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Writer's pictureJohn Qiu

WARNING: You Become What You Read

In We Become What We Behold, Nicky Case uses screens to convey the idea that we become what we behold. For example, in the homepage of the game, before we click "play," we see a series of identical screens, one in another.

Visibly, there are fours screens. Including the player's screen, there are five. However, we know that there are in fact infinite screens in this loop. They are all showing the same thing. Even when the player moves the cursor, the cursors in the screens start to move. This page is a literal and graphical rendition of the central message of this game: we become what we behold. Nowadays, screens are the number one media through which we behold. Screens are everywhere, and of course right in front of the player. This image shows how one screen spreads so quickly across millions of screens and making them all identical. In addition, this image also feels quite creepy because it makes the player feels like he is being monitored 24/7. However, isn't it true thought? In an age of snapchat and nosy medias, what someone is doing at any moment might very well be recorded in a screen and spread to millions of others.

Moreover, the ending scene implies the same message and serves as a warning. In the game, the squares and circles have behold the screen and started killing each other. What about the player then? The player is also in front of a screen and beholding a fictional mass murder. Is the player going become a part of the violence then? The game asks the player to consider this question deeply.

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3 Comments


ayresn
Nov 14, 2019

I think that while there is a lot of merit to the idea that media does inherently impact the cultural consciousness and may heighten some opinions on power structures present in society, I think that it isn't quite enough to say that it is either 1) necessarily a bad thing, or 2) the full picture. For one thing, we don't always only see one side of the story, although there are, of course, people who live in the echo chambers of their choosing. We are not all children in the Albert Bandura bobo doll experiment. While some ideas or attitudes may be reinforced, we can still come to think critically about what we see, especially if we see multiple different…

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Noor Amin
Noor Amin
Nov 14, 2019

I believe your question of how the player is part of the violence in the game is a crucial element of We Become What We Behold’s narrative. In controlling the content on the TV screen through taking photos, the player acts as a witness to the NPCs’ actions. The murder scene presents a pivotal point at which the player understands that they not only witnessed but enabled the violence through the game’s primary mechanic. The question I am grappling with is the function of this shift. You state that “in an age of snapchat and nosy medias, what someone is doing at any moment might very well be recorded in a screen and spread to millions of others.” Does…

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Charlotte Wang
Nov 12, 2019

I am wondering if you felt like this game led you to change your opinions about mass-media. I personally felt that the game was telling me something that is widely studied and that, for the most part, I already knew. Is this game successful in the way that it seeks to change or expose the player to this serious topic, or does it fall short in its attempts to enlighten us on something we already know? If not, I am wondering how the game could change, in terms of visuals or mechanics, in order to make a more insightful and impactful point about the downsides of mass-media.

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