Receiver

Had Solomon been a developer of games, rather than a developer of laws, I can only imagine he would have bestowed upon the people of Israel something similar to Receiver.

Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.

...and I saw that under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the learned, nor favor to the skillful: but time and chance in all.

As I crept through hall after louring hall of Receiver’s utilitarian architecture, the whole affair of fumbling with reloading, collecting unpredictably scattered single bullets, and clumsily firing at super-agile, hovering taserbots struck me as a parable for the vanity of luscious graphics and fluid, intuitive controls. The Truth of Receiver is in the external combat between gamer and controller; beneath the facade of visuals, narrative, character, mechanics, it's nothing more than hitting an arbitrary set of buttons, resulting in a series of signals flowing to a screen, consequently producing a sequence of images with no import whatsoever beyond that particular moment. Nothing the player puts into Receiver is fun. The fun, developer Wolfire Games seems to assert, if anywhere, is in the receiving.

Indeed, Reception Theory constitutes a branch of critical aesthetics (most prominently represented in the work of Stuart Hall) that takes this insight as its point of departure. Reception Theory gets its name paronymously from the “receiver” of Communication Theory, indicating its focus on receiving, rather than sending, as the meaning-generating phase of communication. The game's cassette tapes (the acquisition of which is the player's nominal objective) stand as an embedded metaphor in this respect. --And, what else is a tape but a lesson in Deconstructivism?

“Well, it is a plastic shell with spools.” Yes—but which only exist to hold magnetic tape.

“Do you mean to say the cassette tape is quintessentially magnetic tape?” No. The magnetic tape's only purpose is to hold iron oxide dust.

“Then—it's substantially iron oxide dust?” Of course not. The iron oxide's only reason for being is magnetization, for which the only necessary component is its electrons.

“By that rationale, isn't everything just electrons?” Far from it. So far as the tape goes, the electrons are just a means of information-processing. The tape-player reads them--which it only does in order to play a sound for some nameless listener.

“This listener, then!” Do the tapes have meaning for him?

Picking up each tape, Receiver treats the player to one of eleven (randomly selected) voice recordings, waxing philosophic on the trajectory of Absolute Idealism. The eleventh tape, supposedly, will signal the player's enlightenment, his transcendence to a state of “perfect awareness.” Or is it the thousandth repetition of the eleventh tape? I certainly don't recall achieving perfect awareness at the end—but then, if I did, would I recall my previous unenlightened state? Would that not imply that Truth contains error, Idea contains illusion, Transcendence contains immanence?

Let's allow Reception Theory to moot this metaphysical digression and ask, simply, was the meaning I received fun? In the course of playing, I was reincarnated countless times. No--it's not about fun. It's about tapes. At some point, inculcated with the utter futility of it all, I feel as if fun ceased to be a relevant category. The very predicate festered and decomposed, leaving only pure, subjective experience.

...The heart of the wise is where there is mourning, and the heart of fools where there is mirth.

Like much modern art, Receiver is appreciable mostly as an object of criticism. I would describe my relationship with the game as agonistic. Receiver is a contest in which victory comes only through resignation--not to any fictional antagonist, but to one's disconnectedness from whole ordeal. If what you want is a good time and only a good time, dismiss it. On the other hand, if you can describe your appreciation of Barry Le Va's Velocity Piece: Impact Run as “empathetic,” Receiver will likely be a rewarding study.