This blog post explores our final game project, terminal connection, and the intention behind it. terminal connection is a metaphor for doomscrolling in which the player flies a plane. They must stay close to surfaces to keep the plane’s engine running through diverse and intense landscapes. In creating this game, we remained focused on the concept of hyperreality that we have been exploring in our last few projects. A full playthrough of the game can be found here. Play the game on Steam here. 

General

What do we mean by Hyperreality?

Hyperreality is – the abstracted and self-referential understanding of reality that comes about as a result of human communication and, more relevantly, mass media. It identifies the distance we have created between our subjective realities and some “actual” reality as a result of our construction of reality based on the subjectivity of others rather than what actually might be real. Note: We recognize that the existence of an objective reality is highly debatable, but we find importance in the assumption that objective reality is at the very least a useful construct in this discussion. If a rare flower were to be found in the modern day, a hyperreal construct of the flower would be created through language, videos, images, songs, artworks, and poems of said flower. The average person’s understanding of the flower would almost certainly be based on the hyperreal construct of the flower, and more hyperreal constructs would be created based on the existing hyperreal constructs. This perpetuating web of abstraction (the reframing of ideas, places, objects, and living beings to create symbols and interpretations) extends until the real flower itself is nearly forgotten. Only a minute few would have ever actually seen the real flower.

Hyperreality with Capitalist Incentives

Throughout our process of ideation and development, we have identified that hyperreality itself is a natural part of the progression of human communication. Structurally, it is neither a benevolent or malevolent force, it is simply a feature of how our species communicates.

From there, we have also identified that the fundamental characteristics of hyperreality can be influenced by other societal structures. This led us to the topic of hyperreality driven by capital incentives, termed by us as capitalist-hyperreality. Capitalist-hyperreality is a phenomenon brought about by the exponential growth of hyperreal influences (a product of things like the internet) within a capitalistic structure (the monetization of the internet). 

It is when the layers of abstraction and self-reference that are otherwise unguided and naturally expanding within hyperreality get influenced by the incentive of monetary gain. Within the base structure of hyperreality, abstraction is simply driven by our innate instincts, however within capitalist-hyperreality, they are driven by what can result in the most capital. 

Capital incentives aren’t always malicious. However when capital becomes the primary incentive of the highly self-referential and recursive processes of hyperreality, it can very quickly devolve into malicious practices. One such example of this is how it manifests in social media. Social media is one of the clearer structures of hyperreality as it is filled with self-referential layers of abstraction. When the structure of social media is given monetary incentive, it is no longer here as a pure form of communication, rather it maximizes obtaining our attention. Due to the self-referential nature of hyperreal structures, posts that gain more attention are then shown to more people making creators more preoccupied with obtaining and maintaining attention. As this cycle continues and the structure of social media becomes more and more optimized to garner attention rather than be an effective form of communication, it can lead to quite destructive outcomes for the individual. It is quite dangerous that our most widely-used form of communication is not designed for effective communication, but rather to grip our attention irrespective of what it is actually showing.

terminal connection is an observation of the resting state of capitalist-hyperreality. It diagnoses the consequences of when hyperreal abstraction is driven by monetary incentives. We hope to accentuate the adverse consequences of capital incentives on the otherwise natural processes of abstraction spreading throughout mass media. We’ve attempted to depict some of the relational cycles of oppressors/oppressed present in capital driven social media and provide the player with the first step out of the cycle – the moment you choose to leave.

Doomscrolling

A common phenomenon that has arisen as a result of capital incentives on social media is doomscrolling. Doomscrolling is defined as the excessive and compulsive consumption of news and short-form media over a long period of time. It is often related to increased anxiety, mental burnout, decrease in motivation, volatile emotional changes, and lack of sleep. Needless to say, it is generally a harmful phenomenon. We have chosen doomscrolling as the primary premise of terminal connection as it is a direct outcome and representation of the harmful effects of capitalist-hyperreality.

What is the Game? 

This will be greatly expanded upon in the following sections of this post, but we would like to provide a short description of the game first.

As the game starts, you find yourself in a cozy airplane hanger, seated in a cockpit. As you attempt to start your flight, a glowing cave fades in around you. You go through the standard flight checks, testing your controls, and begin to glitch through overwhelming and disorienting spaces. Terms and conditions fly by you, the love you’ve never had is advertised – demanded – of you, your interests are weaponized in your workplace, and you’re forced into a space of mutual vulnerability. Finally, space seems to collapse onto itself, threatening to overpower you, but you find yourself flying into a never-ending void. Will you end your terminal connection?

Diegesis and the Metaphor

terminal connection is a metaphor for doom scrolling and expects to simulate the emotions brought forth by ever invasive social media. The game itself showcases a journey through a hyperreal dream that is made to mimic the experience of doom scrolling. Traveling through the various levels of the game is meant to represent scrolling through various posts on a social media platform. At the start of the game, the player finds themself sitting in the cockpit of the plane; upon clicking start the plane does not take off but rather is phased into a new location mid-flight. This is made to indicate that the player never really flies the plane until the end. The majority of the game is the character’s hyperreal dream of what flying the plane may be like. It points at how social media is a mimicry of life that attempts to be more than real and in the process ends up being a distorted and over-exaggerated form of reality. This is also represented through the over-stimulation of the subsequent levels. The player’s abrupt progression through the various abrasive and tonally dissonant levels is made to spotlight the disorienting rapid consumption of social media posts. Switching from one post to another often results in abrupt shifts of tone that leave no room to process the intake of information. Similarly, we have decided to give very little warning or downtime when switching levels to incite and identify this feeling.

