LSD, Dreams, and Games

Ben Cantwell

LSD, Dreams, and Games

            Lovely Sweet Dream, or LSD, is game that is directly based off of dreams. Dreams are abstract and are given meaning through memories, visuals, and processes that we do not understand. No one really knows why we dream. There has not been any scientific explanation other than hypotheses and theories. Dreams are something we all share in the human experience. The same can be said for games. In McKenzie Wark’s book, Gamer Theory, Wark argues that we can never fully escape games. Dreams offer the same escape, but a subconscious, required, and far more powerful one. Not only do they offer this escape, they offer an escape that we cannot achieve while we are awake. We must dream in order to function as a human. Do we need games to function in gamespace? Are dreams games within gamespace or a projection of a sort of flexible gamespace?

            LSD was, in it’s original form, a journal. An employee of a Japanese video game production company, Hiroko Nishikawa, kept a journal of her dreams for more than 10 years. This inspired her to create a game, simulating dreams, referencing the contents of that journal. In later releases, the journal was turned into a booklet with illustrations by 80 “artistic units.”  This is a very interesting path for a media like LSD to take. It is almost like it evolved out of the pure abstract processes and algorithms in Nishikawa’s brain into memories, then into more algorithms, then interpreted again through the artists into visual representations. This path is incredibly interesting. It bares a similarity with what Wark describes as ‘allegorithm’: “Games have storylines like the historical novel, which arc from beginning to end. They are not just an allegory but a double form, an allegory and an allegorithm” (Wark 67). Dreams have often been considered meaningful throughout recorded human history. There are many myths and legends that attribute meaning to dreams. In a way dreams can be considered allegory. Even though a person may not consider all dreams significant by any means, there is still substance there. The substance evolves out of everything we experience in life. This is quite like how games have evolved out of all other media. Games borrow from books, television, movies, even legends and ancient history. They are developed from the human experience. This is the same for dreams. All of our experiences are developed, processed, stored, and parts of those experiences end up forming our dreams.  Dreams and games are formed out of the rich history of the human experience, which are what Wark calls ‘gamespace.’

The games of today hold some of the similar properties of the game of our ancient ancestors such as one of Caillois’ classification of games, agon. Classifying LSD using Caillois’ ideas is a bit difficult. The game proclaims itself to be a simulation. Chance is a huge aspect of the game. The worlds are created at random with all sorts of variables and algorithms that recreate a world each time you enter or interact with objects and doors. In that sense it would be a sort of Alea type of game, though the actual scale of chance is limited due to algorithms. The same can be said for Poker or roulette; there are rules but chance is the driving force of the game. In regards to dreams, you could say that chance is a large factor in what the result is. Since we experience a mash of memories, places, sounds, people, and emotions in dreams, there is the sense of chance that is the deciding content of dreams. No one goes to sleep knowing what he or she will dream about. Sometimes people wish they could choose what they dream about, but it is rare that they can control it. If we use Caillois’ classifications and Wark’s theory of gamespace, we can put together a process that takes all of the agon, alea, mimicry, and ilinx games that occur in gamespace and combines them, through memory, dissects them, and produces dreams through choosing bits and pieces of them and presenting them as a dream. In the most common dreams there objectives or situations that are games in themselves. Running away from something, attempting to fly or actually flying, and other agon situations are the most often reported dreams. So if we take that information from dreams and make a game out of it, such as LSD did, what is it? It has the content and interpreted simulative function of a dream but in a completely different context. The game allows experience of a dream-inspired state that is a ripple or an echo from the central dream journal followed by the actual dream. 

