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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

InternetJanuary 20, 2022

I owe it all to the internet

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

For IRL, Dylan Reeve spends all day writing about how the internet impacts other people’s lives, but he’s never turned the spotlight on his own life before. Until now. 

Since September, it’s been my job to write about the ways the internet intersects with our real lives, but I’ve never taken the time to explain how the internet has affected mine. Almost everything in my life is thanks to the internet – and even the nearly-forgotten online technology that predated it.  

Before I go all the way back, I’ll get the biggest thing out of the way: my three children, who owe their existence to the internet. In 2002, I joined a website called NZ Dating, the purpose of which is right there in the name. It was a time before swiping and social media, but aside from the cheesy early 2000s web aesthetics, it would feel pretty familiar to today’s dating app users: you see profiles, message the fellow singles who attract your attention and then… just hope, I guess?

I was a little introverted and not exactly filled with self-confidence. I’d met a couple of people from the site, but nothing progressed past a couple of dates. So, while I still held out hope for the future, I wasn’t raising my expectations too high. in March 2003, I messaged “melsy” on the site and she replied soon after. The records of our first messages are long since lost, but my vague recollections are of dorky jokes made and returned – we were on the same wavelength! 

The NZDating interface, replete with cheesy early 2000s web aesthetics.

With our senses of humour a confirmed match, we agreed to go on the only real-world date that was allowed in the early 2000s: meeting at Borders on Queen Street and seeing a movie together. It was Dreamcatcher (her choice) and it sucked, but I told her she smelled good and, thanks to that winning comment (or perhaps in spite of it), she suggested we go to the Easter Show the following weekend. We got on even better in the fresh air and daylight, and just never stopped hanging out together. 

Eighteen years later, we’ve been married for almost 15 years and have three children. Not only is this obviously a very significant part of my personal life, but the realities of starting a family also changed my professional priorities. At the end of 2004, with my first kid on the way, I decided my almost-minimum-wage job, working a night shift making reality TV, wasn’t cutting it. So I hustled for another role, and soon I was handing in my notice and heading to a new job, with a better title, more pay and reasonable hours.  Since then, my family has remained a key driver in pushing me forward professionally. And, of course, Mel’s support has been instrumental in encouraging me in many endeavours. 

If my marriage and kids were the only thing I had to thank the online world for, that would be enough, but it’s so much more significant than that – I can trace so much of my adult life to the early internet and proto-internet technology. 

The Sliding Doors moment that changed the course of Dylan’s life.

To explain, we need to go back even further, to a time before anyone had heard of the internet.  It was early 1992, and I had recently started intermediate school. Like most boys at my school, I wanted cool shoes (“kicks” as the kids today would say, but we just said “basketball shoes”). There were only two acceptable options: Reebok Pumps or Nike Air Jordans.

I had been saving my money and finally had the cash I needed. My dad drove me to Newmarket to buy the Reebok Pumps I’d settled on. But something happened as we headed towards 277 Broadway: we stopped at a computer store. I’d had my own IBM-clone 286 computer since Christmas 1990, and I was always looking for ways to make it do more, such as with the second 5¼ inch floppy drive I’d recently installed.

In the store I saw a modem for sale; a computer expansion card that could slot into the big beige box and let me connect my computer, through the telephone line, to other computer systems around the world (well, around Auckland, anyway). It cost about the same as a pair of Reebok Pumps. I had a choice to make. 

I never did end up owning cool shoes. 

The modem offered me the opportunity to call into various bulletin board systems (BBSes) around Auckland; remote computers connected to the telephone network, just waiting for users to call in. Each one had its own collection of text-based games, files to download and message boards. Most of these BBSes only had a single phone line, so getting online required persistence, but armed with a print-out of the regularly updated Auckland BBS text file, I would sit at my computer after school and work my way around the various bulletin boards that formed my growing online community.

I formed many online friendships through this community, but one with a fellow geek who went by the name “Amadanon” became especially influential. My online friendship with Amadanon (real name, Jort) grew over the years until, around the beginning of 1994, we met in real life for the first time. He was a few years older than me at the time and had just got his driver’s licence, and he became my conduit to the real-world manifestation of BBSes: the BBS party.

