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very much coming to this party late, and undoubtedly smarter people than i have already eviscerated mr cage and his robot game, but unfortunately i still came to the party and i need to talk about how shit it was.
there's also the part where, very unfortunately, DBH is relevant to what i'm doing with my dissertation, so. here we are.
that's actually the entire reason i played it: i knew enough about DBH to know it was highly derivative, and i thought that would actually be useful for what i'm doing with my research. lol, lmao.
it's not even just the hamfisted civil rights movement/slavery analog he leans so hard into that he manages to wrap right back around into racist territory--even though that's certainly a huge part of it.
i think what bothered me the most while playing is how easily you can gauge the disparity between how smart david cage thinks he is with, well, how fucking stupid he is in actuality.
if you're being gracious, i suppose you could chalk up a lot of how poorly he handles the issues of civil rights and slavery to being an outsider looking at American history from a great distance. some of the worst scenes (the Rosa Parks shit, "we have a dream," the goddamn underground robot railroad) could, i suppose, be viewed through the lens of someone disconnected from the society and culture these events have marked, floating them as pure, sterile, historical reference. which doesn't excuse how badly those scenes are handled, but it is probably a more kind read than what i actually assume: david cage is an idiot.
there was a point when i was playing DBH early on, where i started thinking "has he eschewed subtlety because he thinks his audience is going to be too stupid to follow otherwise, or is it just that he's incapable of it?" and friends: pretty damn sure it's the latter.
the scene that really drives home for me just how much cage doesn't know what the hell he's doing in any respect is the news report about the AI author, VOLTAIRE.
it's fairly early in the game, if i'm remembering correctly, and occurs in the police station. the world's first AI author, we're told, has just completed the novel Do Humans Dream of Mammalian Sheep?.
it's presented as a bit of a joke; a gotcha for fans of robot stories. it's presented as if it's an exceedingly clever rebuttal to Philip K. Dick's novel.
it also pretty clearly shows that mr cage either hasn't read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, or that he didn't understand it if he did.
bc that's the point, david. that's literally the point of that novel.
aside from a pretty clear reference to the phrase "counting sheep," the title of PKD's novel is a reference to Deckard's electric sheep, and by extension to the theme of empathy that the novel is centered around.
( more background on the novel here )
so when cage includes "do humans dream of mammalian sheep?" as a joke specifically meant to be a rebuttal to PKD's novel, it makes it pretty clear that he doesn't actually know what's going on in the novel he's trying to spoof.
i do actually think he's read it, btw. not just because of the animals (and specifically the inclusion of animals in relation to androids), but because of the "Kamski empathy test," which is another clear nod. tho idk i guess he could have just spark notes'd it?
regardless, as with everything else, he fumbles his attempts at saying anything there too: one of my main gripes with the way he presents the game is the complete oversight in trying to present androids as both distinctly unique (if not as an existence 'better than' human) and also "just human but with electronic bits." there's the urge to judge the humanity (acceptability) of androids by humans (the ever present 'approval rating'), as well as the insistence that androids should decide for themselves (this is ignoring the fact that every playable character is an android whose actions are being decided by a human player, which does add a bit of irony).
however what ultimately determines the ending is that approval rating: to get the "good end" you have to force your android characters into a certain set of actions, which, honestly speaking, often DO NOT feel at all natural, especially in the case of Markus and Jericho. the narrative that any form of violent protest is bad, and that in fact the only way to achieve your goals is to let your oppressors murder you without the least form of resistance, seems at best tone deaf.
of course there are going to be constraints because it's a game, but cage does something similar with the way he illustrates the androids' programming:
i actually thought this was pretty cleverly done at first! at the start of the game, when the player encounters an invisible wall (game constraint) it's incorporated diegetically through the visual of the android's programming appearing in orange text. this adds increased weight to the first scene of an android deviating: Kara physically breaking through the (invisible) wall of her programming.
however, this is immediately undermined by the fact that the invisible walls remain: the orange text still appears to constrain each of the android characters. and you could cut cage some slack here and say that this is a limitation of the medium except nah. 1) don't cut the bastard slack on anything and 2) if you want to present something like the wall-breaking/deviation scenes as having any weight, you can't immediately defang them like he does. even if it just comes down to axing the orange text but leaving the invisible walls, or getting more creative with environment design, there needs to be some attempt to retain the weight and meaning you want those scenes to have.
same holds for the approval rating: are you trying to present a message about a people finding their freedom and independence or are you immediately placing limitations on the concept of freedom through the constraints enforced by your own narrative and gameplay?
this is rhetorical; i don't actually think he's capable of presenting a meaningful message about anything.
anyway, just want to end this by coming back to that thought i had initially about DBH being derivative: something that's been interesting for me personally is tracking some of the influences there, or, at least, the genre trends cage is drawing from.
just about every single aspect of DBH has been done better elsewhere. you want an analog for the Civil Rights Movement that isn't offensively hamfisted? try Mahiro Maeda's The Second Renaissance from The Animatrix.
