Gamedec — A Case of Underappreciated Worldbuilding

If you haven’t heard of it, I don’t blame you

Nowadays, video games are a dime a dozen, thanks to Steam’s highly accessible digital platform. Interestingly, when Steam came out, it was only ever meant to be a program for Valve, its creators, to contain all of their games in one place for the consumer’s convenience. One thing led to another, and Steam is now the most popular digital platform on the Internet right now. Seriously, Steam even monopolised the digital distribution platform for a while until competitors came around, such as the Epic Games Store. But even then, Steam reigns supreme as that one place with all the games for the right price, and maybe that’s why people love it.

I, personally, do not enjoy Steam, although I’m probably the only person on Earth who doesn’t have it installed on their computer. Why? I’d gladly talk about it another time. But because I don’t use Steam, I go with its competitor, the Epic Games Store. They function alike, mainly in promoting random video games you never heard of, mainly because of improper marketing strategies. But it’s through this dice roll that sometimes I land on games that are surprisingly interesting in their approach. One such game is called Gamedec.

Though I am only two levels into it, worldbuilding particularly caught my interest in the game. The game itself plays like most detective games, although I feel like the choices I make mean something, unlike most games that employ a choice system. But there was some substantial worldbuilding in this game because it is set in the far future where video games are alternate realities people can explore as if it were the real world. Although they still have to access it with machines connected to their heads, people move around with their entire bodies in these video games because every video game is a world. The first level takes place in a game called “Twisted & Perverted”, a place for people with fetishes to explore their sexuality, and the second level is “Harvest Time”, a farming simulator set in the Wild West. I hope to play the game more and learn its interpretation of the future, but I have to get to the meat of things ‘cuz I’ve been procrastinating too much lately…

They have redundant neologisms in the future

What’s even more interesting about the game is how it incorporates real-world sciences such as biology and sociology and tries to give a pseudo-realistic explanation of how it would unfold in a video game, which is, again, alternate realities in themselves. For example, in video games, people use avatars to present themselves visually, and there is a plethora to choose from. One player decided to present himself as a unicorn, like a hooved creature walking on four legs and a tail. Upon meeting this character, the protagonist explains to him that a human who is adjusting to the morphology of a horse can lead to serious complications in the nervous system because humans and horses have different morphologies. This is somewhat understandable because you’re used to using fingers all your life, and then suddenly you can’t move them, but it’s because you have hooves instead. Thinking about it seems like something that a human brain would have problems adjusting to.

What fascinated me about this game’s worldbuilding is the pseudoscience around it, which went even further by having its own glossary of future words. Words such as Realium, Virtualium, Rendan, Mobrium, Zoenet, Holopic, Viator, Gamedec (the thing in the game; not just the game itself), and some others the game hasn’t revealed to me yet because I haven’t got far enough in the game. For example, the most general neologism in the game is arguably “Realium”, but what is it? Well… Realium is basically just another word for reality, but people only say Realium in the context of video games. Video games have become such an intricate part of society that some social issues can’t be solved by admins (like in real life). Hence, people employ “Gamedecs”, which are private detectives specialising in solving cases relating to video games, and that is the character the player assumes. Whether or not video games are everything in the future, I still haven’t found out.

I know all too well how an in-depth glossary can be more confusing at times than make the game stand out; I did it with my book, and the results weren’t what I expected. Considering that, it would beg the question of how this enormous glossary would look like in other languages. It’s already complicated enough as it is in English, but having it in other languages would require the translators to be creative. Not necessarily since some of them would just opt to have the English pronunciation, but how would it sound like in French? Suddenly, it’s a problem…

Just be creative with it

I don’t think I can do anything about this. At most, I can probably give my advice to translators. So here it is: regardless of what language you speak, be creative with the translation rather than copy and pasting it from English, simply because it looks better.

On the off-chance that you choose to be lazy, then… uh… good for you… I guess.

What’s YOUR take on Steam?

I’d love to continue talking about the significance of Steam in contemporary gamer culture, but that’s a dedication for another article. Regardless, if you don’t use Steam, like me, then do say why, and I’ll tell my take on it at a different time. If you have something to add about the worldbuilding of Gamedec, then I suppose you can do that too.

In Conclusion…

It didn’t get outstanding reviews, but Gamedec is an exciting game with a world to explore, worlds inside that world to explore impactful choices that affect the narrative and the gameplay, and an exciting dialogue system. If you like this kind of detective game, maybe you should give it a try.

I don’t really have anything else to add about the language issue I presented. The first thing that should be taken care of is in these video games finding the translators, and only then have them be creative because I’m not sure if the game comes in other languages.

Anyways, I have had a rough weekend, which may or may not be evident by this article. I’ll just regain my energy before moving on to the next article…