PLEASE READ A Mind Forever Voyaging

6 4月 2023

when i encountered this passage for the first time, i was awestruck. of all my 29-odd years of playing video games, this was the first time i've ever read a scene where you witness the murder of someone like me.

and all you can do is record and be an eyewitness to this violence

A Mind Forever Voyaging written by Steve Meretzky, developed by infocom, and published on 1985 is not a game i expected. at first glance, it looked like a science fiction work. i've seen it touted as an anti-reagan work, which did pique my interest. but i only decided to read it after reading IF50's article on Photopia touting how it was one of the first titles to do away with puzzles and explored interactive fiction storytelling for its own sake. i figured i should give it a shot at last and see why this topped the IF lists forever.

but like with every infocom title, you gotta check out the feelies. in this case, there is an important short story that serves as the prologue and let's just say it's a really dank story that sets the fucked up tone super quickly.

and once you get into the game and start walking around in this simulated city years after the plans instituted by the fictive version of reagan are implemented, you are assigned to record the everyday happenings of the work. i took the work with care. i had fun exploring the city and figuring out fulfilling the goals while reading as much flavor text as i could.

but once i was done with the assignment and my creator was like, "lol i'm so swamped, do whatever in the meanwhile xD", i fucked around and watched the news. and then, i dived into the simulation and found myself exploring the world 20 years later, then 30 years later, and so on...

and in this futuristic depiction of the world, you see the united states go to hell hard. it's a libertarian paradise for the rich, a racial capitalism for the poor. i was horrified as i watched a woman get beaten up by cops, christian fundamentalists take over the town and get ready for lynching, and everything fell into disrepair. these events were surreal to experience because they seem so similar to what the fuck's happening in today's usa.

as aaron reed in the if50 article on this game mentions:

A common critique of the game has been that its political leanings are too obvious and overexaggerated: it has a “distinct lack of nuance,” a modern reviewer noted. Its projections of the Plan have been called naive caricatures of conservative policy, taken to extremes too ridiculous to take seriously. And yet in 2021, four decades after Reagan, many of the details of future Rockvil that were once meant to be warnings have already come to pass, and go unnoticed by modern players. The death of local newspapers; cities with contaminated drinking water from under-regulated utilities; a deliberately hamstrung postal service; politicians who reject facts as fake and declare the press the enemy; overly aggressive airport security measures; extremists occupying government buildings; routine mass shootings; a constant backdrop of police brutality—the list of parallels to today’s world, many of which were once science fiction, is profoundly disturbing to compile.

this is the nightmare world that some guy in 1985 fearing about reagan's rise to power predicted. how the fuck is this work so prescient? i can only wander around Pathologic-styled as i see the rich gets richer and the poor gets deader.

what really helped with my connection with the work is the protagonist who's just in this unfortunate incident. the guy just woke up and realized he was some AI. but he still had feelings and he had a family to tend to. i always made sure to visit his family in every instance and it was heartbreaking to see this family dissolve harder and harder due to white supremacy.

so when i reached the ending, i got hit by the feels. i didn't expect the tone of the ending and it felt ... apt for what we all want out of this experience.

i would write more and turn it into a proper post, but suffice to say, this is the one text adventure game i wish everyone played. it's the one that will stick with me because of how forward-looking the game was and i appreciate its brutal honesty about how fucked reagan's legacy would be.

this is likely one of the best narrative games of all time if you ask me.