Isaac Asimov, in his introduction to The Complete Robot, talks about the theme of robot-as-pathos, and how often it occurs it his own works: for the robot and soul there's "Robbie," for what's most likely the inspiration for Carl and Markus there's Andrew and Sir in "Bicentennial Man." Dr. Susan Calvin opines that robots are better than man in "Evidence."
there's echoes of Spielberg's A.I. not only in Alice and Kara (David and the nanny bot/Joe) but in the junkyard scene and Markus (the junkyard before the flesh fair).
Markus saving android-kind by smooching North also evokes Alquist determining humanity isn't doomed after all when he observes Primus and Robot Helena's love for one another at the end of Capek's R.U.R.. not to mention the fact that that's basically where the concept of a robot (android) revolution comes from. (compare also the mass unemployment in DBH--that cage does nothing with!!!!!--and the complete lack of human labor in R.U.R., which of course directly leads to humanity's extinction. and for a much more thoughtful and well-written musing on the theme see Park Min-gyu's "Roadkill." )
bonus round: compare Kamski and Ex Machina's Nathan. Nathan's pretty clearly just a stand-in for tech billionaire (Musk/Zuckerberg), and Kamski's obviously the same, but it's interesting that they're both introduced in effectively the same way: through physical exercise. we see Nathan boxing (a continued threat of physical violence that's realized later in the film) and we see Kamski swimming (the Chloe models appearing as props in the foreground).
additionally there's that Bluebeard flavor: all the prior iterations Nathan created before Ava, and Kamski's endless Chloes, which he's just as willing to destroy.
of course all this is making david cage out to be more well read than i actually think he is, but it's sure been something to think about when i've been in the shower. :p
it's also a nice starting point if you'd like to read literally anything better than dbh about robots/androids lmao.
there's also the part where, very unfortunately, DBH is relevant to what i'm doing with my dissertation, so. here we are.
that's actually the entire reason i played it: i knew enough about DBH to know it was highly derivative, and i thought that would actually be useful for what i'm doing with my research. lol, lmao.
it's not even just the hamfisted civil rights movement/slavery analog he leans so hard into that he manages to wrap right back around into racist territory--even though that's certainly a huge part of it.
i think what bothered me the most while playing is how easily you can gauge the disparity between how smart david cage thinks he is with, well, how fucking stupid he is in actuality.
if you're being gracious, i suppose you could chalk up a lot of how poorly he handles the issues of civil rights and slavery to being an outsider looking at American history from a great distance. some of the worst scenes (the Rosa Parks shit, "we have a dream," the goddamn underground robot railroad) could, i suppose, be viewed through the lens of someone disconnected from the society and culture these events have marked, floating them as pure, sterile, historical reference. which doesn't excuse how badly those scenes are handled, but it is probably a more kind read than what i actually assume: david cage is an idiot.
there was a point when i was playing DBH early on, where i started thinking "has he eschewed subtlety because he thinks his audience is going to be too stupid to follow otherwise, or is it just that he's incapable of it?" and friends: pretty damn sure it's the latter.
the scene that really drives home for me just how much cage doesn't know what the hell he's doing in any respect is the news report about the AI author, VOLTAIRE.
it's fairly early in the game, if i'm remembering correctly, and occurs in the police station. the world's first AI author, we're told, has just completed the novel Do Humans Dream of Mammalian Sheep?.
it's presented as a bit of a joke; a gotcha for fans of robot stories. it's presented as if it's an exceedingly clever rebuttal to Philip K. Dick's novel.
it also pretty clearly shows that mr cage either hasn't read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, or that he didn't understand it if he did.
bc that's the point, david. that's literally the point of that novel.
aside from a pretty clear reference to the phrase "counting sheep," the title of PKD's novel is a reference to Deckard's electric sheep, and by extension to the theme of empathy that the novel is centered around.