Why Flight and a Plane?

Core features of doomscrolling include discomfort, distress, and a lack of control. The functions of the plane serve to identify these features of hyperreality. Doomscrolling creates the illusion of control by giving the user the physical capacities to control their pace, but takes away the user’s mental capacity to make such decisions. This results in the feeling that one should have control, but is completely out of touch with it. Similarly, the plane in terminal connection gives the illusion of control by technically allowing players to control their speed, but doing so in a non-intuitive manner. In the game, the plane speeds up when it is close to surfaces and slows down when it is far from surfaces. This technically gives the player the ability to manage their speed, but usually results in the player being uncomfortably fast or uncomfortably slow as well as being uncomfortably close to obstacles or uncomfortably far.

In addition, our decision to choose flight (and specifically flight in the form of a plane) as our framework for movement is the theoretical limitless maneuverability of flight combined with the limited physicality of a plane. Much like the discomfort and illusion of control that social media creates, planes have a similar illusion of control for flight that works nicely for the metaphor. Navigating social media creates the guilt-driven illusion that you theoretically could stop at any time or choose to see any kind of content if looked for. However, in practice it often manifests in a mindless loss of control due to the distress and overstimulation. Similarly, flight theoretically should be the purest and most freeing form of movement, but the constraints of the plane gives the illusion of freedom while constraining the player to a distressing and overstimulating movement controller.

Game Start and Tutorial

Content [0:00-1:23]

The first thing you will see when starting the game is a plane cockpit, parked in a hanger. There are three buttons to select from: a settings gear icon, a button that reads “Begin Flight”, and a button that reads “Exit”. Upon clicking the “Begin Flight” button, the world around you begins to fade away as text that reads, “terminal connection” fades in on your screen, fading out as the world around you is replaced with a bland, if not eerie, grid-textured tunnel. Sunlight peeks through the top of the tunnel as the basic mechanics of the game interrupt play.

First is a screen that teaches you to use WASD to move the plane and the mouse to rotate it. Second, a screen that explains that the plane must be kept close to surfaces in order to retain its speed and that straying too far from surfaces will kill you. This screen progresses to an explanation of the lights in the cockpit: green means you’re close enough to be speeding up and are thus safe; red means you have strayed too far from surfaces and are in danger of dying.

The texture of the bland tunnel changes to resemble a rocky cave as a blue fog takes up most of the viewport. A thin grid-textured strand extends in front of you as the rocky walls of the cave quickly expand to the edge of your view. In order to progress, the player must follow this grid-textured strand until they are glitched into the next level.

Intention

This level was designed to accomplish the following: get the player to understand the basic mechanics of the game in a forgettable space that doesn’t feel out of place. The critical mechanics for this game are WASD + Mouse to steer the plane and the “keep the plane close to surfaces to stay alive; fly too far from a surface and die”.

While we discussed the style in which to tutorialize the game (mainly how diegetic it should be), we ultimately decided to rely on conventions set by other games: freeze the game to give the player an instruction, give them room to try it, repeat until all core instructions are communicated. The shape of the tunnel the tutorial takes place in is designed such that it is impossible to beat without at least accidentally engaging with every mechanic. We tried to balance it such that the level was about as close to flying in a straight line, with any challenge being the bare minimum to force the player to turn the plane on each axis and simply make sure it was close to a surface.

Originally, we had planned to dress the level to resemble a dark but cozy cave to establish a calm and palatable start to the game. This was in theory a minor point in line with the overall designed emotional experience, but we ended up deciding to shift both the tone and intent. Instead of a cozy start, the start should feel a little eerie – not overpoweringly so, but we wanted to to feel at least a little off if the player were to think about it. We then also decided to prioritize the clear communication of the mechanics, above developing this space into a specific point made in the context of doomscrolling as a metaphor.

An observation we made that resulted in all the above decision making: during early playtesting, players generally did not include the tutorial space when recounting what they remembered from gameplay. Early versions of the tutorial were forgettable. We figured this was because players were simply engaged with figuring out the mechanics and preoccupied with not dying, and that the space itself was simply bland in contrast to the rest of the game. In discussing this, we found that there wasn’t really much we wanted to communicate in that space outside of the instructions, thus we decided to lean into the forgetability of the tutorial space while prioritizing clarity of instructions.

As a final point, the tutorial being forgettable does misdirect the entire start of the game – the player never actually leaves the hanger, a point that becomes obfuscated not only because there is an influx of information when starting a game, but also due to the general forgetability of the game’s start. This gross, grid space just fades in and they start flying. In all honesty, this is just something that happened (unclear whether misdirecting the entire opening of the game (which is supposed to be part of the point we’re making) was helpful). While we do fade in the title of the game, “terminal connection” at the start of the tutorial, we did not end up playtesting that part of the sequence or inquire what it evoked in players. It is at least consistent with our metaphor; you start the game by establishing a terminal connection, and that is important to note for the player attempting to decipher the meaning of this game.