Dylan can confirm, per this warning by PC World in 1992, that bulletin boards are a gateway to geekdom. (Image: Scott Phillips)

We would hang out on weekends and go to parties filled with socially-awkward nerds in rundown flats in Auckland’s outer suburbs. The parties were a very eclectic mix of people – the obvious techy types, like veteran computer and communications engineers, but also punks, goths, musicians, artists – the only definite commonality was that we were all comfortable using fairly obscure technology to connect online, and then in person. Looking back, it was probably a pretty strange world for a 13 year old to be a part of, but it was the first time I really met “my people”: geeks.

Around the same time, I was not getting on well at my high school, Takapuna Grammar. I had started my educational life being home schooled; since landing in “proper” school at the end of primary school it was never a great fit, but high school was really where the friction started to get too great.

At that stage, half way through third form, the school and I were at loggerheads: mostly we could not see eye-to-eye on homework. I was smart and kept up in class, but it wasn’t enough for them, and I didn’t see why it shouldn’t be. We could not agree to disagree on the matter.

Auckland Metropolitan College. (Photo: Keith Scott)

Jort had attended an alternative high school in Auckland’s Mt Eden. Auckland Metropolitan College (Metro to its friends) was established in the late 1970s as part of an experiment in alternative education. It aimed to cater to kids who weren’t fitting into traditional public schools: Metro had been founded based on the Parkway Programme from the US, which embraced the idea that learning can’t be forced; therefore student choice and life experience were to be the cornerstone of school programmes. Students were encouraged to identify and pursue their interests and only gently prodded towards traditional academic subjects. 

The school was the first massively transformative part of my life that I could directly trace to the online world, thanks to my friendship with Jort. Prior to meeting him, neither I nor my parents had heard of Metro. But Jort talked it up, and I soon found myself commuting to Mt Eden every morning. 

For me, Metro meant the opportunity to experiment with computers, video production and photography in a way that wasn’t possible at my old school. With some encouragement from me and a few other students, the school bought an expensive Mac computer with video editing software, as well as copies of a reasonably new image editing program called Photoshop. I even did some after school, part-time work with my photography teacher making interactive CD-Roms; a bleeding edge technology at the time.

Pioneering internet service provider ihug’s website in 1997, where Dylan landed his first job.

Did I pay much attention to maths? No. Science? Not a whole lot. But the time I spent at Metro exploring the possibilities of computers and video cameras solidified my interest in a career within the film and television industry. That interest was given a further kick when the school facilitated the production of a student-made short film, in which we were let loose to write, shoot and edit whatever film we imagined using professional equipment and with the light-touch mentorship of established industry pros, including film and television director Matt Murphy.

But before I could make the next step towards the television industry, Jort went on to introduce me to what would become my first full-time job at one of New Zealand’s pioneering internet service providers, ihug. I left school and spent the first five years of my working life bouncing between different roles at the company; all the while teaching myself even more IT skills and leaning on my co-workers for programming tips and systems administration tricks.

Dylan collaborated with David Farrier on a documentary about a strange tickling competition.

After leaving ihug, I briefly worked in marketing and communications before heading back to IT as a programmer. But when that role ended in redundancy,  I finally remembered the high-school passion that I’d become so distracted from. I quickly fired off an application for film school, which began just a couple of months later. 

Years later, having graduated film school and working a little over a decade in New Zealand’s television industry, I saw a Facebook post from another online friend, David Farrier, about a strange tickling competition. The rapidly unfolding collaboration between David and I on that mystery became the feature documentary Tickled

The investigative work I accomplished with David on Tickled, and on some subsequent collaborations, led me to spend more time investigating little internet mysteries and writing about what I found. Instead of just working on other people’s creative and journalistic projects, I started working to create my own – a development that led, fairly directly, to the role I’m in now.

