Saturday, March 8, 2008

SXSW movie review: Second Skin

Other realms of existence, for good and ill.

By John P. Meyer

Director Juan Carlos Pineiro admits to personally enjoying board-based RPGs, as opposed to computer-based ones.

Second Skin made its world premiere on opening night (March 7) at SXSW with director Juan Carlos Pineiro and his producers in attendance, along with many of the film's subjects: virtual reality gamers involved (heavily) in Massive Multiplayer Online Rope Playing Games (MMORPGs). After seeing the film, it stacks up as quite an accomplishment that the filmmakers were able to drag these folks away from their computers to attend.

We're talking guys (and gals) who spend upwards of half their waking lives immersed in adventures such as Everquest and Warcraft, conquering levels until there are none left to conquer - until a new game version is released. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade released in 2007, and our guys stood in line along with gazillions of others to be the first to a) get their hands on the new software world, and b) rise to the top of the online gaming heap, competing against both themselves and the virtual community at large.

It's no coincidence that there's a Matrix poster on the wall of the tiny house in Fort Wayne, IN where Anthony, Chris, Matt and Andy have created their "Fortress of Dorkitude": their "real" bodies and outside realities become meaningless to them as they conduct their nightly raids in WoW (Worlds of Warcraft). Amazingly, a couple of them appear to be are on the verge of transitioning into productive lives through marriage and parenthood.

Some of the characters - real and imaginary - profiled in the film

A second plot thread follows the initially long-distance and then up-close-and-personal relationship of Everquest mavens Heather and Kevin, who met through their avatars in that fantasy world and developed a close (and really weird) bond. When Heather decides she's had enough of Kevin's flirtations with other svelte female virtual reality characters, she suggests they get together - and flies from Florida to meet Kevin -sans avatar - at his home in Houston.

And then there's the amazing tale of Dan, whose life has been pretty much ruined by his gaming addiction when we first meet him: he's lost his job and his girlfriend and is thinking about suicide to put paid to his (real life) loser ways. Enter OLGA (that's OnLine Gamers Anonymous), whose organizer knows a thing or two about addiction from her own life experiences. The manner in which Dan pulls himself out of his own pit of self-destruction is a truly inspiring (and entirely unexpected) narrative.

All this is told through a visually dynamic intermix of game screen animations and "real person" film footage, set to a driving, swashbuckling adventure drama soundtrack.

It's cool to see the characters morph from avatars into their actual selves, but what's cooler are the candid conversations to which we're made witness. Following the screening, the filmmakers explained to us that they became close friends with their subjects over the course of the two years of filming - which elicited a question regarding the extent to which the camera wielders might have influenced the actions of their subjects: the old quantum physics argument. While this resulted in a certain amount of hemming and hawing around, one of the Fort Wayne Boys expressed his newly-found dedication to video game advocacy in response to attacks on the culture by lawmakers.

Two other side stories of note are explored in the film: 1) the strange and almost unbelievable practice of gold farming, whereby a boiler room full of industrial gamers play level after level of, for instance, Warcraft in order to obtain flashy armor or powerful weapons, and then sell them off to ordinary WoW Joes and Jills for actual (and substantial) cash money; and 2) the manner in which persons with physical disabilities are allowed - through virtual reality gaming - to escape from the limitations of their bodies and do things they could never hope to do in real life. Such as walking, or carrying on a conversation with their peers (via text), or - of course - slaying a dragon.

KNOW THYSELF: "How many hours do you think before we pass out in front of the computer?" - one Fort Wayne Boy to another, after picking up his copy of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

RELATIVITY: "Maybe a crackhead's more of a person than a video game addict." - Dan's brother, who Dan has introduced to the MMORPG world, to Dan

ONE PERSON'S CURSE IS ANOTHER'S BLESSING: "It lets me be free from my regular body - and I like that." - disabled man, re. his virtual self

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