My Summer Musings

I’m quite aware that its been a little while since I’ve posted here.
Suffice it to say that personal matters (together with old fashioned writers block) have not given me the opportunity to write about or even build anything (rocketry related).

But this curse of inactivity is now temporarily surpassed, for reasons not easily communicated but perfectly cromulent¹Cromulent is a perfectly Cromulent word, in case you were wondering.

I play a lot of games, and I take an uncommon interest in how they are constructed.
To me, it is especially interesting to find a game mechanic or some other experience which is possible only in video game form.

The example I normally use, mostly when somebody asks me if Video Games can be art²With art here, I am referring to an (emotional) experience, although to me it has to be an experience unique to the medium of video games, since it provides something different than merely something pretty, and because a game can be artful without looking nice, is Papers, Please, specifically how its monetary system forces you into moral dilemmas.

"If I take this bribe I can afford medicine for my son."
"Do I want to pay for heating or food... Maybe if I check more passports tomorrow I can pay for both."
"If I arrest more people I can get paid more and maybe move into a better apartment."
"If I reunite this mother with her child I will get a fine, which I cannot afford if I want to feed my children."

Thoughts like these arise as a direct result of the systems you interact with, not trough text or sound, but trough gameplay.
You cannot replicate the experience you get playing Papers, Please trough books or movies or music, because its your own actions that influence what happens, and therefore your experience.
You are the one experiencing the moral dilemmas, as well as the one tasked with resolving them.

It’s a truly fantastic game, and I cannot praise it highly enough.

But Papers, Please is a well known example, in fact in many cases it’s the example³“Buy, study, and share this game as an example of video games as true art” says Sam Machovech writing for Ars Technica, although the writer of the article in question seemingly fails to define what actually sets this game apart as a form of art, as does mine.
Art, and defining it, is hard. To me it is more of a feeling, or rather a conviction, that Papers, Please is somehow different from the more conventional gaming experiences in ways more fundamental than I can properly describe. of games as an art form; of an experience unique to the medium.⁴This, again, is my personal and vague definition of what constitutes art in the realm of video games. And in the end its merely an opinion.

Instead, I want to talk about My Summer Car.

My Summer Car is a unique experience, like Papers, Please.
But while Papers, Please is a serious game about moral dilemmas and border control, My Summer Car is about building a crap car, drinking alcohol, and swearing in Finnish.

It’s a hard sell.

It’s also one of my favorite games.
I started playing it for the in depth car building mechanics⁵You start the game with a garage with hundreds of car parts and a disturbing lack of a manual, and if you keep at it you end the game with a fully working car you (blindly) assembled yourself, and by the fifth time you build it you could probably tune a loose fan belt in real life., and I kept playing it for the almost caricatural representation of 1995 Finland⁶Please note that I was not around in Finland circa 1995, so I can not exclude the possibility that Finland was actually entirely like this., with its swearing, drinking, gambling, rally racing, mail ordering and strawberry picking.

If in depth car building and / or Finnish culture appeals to you, I would recommend you give it a try, assuming you are already familiar with games and their trappings.
I can’t say it’s a simple game to play, or a relaxed experience, but you won’t find anything like it anywhere else.

For the laymen⁷In this case: somebody not used to playing (first person) video games, it’s going to be somewhere between unenjoyable and unplayable.

With all that out of the way, lets bring addiction into the conversation.

One of the things in My Summer Car, which to my knowledge is unique to it, is it’s stress mechanic.⁸Stress here, from what I’ve read, is different from what you might call stress, as in Finnish culture stress appears to mean more the sense of grumpiness and frustration you experience after a long day at work or a eventful repair job, rather than the more overhanging dread of losing your job or faling behind in your education.
This also (at least partly) explains why things like nice food and relaxing helps alleviate it, instead of needing to tackle some root concern.

Permanently affixed to the top right of your screen is the following widget:

These bars⁹Note that “Money” is not a bar but a counter, which does not show on this picture slowly fill up, depending on the circumstances the player finds themselves in, and can be lowered in various ways.
Very standard game stuff, an almost stereotypical abstraction.

If one of the bars gets full, and stays that way for too long, you die.
Which, by default, is a permanent affliction.¹⁰Which is somewhat unusual for a Video Game.
For those not in the know, usually when you die in a game you get to try again from an earlier point (the start of the level, the last save point, the beginning of the fight etc etc). When you die in My Summer Car while “Mortal”, you get to start from the very beginning, which funnily enough is the player character being born.
It’s a very singular game.

Fatigue, Hunger and Thirst “meters” are rather conventional things to have in a game, especially games focused on survival in some respect.
However, Dirtiness, Urine and Stress are not.
I wish to talk about the Stress mechanic.¹¹Urine and Dirtiness ought to speak for themselves.

While playing, the Stress bar will slowly fill up, all on its own.
It will fill more if you experience stressful things, such as getting a speeding ticket, failing a car inspection, losing while gambling, or having a hangover.¹²Just like in real life, I think.
I haven’t had the pleasure.

There are a number of activities which can lower your stress:

• Driving really fast¹³To each their own, I guess.
• Drinking alcoholic beverages¹⁴Not recommended
• Winning a rally
• Having your car pass inspection¹⁵The game is, unsurprisingly, rather car centric
• Swearing¹⁶Although you need to keep at it for quite a while to make a dent in your stress meter
• Drinking coffee
• Eating grilled meat¹⁷As opposed to the usual fare of cold microwave pasta and precooked sausage
• Being at your parents’ island cottage¹⁸You know, as you do

And, the two most common options:¹⁹Or rather, in earlier versions, the only options

• Relaxing in your sauna²⁰Finland!
• Smoking cigarettes

I love the smoking mechanics almost as much as I hate the tobacco industry, because like most things in My Summer Car they are a clever (if satirical) implementation of the real thing.