Terms of Service

Content [1:23-2:47]

The title screen reads “You are accepting the Terms of Service.” A narrator says, “Side effects of terminal connection may include headaches, nausea, fatigue, racing heart, increased anxiety, signs of depression, addictive behaviors, paranoia, dissociation, loss of data, and loss of self. No parties associated with the production of terminal connection including but not limited to Zach Northrop, Austen van der Byl, David Zheng will be held liable for any of these induced side effects under any conditions. Have fun doomscrolling nerd.”

The player begins flying through a very dark tunnel lit up by an endless scroll of tiny, glowing text that lines the walls. A low rumble pervades the space, and the player can hear the narrator reading out the side effects all around them as they fly, pitched up and down and stretching as they fly past. 

There are shapes covered in the same endless text that block parts of the tunnel, and the player must dodge these obstacles. Every now and then, the player emerges from the tunnel into a deep open chasm filled with the voice of the narrator. They drift across the chasm and must reach the lit entrance to the next section of tunnel. 

Intention

The primary goal of this level was to begin to reveal to the player the sinister nature of the doomscroll they are entering. In contrast with the relatively neutral (if not a little bit ominous) first level, the Terms of Service serves as a clear indication of the fact that terminal connection is not here to make you feel good. The darkness that stretches on into the distance, the low rumble of ambient audio, and the surrounding voices made malevolent by their pitch processing are intended to create feelings of unease and discomfort. 

We believe that the metaphor of the long and inaccessible terms of service serves our intended purpose very well. It is a symbol of one core aspect of social media’s oppressive nature: rejection of the well-being of the user in the name of profit. With the voice lines in the level, we compare this contract that the user “agrees” to with the side effects of prescription medication: the benefit of the product is often entirely outweighed by the issues it can cause, but those are downplayed in the name of selling it to a consumer. These contracts delineate the lines of liability as well, always drawn to abdicate any and all responsibility for the damage the platform can cause. 

The addition of the last piece of the voice line, “Have fun doomscrolling nerd,” (beyond being a funny thing for us to make our voice actor friend say) gives the metaphorical social media platform a bit more concrete of a voice in this level. Whereas the first few sentences are meant to feel cold, uncaring, and disconnected from a real sense of humanity (as social media companies tend to be), we wanted to posture the game as an antagonist to hopefully begin giving the player the sense that they are in a hostile space. 

The overwhelming amount of text in the level is also meant to point out a core imbalance in this contract: companies use excessively long documents full of inaccessible legal information to hide their true intentions with the information they gather and the services they provide. Essentially, the user is not given a fair chance to understand what they are signing up for. We use the experience of speeding past all of this text to encompass the experience of scrolling past a terms of service contract, not fully understanding the intricacies of how a platform will take advantage but being forced through anyway. 

Nostalgia

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The title screen of the level reads “You look lonely… I can fix that.” with voice over of the same words taken from Blade Runner 2049. Alongside the voice line, there is also the background audio of a bustling city and rain falling on the ground.

The audio clip soon fades away and the player is brought into a colorful vaporwave cyberpunk city with neon lights. City pop music quickly fades in as the player flies among tight skyscraper blocks. The city is illuminated by splashes of red, purple, and blue lights. Right off the bat, the player is made to turn sharply downwards to evade a building right in front of them. The buildings are reminiscent of tightly constructed skyscraper blocks in big metropolitan cities, but there is a sense of odd uneasiness from how they are so tightly compacted. Some may also notice that half of the buildings are upside down. Below you are the roofs of buildings, and above you are also the roofs of upside down buildings.

As you follow the contours of the space, you see large neon advertisements emitting near-blinding luminosity and plastered on the side of buildings. The corridor of buildings forces the player to make unnaturally sharp turns. Due to the geometric construction of the space, players will find it difficult to use the smooth turning of the plane to follow the sharp edges of the buildings. It closes in at certain points and opens up to wider areas in others, but all the while all you see around you are buildings and advertisements. The overall space is relatively large compared to the previous level, yet it creates an odd sense of claustrophobia due to the sharp geometric turns and unnatural construction of the otherwise common objects. It’s made to feel like a bright cosmopolitan city, but not quite right.

As the player flies further down the corridor of buildings, the music picks up and they eventually reach an opening. At this point they are presented with a massive open view of two cities — one right side up, and the other upside down. They fly along a translucent road toward a pair of glowing hands containing differently colored galaxies. In the distance is a massive vaporwave sun and the ground and ceiling of the space looks like you are peering into two separate galaxies.

As you fly down the translucent road, the camera distorts to give a wider view as if you are going faster and the colors become more blown out and vibrant. The motion blur is also increased alongside film grain and chromatic aberration on the edge of your view. Floating advertisements and images of various couples and people kissing start to appear around you until you reach the end of the road and your view cuts to black leading to the next level.