My decades spending my days online, and my willingness to let the friendships I’ve formed online merge into my real-life, have ultimately come together to where I am now. I’m spending my days researching and writing about various internet rabbit holes, conspiracies and communities, and thinking about all the many ways the internet shapes our real lives, just as it’s shaped mine. It’s easy to get caught up in the negative things the internet throws at us, but I can just stop and look around me from time to time to get a reminder of the endless good it can deliver, too. 

I owe a lot to the internet.

Keep going!
Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

InternetJanuary 19, 2022

Escaping escapism: The rise of mundane simulator games

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Gamers are flocking to lawn mowing, truck driving and house cleaning simulators. For IRL, Josie Adams discovers the appeal of mundane games. 

Every day, Emma Maguire goes to work as a communications professional in Wellington. Every night, she drives a truck through Europe. She bought her truck simulator for $2 on Steam, a game-purchasing platform, a few years ago. She’s never looked back. While hiking and dancing are tools she’s used to de-stress physically, she now has the option to check out of her brain almost completely. “I find driving a truck is more chill [than hiking]. You don’t have to move.”

Maguire is one of a slowly-growing number of people who are opting for “mindless” simulator games; games like Lawn Mowing Simulator, where you drive a ride-on lawn mower, or Powerwash, where you clean houses. Euro Truck Simulator 2 has sold more than nine million copies. What paint-by-numbers is to visual art or First Dates is to television; that’s what these simulators are to gaming. These games, which simulate mundane tasks or everyday jobs, are described by users as meditative and soothing. “You just sit there and drive for two hours and listen to podcasts,” said Maguire.

Would Maguire like to drive a truck in real life? “Absolutely not,” she said. In real life she cannot drive a car, let alone a truck.

While spending your night driving a virtual truck might seem strange, this kind of game has a long-established history. In 1979, the first Flight Simulator game was released. A reviewer called it “the single most impressive computer game” they’d ever seen: “The German fighter pilot capabilities range from OK to very good and seeing them stacked over their field was almost a physical pleasure.”

In Airplane Mode, released last year, there are no German enemies.There is Sudoku, a nice window view, and a call button to order drinks. The simulation is for passengers, not pilots.

The gaming dream is often extreme: even in the early days, games like Battlezone and Bad Street Brawler were designed to make players feel ultra-accomplished and badass. Today’s games, like Halo and Fortnite, imbue players with cool powers and gear and dump them in strange new worlds. It’s easy to see how simulations like Euro Truck Driver could be the antithesis of gaming culture, but they may just represent an evolution of it.

Lee*, who is keeping his last name a secret so as not to be embarrassed in front of his workmates, plays Snowrunner. This is another truck simulator, but with snow. He’d never been a “simulator person” until he downloaded the game six months ago. “I stopped playing all other games when I started playing it,” he said. “I’m now watching Farming Simulator videos.”

He said that after a long day at work – he’s a UX designer for an Auckland software company – he likes to put on some Four Tet and drive around the icy roads of Michigan: “You put music on and stare at trucks for a while.” Lee has a self-imposed set of restrictions, and refuses to leave Michigan until he’s completed all the tasks nearby.

Why all the meditative virtual driving? Are Lee and Maguire more stressed than the rest of us? The answer, they both reckon, is no. They’ve just got a different outlet; one more and more of us are discovering.

Victoria University senior lecturer Dr Simon McCallum, an expert in gaming development, said simulator games aren’t just about doing virtual chores; they’re about doing chores slightly more easily. “Power washing is an amplification of your power over hand washing things,” he said. In a simulation you do these apparently mundane tasks more easily, and without any complicated decision-making. “In a complex world, where we have lots of challenging interactions, sometimes people seek out simple things.”

Victoria University senior lecturer Dr Simon McCallum says mundane games help reduce the complexity in our lives. (Photo: supplied)

He compares the appeal of simulator games to the Scandinavian-inspired slow TV movement. “My wife stayed up and watched the sheep-to-jumper television programme,” he said. “They were going for the world record for how quickly you can go from wool on a sheep to a fully done jersey.” It’s fast for a jumper, but slow for TV; and that’s what we crave. 

