And yet the game's purpose is a distillation of the real, making the consumption--though virtual--more pressing, more incentive-driven, more intense. This is part of its allure. This is part of its danger. This is part of its future. This is part of its strength. For this type of consumption's greatest threat is never eventual starvation due to a surfeit of indulgence, but rather the inversion of the target to the point of self-consumption. (Self-examination, then, is the precursor to intellectual self-consumption, a radical event that grows off of that which it feeds--a twist on Hamlet's observation of "...[a]s if increase of appetite had grown/By what it fed on...", though the Prince of Denmark anticipates this rapacious consumerism in his prescient lines. Whether or not one's self-consumption actually transpires seems implausible: Has one ever thought oneself into madness?) With the game, however, its self-consumption can constantly hold satiety in abeyance, in part because of the endlessness of its product, its endless repetition of the buttons, its refusal to end on the terms of the gamer--always on the terms of the game. But more than that, the game can generate its selfsame indefinitely, for it isn't limited by natural resources. Its limits come from algorithms, yes, but if the algorithm is its boundary, then time only will delimit it to the point of effective infinity. It is the most harmless kind of consumption within the world of the unreal, and it is a nearly-disease kind of consumption in the world of the real.
The (Un)Real World
It is Skyrim where we see this consumptive desire played out in its endless expanses. Acquisition for its own sake is the metaphorical name of this game. Pots, body parts, weapons, ores, clothing, and so many other miscellanea that a list is worthless perpetuate themselves throughout the game. The gamer can never consume it all--there is always more to take and to sell, to weigh down Lydia with, to hoard in one's home. The game yields its bountiful crop each time the gamer enters its frosty hills.
But it is more than just the quasi-tangibles of the game, those items that weigh down the character and make for endless scrolling. The acquisition of levels, of spells, of perks, of trophies/achievements--all of these join in and expand upon the expansiveness of Skyrim. One can journey from one end of the map to the other, passing stunning vistas (that eye-candy that is visually devoured as rapidly as real-world candy) and avoiding roaming giants, yet the experience is not satisfying. The lack of satisfaction doesn't come from disappointment--it comes from the impulse of addition. Finding every homestead is not sufficient; other locales may yet need discovering. The exploration fuels this, yes. After all, there is a small thrill to finding some ruins that bandits have taken for their own, expelling them, and adding another mark to the map. But within the gamer lurks this insistence that there is yet something to accomplish.
The Real World Consumption
The game turns itself outward, then, as what was harvested and harbored in the game again becomes insufficient. New games are then purchased--too many games to ever keep up with. Casual games of produce harvesting (consuming the virtual representation of that which turns into the most fundamental consumptive product) generate real world money for unreal world acquisitions. Birds with temperament disorders insist on the possibility of not only more stars, but more levels--thematic for the seasons--and external product of the unreal (plush toys, board games, keychains, and more). Thus the game turns in on itself while simultaneously turning outward, consuming the world that it never should have been able to, blurring the line between the real and the unreal, the analog and the digital, the finite and the infinite.
