I just wanted to take the time to extend u/rrockwe1's interpretation of the game, as it was succinct and similar to where I instinctually landed. Actually, this turned into more of a provocation - I'm looking as to whether this is even the right direction rather than if I've stuck all the details. Sloppy, I know.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NeverBeGameOver/comments/bfzd79/the_ruse_is_the_lack_of_ruse/
Conspiracy is the "heart of the MGS" series, but I would add - as it's flavored by the technological mediums we partake in. The games are not traditional games but loosely connected simulations to discover a conspiracy and the power dynamics of those involved at the top of it. Not unlike our own world.
Setup:
To start, I would highly recommend everyone on this sub to check out Dan Carlin's SuperNova in the East episode 1. The "incidents" he talks about each play out like a Metal Gear game. We can't forget that Kojima, born in 63, is reacting to events that happened in the immediate generation prior, as we all do. Think Marshall McLuhan's idea of the rear-view mirror while listening. For this interpretation, the relevant takeaway from the podcast is that due to the changes in communication technologies from the industrial revolution, the equilibrium for conflict settled into subterfuge. It was when Japan became sloppy with this new normal (like a winning poker player staying at the table for too long) did they accidentally usher the country towards the most important identity-altering period (WW2) since the Meiji Restoration. For Kojima, I'm imagining/empathizing that if you don't understand this phase shift you don't understand your reality, a reconstructed post-nuclear Mc-Meiji mess.
Now how does this relate to us internetted folk with our new communication mediums? Id love to also introduce this sub to Jordan Greenhall. In the linked post, he goes on to analyze the QAnon phenomenon and is able to abstract some properties that are very reminiscent of what I experienced through NBGO.
Q is the most recent and most important example of a widely distributed self-organizing collective intelligence. We’ve actually seen many precursors. Cicada 3301 is a famous example. Even the I Love Bees ARG for Halo 2. Perhaps Bitcoin is the most important precursor to Q.
These “self-organizing collective intelligences” (SOCI), are a new kind of socio-cultural phenomenon that is beginning to emerge in the niche created by the Internet. They involve attractive generator functions dropped into the hive mind that gather attention, use that attention to build more capacity and then grow into something progressively real and self-sustaining.
The Q SOCI is, for the most part, about sensemaking. It is combing through the billions of threads of “what might be real” and “what might be true” that have been gathered into the Internet and it is slowly trying to weave them into a consistent, coherent and congruent fabric.
I, like u/rrockwe1, think this ruse was designed. Meta-gaming design is not unheard of in videogames before as another favorite game of mine, FEZ, pulled a similar move in a simpler form.
Also a Gamasurtra article on the design style:
"There's a fourth really big influence that I haven't been honest about," Fish continued. "Myst. There's a lot of Myst in Fez, in fact I'd call it a 'Mystroidvania.' It's a huge open nonlinear world, with lots of super obtuse metapuzzles everywhere. The world has its own alphabet and numeric system."
"I don't know if that is still going to fly today, that's a school of design that's really very old school. There's a high barrier of entry for that second part to the game, and I hope there will be things that will take internet forums weeks to decipher. I want people to talk about that weird thing that they don't think they were supposed to find in Fez."
To begin:
Now we all know Kojima has had mixed feelings towards his own series as he's intended every MGS from 2 onward to be the last in the series (most likely returning due to corporate pressure).
This quote from 2014 about MGSV is telling:
"So in a way I guess I'm taking advantage of that to try new things, because every time I work on any game, be it Metal Gear or something else, I try to make new things. So for me, my challenge right now working on Metal Gear is, while preserving the elements that make it Metal Gear, to do all the new things I really want to do."
He's kept things new by innovatively making marketing Metal Gear part of the game experience; bringing an added self-awareness to gaming, fandom, and technology. While the Fez Meta-game was designed to solve newly enabled internet-forum-oriented puzzles, the metal gear Meta-games have been much more difficult to interpret, as they are often part of the artistic statement. However, Kojima has deliberately moved "the game" aspect to encapsulate before, during and now After release*.* Thus as this relates to MGSV, I believe NGBO and similar sensemaking forums will go down as part of "the game" just as much as we can easily state that Metal Gear Marketing before release has been part of each other game in the series. What is MGS2 if you didn't pay attention to the codec briefing marketing of the game.
