Becoming too Digital

Having finished most of my school work for the week, I thought it would be fun to finish watching eXistenZ, a film we started in class a couple of weeks ago.

To sum up, and without giving away too much of the plot, the movie is about a multiplayer game that brings its players into a virtual world where the game and reality become fused and often indistinguishable. The game-pod uploads information by directly porting into bodies of the human players. Once the game begins, the player immediately falls into a deep sleep and begins to experience eXistenZ as a video game persona inside the game.

While a player’s game character may have the same facial features, and can recall various things from his or her actual life, the game character may wear entirely different clothing, have a different accent, or even have certain uncontrollable urges and impulses. The game plot often drives a character to do things that the actual player would not do in real life in order to advance the game. The objective of the game is to ask the right questions and make the right moves in order to survive. However, the game is constantly changing as its players are transferred from one scene to another. As the players navigate through the layers of the game, they begin to lose the ability to perceive reality, and they ultimately lose control of themselves.

While virtual games like eXistenZ do not exist today, the concept of losing oneself in a digital world is very much real to our world. Billions of people go online everyday - hiding behind game characters and screen names, a user can become an entirely different person and live a completely different life. In the movie, a gas station owner who owns very little worldly possessions claims that his life was transformed by virtual gaming. While his work day is tedious and he is relatively unimportant in society, he spends his nights in a virtual world where he is respected and his talents are needed.

While digital features like online chat rooms and games are extremely enticing and even addicting, I believe that they should only serve as a means to entertain and tools for communication. If a user completely immerses him or herself into a virtual world, the person risks losing his or her identity - and the ability to function normally in society.