Welcome To The Game 2 is one hell of a messed up experience.
Between trying to save a girl’s life, dodging the police, hiding from an assassin named
Lukas and desperately looking for keys hidden on various pages of the deep web, we’re
given very little time to actually think about the situation that’s been presented to us.
I mean...we’re given plenty of time but it’s stressful!
And yet, its the situation our character, Clint Edwards, finds himself in that is really
the most interesting part of the game.
Clint is a reporter investigating the disappearance of a woman, Amelea, who’s livestreaming
a frantic explanation that she’s being hunted by some people in masks.
These people, the Noir, are a radical group of masked dickbags who get really upset when
you walk towards them and disappear if you don’t look at them for 30 seconds.
I don’t understand what Amaela is so scared of them for, but hey, maybe she didn’t figure
out that game mechanic.
Our task is to free her, and we’re told that the only way to do so is to find eight
hashes, eight keys, hidden throughout the deep web, and piece them together to form
a digital tunnel to the shadow web so we can find Amaela’s location and save her.
If you didn’t understand what I just said, it doesn’t really matter, all you really
need to know is the game revolves around finding digital keys that look like this and you have
to put all eight together to find Amaela’s location before she’s killed.
Those hashes are hidden on anything from a furry website to a semen salesman site, to
one where a man is renting out his daughter as a sex slave, and many others.
Each one is more gut wrenching than the last, but this is the task we’ve set out to do.
The stomach churning, disturbing, uncomfortableness the game gives it’s players is more than
just a stylistic choice by the creators.
What we’re looking at here is a philosophical interpretation of something we all struggle
with.
Every website in this game has the potential to be real, to have its mirror image on the
real dark web.
This game may be fantasy, but it’s design is based in realism and that’s what we’re
going to explore today.
So prepare yourself, to look inward at your own darker nature, to come face to face with
a truth we all would rather sweep under the rug.
This is the story of everything wrong with society and humanity.
The story of horrors beyond reason, the story, you never knew.
Welcome To The Game exposes a real dichotomy within people.
When we watch Amaela’s livestream, it isn’t being broadcast to just anyone, it’s being
shown to over a thousand people, all of whom are voting on whether her life should be spared..or
taken.
It’s a fucked up poll, but what’s even more nauseating is how the numbers overwhelmingly
skew towards death.
Now ask yourself this question: If this situation were real, how much would those numbers change?
And that realization brings us to our topic for today: The duality of man.
The idea that within all of us there is a dark side, an evil side, and that this is
the natural state of humanity.
Carl Jung was one of the leading psychologists when it came to duality within humans.
He believed that each of us has a darker side, The Shadow, and to truly be whole with oneself,
you must acknowledge and accept that darker side.
“Every good quality has its bad side, and nothing that is good can come into the world
without directly producing a corresponding evil.
This is a painful fact.”
And honestly, we know this is a part of us.
Whether you have lied during certain parts of your life, cheated, stole, or something
worse, we can all acknowledge to ourselves that we aren’t perfect, that we have that
urge and act in ways that society would deem less than respectable.
We’ve all done something a “good person” wouldn’t do.
And that brings us back to the game.
Because this story is filled with people of...less than redeeming qualities.
Whether we’re talking about the people watching Amaela’s livestream and sending those worse-than-YouTube-comments-sections
messages, or the doll maker who creates living sex dolls, this game is filled with everyone
who does wrong and only you trying to do right...kind of.
Clint is attempting to do the right thing, but going about it illegally.
Even our character is, in a way, showing his duality.
His two sides.
He’s illegally buying things, stealing neighbors wifi, siphoning money, and if you’re unlucky
enough, cooperating in the kidnapping of a woman in your apartment building.
Are those the actions of a good person?
They are the actions of the protagonist of this game.
So I want you to ask yourself why.
Why do we have this urge to do wrong that accompanies and contrasts our urge to do right?
What is the defining factor that tears us in two?
If you ask me, the answer is simple.
It comes down to anonymity versus accountability.
When we are being watched, when people know who we are, we feel a much stronger urge to
be on our best behavior.
We don’t want to ruin our reputation or be outcast from society.
The urge to be liked, the desire to do good is not inherently altruistic, it instead feeds
our own selfish needs.
This isn’t to say that people don’t do things out of the good of their hearts for
others.
But whether we like it or not, part of our psychology is designed to make us want to
do good things because they will also elevate how others perceive us.
Plus an added bonus if it helps our self esteem.
There’s always an underlying, somewhat selfish reason, even if it isn’t a conscious, that
is part of why we made a good choice.
Accountability creates goodness in people.
Because when there’s eyes watching, we do much less wrong.
Now, let’s flip that coin.
Jung’s Shadow thrives in Anonymity.
When we think no one will catch us, when no one is watching, that desire to do wrong grows.
The people who shoplift or rob, they don’t expect to be caught, they expect to get away
with it and hide their identity because it allows them to continue to play society’s
game after breaking it’s rules.