Intention

Anemoia, Nostalgia for Something that isn’t Ours

Anemoia is defined as the phenomenon of feeling nostalgia for a time or place that you have never experienced. It captures the sensation of being so convinced of something that has never actually happened to the point where it is emotionally difficult to discern reality from fiction. Anemoia is a term that has gained popularity in recent years due to its increasing relevancy. Social media, mass media, and entertainment in general have formulated their own hyperreal constructs of experiences we all should have or at least want to have. These constructs have been refined to a level of persuasiveness that effectively messes with our perceptions of our own lives. When short form videos pop up on your TikTok feed of images of playgrounds and soccer fields overlayed with sad nostalgic music, it often incites in us a feeling of longing for times of the past that we ourselves may have never experienced but are convinced that we have.

A Convincing and Skewed Argument for Life and Love

On a small scale, anemoia is just a quirk of our minds and media that incites anemoia is just a fun bit of brain scratching entertainment. However, when put into the recursive and min-maxing system of capitalist-hyperreality, it can be turned into something noticeably harmful for individuals. Media that incites anemoia has the powerful ability to distort our perceptions of our own lives and convince us (even if momentarily) of a different personal past. What happens when this force is driven by monetary incentives to capture our attention or convince us of ideals regardless of what effects it may have? The answer is a disorienting mirage of reality that takes effort and work to detangle.

This level specifically points at anemoia regarding the topic of bittersweet romance. There is a specific love story that many of us could probably recite. One of pure naive affection from a time of the past. These ideas for youthful romance are reinforced by the various forms of media telling this exact story and presenting it in a way that convinces viewers of its importance. The way these stories present themselves makes an argument that this is something that everyone should have experienced or at least should want to experience, irrespective of what the individual actually wants. It creates a feeling of anemoia for a lie of a love story that is filled with blissful, bittersweet tones and is lacking in nuance. Such a phenomenon results in disorienting perspectives around companionship based on a disorienting hyperreal illusion that is easily mistaken as reality.

This level attempts to recreate and shine light on this phenomenon. The almost-real layout of the city with nostalgic music and blissful lighting creates the emotional experience of driving through your childhood city streets at night. At the same time it creates a feeling of eeriness and unease through its claustrophobic and unnatural layout of stacked buildings. The space feels too real to be real — there is more reality than there should be. It tries too hard to convince you that it is a nostalgic city to the point where you can feel its facade cracking. The unnatural contours of the space that clash with the natural turning angles of the plane also indicates the plasticity of the space. It tries so hard to be a space that is welcoming and comfortable, yet neglects the needs of the individual navigating it.

The quote from the title screen “You look lonely… I can fix that.” taken from Blade Runner 2049 is meant to point at the manufactured companionship created by the types of stories and media previously discussed in this section. In order to capture our attention it constructs a comforting, strict narrative for romance and convinces us that we need to buy into it, creating a loop of consumption that results in a distorted anemoia. It also develops a cycle of reliance on such stories to fill the void that it itself creates. In the Blade Runner 2049 quote, the one speaking to the player is meant to represent the hyperreal stories created from capital incentives selling us a feeling of anemoia to fill our need for companionship. It is also ironic how this particular quote has been widely posted throughout various social media platforms and taken out of context to the extent that it may incite anemoia for viewers that have never actually seen the movie. We thought it was fitting and interesting to take this particular quote to spotlight the harmful ways that capital-driven hyperreality distorts and utilizes anemoia.

The imagery later in the level of glowing hands reaching out for one another and floating advertisements of couples is meant to point at this commodification of romance. Capitalist-hyperreality utilizes anemoia to convince us of standard storylines of romance and disorients us into believing that these experiences are not only things we should want, but things that we should believe we have already experienced. It loops us into feeling nostalgia for experiences that we have never experienced, distorting our perception of reality and making us reliant on more content to maintain the falsehood that it itself created. This is all done in the pursuit of attention and revenue. Media that incites anemoia is able to capture our attention by presenting a pleasant falsehood as reality, and continue to sell us more content in order to maintain the facade.

Within the leadup to the final section of the level, there is very little iconography signifying the themes of romance. The rest of the level serves to build up a sense of tension that is released in the final reveal of the level. After flying through an unnatural landscape, the player is bombarded with imagery of romance. The abrasiveness of this abrupt reveal is intended to both hint at the themes of the level as well as generate the similar feeling of disorienting overwhelm that tends to follow anemoia in capital driven hyperreality.