Since gamespace is reality and we experience dreams through reality, are dreams a natural and necessary escape from gamespace, just like the games we create for ourselves? We know that dream deprived people cannot function as well as those who have been regularly dreaming. Games are an escape from gamespace but also are a tool for learning. Would people deprived of games not function as well as those who play games? Wark suggests that games are inescapable. Dreams are inescapable too, but in a different way. In a world without games there would be no learning, no societal functions, and not much of anything. It would just be akin to an electric current, pure existence. LSD puts you in a world where you exist. You are free to move and explore, but there aren’t any rules besides those encoded in the algorithms. These algorithms can be seen as parallel to the logical algorithms we inherently have in our dreams. But unlike the computer algorithms in LSD, those logical constructs can be broken. This is what sets dreams apart from games. Games must have rules to function. Dreams have rules that can be broken. We know with our current knowledge that humans can’t run at the speed of light, but in a dream I can make myself do that. We can “cheat” logic, algorithm, or gamespace in our dreams. The control over our situations and realms in the dream are something that conquers the gamespace and reality we live in. This makes dreams inside of games but also outside of them. We use them as an escape, even though we can’t even turn them off. It might be better to say that our evolutionary adaptions use them for purposes we have yet to understand, but offer us an escape in which we can play any part or do anything we want. This is something that games offer, but they are defined by their limits in wakefulness and algorithm. Games are defined by their controls (what would a racing game be like without a top speed limit?). Dreams are defined by controls we know we can break, or our own minds can break. LSD has taken something our brains use that offers escape, breakable rules, and represents that experience through a controlled world in a context that isn’t sleep. In that way it’s like a Russian nesting doll. The outermost doll is gamespace in which the next doll, games lay, and then finally come dreams. Dreams offer the illusion of breaking through gamespace into the outer unknown. So in a sense the dream doll is both inside and outside of the game doll as well as having the illusion of being outside the gamespace doll. It’s almost like a rocket ship breaking out of the gravitation pull of earth and going beyond the atmosphere all while really staying inside of it: “The form of the digital game is an allegory for the form of being” (Wark 225). Dreams offer the illusion of escaping the rules of the form of being. This allegory that games allow us to partake in is a process in which we learn.

As children, we learn social skills as well as coordination through games. In LSD you “learn” (more like experience) through repetition. Each cycle of play is limited to about 10 minutes depending on what you do in the world. These are called days. Once you get past a certain amount of days, you then get to have the option of a “flashback.” This means you can revisit a certain dream day that will have the same textures and entities you had experienced once before. This is the only instance in which you can revisit a world. All other times it is completely different. It’s this idea of the new experience combined with memory that is something that is engrossing and enticing.  The connection of dreams and learning is actually part of a theory that the entire purpose of dreaming is so that the information we have acquired through our experiences can be sifted or sorted through and stored into our brains. The experience we have is just a side effect, state, or the process that we must go through in order to encode that information. Our brains have a sort of encoded algorithm to process information, which Wark explains: “…to interpret a game means to interpret its algorithm…” (Wark 30).  So in a way, interpreting our dreams is like interpreting the game LSD.

            The physicality of the dream journal versus the dream is something that is unique. In the case of a book versus an experience or game, there are many differences. Reading LSD’s dream journal is totally different from playing the game, obviously, but the way it is different relates to the “topos,” which is what Wark describes as “…a place both on the ground and within language.” Seeing words from a journal creates a landscape in the mind. Words go into the brain and are translated into images. Reading excerpts from the dream journal is a parallel process to actual dreaming. Since we know the context is a dream, or the topic (topos), we put our thought processes and imagination into that scenario. When we do this, the map (images we perceive as the dream) forms as the topographic. We put ourselves in the place of the author/dreamer. The dream journal does this because it is precisely what it is, a journal of dreams. The very function of it changes from author to reader. The author records the dreams and the reader perceives the dreams as actual dreams or dream experiences. This is something the text form of LSD does that the game doesn’t. While the game is titled as a dream simulator, it doesn’t cause us to think in context of ourselves actually dreaming, rather, it mimics the attributes of the algorithms of dreams. The “topological,” or the digital, is never reached in the text, but does in the game, obviously. I would say that the game is more of a unique and subjective emulator of the dream journal and thus, the dreamer’s experiences. It takes specific and detailed aspects of the dreamer and dreams and translates them into algorithm: “Gamespace turns descriptions into a database, and storyline into navigation” (Wark 69). The database here is the specific memories and visuals from the dreams (which is gamespace) as well as the attributes of a dream. The abstract storyline of the dreams become a sort of extremely basic track or constraints for the user to follow (the control of the “player” in the game);  “…the algorithm consumes the topographic and turns it into the topological” (Wark 69). When applying the game’s algorithm to the journal along with the visual constructs, it becomes the topological, but in this transformation it loses it’s ability to create a sense of dreaming in the players mind. They are playing a game, but not reading a dream or experiencing or constructing that dream in their mind. That’s what separates the text from the game. In becoming a game it loses its sense of being a dream. The physical act of putting a CD into a gaming system and watching it on a screen disconnects the player from a true sense of dream far more than reading the dream journal. The proxies that the player must use in order to access the content along with the context of the delivering of the content push the construction of the dream in the mind far, far away.

