Anyone who ever played and loved a video game, especially as a teenager, will know that the game itself is often only part of the experience. It is also about community. We seek out other players, through forums, message boards and social media, and sometimes the relationships we form in these haphazard spaces move beyond expressions of shared fandom. They become friendships, support networks, perhaps even romances. Videoverse, the new visual novel from Kinmoku, creator of the acclaimed relationship drama One Night Stand, is an engrossing and emotional study of these digital relationships and the games that precariously support them.
The year is 2003 and 15-year-old video game fan Emmett spends hours each day on his Shark games console, playing the Japanese role-playing game Feudal Fantasy. When not playing, he is socialising on the machine’s online service, Videoverse, a combination of discussion forum and instant messaging platform. Emmett is part of a thriving, mostly supportive community of gamers and artists, but when the console’s manufacturer, Kinmoku (one of many slyly self-referential elements in the game), seeks to move the user base on to its new Dolphin console, the company announces that Videoverse will soon be switched off, plunging the group into an existential crisis.
Playing as Emmett, you experience most of the game through his retro-style console, posting Feudal Fantasy fan art, commenting on posts and chatting with friends via a multiple choice textual interface. There’s laddish pal Zalor, caught up in an unstable relationship with fellow player Tifa-Chan; there’s quiet game nerd MarKun666; and then there is mysterious newcomer Vivi, a talented artist whom Emmett immediately falls for. Their halting, cautious relationship is told entirely through instant-message interactions, your conversation options swaying between game chat and snippets of real-life detail. The dialogue is authentic, relatable and often painful as anxieties and secrets come to the fore.
Veteran gamers will see in this fictitious digital environment elements of Miiverse, AOL instant messenger and ancient online message boards, the visual design perfectly replicating the pixellated, lo-fi nature of these formative spaces. But what is really clever about Videoverse is the way the format symbolises the themes of the game. Each chapter intercuts cinematic sequences from Feudal Fantasy with interactive chat sessions, drawing comparisons between this epic tale of feuding ninjas with the everyday anxieties and excitements of these young fans. Meanwhile, the limited multiple-choice nature of the dialogue perfectly explores and replicates the struggles of teenagers unable to fully express their fears and desires. Often choices are blocked off to the player because your Emmett has not been compassionate or cocky enough in previous interactions to use them, leaving you almost tongue-tied.
But this isn’t just a game about teen relationships – it is specifically about how, in the digital era, those relationships become inextricably linked with commercialised environments. The Videoverse community relies on servers maintained by a faceless corporation and as ads for the Dolphin begin to pop up on your Shark title screen alongside sanitised messages about the closure of the online service, you realise how ephemeral these spaces are, and how much we lack agency and control as teenagers. The community swaps concerns and rumours on message boards, while one user UnclefromKinmoku claims to have insider info, mimicking the dynamics of Reddit-based fandoms. What Videoverse shows us is the pernicious effect of enforced obsolescence on these digital communities. As Kinmoku withdraws resources from Videoverse and presumably, moderators are let go, the community degrades. People begin to post explicit images and abusive messages multiply. The game wants us to ask, were problematic users always there, lurking in the shadows? Or are online misogynists like vultures, smelling the blood of a dying platform?
In here, too, are lovely explorations of gamer culture: expos, games magazines, format wars and the cost of buying and playing games are all woven in. As the story progresses, Emmett, a comparatively well-off gamer, is forced to confront his privilege, especially when the reality of Vivi’s life intersects with his understanding of Videoverse as a sort of quasi-utopian online society. Through it all, the the group finds comradeship and strength through their shared obsession: games.
There are moments in this visual novel so gently honest, so subtly profound, about digital relationships and the value of gaming that they brought me to tears. The day after I finished playing, I went back and started again because I missed the characters, I missed their world – it reminded me of the things I have found through games, of moments with my dad, my sons, my friends, that are irreplaceable.
Videoverse made me happy, sad, thoughtful and achingly nostalgic in a way only the most carefully crafted art can. It is Adrian Mole for the digital era – I can think of no higher compliment than that. Anyone who has ever played and loved a video game will surely discover what I mean.
Videoverse is available now on PC; £11