Anonymity is almost necessary for someone to do something wrong, just take a look at
The Game.
Look at all those stomach clenching messages during Amaela’s stream, would those people
say the same thing in a public space?
Ask yourself the same question of YouTube comments.
I can’t count the number of times someone has called us the N word or gay, or something
else hurtful and derogatory through comments.
Would those people dare to do the same thing in a public square?
Of course not!
They would be overrun by judgement and downcast in the eyes of everyone.
The internet has created a space for anonymity to run rampant, and with that comes a surge
in our negative urges.
That equally negative reaction Jung talks about has found its place within the internet.
And we can see just how far that urge will go on the sites we visit throughout the game.
The dollmaker, the rape sites, the killing votes, the flesh trade link, all these things
grew from anonymity.
Yet this entire idea precedes the internet by multiple eras.
In fact, we can find examples of the idea that anonymity breeds negative action going
all the way back to Classical Greece.
A story from Plato’s Republic tells the tale of a magical ring that would make the
wearer invisible.
The ring of Gyges, the one ring...to rule them all!, Was part of a thought experiment
to consider whether the wearer would be moral if he or she did not have to fear being caught
and punished for their wrongdoing.
In the story, the man, Gyges, who finds the ring bangs the queen of Lydia and kills the
King, taking the throne for himself.
The argument is that morality isn’t something inherently within us, it’s part of the social
construct we create in a desire to maintain our reputation of being virtuous and just.
Once that fear of losing our place within society is removed, our morality evaporates
as well.
Of course this is not a fact, it’s part of a Socratic dialogue, a discussion of justice
and morals and what is part of human nature and what isn’t.
How much of this idea is true is hard to judge, but I can safely say that the less likely
it is someone will know I did something wrong, the more likely I am to do engage in wrongdoing.
I’m not about to bang someone’s wife and then kill them, but I might take the last
cookie from the cookie jar if no one is looking.
And that’s the point of the socratic dialogue, and that song about who stole the last cookie.
If there is no punishment, no accountability for your actions, what’s to stop you from
doing it?
That thought brings us back to Welcome To The Game, to Clint Edwards, the man who unbeknownst
to nearly every player, may actually be the happiest and most mentally balanced character
within any game we’ve ever played.
Unlike most of us, Clint embraces his Shadow, the darker aspects of his life.
He actively uses his negative thoughts, his hacking abilities, everything he does within
the game, for a good reason.
He’s allowing his negative parts not only to exist, but using them with the desire to
do good, to save someone else’s life.
In truth, Clint has figured out how to equalize his duality, to use anonymity to his advantage
to feed both his negative and positive desires.
And this is vital to one’s mental health and happiness according to Jung.
Jung wrote that if we can embrace and “romance” the Shadow, we can channel it for productivity
and use it to gain access to creativity and wholeness within ourselves.
However, if we ignore The Shadow, it will become darker and denser, eventually coming
out in destructive ways.
Welcome To The Game 2 shows the entire spectrum of individuals’ Shadows.
Everything from the darkest Shadows like the people who created the websites we’re searching
on, to the balanced good and evil within Clint.
The game stands as another stepping stone in continuing Plato’s socratic dialogue
about morality.
It agrees that anonymity breeds negativity, but Welcome To The Game takes it a step farther,
showing both the polarizing negative within the Noir, Lukas, and the owners of the websites,
and the balanced equilibrium within Clint at the exact same time.
We can’t hope to always be good people.
It’s not in our nature to be altruistic, to only do good deeds, to not make mistakes.
We are naturally flawed, and our ultimate goal shouldn’t be to hide those flaws, but
embrace them.
It’s never going to be societally okay to act negatively, but if you can use that negativity
to create some good, it helps balance your own life in the process.
That’s the truth bubbling beneath Welcome To The Game 2.
The hidden meaning underneath our own protagonist.
The philosophical psychological beast of a lesson lying in wait behind the anonymous
veil of our very own screen.
That’s the story Clint Edwards, The story of Welcome To The Game 2, The story, you never
knew.
Wow!
We haven’t gotten that philosophical since the last Story You Never Knew!
Between Carl Jung and Plato, we had a lot of high rollers in this episode, but if you
want to discuss more philosophy and psychology with us, head on over and talk to us on our
Twitch live streams!
We’re streaming every weekday at 3pm Pacific time which means we’re streaming right now!
Well basically right now...we released the video an hour before the stream.
We’re growing the most amazing and welcoming community we’ve ever seen and we’d love
if you were apart of it.
If you want to become part of the Twitch family or whatever we’re making, drop by and say
hi, it’s been a blast so far and we absolutely love getting to talk to you guys in real time.
Also, if you missed us streaming Welcome To The Game 2, you can find the edited down,
distilled, purest most blue, blue crystal version on our new channel, Streamsicle.
Check it out!
Links in the description, or just look under our Treefriends list on the channel page!
That’s all from me today, so I’ll talk to you guys on here in a few days, or right
now on Twitch!
Yup.
Right now.
Bye!