Had one of those wacky constant-game-restoring experiences in Mass Effect this evening, which left my head whirling with the strangeness of these game universes we play in as masters of Time and Space.

See, all kinds of things went wrong while I playing a particular sequence in the game. For one thing, I died several times. One time I died, the game restored back to a much earlier point because Mass Effect’s checkpoint system doesn’t seem too brilliant (to me). So I replayed back to the same battle (saving before hand), died several more times and restored to the start of the battle. Won the battle. Realised the earlier restoring of the game had put me back before I’d done another of the important objectives, so did that again. Died and ended up restored to part way through the other objective. Did that, did the other other objective again (after saving), died, did it again, finished it, and walked dizzily back to my ship.

In the normal smoothness of game time (especially when you’re not playing on a terribly high difficulty level) you don’t die much, so you don’t tend to restore. Time is linear, the world seems fairly orderly. However, once you start engaging with the saving and the restoring, time stops being linear. You live through moments that are revoked and replayed. You effectively open up parallel universes. Universes in which you died behind that crate rather than next to that barrel. Universes in which you used the sniper rifle instead of the pistol.

And because the time mixing became so out of control this particular evening, I began making arbitrary ethical decisions too. By the time I had entered my fifth parallel universe, I decided to reverse the decision I’d made about the genocide of an alien race, drowning their queen and their hopes in an acid bath rather than setting her free. In another universe I stopped to see what would happen when the area I was standing in was destroyed by the computer I’d instructed to do so. I died and came back again. It reminded me a little of Donnie Darko or Primer. It also made me feel like I was playing Mass Effect as filtered through DJ Hero. Time skipped, flipper, reversed on itself, hiccuped, speed up, and completely changed tracks.

When I emerged on the other side my Commander Shepard had been many different people, but she didn’t know it.

I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect of late. I picked it up again on Monday after having only played the first hour so previously. This time I restarted with a female (Jess) Shepard, based on reading about Tom Bissell’s experience in Extra Lives. It’s really made a difference and for various other reasons I’m finding the game weirdly engaging and moreish. So I ended up playing about 10+ hours in two days. A lot for me.

Anyway, part of what I’ve found myself thinking while playing is that age old “ha ha” about representations of people in media, which is “when do they go to the bathroom?” You know, that old chestnut. Other than the very occasional scene which emphasizes it (Travolta in Pulp Fiction, say), it just doesn’t happen. It’s implied. Maybe they do it when they’re not on screen for a scene, maybe they do it between shows, maybe they do it in an ad break, like us.

But that doesn’t parse quite as well with a video game, where time is most frequently represented as continuous. So when does Jess Shepard go to the bathroom? When does Gordon Freeman? I mean, they need to go to the bathroom. They’re human, it’s an important characteristic. Humans go to the bathroom. So Gordon and Jess go the bathroom. Got it?

So, obviously, they just go in their suits. Presumably their suits, along with the armour-plating and flashlights, have special waste disposal (or recycling) facilities. Recycling, perhaps, because they don’t obviously eat, either. They probably subsist on health packs and medigel. Not tasty, but it keeps you going.

This kind of silly question gets at larger issues I sometimes think about as I play games. What does it take for something to be “real” in the world of the game. Is the moon in Grand Theft Auto real? You can’t go there – you literally can’t, it’s not a space that the game represents beyond its appearance in the sky. On the other hand, there’s the moon up in the sky, and you’re down on Earth and not expecting to go to the moon – it’s not part of your experience in the world, suggesting that the moon is real. Much as Jess Shepard and Gordon Freeman must piss in their suits, the moon must be real.

The only other option I can think of is to imagine these games as sets populated by actors, some of whom we control. When we turn off the console, Gordon Freeman tears open his fly, Jess Shepard runs to the catering table, and the moon falls off the nail it’s hanging on and has to be replaced.

Frankly, I like both options, so I’m happy.

I haven’t written a post about the stimulusresponse side of life for a little while, and it occurs to me that I’ve been doing a bunch of these All-Caps Comics and might try and say something about them. Also, while I’ve been gathering some more thoughts of Modern Warfare 2, I haven’t jumbled them into any order, so.

So, I’ve been drawing a series of comics called “All Caps Comics”. They came about because one day, while writing my (theoretically) daily poetry, I decided to write it with the caps lock on just for the hell of it. I forget why exactly, but the effect of writing that way was to drain emotion out in a really strange way. Everything became a kind of direct broadcast from my brain, generally without much nuance.

And it’s a voice I liked quite a lot, so I pursued it. And, poetry being poetry and poetry being mysterious, the poems came out as odd conversations between two invisible protagonists. They talked about all kinds of thing, usually ending up in some kind on blunt non sequitur or inappropriate statement.

At the same time, I was getting bored of the things in my special bin (folder on my desktop) of ideas and sketches. Ideas have their time, and then they rot. That’s one of those things on the Cult of Done manifesto which, though I don’t agree with all of it, has some good general points. So anyway, I turned to these all caps poems as a way of generating content for new comics, since I’ve become obsessed with the idea of producing comics (or other things) as often as I find humanly possible. Preferably at least every two days, say.

And hence, the All-Caps Comics I’ve been doing, in which I take one of the poems and then try to make it into a little comic of people talking to each other. It’s been a bit of an adventure and the entire time I’ve been searching for some reasonable style for representing the strange flatness of the poems, while keeping it interesting to look at (as in, for there to be some kind of point in making it a comic at all).

I kind of suspect that these comics too closely refer to my own stupid inner thoughts and impulses, and thus come across as more or less incomprehensible to other. Well, that’s pretty much life. My feeling is basically that if I think too much about what might be rad for other people, I’ll be screwed and not draw anything at all.

Better the devil inside than the devil in the audience.