REVIEW TO THE DEATH: Analogue: A Hate Story  vs. Super Deep Throat

Cut to the chase and call Analogue: A Hate Story and Super Deep Throat companion pieces. The first, Christine Love’s newest femi-techno product o’ praise; the second, a game about having sex with women’s mouths. Yet, despite this outward disparity, both games strive to address two sides of the same issue, and in doing so draw upon a raw, honest physicality that can be both shocking and ordinary.

These are, you see, games about interface–that flush-coming of boundaries that increasingly defines the twenty-first century.

First up: Analogue: A Hate Story…

Ever since 2010’s Digital: A Love Story, folks have questioned the “gameness” of Christine Love’s work. “Visual Novel” is what some prefer to call it. Alright. You’re allowed. But those who know me know I don’t do things the way you do, and though Analogue’s immediate, strictly-physical interactivity is markedly constrained, the conceptual game is far deeper. Emphasizing this depth is the game’s thematic focus on interface, most immediately that of meatspace-us and technology. Like Digital, Analogue’s gameplay imitates, well, the very thing you are doing now: Sifting the myriad data-nodes of a sprawling network. However, while the former focused on the technology of the past—a local BBS of “five minutes into the future of 1988”—Analogue sees players accessing the mainframe computer of a derelict generation ship, the God-knows-where-bound Mugunghwa. What happened to its inhabitants? And what exactly caused their uninhabiting? These are the questions that drive the player early on, as he or she (with the assistance of two AI companions) browses the data remnants of the ship; passively, much as you are now. But this passivity soon reveals itself as a chimera of distance, for in the interface of the conscious self and History, there can be no passive.

Ah, but we must be careful not to limit ourselves too sharply, for we will miss out on Analogue’s central subject: The often tenuous, but ever-diligent linking of she to he and he to it: The social interface. And what is the “it” in this case? Well, History, in all its highs and lows. And it is in this way that Analogue, as an interfaceable object both in and of the game, reveals itself as a History machine—a device through which we might passively investigate the past. In this act of witnessing, the player takes on the role of a surveyor-turned-agent…that deshrouding of the Emerson eyeball, opaque and utterly present, seeing its seeing see itself.

This, as I have stated before, is the real game of any game—the mental pain of passivity gone south, of finding oneself iron-encircled in conceptual feedbackism. It’s for this reason that I find Analogue’s praise and Steam-accessibility so fitting…Like the fictional generation ship it offers access to, the game itself slips through a kind of space, waiting for interface.

And believe it or not, this, too, is Super Deep Throat’s bag.

Created and dutifully maintained by an entity known only as konashion (for all we know, “he” too is an AI), Super Deep Throat is about an entirely different sort of “interfacing.” Similar to Analogue, players find themselves in the shoes of a faceless protagonist, but instead of a curiosity for History we are now endowed with a penis that ranges from six to fifteen inches. And this customization is not limited to the male alone–players will find an exhaustive selection of options for their digital female companions, ranging from clothing; hair; eye color; skin tone; mascara runniness; weight; accessories; stance; throat resistance; and facial expression (ranging from blank to angry-blank).

Ah, but don’t let the lack of meaningful expression fool you, because while SDT’s females may seem to be lifeless interface-holes, they are certainly not reactionless—no, no, no, these interfaceable objects murmur and cough and panic-pat for reprieve. Which is to say, what Super Deep Throat’s females lack in inward being they make up for in outward tribute. Like Analogue’s AI companions (also female) SDT’s females assist and accommodate the player’s interfacing, enhancing the effectiveness of the player’s prodding.

And also like Analogue, I can’t help but see a social interface here as well. For this agent-penis does not only interface with a few preset archetypes…No, spend a few minutes browsing konashion’s storage archives and you’ll find yourself interfacing with females from just any series you can think of, for any reason you can think of: Did you find Left 4 Dead’s Zoey too attached to Bill? Well, then interface her. How about Adventure Time’s Princess Bubblegum, was she too self-sufficient and prepubescent? Interface her. Oh and let us not forget Mojang’s de facto mascot, the Minecraft creeper…

Which is all to say: If Analogue: A Hate Story is a History machine, Super Deep Throat is a revenge machine, manufactured out of the masculine desire to turn the social sexual in order to dominate it. And to that end, you’ll find find archived on konashion’s blog hundreds of fictional females all in interface pose…all those Chun-Lis and anime sexpots; and yes, you’ll even find hipster Ariel. Each female represents the turmoil of a century’s worth of un-interfaceable media…that iron curtain that has prevented our fantasy sex, fever-penetrated at last.

It is in this way, for me, that the companion piece-ness of the two games flourishes. For all self-conscious beings, regardless of sex organ, desire to mouth-sex History, to alter the just-past and long-gone alike. But it is the difference in approach that fascinates me about the two games: while Analogue embodies the naïve fable of passivity, Super Deep Throat exemplifies the self-aware and self-centered acceptance of the fable’s falseness. This difference is reflected in each game’s imitation of interface, too…that “idle browsing” physicality of passive study; that “options galore” physicality of direct agency.

Both games, when considered in tandem, function as another kind of machine altogether—a development engine, performing in two-stroke: The belief that our witnessing slips invisibly across the world, and how we react to the realization that it does not. This—and I mean exactly this—is why I’ve been so vociferous in the past regarding the interactivity of all mediums, not just videogames. For without the development of the self, an act which requires the conceptual feedback loop of self-realization (“Did I just do that?” “Why did I just do that?” “What would my mother think?”), then videogames would be nothing more than slots through which we insert inconsequence; a Great Worthless Ticking of Options; with no output but the machine’s cold archival of data.

Ah, but thank God games are more than that:

Time             Art