Limits and ladders
The first time I tried to play The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) was in the spring of 2019, following a ten-year hiatus from video games. I didn’t make it very far.
In the opening chapter, the game introduces several tutorial-like tasks. I learned how to pick up objects, move my player from one room to the next, and—most importantly—how to shoot and run. I entered a building and encountered my first infected person, and after bumbling around with the controls, I managed to eliminate them. I moved through every room, peering through cracks in the doors and windows. I could see that outside there was road, I just didn’t know how to get there. The building was adjacent to others, forming a grassy enclosure full of detritus. There I found a ladder, but the only place it reached was the building I had just exited.
I was moving in circles. My son had his head in his hands, begging me to give him the controller. I knew that he knew what to do because for months I had watched him play Fortnite with strangers, screaming ‘Revive me!’ I decided that this overgrown courtyard was as far as I could go and put my controller down. I had been a gamer once—now I felt old.
*
On Friday, March 20, 2020, my son’s school announced that it was closing “until further notice.” That morning, we took our usual route along the northeastern curve of our street, and through the short passageway that exits toward the school. Sometimes the bollards blocking cars from using this path lie broken on the ground, but not that day. We probably sprinted part of the way. We were always racing to get to the school gate. We lived next to the school and always thought that we had time to spare. And then, suddenly, there was no more school run.
*
We have been in lockdown mode for months. We have a pandemic routine: wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast. Print homework pdfs. Lunch. More work. Eat dinner, watch TV. It feels like doom and it feels cozy. We go out once a day for our brief government-approved outdoor exercise. We do this as a family, at night, when the streets are empty. Sometimes a cyclist whizzes by, sometimes a speeding car. I miss the adrenaline rush of almost being late to school. We get home and it’s time for bed. For everyone else, but not for me.
The pandemic has turned me into a gamer. I don’t remember now the exact moment, but not long into the first lockdown, I decided to give The Last of Us another try and this time figured out where to place the ladder. Detailed YouTube videos helped me out of my first serious confrontations with the infected, and many hours later, when the closing credits rolled, I started crying. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go back to the old way of doing things. The colons and coinages of peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations where I said things like “in what follows, I will argue that”?—these forms didn’t make sense anymore. I started writing poems again and played more games. I sketched out an idea for a game and then another. I should have been enjoying the fruits of my professional “expertise,” instead, I read game design books, and wondered if it was too late to learn how to code.
The answers would come later. On this night, in the middle of the pandemic, I am playing as a parent navigating a global crisis without a blueprint. “You keep finding something to fight for,” Joel says, stroking his broken watch. What am I fighting for? To keep my family safe. To climb the ladder. Time and breath.
I want to stay alive. I pick up my controller and head to Pittsburgh.