It's practically a cliche at this point, right? Every millenial mom at some point or another has had their kid beg them to buy in-game currency for whatever's hot at the moment. And every mom's been on the receiving end of the iPad kid tantrum they throw when they don't get it. It's like a rite of passage.
But things have gotten dire here. My son has gotten a bit more... "creative" in his pursuit of money. He's stolen my credit cards and tried to log into by bank account. I gave him a cash allowance, but he used it to buy Visa gift cards he would then enter into the game. I put a stop to that. No more allowance, no more birthday money.
The game's called Arcadia. Android only, I suspect because the developers felt iOS was too locked down, more on that later. For the longest time I didn't even know what the game was because whenever I tried to look, he always hid his phone screen, like he was ashamed of it.
I downloaded the game to see what he's so obsessed with. Right off the bat, there weren't just red flags, but red flashing lights and alarm bells. The first page of the EULA read "WARNING: You will be gaslit," and the proceed button is grayed out until you click a checkbox saying "My grip on reality was never that strong anyway." What the fuck is that? What IS this?! The app asks for every single permission from your phone, and doesn't boot until you allow all of them. It even encourages you to root your phone. Fuck that, I'm running it on an emulator in a virtual machine. I've been around the block once or twice. Once I gave it full access to my nonexistent phone, the developer's name appeared on screen: Sinneslöschen.
I had suppressed the memories, but I could never forget that word. German for "sense delete," apparently. When I lived in Portland, there was this urban legend about an arcade game called Polybius. Supposedly it was some secret government mind control project. I never paid it much mind. It sounded like one of my dad's ramblings. He claimed to be an MKUltra test subject. But he was always a conspiracy theorist, and had all kinds of wacky ideas about how the world works and who runs it. For a long time I didn't even think MKUltra was real, until they declassified the files. When I read them, his stories did match what they described. Of course all this happened after he passed. I could never apologize for doubting him. I wonder if trauma like his is generational. I do remember reading once that trauma rewrites your DNA.
In any case, I was heading up to the arcade with my girlfriends for a round of Ms. Pac-Man. When just by chance, two men in black suits were installing a Polybius cabinet. They didn't put it in line with the other games. They gave it its own special area, where it stood out like a monolith. We all knew the legend. My girlfriends dared me to give it a try. And who am I to back down from a dare?
It was a vector game, like Tempest. In fact it was basically a Tempest ripoff, except instead of shooting, you collect arbitrary shapes. I was disappointed at first. The game was too easy and boring. But as the game progressed, the tunnel drew me closer and closer towards a wiry figure. The closer I got, the clearer the image became of a disembodied nervous system. Its bare, piercing blue eyeballs would come to haunt me in my sleep, just before dreams, when all the colors start to swirl. Its brain decayed before my eyes, becoming infested with maggots and liquefying into a dripping black sludge. I could smell it, even now, just imagining it. The figure came to dominate the screen, obscuring the playfield. And just when I felt lost in its unyielding gaze, the killscreen ripped me from my consciousness: a sequence of red and blue flashes almost certain to induce a seizure. At least that's what happened to me, anyway.
Despite the health scare, I was compelled to keep playing. I tore apart my house looking for quarters and wandered the streets in search of loose change. I actually pretended to be homeless once. Yeah, I'm not proud of it either. I started seeing men in black out of the corner of my eye, and they'd disappear as soon as I looked at them. I never told anyone that, I didn't want to seem crazy. My parents convinced a rehab center to take me (gaming addiction wasn't recognized as a disorder back then), and luckily, it worked. I looked into similar options for my son, but my insurance doesn't cover rehab. Even with my salary, San Francisco is a bitch. They practically charge you to breathe here.
Going back to Arcadia, it seemed to be nothing more than a modernized Polybius. Upon starting a new game, the following message appears on screen: "WARNING: In this game you earn a score. This score will not be posted to a leaderboard. Do not post about your score online. Your score is between you and God." Absolutely batshit. Another warning: "In this game you play as a rat. You collect molecules. Do not question this." Well I wasn't going to before, but *now* I am.
And the microtransactions bear questioning, too. They sell lootboxes, but there's no loot. All you get is a color indicating rarity. You can also buy credits to spin a wheel for the chance to increase a number. This number has no gameplay significance, and as far as I can tell, there's no way to actually look at it. Of course, in mobile games, they always give you something on your first spin (the first hit's free), and all it said was "The number has been increased." By how much? Who knows! My son really begs me for money for this?
What was especially concerning was that after playing the game, all my targeted ads became cigarettes and alcohol, even on my real phone. Is it even legal to advertise those? I asked my son if he got those ads, and luckily, he said no. His ads were for candy and soda. Ok, so at least it's age appropriate. But aren't candy and soda addictive in their own way?
There were other wrinkles too. In addition to the addiction, he also developed behavioral problems. He started fights at school and lashed out at anyone who tried to take his phone away. He even tried to bite a teacher. He was never like this before Arcadia. He was always a sweet boy. He loved butterflies and rainbows even when other kids made fun of him for it. Where did that boy go?