Bones and Bows [the doors level]

Content [4:02-5:19]

The title screen reads, “Oh, you’re gonna love this!” as a selection from “dead meat” by death insurance plays with the lyrics of, 

Apple juice piss and roaches in the sink

I look at my knees and it’s dead meat

Bubblegum guts spilling down the drain

Dead in a ditch I found my fate

I’m screaming out at the top of my lungs

Your eyes are then assaulted by overexposed pastelle lights and bright paws. Office supplies and furniture are suspended in space and you are at risk of slamming into them at any moment. More pressingly, enormous metal doors swing open and shut in time with “sludged” by death insurance. All of the objects in the level also pulse in time with the music as they whip by you. The lyrics that play through the level are:

I can feel it hit the nerve

I know I’ve got what I deserve

My dreams are full of endless loops

I’m wide awake but cannot move

I feel it seeping through my veins

Don’t try to salvage what remains

The flies are swirling all around

And I can feel it shutting down

As the level progresses, the colors in the level shift three times. Initially, the screen’s borders only distort a bit and colors become brighter as doors swing faster and objects pulse more intensely. The second time this happens, the pinks deepen and brighten as the screen around you distorts and the doors start opening and closing more aggressively (twice as fast), and an illusion that you are flying faster and speeding up is created. Finally, the distortion flips inward, magnifying the center of your screen, and the doors and objects move and pulse at a quarter of the original speed they were moving before. The lights shine black, and the world takes on a sickly green hue.

This level ends after you survive for one minute. There are some other prominent visual features of the level as well. The space through which you are flying there is a loop (shaped like a heart) which further disorients the player past the initially overwhelming visuals. Buried in the top nook of the heart-loop is a very cute office setup. Fluffy clouds surround the desk and support the pink chair, little paw prints light the space, and an overall cozy atmosphere might be present if the space was not placed behind a metal fence. This space is also quite difficult to see as it typically is visible two or three times in the level (as the player loops) and the player is most likely to be hurtling past it due to the speed required to stay alive in the level – an impression of a metal fence is most likely what the player will be left with. Finally, the lights in the loop spiral and twist along the surface and actually indicate the safest possible path to take through the space. The lights are placed directly above each of the swinging doors, illuminating the safest gap to fly through; they are also bone-shaped. 

Approximately 70% of the space is filled with office supplies and furniture in various configurations. Visible are: desks, clocks, phones, computer screens, keyboards, mice, lamps, paperclips, and other stationary. There are also some other assets like flowers, paws, and clouds throughout the space that are all concentrated at the top of the heart, composing about 30% of the space. Flying into most objects will kill you, although there are some that will clip through the plane.

Intention

Simply put…

If you occupy hyperpop adjacent spaces, the simple explanation of the intention of this level is to elicit the discomfort that comes in the pre-ironic space where hyperpop is not yet stylistic, enjoyable, or self-referential and ironic in a way that evokes pleasure. In other words, it’s the feeling of listening to hyperpop before knowing that there is something to know about the way it sounds (hyperpop tends to sound chaotic, noisy, and even obnoxious, which is often part of a point being made, or is at least an intended aesthetic). The initial tagline for this level was, “harajuku conversion therapy /derogatory”; dressing up something heinous [conversion therapy] in a bright, vibrant, and personally appealing [harajuku fashion] way. This turned into the idea of making a space that has standard, corporate office furniture and supplies but dressing it up with cutesy objects in bright, vibrant, and pastel colors. The office space is meant to invoke a standard, if not menial, 9-5 spreadsheet grind for some company that insists your employment is contingent on your ability to care about your work, whilst they are mostly occupied with how they can most efficiently exploit your labour. Then, the office space gets dressed up with things that are cutesty and might make you feel cozy, comfortable, at home. So now, obviously, you love having your labour exploited! Right guy? Guys?…

The title card is meant to be an ironic statement, “Oh, you’re going to love this [soul crushing job and environment that we’ve presented to you in a way that is personally compelling in order to solicit the maximum potential value out of you for some company you don’t even believe in]!” The audio that plays is meant to evoke the feeling of the information in the square brackets.

Things kinda suck.

Surely more of what I love will make this hell [suffering] bearable [justified]. This sentiment is commonly represented by self-help TikTok gurus, “Control your environment. Make sure you’re surrounded by things that remind you why you’re on that grind. Put lipstick on your pigs and polish your turds.” While there might be some positive externality to being satisfied by the color of the chair in which your labour is harvested, you remain exploited. This level is meant to point at the malice present in this misdirection.

As you progress through the level, things get brighter, louder, and you feel like you’re going faster. In the last ten-ish seconds of the level, there is this release, where things darken, become sickly green, and it sort of feels like you’re moving through sludge. There is no real player agency in this level; you simply have to slug it out until you get so good at it the world around you collapses in on itself and you’re thrust into the next malicious system trying to take advantage of you. 

Here’s how:

Doors are meant to be walked through. Except in this space. They’ll kill you. One of the most important things to realize mechanically as a player in this level is that you must overcome your instinct of going through doors in order to survive. This mirrors part of the broader point made in the game: you must quit to beat the game [go against your natural instinct in order to succeed]. It additionally is meant to imply that systems can be set up to communicate, “This is here to help and guide you”, when instead they are quite explicitly set up to simply make your life harder for the sake of some nebulous, bigger point that you’re supposed to care about for some reason. All of the visual elements present in this level, the leading lights that are bones, the cute desk gated behind the metal fence, the clouds, the paws, the oh-so-ugly office furniture and supplies, the pretty pink flowers that you almost crash in everytime you loop back around to them are supposed to just make you feel a little ill.

