**TEACHER**: Mark Shannelly # Garage Heathen's mind-snatching "WHO'S LILA?" (2022, Russia) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1697700/Whos_Lila/ ### How is violence depicted? "Who's Lila" shows its sharpest wits at the peaks of its most violent subversions. "LILA" is a mind-entity without body (a "meme"). She finds embodiment in human minds ("look at this funny meme"). And when the meme is conceived, LILA takes control over the human exactly the way player takes a control over their avatar. How do I know that I'm not under some meme control? I definitely have LILA-meme in my mind at the moment ( ⚠️  exactly the way you're having the LILA-meme in your mind if you're reading this now ⚠️ ) When we start playing "Who's Lila" we know nothing of what I mentioned. The mind of the player is an unplowed field that the LILA-meme infiltrates starting with the title. "Who's Lila?" With this voluntary question in mind, the players flops into the jungle of frenzied conceptual beasts. How do I know if other people have mind experience similar to mine if thoughts are private? Do bats have color in their heads like we do when we imagine a blue hedgehog? Should the memory of a red bird be always red the way it is red when we recall this memory? Down head's interior [[сплошная ГРАНИЦА из ДЫРОЧЕК между жизнью и смертью - a flesh WHOLE of HOLES separates life from death|hole]] to the darkest ego death. And when now no shadow of color is left in the labyrinths of brain-meat, LILA-meme takes full control of whatever the word "me" denotes 🫥 ### Does the player have a choice in participating in the violence or not? How is this handled? Yes, the player can choose a branch in the narrative that deliberately avoids violence. On one hand, the branch is thin enough to render it impossible to find it in the first playthrough. And on the other hand, if the player succeeds, the branch will lead them through the backdoors of most game secret layers. The branches range from mundane to most inhuman. The branches with most open ends are the most violent paths in the brain-meat jungle. Simply because open endings raise questions, they determine the player to grow closer to the LILA-meme-entity. "Who's Lila?" -- as long, as the question makes players think of her, LILA's in their heads. A game highly contagious of mind-parasites... #PLAY/JUDGEMENT/_TASTE/_HAZARDOUS/mind_contagious_BIOHAZARD ### Does the violence fit the narrative of the game? How? "Who's Lila?" does violence rather than simply represents it. The game's violence is its deliberate intention to snatch the players' minds and replace them with LILA. Memes leak nightmares ([[🌪️ Cyclonopedia (2008)|while games represent nightmare logics]]). The game is concerning, and still I let it conquer my thought for a moment. Am I me or am I a meme? If I may picture "Who's Lila" to be a thought experiment game lab, it executes the experiment masterfully. And to be the experiment subject of this must made me feel as a snake that grows off a skin. ### Does the violence fit the mechanic(s) of the game? How? The game has one interesting mechanic. The avatar is neurodivergent and then does not understand emotions. So the player must sculpt his face to express emotional reactions to the game events. The precision of the depiction determines some dialogue options. The rest of gameplay is point-and-click substantially. The emotion-sculpting mechanic feels uncanny and de/in-humanizing. But when more metaphysical mind-porn is exposed, sculpting a human face gets curiouser and existential(ler). ![[ATTACHMENTS/REFS/LILA_daemonium.png]] ### P.S. I want to share some academic works on tabu and violence in games that I know some bit of about: - Jorgensen's "The Taboos of Game Studies" project: https://www.gamejournal.it/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/I9_GAME.pdf - And Jorgensen's "Transgression in Games": https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262038652/transgression-in-games-and-play/ - And Bjork's concept of dark game design patterns: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/301007767.pdf ![[AgainstGameMetaphysics.borders]]