An Ode to xX_Rick420_Xx, My Most Hated Enemy, Whom I've Never Met, And Who Doesn't Know I Exist
Screen names have been changed to protect the presumably innocent.
I have an archnemesis, and their name is xX_Rick420_Xx.
(I'll call them Rick from this point forward.)
This is no mere rivalry. Rick represents all that I hate. I'm not happy merely defeating Rick, I must humiliate them. If, during a race, I have a choice between coming in second with Rick coming in first, and coming in sixth with Rick coming in seventh, I'll take the latter every single time.
Rick is not a game character. Rick is a real person. I don't know Rick. Rick, I presume, doesn't even know I exist. All of these is true.
Now I need to tell you all about Forza Horizon 3.
Forza Horizon is a series of racing games revolving around a car-themed music festival. On each of the four installments (with a fifth having been recently announced, making this post weirdly timely, something I must assure my faithful subscribers was not on purpose) players can race an incredibly vast array of licenced motor vehicles on an expansive open world. This is not important.
The important thing is this: Forza Horizon 3 is the first game in the series in which you don't need to win.
OK, that's not entirely true. There are specific events, which you are forced to participate in, which you have to win. These so-called Showcase events have you racing against weird non-car things, like a train or a fighter jet. They are also very easy: on three separate occasions (of five events you need to play), I was lagging behind for over a second, then suddenly won in the last moment. So there are events you do have to win, it's just that I think you need to try hard to lose these.
But regular races? The ones in which you drive against other cars? You don't need to win any of these. In order to see all the game has to offer, all you need is "fans", the game's fancy term for experience in the modern, social media soaked world. The best you place, the most fans you get. But, crucially, you get some fans even if you arrive last. You could, technically, arrive last on every race and still see the entire game. It'd take a long time, but you could.
Why would you do that, though? That's the other thing. Forza Horizon 3 not only never expects you to win, but never expects you to race in a certain way. There are hundreds of cars to choose from, in nearly a dozen categories, and you can set up the races any way you like them. Sure, you could race fancy sportscars, but if you show up in a junker, the game will select cars with similar ratings to keep things fair(ish). Changing categories can also wildly change the way a race goes. Racing modern hypercars is very different from racing classic sedans. You can also use special categories, or even create your own (although this process is quite tedious).
I'm telling you this because this is the way I played FH3. I don't give a single shit about winning. I find a cool race, play it with the junkiest junky cars I can find while the computer struggles to keep out with other adequately shitty cars, then think to myself "This race would be even more fun with [different junky car]", so i go straight back to the start point to race again. Other than whisking me off to the showcase events, the game didn't care.
This is very important to me, because I love shitty cars. I want to race these crappy ass motherfuckers all day long. Most games won't let me. Most games will give you a crap car at the beginning, then say "with hard work, you can upgrade this to a Ferrari!" I don't want to upgrade to a Ferrari. I'll keep my starting junker for as long as I can, then lose interest in the game when it gets outclassed.
Cars never get outclassed in Forza Horizon 3. I spent most of my first hours in the game racing a 1945 WW2 Jeep. I later switched to other cars, and even upgraded a few of my beloved junkers so that they can race at something approaching actual racing speeds, but I did it because I wanted to, not because I had no choice. This is something rare in games, and something I find beautiful.
(Do notice this reflects my personal experience, which started when I got the game at a massive discount when Microsoft stopped selling it. If the next game in the series is any indication, the online events, specially the time-sensitive Forzathon races that give you exclusive prizes, do force you to use certain cars, and do very much care if you win. But these are effectively optional, to the point that I still recommend FH3 even though it no longer has weekly events and the multiplayer servers are in their dying throes.)
Now I need to tell you about Drivatars.
OK. So in the beginning, the Forza Horizon series didn't have the technology to populate your world with other players, but wanted to pretend it did. So it came up with Drivatars, this stupid portmanteau of 'driver' and 'avatar'. Basically, your world is filled with AI drivers, but these AI drivers are based on real people.