The things you love and the things you hate clamour for your attention, and you’re just expected to live through it. It doesn’t matter how you get through. You can go fast, you can go slow, you can technically just fly in circles until the song ends, but your senses will be assaulted, and you will be forced to do your time. You love that don’t you? (no you don’t. that’s the point of the level.)

Gore

Content [5:19-6:32]

The title screen reads “You will see their insides, bloody and raw, whether you want to or not. Do they even want to show you?” As the text appears, the player can hear the sound of flesh ripping accompanied by far away, almost drowned out screams. 

The player begins flying in a very wide, red tunnel. They must follow the contours of a curving shape that resembles a glistening intestine. Upon entering the level, the sounds of the plane’s engine are gone and the player primarily hears the muted flowing of blood around them. They can see (and hear) giant hearts beating in the distance.

After flying for about fifteen seconds, the game transitions with the same glitch effect that is used for the beginning and ends of levels, except the player appears further down the same tunnel instead of in a different level. Now next to the hearts, the beating is much louder and the player can clearly see the veiny details outlining the surface of the massive hearts. Further down the tunnel, the player can barely make out a wall of eyeballs, all looking in different directions.

The game transitions again and the player appears right in front of the wall of eyes, all of them now watching the plane. The game entirely changes perspective with the camera now viewing the outside of the plane from behind. A dissonant sound rings out, accompanied by growing and falling whispers. 

The player turns downwards in the tunnel and the game transitions again to a space with giant, bloody hands reaching out towards the player. The sound of flesh ripping begins to play quietly, and the player continues to fly along the intestine in third person. After only a few seconds this time, the game transitions again, and the sound of the flesh and screams grow louder as the camera moves further away from the plane. After another quick transition, the sounds are loud in the player’s ear and the camera pulls way back as the player flies towards the surface of a brain. The transition plays again, and the level ends. 

Intention

Vulnerability

At its core, this level is about vulnerability. One core experience of doomscrolling for us (and the discomfort that it brings) is the feeling of being forced into the mind of someone else, seeing extreme vulnerability in the form of discussions of relationships, trauma, hopes, dreams, suffering, or other deeply personal topics. The short-form nature of the content can be incredibly jarring: it feels like the user has no opportunity to consent to this extremely one-sided “connection” that is offered, creating that experience of being forced into and pushed through this content. Because of the systems at play on these platforms, this content is algorithmically prioritized due to the engagement created by its sheer viscerality, pushing forward this artificially commodified space of extreme personal exposure. 

The level itself is meant to feel like the physical representation of this experience: moving through the gritty, bloody, torn open insides of another person. The quick level transitions pushing you through the different sections of the level are meant to encapsulate the feeling of a lack of agency that the user has when being fed this type of content against their will. 

An important piece of this idea is the way that the oppressor/oppressed relationship is presented. It’s easy when discussing this part of social media to present a basic idea of one party oppressing another in the creator/viewer relationship, but we hope to present the idea that the two are postured against one another by the fundamentally oppressive force of the social media platform itself. This is what the chapter title attempts to express: you don’t really want to see what you are seeing, and the creator doesn’t really want to show you. Note: A deeper dive into the relationship between oppressors and the oppressed in the context of terminal connection is in the “Process” blog post.

Observation

A critical piece of this experience is the idea of observation, both in terms of watching and being watched. There is the obvious observation that the player engages in by seeing the bloody insides of the person/people they are flying through: there’s that feeling of seeing something that isn’t yours to see. But the game also presents the idea of the player themself being observed in this space through the use of both the eyes on the wall watching and the change in camera perspective. 

In the process of observing and engaging with the vulnerable content being presented, the user’s gaze is being felt by the creator and observed in return. Sometimes this is more explicit through actual back and forth engagement in comments, but oftentimes this is inherent in the content itself. As a perspective is presented (a specific individual’s hyperreality), there is often inherent judgment associated with how the viewer should engage with that perspective. Basically, in the way that ideas are presented in short-form content that must conform to specific qualities in order to gain engagement through the platform’s algorithm, ideas are generally presented as factual and morally objective. As a viewer, it’s common to feel the eyes of the person talking to you on the screen, telling you what you should think and calling you a bad person for thinking something different. 

Social Media and Change

To be clear, we recognize the transformative power that social media holds. One of its primary affordances is its ability to disseminate important information very quickly and provide space for very different people to engage with one another. This can (and has proven to be) extremely effective in exposing various forms of oppression, such as sexual abuse and racism, and creating the groundwork for worldwide movements of social change. We believe deeply in the importance of this function of social media.

What we are specifically attempting to expose and discuss here is how the meta systems at play in current social media platforms distort their usefulness in the name of capital. Content of extreme vulnerability is presented in an entirely decontextualized environment (immediately after cat videos, for example). It is given to the user in ways that don’t prioritize giving them opportunities to choose how they want to engage with the content (this content is fed without reasonable opportunities for the user to give or revoke consent). Lying beneath these issues is the fact that this deeply personal content exists in a system that is primarily created to generate profit. People are incentivized to open up and to see others opening up not necessarily because they believe it is important for themselves or others’ well being, but because they are incentivized to “appease the algorithm” and gain popularity/engagement, creating a fundamentally distorted space. 

