greater enemy does one have than oneself? And wasn’t she to blame for all of this more than Dov? He had said it would be trouble if she came to his apartment, and still she had gone. If someone tells you there will be trouble, believe them.
When the cab arrived, he walked her down to the street.
“Friends?” he said.
“Of course,” Sadie said. She handed him his key, without waiting for him to ask for it.
He hugged her, deposited her in the cab, and closed the door.
As the cab headed down Massachusetts Avenue, she felt hot in her winter coat and like she couldn’t breathe, so she asked the driver if she could roll down the window. From the window, she could see the water tower of the New England Confectionery Company’s factory, which had recently been painted to resemble a roll of Necco wafers, those barely flavored, pastel-colored, vaguely religious-looking chalky disks. As they approached the factory, the air increasingly smelled of sugar, and the scent made Sadie nostalgic for a candy she had never even tasted.
4
The day after Christmas, Sam sent Sadie an email: Hello Stranger, I’ve played your game twice now, and I want to talk to you about it! Let’s get together when you’re back from the holidays. Say Hi to our old friend California for me.—S.A.M. P.S. I’m glad we ran into each other.
She did not immediately reply, the fact of which did not trouble Sam. In those days, a person might not be able to check her email when she was away from school.
By the middle of January, she still hadn’t replied, and he began to worry that his email hadn’t been received. He decided to send another.
While he waited for her response, he played Solution again. At that point, he had played through the game, alone, three times. The first time he played, he didn’t get any of the information, just went for points, and he received the rank of Grand Nazi Collaborator. The second time he played, he took all the information but still solved the levels as quickly as possible. He was given the rank of Facilitator. The last time he played, he received all the information and played the levels as slowly as he could while still leveling up. He received the rank of Conscientious Objector. Sam believed that Conscientious Objector was the best possible rank you could obtain in Solution, though he hadn’t gone into the code to confirm it.
As Sam played, he began to take notes on the game. He thought the game was clever, but he also thought there were small things she might improve. At the same time, there were other small things that had been done so well, he wanted to make sure she knew that he, at one time her best friend, had noticed her labors. He organized the micro feedback into a spreadsheet, with categories like sounds, delays, mechanics, prose, graphics, pacing, HUD, controls, general ludic thoughts. He hadn’t decided if he would give her this file.
The thing he most wanted to talk to her about was the game on a macro level. His biggest note was that the game should have greater complexity. Solution, he felt, was fantastic as an academic exercise. But wouldn’t it be even better if you could open another part of the game if you chose the moral path. After a while, if you used your points for any of the information, the mystery was obvious and the game became repetitive. Wouldn’t it be better if those who played well enough and morally enough could figure out how to reroute the factory’s output? The simulation, Sam felt, was incomplete, and thus, not fully satisfying. The simulation was incomplete because it didn’t have a call to action. The only feeling a player could have at the end of Sadie’s game was nihilism. Sam fully got what she was trying to do, but he also believed that she would have to do more if she were to make games that people loved, not just games that people admired.