            LSD has a sort of dream history; the journal itself is a history of unique dreams. This is another parallel with games that dreams have. “History is indeed absent from the game, absent as something finished, as a storyline in the past tense. What replaces it is a history workshop, a model of history as the intuition of algorithms and their consequences” (Wark 71). The journal of dreams is the framework or model of history that ends up producing the game just as our experiences and human history becomes the framework of our dreams. We are not designers of our dreams, at least not consciously. We do through our actions and experiences have control over what we see, memorize, and witness with then though through lucid dreaming, you can become a designer of your dreams.

             Dreams are configured even though we (usually) don’t have any participation in the design. In the same way games are designed, our brains design our dreams as they occur. As Wark describes the game Civilization III, he states that “...time can be configured and reconfigured, producing endless variations on the cascading sequences of cause and effect” (Wark 71). Many of the games we create for ourselves offer endless variations. LSD offers this within obvious constraints. Ever game has constraints or rules but still offer endless variations within those confines. The same applies to dreams. Dreams take this one step further by allowing us to have endless variations within gamespace limitations, but which can be broken. Time as a rigid and ever-present ruling force is abstracted and very much ignored or forgotten inside the dream. There are endless variations and time is so warped and unreadable. We have no idea how long our dreams last. There is no keeping time within the dream. Time itself is warped during sleep and is perceived vastly different from wakeful cognitive consciousness. LSD takes the approach differently in regards to time. Each “day” is limited to 10 minutes maximum. The user is constantly reminded of the time at the end of each “day.” In this sense it loses the aspect of a dream-state in regards to the physical feeling of time in dreams. It cannot replicate that in-dream perception of time. But it does successfully replicate the post wakefulness recollection of dreams. When we wake up and recall a dream, we don’t remember the entire thing, we only remember small sections or specific events in them. I think that is something that LSD recognizes through the “day” function. It goes hand in hand with the original medium: the dream journal. Looking at each entry as a block in a grand hyper-sphere of each of the actual dreams would allow for the creator to assign a limitation such as the 10-minute time span. This constraining timespan is admittance that the game is a recollection of dreams and not a dream-experience itself, and a thus an algorithm that reminds us of the limits of games in gamespace.

            After each “day” is finished the user is greeted with a map. This map has four labels starting with UPPER at the top, DYNAMIC to the right, DOWNER at the bottom, and STATIC on the left. This aspect is something that allows the player to grasp a basic understanding of what he or she experienced during the “day.” It is like scaling Wark’s “topos” to the topographic and gaining an understanding of the context. The map after each “day” becomes an overlay that is above the entire previous experience. It labels it which brings forth reflecting. This is a type of reflection that is not unlike the recalling of dreams after waking up. It is a reflection and assigning of context and meaning to the previous experience. Since the worlds in LSD are all structured but based on algorithms that apply certain processes based on your interaction, the map is the dream journal equivalent in the actual game. The dream is like a light shined through the dream journal that forms the game which shines through the map into the players mind. It’s akin to a room with mirrors on two walls, with reflections that go back and forth; “Allegory becomes a double relation: on one side, there is the relation of gamer to algorithm in the game, its allegorithm; on the other, there is the relation of allegorithm to everyday life in gamespace” (Wark 42). What is really interesting is where we classify the actual dream. Dreams can be considered games in the experiential sense as well as allegory with meaning reflecting off of our lives and memories. Our brain can be seen as having algorithms that dictate our dreams and thus dreams produce allegorithm to everyday life in gamespace.