He said a big benefit of slow TV is that we don’t have to activate our executive function so much. “You’re not having to make choices. You’re not having to negotiate. You’re not having to socialise. You’re not having to keep up with a complex plot,” he said. “I think the complexity of our world and the stress in our world may mean that we are wanting more of that than we have in the past.”

On the other hand Tom Walker, an Australian comedian, has worked hard to complicate his truck driving. He has more than eight and a half thousand followers on his Twitch channel, where he live streams his American Truck Simulator sessions. He started streaming when the comedy circuit got shut down by the Covid-19 pandemic. “I needed something to do and a job, probably in that order,” he told The Spinoff. “I started truck streaming because it was low impact enough that I could just natter on to the chat.”

On Twitch, viewers can donate money in exchange for a moment of game control, or a fun performance by the streamer. Walker set up a couple of options: for $5 you can yank the wheel of his truck left and right. For $13.37 he enters “Wig Mode”, and wears his girlfriend’s blonde wig for 20 minutes.

Tom Walker, a popular Twitch streamer, playing American Truck Simulator. (Image: supplied)

While he mostly streams for money, he also does it for love. “My audience are smart and funny and I appreciate them too, not just for the financial aspect,” he said. “There are genuinely people in the chat who I look forward to seeing.”

While players like Lee and Maguire are more casual, Walker takes the simulations at an expert level. He used to be like them, taking long-distance contracts and driving for hours using the keyboard. “It was relaxing and low-stakes and felt like I was just zooming along the road, able to not think about anything,” he remembered. “I didn’t know a Scania from a Volvo.

“Now I’m a freak with a steering wheel, pedals and an H-pattern shifter that plugs into my big computer and I can spend minutes trying to get a park right.”

Oskar Howell is a “gamer advocate” and ex-gaming reporter. He knows even the most boring simulators can be made extreme. His simulator of choice, Farming Simulator, has been turned into a full-on esport – the elevation of a game to the level of a professional sport – by its fans. “Players will strategically ban or pick vehicles to make the lives of their opponents difficult, then spend 20 minutes in a low-octane esports environment where they rush around delivering hay bales,” he said. “It’s bizarre, but I can’t fault it.”

Oskar Howell, a “gaming advocate”, playing Fall Guys at the Devolver Games booth at PAX 2019. (Photo: supplied)

Howell said real-world simulators have always been “something of an oddity” in the gaming community. “Why would the average person devote their time to a career that they could pursue in the real world?” he asked. “I spend most of my time playing in virtual worlds I’d never want to experience in real life, like warzones or fantasy worlds.”

That being said, he absolutely froths the virtual farm. Like the other gamers we spoke to, he finds mindless simulations soothing. “People want the occasional detox from the high-intensity life of shooters and racers, and if that means driving around a virtual combine harvester, so be it.”

During the Christmas break, Howell played 100 hours of Skyrim over 17 days. Sometimes he’d take a night off to play Farming Simulator as a “break”. “If I played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive [a competitive shooting game] for a solid month of grinding, I might expect to need a night or two of something slower-paced like a Farming Simulator to detox and reinvigorate,” he said.

This is the core of the simulation evolution: we play them to rest. Just like in Airplane Mode, we’ve become passengers in the game, not pilots. Lee used to fly planes, and used the older flight simulators to enhance his learning for a pilot’s license. Truck simulators, he said, don’t work the same way: “It’s not like [Flight Simulator], you’re pretty much in a truck with some hairy arms that go left and right, and then you fall off a cliff.”

While Lee doesn’t feel modern simulators have the same extreme environments as older games, the stakes are still higher than in real life. “My God, if trucks went over [in real life] the way trucks go over in Snowrunner, we’d be in a very poor place.”

McCallum believes there’s a dual appeal in simulator games: like slow TV, they require very little brainpower. But like traditional games, they also give us a sense of accomplishment. “You’re motivated because you’re wanting to see completion, and you want to have the right level of agency in the world,” he said. 

“One of the nice things about Lawn Mowing Simulator is that when you’re done, the lawn stays mowed.”

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