In real life, nicotine has some “positive effects”, such as increasing dopamine (indirectly increasing happiness).
This is also what makes it addicting.²¹Otherwise smoking would be only as addicting as playing bad tasting video games
But before long, how I understand it²²I don’t smoke and have no aspiration to, so this is purely academic knowledge, the stress caused by the addiction smoking causes overtakes these stress decreasing effects, and you have to keep smoking just to return to your previous baseline.
This is what makes it so hard to stop.²³I think. please let me know if I misunderstand the effects of nicotine addiction.

Now, take cigarettes in My Summer Car.
A single cigarette is capable of emptying your entire stress meter.
A pack of 20 cigarettes is slightly cheaper than a bag of chips²⁴In the game, you can smoke one while doing other things such as driving, shopping or building your car²⁵Or while filling up your gas tank, if you wish to win a Darwin Award
And it only takes a few seconds.
It is, without exaggeration, the easiest way to deal with stress in the game.

Now, the sauna.
First it needs to be warmed up, which requires you manipulating some obnoxious and, more importantly, unlabelled knobs.
After you figure out which knobs to turn which ways to make the thing turn on, it starts making a horrible racket, and, seemingly as a byproduct, starts heating the sauna.
It will now take about 15 minutes, real time, before the sauna is up to the desired temperature.
And you can’t just turn it on in the morning and come back to it in the evening to get rid of your stress of that days traffic violations, because if you keep it running for too long your house catches fire, so you are then forced to sleep on a couch you found in the garbage²⁶Because your bedroom burned down, can no longer receive phone calls²⁷Because your phone burned down, can no longer use the fridge to prevent food spoilage²⁸Because your kitchen burned down, and so forth.
It is basically “game over” if your house burns down, so you best turn off your sauna if you are not using it.²⁹And no, you cannot repair your house, you are a teenager who’s parents are on vacation, you can barely afford gasoline let alone the costs of rebuilding an entire house.
My Summer Car is a game out to teach you a lesson.

But I’m not done.
When the sauna is finally done heating up (something you can only check by going into the sauna and referencing the rather vulgar thermometer on the wall there³⁰Curious why, and in what way, the thermometer is vulgar?
Good), you need to get a bucket, fill it up with water, and throw water on the heater using a special utensil to create steam.
This takes an inordinate amount of effort, and people who have not trained their water-slinging techniques will likely throw more water on the floor than onto the heater.
To make things just that little more annoying, halfway trough emptying your stress meter you will likely have to leave the sauna to refill your bucket, as it is³¹To my knowledge not of sufficient capacity to nullify your stress in one go.
And, in the process of sweating your stress out, your dirtiness bar will fill to capacity, forcing you to take a shower after.³²Which is realistic, but also slightly annoying if you have to do it in the game you play for for. This seems to be very much intentional.

And, as a final gentle kick in the face, the sauna uses quite a lot of electricity, which in keeping with the general spirit of the game, will be duly billed at the end of the month.³³My Summer Car is not so much a fun experience as it is a truly unique one

Clearly, cigarettes seem to be the superior option for an angsty teen trying to deal with the horrors of living in Finland.³⁴Ei ollut tarkoitus loukata, Suomi!

But there is a insidious little mechanic, not told to the player, which prevents cigarettes being the final solution to stress and anxiety.

For every cigarette you smoke, the rate your stress rises goes up ever so slightly.
This, of course, causes you to smoke cigarettes more often, even if you don’t notice it to begin with.
This causes your stress to rise ever faster, and before you know it, you are addicted.
If you at this point take a sauna to try and quell this stress, before your sauna can even cool down, your stress has risen to such a degree that you might as well stay there until your house catches fire.
You have to keep smoking ever increasing amounts of cigarettes until, and here is the best part, you can no longer smoke them fast enough.
At this logical endpoint, your stress bar tops out, and you die of a heart attack, ending the game.

The saving grace is it takes quite a long time to get to a point where cigarettes go from an ever increasing annoyance to a fatal mistake, leaving you enough time to build your car and basically finish the game before succumbing to your bad habits.³⁵I think, I haven’t smoked in game for quite a while for what should be obvious reasons

But to me, the kicker is that this is your own fault, because you tried to take the “easy” route you basically doom your character to a life with fatal illness, even if you don’t actually end up dying to it within your playtime³⁶Or, dying first to a completely unrelated thing such as a car crash, falling into a septic tank, getting attacked by wasps, or having your bladder explode.
Suomi! .
And its never directly told; you have to deduce this yourself by noticing your stress levels are rising faster, by trying to quit (and likely failing³⁷if you stop smoking for long enough, your stress level will gradually start to increase more slowly, returning to its original level, but its such a slow process you have to put a lot of time and effort into actively keeping your stress down if you wish to lose the dependency without possibly losing your life (at least when far enough along with your addiction)), and perhaps you might even decide that when you start again from scratch you won’t smoke any cigarettes and will just chop some firewood and drink a beer when you start to feel stressed³⁸In game, assumedly.
All this because you tried a cigarette.³⁹If you watch people play this game on the internet, you will also find people who are too lazy to use the sauna or similar (sustainable) methods of stress reduction; they are quite easy to spot because half the time they are smoking a cigarette

Books can tell you about addiction, movies can show you the effects of addiction, but only a game can make you experience addiction without requiring you to light up in real life.