Okay so I went back to replay We Become What we Behold and I just wanted to go ahead make a post to make note of some of my observations within the game. I must say, upon first encounter I truly wasn't ready for the mess that was about to unfold before me, so when it happened... I was left shook, to say the least. Yet this second time around, I was left uncomfortable yes, but not because of what happens within the game itself, but rather by what the game makes me feel about the real world as a whole. I think that the game is incredibly smart in saying so much, yet so little at the same time, given all of its moving parts and "characters." Thus, for this blog post, I wanna talk a little bit about these elements, and why it is that I think that We Become what we Behold is an incredibly enlightening, uncanny, and very real game.
I wanna talk a bit about the characters in the game, them being folx that are either squares and circles, and then what appears to be a couple, featuring a square and a circle. Throughout the game, the player is tasked with taking pictures/capturing moments of chaos and unrest within this one snapshot of this community, and little by little does everything go to shit, and the game end with a massacre where everyone kills everyone. What’s interesting though, is that while chaos does indeed unfold, not only is this chaos preventable, but it’s also provoked by the player given the snapshots that the game is allowed to take (for example, a “crazed” square attacking). I noticed the second time I played it that the couple (specifically the circle), besides protesting for peace, actually calm the “crazed square” down. Yet when you try to capture it for the cameras, the game says “who tunes in to see people “getting along?” It’s so crazy to think that this manufactured violence and chaos is actually reminiscent of the real world, given the power and influence of media. On that note, I also took note of the fact that besides only getting a small snapshot of the “world” of this game, within this one frame there’s only one television, meaning there’s only one source of information.
All in all, this short, 5 minute game left me with a really uncomfortable and uncanny feeling. Perhaps it was the actual contents of the game, or the title We Become What we Behold and something about the idea of just thinking about ideas of perception, influence, and meaning. Yet despite the discomfort, I really appreciate this short game for its impact, and for really making me (and any player really) sit with a few questions about our society today.
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