{"id":5518,"date":"2016-06-29T11:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=5518"},"modified":"2016-06-29T23:46:42","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T03:46:42","slug":"the-long-dark-the-last-lonely-days-of-the-quantified-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=5518","title":{"rendered":"The Long Dark: the Last Lonely Days of the Quantified Self"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part two of a four-part series on the future of quantification in history. For the thematic introduction to the series, please click here<\/a>. For part one, click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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“You’ve faded into the Long Dark”…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Thus ends each “survival trial” in the frozen and hostile, yet beautifully alive, adventure space of The Long Dark<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

As always it is a frustrating, and disappointing moment – sometimes bitterly so, considering the personal investment involved in each play-through. It can also come as a relief, when you\u2019ve fallen into a spiral of negative outcomes, with no foreseeable way out. But above all, every ending is thoroughly predictable. Just like in real life: you<\/em> will end. It\u2019s just a matter of time. And with this game, the “last moments of life\u201d clock is really<\/em> in your face.<\/p>\n

\"20160628215420_1\"<\/a>
Frozen Corpse In The Long Dark<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lucky for you, it\u2019s just a game. Game over? Press start<\/em> to begin a new game…<\/p>\n

Sometimes though, after a glorious and protracted multi-day struggle against the elements, the idea of restarting a fresh play-through just seems off<\/em>. You can\u2019t bring yourself to press that start<\/em> button so casually. The video game \u201clife\u201d you lost, oddly enough, meant more to you than you expected. It\u2019s as if the \u201cyou\u201d of the video game has somehow become of part of you<\/em>, the player.<\/p>\n

In other words: you\u2019re feeling the pangs of loss. It\u2019s like that dear pet of yours that just passed away, and you just don\u2019t have the heart to run out and get a new one. Or at least not so quick<\/em>. Mourning needs time, because that anonymous video game character you were rootin\u2019 for somehow got under your skin.<\/p>\n

So you\u2019re sitting there, feeling empty, looking at the (beautifully-crafted) main game menu. Some action is required to sort out through your contradictory feelings. So you go to the journals menu, and quietly look at your in-game journal and stats.<\/p>\n

\"20160601225652_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There you have it. It\u2019s all there in front of you: your days, hours and minutes survived, locations discovered, percentage of word explored, hours awake, hours rested, hours indoors, hours outdoors, total calories expended, average calories per day, distance traveled in kilometers, fires started, wolf close encounters, can openers found\u2026<\/p>\n

The list goes on.<\/p>\n

And yet, all these numbers don\u2019t even begin<\/em> to tell your story. Nor do the point-blank journal entries that summarize where you\u2019ve been, what you seen, and what happened to you.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>
Looking down from the rail bridge…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So you decide to write<\/em> a review of the game on Steam<\/u><\/a>, or in the discussion forum<\/u><\/a>\u2026 and the memories start to come alive again, of your heroic attempt at surviving against all odds: that time you pulled a two-day marathon with very little sleep in the craggy areas of Pleasant Valley, just to stumble upon a moldy wolf carcass, and eat your last poisoned supper\u2026; or that time you miraculously found a little to cove next to a waterfall to save you from a blinding blizzard, only to be mauled to death by a bear at night in your makeshift shelter; or the perilous crossings across the ridge train tracks that left you breathless at the other end, happy to be alive; or surviving two back-to-back bouts of hypothermia just to get to that barren island at the far extremity of Desolation Point; or the many private campfires you were able to start in the cold cocoon of a discovered cave, with rabbits hopping outside, in the quiet snow\u2026<\/p>\n

The Long Dark is brimming with memorable moments such as these: the good, the bad and the ugly. Indeed, what you experience in-game is so vivid, it seems that only writing it down and sharing it with the community could do justice to what you went through.<\/p>\n

Welcome to storytelling in the age of the Quantified Self.<\/p>\n

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\"Shipwreck<\/a>
Shipwreck in the Beautiful, Frozen Data-scape<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Simulations don\u2019t die, they just reboot<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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Now with this mourning rigmarole done with, there\u2019s a stranger question that crops up here: just who<\/em> is that \u201cyou\u201d that’s being invoked in The Long Dark’s (nicely quotable) endgame formula? We\u2019ve already evoked the personal investment of players in the game. To be sure – and as we will see – every design decision that has gone into the game has kept to this player-centric approach. But still, isn\u2019t that moment when your digital body passes and your human soul mourns a little strange? True, The Long Dark players are, as a rule, heavily invested into the digital self that is mediated by the game. And again, the endgame is totally predictable.<\/p>\n

And yet, most are them compelled to come back, like flies to a burning light.<\/p>\n

Why? Given this predictable outcome, what is it about The Long Dark that makes it so replayable? Beyond learning about optimal survival strategies, what\u2019s the real payoff<\/em> for The Long Dark players? And what does the game\u2019s survival premise have to do with it? Or the digital medium that brings it all to life?<\/p>\n

\"20160601230039_1\"<\/a>As I am hoping to demonstrate, the realistic solo survival theme and game mechanics of The Long Dark (TLD)<\/strong> are an encapsulation, in dramatic form, of the contemporary techno-culture trend going under the name of the \u201cQuantified Self<\/u><\/a>\u201d. In this article, I propose to show how the game\u2019s structural components – core mechanics, aesthetics, pacing, feedback systems and player self-management model – mirror the activity of self-tracking practitioners, i.e. people using the latest technological tools to \u201cself-improve\u201d. In my view, the sharply honed survival theme of TLD provides us with an opportunity to make sense of self-tracking behavior, by highlighting how<\/em> users make decisions based on their interpretation of real-time personal metrics. Better yet, I am hoping that this under-the-hood examination of TLD might also help us understand what effects self-tracking practices are having on us, beyond the \u201cbenefits\u201d carrot dangled before us by Quantified Self evangelists.<\/p>\n

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If you are what you eat, what happens when you eat data?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

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So what is this so-called Quantified Self \u201cmovement\u201d, and what does it have to do with a solo winter survival simulator?<\/p>\n

Like any self-respecting technology trend, the Quantified Self (QS)<\/strong> has an online HQ. Unfortunately, as the The Quantified Self\u2019s website\u2019s about page<\/u><\/a> is rather circumspect, we\u2019ll have to turn to good old Wikipedia<\/u><\/a> to have the basics spelled out for us:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Quantified Self is a movement to incorporate technology into data acquisition on aspects of a person’s daily life in terms of inputs (e.g. food consumed, quality of surrounding air), states (e.g. mood, arousal, blood oxygen levels), and performance (mental and physical). Such self-monitoring and self-sensing, which combines wearable sensors (EEG, ECG, video, etc.) and wearable computing, is also known as lifelogging. Other names for using self-tracking data to improve daily functioning are “self-tracking”, “auto-analytics”, “body hacking”, “self-quantifying”, “self-surveillance”, and “Personal Informatics”. In short, quantified self is self-knowledge through self-tracking with technology.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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If QS evangelists are at pains to point out that the practices of self-tracking are historically-rooted – for example health journaling across the ages – one can\u2019t help but notice the coincidental growth of such a movement with the historical appearance of computers, and its even neater intersection with the technological regime of Big Data – barely half a decade old as we speak<\/u><\/a>. As the name suggests, the Quantified Self (QS)<\/strong> movement combines detailed and pervasive technological monitoring of bodily processes with contemporary neoliberal \u201cpractices of the self\u201d<\/u><\/a>. Thus the theories, practices and values promoted by the movement seek to seamlessly blend technology and flesh for the ostensible goals of individual self-improvement, health management, and lifestyle optimization.<\/p>\n

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