Obviously, the ways that social media in real life engages with all of these topics sits in a gray area. This interpretation of the systems at play is one piece of a much larger puzzle of how social media engages with people as individuals as well as broader societal systems. The commodification of this inherent value, and how it distorts the connections that people find on social media, is what we are focused on discussing here. 

go offline

Content [6:32-8:30]

The title screen reads, “go offline” – it is silent. “go offline” by death insurance plays through this level. (initial respawn point) The player finds themselves flying along a semi-translucent tube, surrounded by the void of space; the camera starts far away from the plane as it was in the gore level. After following the tube for a bit, the player glitches forward, and the camera gets closer to the exterior of the plane. The player flies along the curvature of the tube for a bit more, and again glitches forward – the camera gets closer again. This time, in the distance, hands can be seen lining the tube, with a spherical shape on their fingertips. The hands begin to move in sync with the music, closing down on the tube. The player glitches forward again. 

(new respawn point) You are now inside the cockpit again, and a hand almost slams down onto the plane. The void around you now seems to be ablaze as dozens of hands line the tube now, slamming into it and lifting up again in time with the music. You can now make out that the spheres on the fingertips resemble eyes, but they are distorted and grainy. You must make your way through the gauntlet of hands until you are again teleported forwards.

You are greeted by a purple tinted void as clouds begin to grow in the distance. Bright pink paws crash down onto the tube as the ring of clouds continues to grow. Should you fly too slowly and recklessly, the clouds will grow to the point where they obstruct your path. There are four rings of clouds, and you must pass three of them, while avoiding the moving paws, before the clouds obstruct your view. The paws crash down in sync with the music. Right before you slam into the already grown fourth wall of clouds, you are teleported forwards.

Many rings of buildings surround the tube. In some disorganized sequence, they fall onto the tube, lift up, only to fall again. The void has returned to an amber blaze, muted this time. Familiar, bright, neon arrows point along the tube and you see many of these rings of buildings line the tube. If you eventually manage to weave your way through the collapsing mess, you will be teleported one final time…

(new respawn point) Into a truly empty, infinite void. The tube you’ve been following extends past the horizon as you are effectively trapped, flying in a straight line forever. The exit button still glows red on your plane’s dashboard.

Intention

So you want to feel like you beat the game. This level is for that. If all the previous levels have not satisfied your desire to prove to yourself, your friends, to us, or whoever you’re imagining that you’re good at this game and can beat it, well, give it a shot. This is supposed to be the hardest dexterity challenge in the entire game. There are plenty of reasons to have quit and be done with things at this point, but you have made it to the point of hyper-saturation.

The design of this space is meant to fulfill two criteria: be a satisfying gameplay challenge that forces the player to be really good at playing the game; indicate to the player that there’s nothing more, that they’re done, and it’s time to leave. Unlike most games however, we don’t tell the player they’re done as the point here is to get them to make the decision to leave. More on that later.

The visual design here is meant to be an amalgamation of everything that has previously happened. In relation to the metaphor of doomscrolling, your brain is so saturated with all the content you’ve been consuming that you can’t even really tell which objects are supposed to represent what ideas. It’s just noise at this point.

To address the noise as well, “go offline” by death insurance is playing. The excerpt of this track is about the turmoil of, “I should go outside and be a real person because I love that, but I also hate that, and I want to be inside and rot and be on the internet because I love that, but I also in fact hate that, and everything around me is telling me that I should be doing one over the other because that would be better for me.” Here are the lyrics that are present:

[Verse 3]

I’m just lazy

I’m just sick

Nothing else will make it stick

I’m walking aimless down the street

Don’t look at me I feel so weak

My stomach hurts with every step

I wanna smoke

I wanna gag

Do you know what it’s like

To feel like this and melt inside?

Maybe I should go offline

Maybe I should go offline

Maybe I should go offline

[Verse 4]

I-I just wanna go offline

I just wanna go outside

I hate it there fuck the sky

I just wanna feel alive

Logging off the internet

I go back in

I go online

50 friends I’ll never see

I hate it here

Don’t talk to me

I just wanna go online

I just wanna go outside

I hate it there

Fuck the sky

I just wanna feel alive

Logging off the internet

I go back out

I go online

50 friends I’ll never see

I hate it here

Don’t talk to me

I just wanna go offline

I don’t wanna go outside

I hate it there

Fuck the sky

I just wanna feel alive

Do you know what it’s like

To feel like this and melt inside

Maybe I should go offline

Maybe I should go offline

An important thing to note as well is that this final dexterity challenge ends, albeit not exactly in the traditional manner. In this level, you reach a point at which there is no more challenge; instead, there is a straight tube that infinitely stretches into the void. If you die, you just respawn at the start of the endless void (you can unfortunately turn around and sort of fly backwards through some of the gameplay challenges which is a bug we missed), but the point is that the dexterity challenge does not continue forever. The point here isn’t necessarily to be a rage game that just makes you give up at some point because it’s basically an infinite runner. The point is you have reached the moment where you are saturated; no additional value can be extracted from this experience; even if there was more gameplay, you’re done now, and the game is done with you. Despite this reality, it is hard to stop doomscrolling because your apps don’t quit themselves; the game does not quit itself. You need to come to the realization that you’re done, that you need to take a step back and turn it off, that you’ve had enough.