Dreams have the illusion of breaking through the confines and laws of gamespace. Many games we play today have that as well. If we wanted to blow up cars with rocket propelled grenades we could do that with games. If we wanted to turn off gravity we could do that. We can also do that in dreams, whether we can control our dreams or not. What separates the escape from dreams and games is that we play ourselves in dreams. We have the full human experience. When we play games we assume the role of an algorithm. The shell created for us to put ourselves into and escape gamespace is what games are for according to Wark. Dreams allow us to escape gamespace but we are able to believe it. We truly believe we are penetrated the outer limits of gamespace, at least while inside the dream. This is what sets dreams apart from games. There is no shell; there is no avatar in dreams. We don’t put ourselves into a human created algorithm. The algorithm of dreams is evolutionary. Created through millions of years of adaption, mutation, and experience. It is gamespace. The dream’s rules and constraints are set by gamespace but allow for the illusion of breaking gamespace. If a person is able to control their dreams, then they have access to the most perfect game in existence. They can live short periods of life outside of gamespace without ever leaving gamespace.

            Controlling dreams is hard and takes many days of training. It is called lucid dreaming. The people who are truly successful at it are able to create environments, objects, people, and shatter the rules and confines of gamespace. LSD is sort of the opposite of training for the ability to lucid dream. The more “days” that go by the more bizarre, abstract, and random the environments, entities, and sound becomes. The more you experience the less of an ability you have to predict happenings in the game. Training for lucid dreaming requires one to perform “reality checks” multiple times a day. Many people on online communities swear by different techniques. Some look at their hands and turn them over. Others ask themselves multiple times a day: “Am I dreaming?” These reality checks transfer gradually over into the dream-state so that when you are dreaming you perform one of these checks, the instability of the dream-state causes something to happen that is different from the reality check in waking consciousness. You notice this and the thought is created: “I am dreaming.” At this moment, it is extremely difficult to proceed. You cannot let this thought produce a chain reaction in which your thoughts build and result in you waking up. Truly gifted lucid dreamers will be able to enter into lucid dreaming state from the very beginning of the dream phase. The fact that the algorithms of dreams are not perfect replications of real life experiences means that it they are capable of breaking gamespace but also allows for the person dreaming having the ability to control it. Games created by humans are also not perfect replications of real life gamespace experiences. They are too algorithms that are not pure replications. They can be broken with hacks, bots, cheats, or trainer programs. The designers of the games don’t intend that, but it is just a fact that it can always happen. The algorithms of dreams is something that seems breakable, as gamespace is always dismissed or evaporated in them, but in reality, the algorithms are not since it is part of the fabric of gamespace itself. Lucid dreaming is just part of the algorithm, it isn’t cheating or hacking the algorithm, but using an aspect of it that is normally not accessed or capable of being accessed without certain skills. Everyone has the ability to access it thus it isn’t an exploit. No one has complete access to his or her entire memory at the blink of an eye. The algorithm of dreams is so complex, has so many variables, and is currently not fully understood. That way we cannot break the algorithm of dreams since it is part of gamespace it self; “All one can do is take pot-shots at time, which relentlessly chips away at life. In the game, there is at least the possibility of scoring points against time” (Wark 133).

            While in many games you can increase your skills and improve your ability at playing the game. In LSD there are no skills. There is no way to improve. There are no scores. There are no friends or foes. I think in this aspect LSD succeeds in breaking the mold of games that is so prevalent today. The user isn’t focused on a goal. “Targeting is at one and the same time the designating of a goal, the person designating, and the means of designation” (Wark 130). These goals perform different functions in different games. For many games, goals are what keep the player returning, pushing the ever-probing knife of boredom away. Goals take form in points, flags, achievements, kill-death ratios, and completing the game. Unlike Rez,  LSD doesn’t have these kinds of goals. LSD is about the experience and the results of that experience. There is an ending in LSD, which can be considered a goal. Once the player reaches 365 days, a cut scene (there are a few throughout the game which are displayed seemingly randomly) plays and the counter resets to “day” one. The FLASHBACK capability stays there though, unlike when originally starting the game.  Dreams have a double side to goals. There is the physical goal of the brain to produce dreams in order to continue functioning normally and there are the experiential goals that we perceive while dreaming. These are related to the context and content of the dreams themselves. These goals may be as bold as achieving flight or simple as finding a specific person in the environment. The unique thing about goals in dreams is that they are constantly changing. In most games goals are static: reach 100 kills in 10 minutes, capture that flag and bring it back to base, etc. In dreams we don’t always have a clear defined goal and if we do, it changes with the ebb and flow of the dream and experience. The complex algorithm of the dream creates these goals from memories and experiences from wakefulness and gamespace. LSD is static compared to the dynamic path a dream takes. Since it has been translated from a translation of a dream into a journal, that separation loses the specific goals. They are lost in the translation from sleep to wakefulness. The unique memories from the dream are written down, but the goals aren’t always recorded.

