The Future of Gaming...Unfortunately

*****THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!*****

David Cronenberg's movie, starring Jude Law and Jennifer Jason Leigh, is about Leigh's character, video game designer, Allegra Geller, who has created not only Existenz but also, other virtual reality games in which you must physically have a hole in your body, called a Bioport, which is made at the base of one's spine, in order to play her game(s). In the movie, if you don't have a Bioport you are considered "lame" and "out of the loop," because everyone has one and it is the cool thing to do. One night, Allegra is giving an exclusive testing of her new game, Existenz. While she is testing it out, there is an attempt on her life by some who opposes her, her field, and her games. Ted Pikul, played by Jude Law, is a marketing trainee who takes her away towards safety. Her Gamepod, this weird and disgusting living thing get damaged in the process. She needs have a second user to help her fix it but, since Ted does not have a biosport, she must get him one. After he gets a Bioport, they go inside Existenz and, what I initially thought was going to be an amazing experience, turns out to be mundane activities like shopping and working in an assembly line. All the game is everyday activities set in a virtual reality world. The world has become so boring that people rather do things that can be done in real life, in the confines of a virtual one. The weird thing about it is that all of Allegra and Ted's dialogue and actions, as well as everyone else in the game, is already prescripted. They have to go through the motions because that is what their character in the game is chosen to either say or do next. Eventually, we find out that the entire game was fake and that Allegra Geller and Ted Pikul were pretending to be other people in virtual reality at a beta testing session. The movie is a little bit trippy and psychological but, it gets into the topic of what is real or not when at the end of the movie, after Ted and Allegra get out of the game, kill the designer of the game (and his wife) that they were playing all the along in the movie. What they did in the game, they supposedly "did" when they got out of the game, but there is no way to know because if what we thought all along in the movie was real, and it did not turn out to be real, then whose to say the final scene say actually did happen. David Cronenberg is great at making movies that make us, humans, physically a part of something. He did it in The Fly, Videodrome, and Existenz. He is/was definitely ahead of his time in terms of seeing how the future may unfold.

The movie really did scare the bejesus out of me because I know that in our both extremely technologically dependant and craving society, what happened in the movie will eventually happen in our world. When there are people constantly pushing the envelope in terms of what we can do with technology, someone will, and there are signs of it already visible (Project Natal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_txF7iETX0), create a video gaming system that is a part of one's body. I still cannot get that image of the gamepod outlet having to be licked to be inserting into the Bioport -shivers- that is so creepy and so, no pun intended, spine-tingling. Also, The movie is very sexualized in that sometimes the actually hole must be licked as a means of lubrication so that the outlet can go into the inlet. I sincerely hope that I am not around what those ideas finally come to fruition (2012 cannot get here soon enough :P).

As a hardcore game, I love video games, always have...always will, but I draw the line at it physically being a part of me. I love to try out all sorts of gaming experiences, like the Wii (which is really a novelty toy than an actual gaming console, but that is another discussion for another day) but having to have another hole in my body in order to the do the new "hip" thing is crazy. There will be people who will do it just based on the fact that it looks cool and its new but, those people, frankly, do not know how to breath. Thank you, but no thank you. I'll stick with my NES controller :D.