[[160 Plausible Essays]] For most of my life (except for my earliest childhood and some varying periods of adulthood when I focused on other things) I've played video games. I am assuming here the legitimacy of video games as an art form- there are good and bad works therein, but to follow my argument, please assume a legitimacy of the form alongside other more modern artistic forms such as the narrative novel, the recorded "album" of music, the photograph, or the motion picture. This essay concerns how video games have shaped this artistic work. If you lack any vocabulary surrounding video games, let me teach you one term necessary for this essay: "fetch quest." The "fetch quest" is the video game equivalent of a character looking in the mirror so that the author has an excuse to describe their physical characteristics. That is to say, it's an often repeated trope, it's bound up in the mechanics of the medium, and it is the bare minimum to accomplish a specific goal. In novels, the goal is describing how a character looks. In video games, it is to create a game- something to do. One of the unique characteristics of video games is that in order to convey whatever artistic or narrative meaning the game's creators hope to impart to the player, some skill and engagement is expected of the player. In a movie, one must typically at least be able to see, hear, and understand the language spoken in the movie in order to engage with it (which is to say some but not much is expected.) One must be literate to read a novel. Yet, in a video game the player has to *do many things* in order to advance the story. Fetch quests rose in prominence within the last 15 years or so with the widespread popularity of "open world" games. In contrast to games designed around linear point-to-point levels, or even small setpiece levels, open world games release the player into some, well, open world in which most or all of the games' content occurs. Thus, the player is given the freedom to aimlessly explore, to start segments of the game at their leisure, to pursue secondary objectives. Yet, even in some of the highest-budget open world games, the "fetch quest" remains. It is simple, it is something to do. The descendent of the fetch quest are "collectibles." Collectibles reward thorough exploration of the game. Whereas a fetch quest is a discrete quest within a game, collectibles may be scattered all throughout the world and serve as something which compels the player to look closely at the world. The more obscure, hidden, or challenging a collectible is to find, the more prestigious the reward for collecting it. Many players ("completionists") will make a habit out of "100%-ing" the game by amassing every collectible, every quest (fetch and otherwise), and engaging with every designed aspect of the game in totality. It may surprise you, given the nature of this odd project, that I am not really a rigid completionist. In fact, as I write this, I am struggling to think of any memorable experience I've had exhausting any particular video game of *all* its content. I've played many games in some alternative fashion, speedrunning, modding, mapping, etc.- I am by no means a casual or inexperienced player of games. Yet, I don't think I've ever made sport out of collecting every single item or completing every single quest in a game. As I worked this project, I realized the pattern and formula for video games was stamped into my thought process in such a way that when I read there were so many hundreds of bus stops in the GRTC network, all I could see in my mind was a progress bar. Every bus stop I successively photographed at seemed to have a little melody of an accomplished task accompanying it. Life itself is not a game, and yet the pattern of a gamified experience shaped how I thought about this task. Great art generally suggests horizons or depth outside of itself that generates an imaginative and reflective experience in the viewer. Think of *Lord of the Rings* and the feeling ancient lore which is pervasive in its pages. Well made video games provoke the same thoughts and reaction- their world design is suggestive of more distant horizons, a history before the player and a future after the events of the game. The beautiful thing about a finite life and a world so vast as to feel nearly limitless to our small frames is that there *is* this horizon in daily life. Yet, video games are ultimately finite. No matter how detailed the world is, when you eventually notice repeated textures, some repeated dialog... there are so many numerous things that finally break the suspension of disbelief in the world. I think if one becomes increasingly cynical, it is possible to look for these same repetitive patterns in reality. After all, the modern world seeks to develop typified and consistent experiences. Walking into any Panera will yield an experience that sits within a rather small possible range of experiences. Still, the world is not ultimately cut and pasted. Any number of houses may look similar, but the physical stuff of each and every building has some unique character and quality to it. No matter what cynical nonsense there is on the internet, there are truly no "NPC" human beings- every person has infinite worth and a whole lifetime of different experiences from you. This all may seem rather trite, but if we believe that anything in life is truly a "fetch quest" we fall prey to believing that anything in life is *actually* cut and paste. There is a line to walk, though. There are many video games I don't play any more because, having recognized the mechanics of what a fetch quest is, I realized there are many games that don't bring much originality in their mechanics- I don't play them any more. But, I still believe video games are fun. In the same way, turning a small fraction of life into a game of trying to make a unique picture at every bus stop in the city is fun, too.