            Victory in LSD is something that is abstracted. It really isn’t even there. Along with goals, victory is something that gamers must have to prevent boredom. In dreams, victory is not something that is easily grasped. In the small games that are presented in dreams, there could be victories, such as surviving a gunshot wound, or defeating an attacker. That isn’t what keeps dream interesting, what keeps it interesting is not being able to predict what is going to happen, it is what is going to present itself. The scenario of the dream is always a new experience. We never know what we will dream about when we lay our heads down to rest. It’s the unknown that is refreshing and presents us with information that is unique. Though in reality the information we see in dreams stems from memories and experiences we receive while conscious, the way it is presented in dreams offers it as a unique experience. It is because of this reason that dreams are the perfect game. They allow the algorithms of gamespace to bend and flex while they are not actually moving at all. This is why dreams are never boring. The algorithm that forms them is so vast and complex that it allows for unique experiences for as long as we are alive; “Victory is temporary, or rather temporal. You can battle time in the game, but only for a time. And having won all there is to win, boredom looms…” (Wark 138). This uniqueness is comforting because it is reliable. We can rely on the fresh experience each night as we lie down in bed. We know that we will dream and something will happen that has never occurred before. Not only will it be unique, but the laws and constraints of gamespace will not apply there. It is an escape from gamespace inside of gamespace. Dreams do everything games cannot. Games are limited in their algorithms due to the fact humans create them and thus boredom is inevitable. Boredom is never the case in dreams. For one, we physically need dreams to function, but it’s more than that. The complexity and sustaining uniqueness that dreams offer is something we will never get bored with. LSD is a great attempt at that aspect of dreaming. The algorithms and randomness are dream-like, but not enough to be convincing. Perhaps just the reminding the player of the dream-state is what LSD is supposed to achieve. Since there is no storyline other than the content of the dream journal (which arguable has no linear storyline at all since we never experienced the dream in the dream state), LSD accurately represents the dynamics of a dream in that sense. There is no real tangible storyline other than the linear aspect of the game itself to follow, no main characters, no checkpoints, no achievements, no golden prizes. The dream journal acts like a collection of lines that could be considered individual linear storylines that come form a grid that is the dream. Since there isn’t big storyline overall in dreams, more than likely there are many, LSD use of “days” is successful in depicting that aspect.

            LSD is a game that was made from something that allows the human to escape gamespace while not actually escaping it. Dreams are vessels to the impression of the dimension beyond gamespace. For Hiroko Nishikawa, the dedication to the dream journal and then to the transformation of that into a game was recognition that we use games to escape gamespace, while also recognizing that they (games) are so limited. Dreams, however, paradoxically allow us to escape gamespace while still staying within the confines of it. This paradox is what makes dreams exponentially capable compared to games that humans design. LSD is like a full circle of reflection originating at the dream, interpreted and recorded into a journal, then formed into a game, booklet, and which has the possibility of returning as part of the dream-state from where it originally formed. Since dreams are so powerful at bending the laws of gamespace, LSD as a “dream simulator” cannot possibly compare with dreams. What it is successful at is the recognition that dreams have the power to make breaking the laws of gamespace feel real. LSD also hints at the complex algorithms that dreams form from, using an endless database of experiences, memories, ideas, objects, all of which combine in the dream-state. LSD is exactly what a dream would be if it had none of the capabilities of a dream. Its confines are that of gamespace, human created algorithm, and through the medium, the audience is reminded of the limitations. It does succeed in mimicking the alea of the dream-state. It’s randomness with the content of the journal produces a likeness to that of dreams. The content also reminisces the dream-state because of its direct origin from dreams. Overall LSD is a reminder and highlighter of the limitations of gamespace, algorithm, the pursuit of breaking of gamespace, and the perfect illusion of breaking gamespace that only dreams allow. These lovely sweet dreams are definitely something to take comfort in, look forward to each night, and be thankful for as they keep us sane inside gamespace.