4/24/2021 0 Comments Armada By Ernest Cline
This is not a new story; its served as the inspiration for countless video games over the past 40 years, not to mention the recent harassment campaigns that spawned out of gaming culture and the wounded, entitled pride at their heart.While the aims of the novel are onanistic rather than malicious, Armada nonetheless demands to be bronzed as the perfect embodiment of the impulses that so often make gamesand gaming cultureboring, self-indulgent, and regressive.
![]() Set in 2044, that first sci-fi adventure took place in a dystopian future in which people escape their lives by jacking into a virtual reality universe. This VR world was created by a programmer who was obsessed with 80s geek culture and built an elaborate treasure hunt into the game based on his very specific predilections. The resulting journey was a confectionary pastiche where the player who essentially got the most 80s references was promised vast, godlike abilities, and the worship of nostalgia was framed as the path to happiness, salvation, and power. Armada is neither as immersive nor as fun, though it remains just as committed to sucking the sweet, nostalgic marrow from superior works of science fiction and pop culture. After nearly 100 pages of overly specific descriptions of Zacks online battles with his friends, everything changes when a spaceship ripped from the game itself lands on the front lawn of school, and a man emerges to announce that Zack is so good at video games that he has been enlisted to fight aliens. Or perhaps Enders Game, a story about a young boy who is so good at video games that he is enlisted to fight aliens. In an interview with the Verge, Cline explained the secret sauce that makes his story different from the other sci-fi tales that have told similar stories: Yup, its pop culture references. In a zombie apocalypse movie, he said, nobodys ever seen a zombie movie. Or in an alien invasion movie, nobody has ever seen an alien invasion movie like Independence Day. Thats what Armada is if an alien invasion happened today, wed be aware of all of that and reference all of this pop culture. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica s flight deck. Armada By Ernest Cline Full Of GunstarsOr Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hangar full of Gunstars. Geek culture has long been preoccupied with trivia; the ability to recognize and make references to games, movies, and TV shows beloved within various geeky subcultures is often considered an in-group badge of honor, a signifier of credibility and even power. Armada is a book designed entirely around getting the reference high-fiving the readers who recognize its shoutouts while leaving everyone else trapped behind a nerd-culture velvet rope of catchphrases and codes. On more than one occasion, soldiers salute each other en route to world-ending battles by solemnly swearing that the Force will be with them, and one character flies to his supposedly tragic and moving death while screaming quotes from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is a book that ends with someone unironically quoting Yoda. When players like Zack are recruited into the Earth Defense Alliance, their in-game prestige also immediately translates into military rank and real-life power. Elite recruits like Zack are immediately promoted to flight officer, meaning they immediately outrank many of the enlisted men, even if the flight officer is a smart-ass teenager who goes by the handle Kushmaster5000. In one revealing moment, Zack calls his mom in midst of the alien invasion and says the words that burn in the heart of every gamer who has ever felt demeaned for the hours they lavish on their favorite hobby: All those years I spent playing videogames werent wasted after all, eh. You might wonder: What is Lex about What motivates her It doesnt matter. Whats important about her is that shes a hot girl from Austin who gets his jokes, has alabaster skin, sports a seminude Tank Girl tattoo, and wants to make out with our hero after hearing that hes one of the best Armada players in the world. Zack has spent a lot of his life consuming those same games and movies in hopes of recapturing something that has been lostthe same impulse that drives so many people to obsess about the past.
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