When I was younger, I used to be extremely into Urban Dead, a text based MMO set during a localized zombie epidemic. Years later, the covid pandemic brought me back to the game’s undead infested streets. Fear makes you crave familiarity, and I wanted to return to a place from my childhood where the pandemic and quarantine were all just normal.
Read MoreThe horror of Dot Hack (and more immediately, my time with Final Fantasy XIV) is the realization that the online game, the company, and the state are working exactly as they are meant to when at their most frightening. If you can’t represent something about yourself through the offered tools you have to compromise through whatever means of communicating the software accepts. You hack the game’s logic on its terms while upholding the system that does not acknowledge you.
Read More