Their names are all real screen names. Theoretically, the cars they race are cars they own and drive in their games, and the AI tries to mimick their driving styles. I don't know the extent to which this actually happens; I've seen people say (with regards to the next game in the series) that they've seen AI drivers try to ram them off the road the way real players do in multiplayer events, but I honestly doubt there's anything that elaborate. (My personal guess is that the computer looks at certain actions the player undertakes and flips switches to pre-set behaviours. Do they ram other players a lot? Switch on "agressive". Do they brake early? Switch on "careful".) What I can say is that, from the short time I was playing with my girlfriend, I can tell her avatar did drive the same car as she did, so these are certainly some flavour of based on real people.
FH3 took this to a new level. On this game, you can also 'hire' Drivatars to 'work' for you. The game finds these people for you, then you race them, then, if you win, they're now part of your team. You get some bonus for having them aboard that I've never bothered to learn what it exactly consists of, and they show up as AI drivers on every event.
That's how I met Rick. They were the first Drivatar the game recommended me, right after it explained to mechanic to me. They were, at that time, around level 200 something. The next avatar I found was level 30. The third, 3. (Probably someone who played the game at a friend's house.) I've also imagined personalities for them. One is silly, one is quiete. The level 3 one is a plucky beginner. I'm usually as happy with their victories as with my own.
Not the case with Rick.
Why do I hate Rick so much? That's because, in many ways, they represent the epitome of everything I dislike in a racing game, every thing that makes me like Forza Horizon better. And they do this only through their choice of vehicle and livery.
Now, to reiterate: the way I play this game is by squaring off the least race-ready cars in the game. We're talking old jeeps and clunky sedans and whatever else would be found mostly covered in rust, and would probably only see a race if it was a demolition derby. But, if there is a serious car choice in the bunch, you bet that will be the one Rick will take. If we play old 60's cars, he'll be driving a classic sportscar. If I choose English cars, Rick'll be in a Lotus or an Aston Martin, never a Vauxhall. If I choose a maker known only for their economy sedans, Rick will find one that had some success as a rally car or something.
Do you see? I only want to watch old cars grinding along. My favourite cars are always thinks that are weird, usually difficult to drive well (or at all). Rick doesn't see this. They actually pick cars that give them the best chance of winning!
How dare they?
Even if they don't find something weirdly effective, they'll try to pretend they did. I love weird liveries. I have a BMW Isetta painted to look like a Minion. (On Forza Horizon, to clarify. Sadly.) Rick doesn't do this. Every car of theirs that's not painted in a single, sober colour, is painted to look like a real racecar. The pure gall!
Now, I don't need to keep Rick around. The game often finds new Drivatars to be my teammates, and since I have a full team already, I could fire them at any time. But I won't, not now. I see the story now. Rick was the first to join my team. They were an ambitious, up-and-coming racer, and they thought joining me would be the way to fast-track to victory. They didn't know I was a weirdo that likes to see microcars racing against war tanks. At first, I wouldn't mind setting them free, letting them race the way they want to. But now, I want them to suffer. They're in my world. They're playing by my rules now. And they'll race another D-Class Offroad on the same track, because that's what I demand.
A lot has been said of emergent stories in videogames, and this is certainly one of them. Neither the real person behind Rick, nor the game, created this loathsome rival as a counterpoint to my playstyle. I did all of the work for them. But the canvas was provided. More weirdly, a real person, somewhere, helped create this canvas. Maybe they only played a few tracks and chose their favourite liveries. I have no indication that they're actually any kind of hardcore gamer or racer. Maybe they just got lucky with getting speedy cars from the game, and they just chose realistic liveries because they were the ones that were displayed first.
There is always a level of dehumanization when you meet someone on the internet, when you consider them a bunch of pixels rather than a complete human being. I daresay I'm pretty good at avoiding that pitfall. I wouldn't be as mean and petty towards Rick if they were a real person rather than a bunch of code, and I always prefer disengaging to prolonged conflict. But there is probably a good idea in the way this character sprung from a bizarre collaboration. There are many ways for games to create stories, and some will probably lay dormant for a while as makers gain more control of the possibilities of the medium. There are songs being written today that couldn't have been written ten years ago, and music has existed for millenia. Have I given myself a glimpse of a distant future of interactivity?
Or maybe I just invented a giant dick to hate because I'm a giant dick myself. We may never know.
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