Ending

Content [8:30-9:56]

From the pause menu, where the perspective returns to the plane just sitting in the hangar, if the player clicks the “Exit” button at any point during gameplay, the game’s ending will trigger. This will trigger anytime the player quits after pausing the game, but not if it is from the beginning screen of the game (because the player hasn’t yet entered the “terminal connection”).

Upon clicking the button, the application does not quit. Instead, the player hears the sound of the plane’s engine starting, the hangar door opens, and the plane flies out of the hangar. Text appears that says “You have broken the terminal connection.” As the plane flies out over a sunny ocean, an upbeat song (“Playing Dead” by Rose Avenue) begins to play and the credits roll. The player can quit the application from this cutscene by pressing Escape or the game will quit on its own after the credits are finished rolling. 

Intention

The Decision to Leave

After a great deal of deliberation (and I mean a great deal), we settled on this ending because of how it engages the player’s own agency and decision making in the process of escaping the game. The game itself, as a representation of a hyperreal social media platform, intends to trap and oppress the player. Over the course of the experience, the player is pushed around, yelled at, and destroyed over and over again. Even reaching the end of the content that we created leaves the player in an endless, empty void. The game will not help them out at any point: it will not gift the player a chance to feel content with the end of their experience. We do not give a sense of easy catharsis that the player receives by simply completing each of the challenges. We do offer this closure in the form of the ending cutscene, but the player must choose to leave themselves to access it. 

In this decision lies the thread that we hope to leave the players with, one of the core pieces of “meaning” that we are attempting to impart. The structure of the game is built to model the specific form of oppression that capitalist hyperreality (specifically in the form of social media) presents, but this ending is meant to express the idea that escaping this oppression requires the oppressed to realize their position (in some form) and make a choice to break free. 

With that being said, there are many different ways that the player can find this experience of breaking free. In order to be true to the metaphor, the player can leave at any point, and this is a valid way of breaking the terminal connection. Getting frustrated and rage quitting in the second section of the game constitutes a form of breaking free: the game is made to be grating and difficult, and this can push some players out early in the same way that social media grates against certain users immediately. Some players can get sucked in by a need to “finish” the game and reach the end of the game’s content, finding nothing but an empty void. These players will see the endless nature of social media’s grasp, and in an experience that ideally models the moment of realizing that there is nothing else on this social media platform of value, the player will choose to leave. In truth, it really doesn’t matter how the player reaches the conclusion to quit the game; the point of the ending is that they must choose to quit themselves. 

We decided that even though the hope was for the player to have this experience of choosing to leave the game on their own, we had to find subtle ways to hint at the fact that quitting is a valid action within the metaphor of the game. The quit button is rarely seen by players as a diegetic part of a game’s fiction, an issue that we consistently ran into with testers. To try to address this (at least a little bit), we decided to keep the quit button lit up in the cockpit during gameplay, while the settings and continue buttons fade away. This represents a piece of the experience of doomscrolling that we hope would give the player the insight they need to find the ending: that feeling of always knowing that you can leave. The guilt of doomscrolling (in our experience at least) emerges from the fact that you are meant to feel like you are always in control, like you should be able to stop and get up and do something else whenever you want. We keep the button on the screen to hopefully feel like that nagging feeling, that back-of-the-mind sense that the player can make that choice whenever they want to. 

The Plane in the Diegesis

Consistent with the core metaphor of the plane throughout the game, this ending is meant to put forth the idea that the plane never really left the hangar. Only now is the real plane’s engine actually turning on, only now is the player actually seeing a representation of “real life”. The experience of playing the game, of doomscrolling, is an experience of life from afar, an experience of simulated life. But the entire time, the player has just been sitting in that hangar, going nowhere, doing nothing.

There is inherent tension in the fact that this cutscene exists. On the one hand, the game itself is representing a social media platform with the player essentially role playing as themself experiencing a doomscroll. The fact that we are representing a form of “reality” (the outside of the hangar) is inconsistent with the fact that we are presenting the entire game as a form of capitalist hyperreality. However, in our interpretation, we believe this tension (and the practical contrast in the cutscene itself) points the player toward the truths of their experience, toward the fact that their reality is their own and anything that we present as “reality” is essentially irrelevant to them.

Though the cutscene itself contains nothing but positive imagery (the bright ocean, the cheery music, the soft sound of the waves, etc.), we found that it feels somewhat gross and fake in contrast to the hellish experience they just went through. The cutscene starts quickly without a lot of time for the player to mentally transition between these spaces; it feels like leaving the house after being on your phone for six hours and getting hit by the harsh sun for the first time. In our experience, that feels weird and harsh. This discomfort, again, intends to lead the player toward an engagement with their own, personal experience of the game, of doomscrolling, and of life; essentially, an engagement with their own subjective reality. 

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We would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on the game or the post in the discussion below! And for a deeper dive into the process of creating terminal connection, take a look at our Process post. Thank you!