Tertiary Entertainment
Last week, I turned out all the lights, lit a couple candles and got under a blanket before powering up the PlayStation to play the remake of Resident Evil II. 3–4 hours and a few shrill shrieks later, I realized I hadn’t made it very far in the game and I began to wonder just how much more gameplay I could endure before the payoff of my sweet sweet escape. It’s 2020 so I didn’t stew in my thoughts for long, this was a simple-enough question poised for the robust YouTube interweb; I ended the night drifting into the sweet oblivion of blue-screened-sleep with twitch streamers cannonball running their way through all the resident Evils video games. Turns out, the current time to beat for the remake of Resident Evil II is a “sub 47min” speed-run, good luck.
Now, I wish I were better at describing for you the world I stumbled upon that night. I think by now the idea of gamer athletes conjures a pretty specific image: oversized headphones, sponsored caps, office chairs ‘modded’ with racecar seat backings. A lean if not slightly pasty male in his mid 20s sits with good posture as he monologues to a live chat screen, cherrypicking comments to respond to. Leon A Speedrunner didn’t sip an energy drink this time, as he critiqued his early performance through the game’s first milestones, “we’re sub 10:40 at the split let’s fuck*** go!” Later when it become clear Leon would have a chance at the world record time, he respectfully, if not apologetically, asked his streamers to withhold their donations until he completed his run — when donations are made live on Twitch streams they make a loud slot-machine-like PING alerting everyone to their ‘generosity’. This strategy of publicly displaying streamers’ spoils to induce more viewership participation and micro transactions is not dissimilar to the mechanism many adult streaming platforms use when fans gift tokens to performers. In either case a stream of Super Mario Bros. coin sound effects comes rushing in as viewers positively reinforce streamers with monetary incentives — the latest business model to capitalize on entertainment. Not only does this financial power-up keep viewers more engaged but it also affirms entertainers in real time with a hit of dopamine (like laugh tracks must have done for actors in 90s sitcoms). It’s an efficient strategy working from both ends to perpetuate consumers, creators, and overall use of these platforms. But for my part that night, I was participating in a secondary market of entertainment by consuming pre-recorded and reposted streams on YouTube. UhTrance had posted Leon A Speedrunner’s world record run on his channel which is where I now watched, quite literally in horror, as Leon weaved his way through zombies with the deft muscle memory of a true professional, the best in the world.
In this single evening, efficiency had so deeply encroached on my concept of entertainment that a night of enjoying a plot driven puzzler video game turned into me willingly watching recordings of someone else win as effectively as possible. The good news is I was too tired, and Leon too quick, for me to really absorb how he actually solved the game, so if ever I return, I’ll still be able to appreciate bumbling my way through its digital wasteland. The joy of this game, maybe more than most, is the experience of playing through it for the first time. You live out a survival fantasy in a post apocalyptic zombie world. Like a movie, zombies jump-scare you and you scream. The point isn’t really to keep getting better at it. Zombies lurking behind doors won’t scare you the 2nd time you find them there, let alone the 3000th. I grew frustrated at Leon A Speedrunner for skipping all the storymode cut scenes, and commenting on how tightly he was cornering corridors as he hacked his way to the holy grail of a sub 55min play through.
And so we’ve ended up here. In a compromise to sway the balance back toward entertainment, unfettered by efficacious deliberation, I’ve opted to watch all 6 Resident Evil movies in no particular oder. This may not seem to counterbalance the problem that I’ve vaguely specified above, but maybe that’s point. Entertainment need not have goals.
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CORRECTION: The world record game completion for Resident Evil II is 52:07 held by Leon A Speedrun. In an earlier review published for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the author inaccurately specified the world record walkthrough was ““sub 47 mins””. We apologize for this mistake.
