Q: Why does your brain constantly return to Gates to Infinity?
A: Because it’s a game about hope in ways that deeply connect with me. It’s about the fight of hope against doomerism, against nihilism, about having the will to change self-fulfilling prophecies of destruction. It’s about repairing a broken world — not one threatened by natural disaster or scarcity of resources, but something even more insidious: people who have forgotten how to trust and how to care for each other, who live in a dog-eat-dog world of their own creation. It’s moving because we ourselves are threatened by the very same things. Success in the end is not so much about defeating the bad guys — most of them are only perpetuate harm because they themselves are hurting, because they’ve been failed by the world around them. It’s about welcoming the “bad guys” in, about healing through radical acts of kindness and community-building.
Q: Should I play it?
A: God, no. Unless you have nothing better to do with your time and are angelically patient.
Q: You... love a game but wouldn’t recommend playing it?
A: Look. I love Gates for what it tries to be. I love its characters, its themes, its ideas. The game itself is painful. The core gameplay loop is a degradation of its predecessors, the pacing sucks, and the narrative feels a little confused until the final act. You can really tell that it’s rushed, and it’s such a shame, because the potential is all here. But that’s also, ironically, probably why I think about it so much. Media that slightly misses the mark provides so much more to think about. How could this be restructured to actually work well? How could the mechanics and the world be expanded to be more engaging? What is the narrative missing? What subtext can we extract once we start thinking deeper, and how can we naturally expand its themes? You consider alternate possibilities and make your own meaning — it’s media like this, the rare stuff that provides something slightly to the side of what I really, really want, that I find myself latching onto in the most meaningful (...and/or obsessive) ways. The Gates I really love is the one in my head, not the one on the cartridge.
Q: So that’s it?
Yeah, pretty much. For the foreseeable future. It doesn’t feel like the community is there for Gates in the same way it is for Explorers or even any other PMD game. This makes sense given that Explorers is a much, much better game that has been played by way more people, and the continued creative passion that still swirls around it two decades later is really inspiring! That’s something really special. But Gates fans in particular never have and I don’t think ever will be eating good. I’d make more in tribute to the game if I had the time, energy, and skill, but I don’t see myself having all those things on the immediate horizon. I think the more likely outcome is that Gates remains a ghost. Invisible to most, yes. But I know it will certainly haunt much of the creative work I do for myself.
Is that unsatisfying? I mean, play the game for yourself if you really want. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you about it.
