Arcades, Geocities, and Shrines to the Self
TW : Unhinged Pretension
"In a temple, people understand why you're still using old technology, why you are not using the elbow rule and why you play video games for more than 20 hours a week. Basically, it's a place where you don't have to explain yourself, and this is an amazing feeling"
Gerald Lee (CoreAGaming)
Anarchy Arcade, if you are not aware, is a virtual desktop running in the Source Engine. The core concept and appeal of Anarchy Arcade is that you are recreating all your desktop shortcuts in a 3D space, you can wander around and find stuff to open, like a normal desktop, except everything with it’s own embellishment, it’s own place. Games looked like cabinets, movies could go on shelves, you could run Reddit off a huge CRT.
I had an Arcade too, on sm_orchard, the map pictured above. It’s long gone now. But if you don’t mind I’d like to give you a tour from memory.
You’d wake up, head slumped over your computer desktop after a late night of watching youtube videos, look out to see a picture perfect sky next to a door that never opens.
Take a stroll to the next room, admire the bright yellow walls beckoning you to play one of the dozens of shimmering arcade cabinets decked with retro titles.
Walk through a room with a divider going through, one side decked to the walls with Minecraft memorabilia, go past it to find much the same thing but filled to the brim with posters of Team Fortress 2.
Pass through a hall of televisions each with their own movie, going down the stairs to the main arcade room to find something to play.
Search through all the cabinets you have, looking for the one game you’re here to dedicate your afternoon to, when your eye lingers on a cabinet in the corner of the room.
Super Smash Brothers for the Wii U and 3DS
You can’t play this game. Clicking on it will only deliver you to a trailer. But it’s taking up a huge chunk of the wall, mixed in with games you can play, but never through this interface.
You haven’t stepped into a 3D Desktop meant to store shortcuts.
You’ve stepped into a shrine.
“Exploring a friend's arcade requires an open mind. There will be lots of stuff in them that doesn't interest you, but you'll also discover new things that you never knew existed.”
SM Sith Lord
I’ve built my fair share of shrines. Both virtual and real, all diverging so wildly the only common denominator is me. My warhammer desk. Both display and active painting area, decked to the brim with knick knacks each with their own meaning. My personal discord. Channels built just the way I want them, topics from fanfic to rivals laid out in a way that I enjoy. Meticulously built Rainmeter huds, theming for every website I visit, my music player decked in hilariously non-functional setup.
Why do we build these?
Why do we spend so much time on these?
What is the purpose of a reflection of an identity for that very identity?
I lied, about there being only one common denominator.
There’s another, much more telling similarity between all my shrines.
I don’t use them.
Every personal wiki i’ve ever set up has sit in a folder, abandoned. My rainmeter huds fall into disrepair as I move icons around without a care in the world. I’ve built tens of arcades over the years but not one of them has been touched since completion.
These monuments to identity aren’t meant to be lived in. These monuments aren’t meant to be touched. They’re made for their own sake in an ouroboros of self-indulgence. Making them makes you happy and it doesn’t matter how useless they are and how you don’t want to walk through a maze to play fucking Minecraft. They’re there for their own sake, because building an environment you want to be in is inherently better than being there, because I like the idea of buying something to display but I have no space to display it and my desk is a fucking hellscape of a mess collecting dust waiting every day for my parents to ask me to put my shit in a box where it belongs.
.
And that leaves you to wonder, if not to use, what is the true appeal of Anarchy Arcade?
The underlying concept that lies, unstated, as if there’s almost a shame to it.
Take a look at the steam workshop page. And you’ll see the answer.
They're for the world.
Welcome to the Radish Records.