( more background on the novel here )
so when cage includes "do humans dream of mammalian sheep?" as a joke specifically meant to be a rebuttal to PKD's novel, it makes it pretty clear that he doesn't actually know what's going on in the novel he's trying to spoof.
i do actually think he's read it, btw. not just because of the animals (and specifically the inclusion of animals in relation to androids), but because of the "Kamski empathy test," which is another clear nod. tho idk i guess he could have just spark notes'd it?
regardless, as with everything else, he fumbles his attempts at saying anything there too: one of my main gripes with the way he presents the game is the complete oversight in trying to present androids as both distinctly unique (if not as an existence 'better than' human) and also "just human but with electronic bits." there's the urge to judge the humanity (acceptability) of androids by humans (the ever present 'approval rating'), as well as the insistence that androids should decide for themselves (this is ignoring the fact that every playable character is an android whose actions are being decided by a human player, which does add a bit of irony).
however what ultimately determines the ending is that approval rating: to get the "good end" you have to force your android characters into a certain set of actions, which, honestly speaking, often DO NOT feel at all natural, especially in the case of Markus and Jericho. the narrative that any form of violent protest is bad, and that in fact the only way to achieve your goals is to let your oppressors murder you without the least form of resistance, seems at best tone deaf.
of course there are going to be constraints because it's a game, but cage does something similar with the way he illustrates the androids' programming:
i actually thought this was pretty cleverly done at first! at the start of the game, when the player encounters an invisible wall (game constraint) it's incorporated diegetically through the visual of the android's programming appearing in orange text. this adds increased weight to the first scene of an android deviating: Kara physically breaking through the (invisible) wall of her programming.
however, this is immediately undermined by the fact that the invisible walls remain: the orange text still appears to constrain each of the android characters. and you could cut cage some slack here and say that this is a limitation of the medium except nah. 1) don't cut the bastard slack on anything and 2) if you want to present something like the wall-breaking/deviation scenes as having any weight, you can't immediately defang them like he does. even if it just comes down to axing the orange text but leaving the invisible walls, or getting more creative with environment design, there needs to be some attempt to retain the weight and meaning you want those scenes to have.
same holds for the approval rating: are you trying to present a message about a people finding their freedom and independence or are you immediately placing limitations on the concept of freedom through the constraints enforced by your own narrative and gameplay?
this is rhetorical; i don't actually think he's capable of presenting a meaningful message about anything.
anyway, just want to end this by coming back to that thought i had initially about DBH being derivative: something that's been interesting for me personally is tracking some of the influences there, or, at least, the genre trends cage is drawing from.
just about every single aspect of DBH has been done better elsewhere. you want an analog for the Civil Rights Movement that isn't offensively hamfisted? try Mahiro Maeda's The Second Renaissance from The Animatrix.
Isaac Asimov, in his introduction to The Complete Robot, talks about the theme of robot-as-pathos, and how often it occurs it his own works: for the robot and soul there's "Robbie," for what's most likely the inspiration for Carl and Markus there's Andrew and Sir in "Bicentennial Man." Dr. Susan Calvin opines that robots are better than man in "Evidence."
there's echoes of Spielberg's A.I. not only in Alice and Kara (David and the nanny bot/Joe) but in the junkyard scene and Markus (the junkyard before the flesh fair).
Markus saving android-kind by smooching North also evokes Alquist determining humanity isn't doomed after all when he observes Primus and Robot Helena's love for one another at the end of Capek's R.U.R.. not to mention the fact that that's basically where the concept of a robot (android) revolution comes from. (compare also the mass unemployment in DBH--that cage does nothing with!!!!!--and the complete lack of human labor in R.U.R., which of course directly leads to humanity's extinction. and for a much more thoughtful and well-written musing on the theme see Park Min-gyu's "Roadkill." )
bonus round: compare Kamski and Ex Machina's Nathan. Nathan's pretty clearly just a stand-in for tech billionaire (Musk/Zuckerberg), and Kamski's obviously the same, but it's interesting that they're both introduced in effectively the same way: through physical exercise. we see Nathan boxing (a continued threat of physical violence that's realized later in the film) and we see Kamski swimming (the Chloe models appearing as props in the foreground).
additionally there's that Bluebeard flavor: all the prior iterations Nathan created before Ava, and Kamski's endless Chloes, which he's just as willing to destroy.
of course all this is making david cage out to be more well read than i actually think he is, but it's sure been something to think about when i've been in the shower. :p
it's also a nice starting point if you'd like to read literally anything better than dbh about robots/androids lmao.