For me though, MGSV is an artistic attempt whose meta-game is an attempt to implode the series's own need for more Canon while simultaneously commenting brilliantly on the reality around him.
Imploding Canon - Kojima on Fandom
Can the quest for further interpretation fuel and mask different needs (like a need to simulate violence) and can that devolve into self-defeating patterns or as Skullface put it "an endless loop of action and reaction?"
Do we play metal gear to gain an understanding of Kojima's critical worldview (anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-authority themes) or to get gratifying rushes of pixelated violence that glorify what he condemns?
These questions are what have plagued the metal gear universe, with the "action and reaction" being fan adulation of a new installment in the series -> leading to corporate pressure -> leading to another unplanned sequel with an intended aesthetic to make us realize the absurdity of the universe he's constructed -> only for our interpretations to fall partially flat on release -> leading to fan adulation...
However, this exact dilemma we fans face when playing a metal gear game is nearly identical to those the characters face in MGSV. The need for more canon becomes self-defeating for the likes of Kaz, Venom, and SkullFace trying to enact revenge. Kaz and Venom need the canon to continue so they can manifest new objects for their revenge - which is the intent of the drawn-out nature of the second act. We, as players are seeking something as deeply unmet as the characters in MGSV's need for revenge is. This juxtaposition is an attempt at making you self-aware about this, to reflect back the tragically flawed state it's characters inhabit on to you and draw the connection to your fandom.
This is a game not lacking in canon but is anti-canon. Canon that consumes the need for further canon.
The only constructive answer he gives is "to exit", which is embodied via Quiet's character. Quiet, written, displayed, and expressed with purposeful alignment to nearly every stereotypical Videogame trope on women, is a prisoner of the medium she's embedded within. She exits her role within the canon when sexually assaulted by a soldier (a proxy for videogamers at large) or to put it another way, when her role was taken to it's extreme (shock therapy). We need to do the same as Metal Gear fans who are cast within the game as Venom.
With his anti-canon deployed Kojima can now "exit" in peace that the series is put to rest psychically for fans. Instead of clamoring for more.
How "to exit" - or how Kojima prepared me for the 21st century
MGSV's story is bare bones on the surface but speaks volumes to hardcore Metal Gear fans.
You, as part of the most knowledgable/obsessive sect of Metal Gear fans, know something is up with this game. Something hasn't sat right in your gut and it continually doesn't sit right. Thus, you naturally sought solace and understanding within a place like NGBO. We came together and exhausted every possible interpretation we could think of as to what this game is. We started doing the homework, building our best ideas and challenged simplistic notions. This collaboration via learning to definitively seek truth as a group is the point of the Ruse Cruise and serves as the antithesis of MGS2's outlook. Now if you are Kojima, what would build this muscle the best within your fans?
- Create a conspiracy, reveal its truth, and reward fans for their hardcore vigilance
- Fabricate all the necessary parts for the facade of a conspiracy yet deliberately having none to force fans through the emotional ringer of figuring out what is true. A gaslighting job.
For me, I settled on it being the latter which truly pushed me as to what was healthy, valid, and useful to believe in. The meaning and wisdom from this game was transmitted/felt for me once I "exited" and realized the insanity I let myself believe. In this interpretation, we serve as art form to others - showing what happens when a fanbase loses its collective mind and pieces it back together again.
Now, why would anyone want to encourage this group behavior? Marshall McLuhan has another nifty quote that points us in the right direction with this:
"World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation."
There's this running joke within the ChapTrapHouse fan community (not a fan, I just observe where metal gear gets talked about) that life is beginning to resemble a Metal Gear game. Biologically genetically altered dystopia, check. Insider leaks of grand governmental conspiracies, check. Zany political characters seizing power, check.
Metal Gear Solid V's Ruse cruise was a simulation for a reality that's to come/is here like how MGS2 was a simulation for MGS1. We know we are lied to by authorities and we know the internet is a mess at being an alternative. Thus, Chaos. For Kojima, my guess is that he wanted to kickstart a version of grassroots behavior that will be important in combatting this "truth recession," because telling us via MGS1-4 doesn't seem to work in changing people's behavior, we have to actually crash and burn in doing it. WW3 is here, we got a slice of training.
Thanks For the Read :)
Also,
(my edgiest take is that I think he's embodying his own vision from MGSV. He is Ahab/Venom).
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