Aug 10, 20211 min read

Will Lee

Will Lee makes small games, machinimas, and other creative expenditures.

Acedia of Arcadia

This machinima documents the wandering gaze of a player who has satisfied every obtainable goal in various video games, left only to ruminate on the stillness that erupts from the cessation of desire. Gameplay from different dystopian cyberpunk and dark fantasy games are combined to emphasize a shared graphical affinity for realism, one-point perspective, and sublime landscapes typically used to afford an optimal perspective for strategic manipulation of the game world. Now, all these character models, coded mechanics, and environments are left in a state of infinite play, a game without a game.

We were fighting, but what for? Utopia had been won, yet we arrived nowhere. We knew what we wanted to be free from, but not free for.