Havana Times

We Become What We See

Kabir Vega Castellanos

How the game looks.
How the game looks.

HAVANA TIMES — The title of this post refers to the name of a game: “We become what we behold.” I found out about it on a video I watched on the channel “Juega German”, the young Chilean who has won popularity awards for his videos on Youtube.

German is already an extremely famous personality on the Internet and his videos are even included on the Weekly Package which is distributed unofficially in Cuba.

I wanted to use HT to promote this mini-game, as it’s not something you see every day. It isn’t an action or strategy game and it has nothing to do with solving a “jigsaw puzzle”. It requires 5 minutes of your time max to play it wholeheartedly and it doesn’t only aim to entertain its players but also to transmit a powerful message.

I’m sure that if you Google it you’ll be able to find and download it for free, but I can’t guarantee it.

This “point and click” game recreates a small representation of society, where different little people walk about the screen randomly and there is a TV screen right in the middle. The player doesn’t have to do anything but move around the mouse like a camera lens and record, with a click, different events that they see appear. These photos are then immediately broadcast on the TV with a subtitle, and the people in this virtual world react according to the news they read.

Then, as the player advances in the game, they discover how the media manipulates information and how they themselves are accomplices of this. The player will be able to understand how you can influence these people with artificial intelligence by controlling the information they read, to the point of even being able to control their minds.

A simple game which gives us an overwhelming example of the power that what we consume via the media holds. How much it affects us on a subconscious level and how we can be manipulated by impressions.

To adapt the translation of the heading of this piece a little, it would be better to say that “we become what we see”, because our minds can only be influenced by a concrete visual image we choose to see, voluntarily, by paying attention.