M.M.O.R.P.G. Addiction Documentary: Clichéd, Predictable, Anything but Boring

Now, you would think the first two descriptions aren’t compatible with the third but this isn’t the case with “Second Skin.” As a documentary focusing on an addiction and how it affects its subjects lives, it is clichéd and predictable, in that it follows the set of rules this genre of doc-making has made for itself:

Find a thirty-something-year-old who has lost everything and still can’t quit. Follow the grieving mother of a child she lost to the addiction, or watch as a couple who came together through their shared addiction battle with it as they try to raise a family. Watch as a group of friends slowly break apart when some start to look outside of the addiction for satisfaction in life.

We’ve all seen something of this nature before, from MTV’s “Real Life,” to A.M.C. “Intervention,” and even the scare films of our health class in high school. You can take any of these clichéd subjects and just switch different addictions in and out.

The thirty something-year-old has lost everything due to meth, pot, crack, weed, gambling, porn, uppers, downers, you name it. And the director Juan Carlos Pineiro Escoriaza does not stray from these clichéd subjects or the predictable nature of this genre at all, which is fine because he accomplished something any doc director has to accomplish: find or have “fall in your lap” a very interesting subject matter.

So what is this subject matter Mr. Escoriaza found? The addiction people have with M.M.O.R.P.G.s (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). In simple terms: You buy a game, go online and create a character, and then use this character to interact with other people online who bought the game in a computer generated world.

For example, in World of Warcraft you would create a good guy elf to interact with other good guys elves (other players online) to go fight the bad guys (people online who like Darth Vader more than Luke Skywalker). Yes, for those of you not familiar by now, people get very addicted to M.M.O.R.P.G.s, and this makes for a very interesting documentary.

Now, when I say you can take any of “Second Skin’s” subjects and switch out their addiction with another one, you can. Take the couple, Andy and Karalee, who met over World of Warcraft then move in together. Big shocker! Karalee gets pregnant, and stops playing the game while Andy just keeps pounding away at the keyboard.

Take these two and have them meet through mutual friends at a bar they both frequent. Guess what happens to Andy when Karalee gets pregnant? Yep, he keeps drinking. Now, I know this doesn’t sound interesting until you realize that none of these people in “Second Skin” are abusing a drug (beside the mass quantities of Mountain Dew).

These people are addicted to interacting with other people in a computer generated landscape. And within this digital landscape, you can never really know if the person you’re interacting with is who they say they are unless you meet them in person! Think about that for a brief second. Weird right? You get all these images of fat guy dumb nerds thinking they’re flirting with what they think are girls but are just more creepy other guy nerds posing as girls right? Of course you do, because with any group of people you form a stereotype in your head and as always that stereotype is right in some respects but most always wrong in many others.

And that’s one of the reasons I found “Second Skin” fascinating, not because these kids were so outside of our preconceived notion of normal, but that these kids are just like everyone else that walks down that road, be it the overuse of alcohol or painkillers. These kids are just as messed up as everyone else and looking for a way out.

And that’s the rub. It’s the single most depressing connection that I inferred from watching this movie and countless other “addiction” docs is how they all describe why they enjoy their particular addiction so much. In “Second Skin” the movie’s subjects refer again and again to “When we’re in the game, we’re no longer unpopular or unemployed, we are a beautiful elf warrior or wickedly powerful magician.”

Now compare that to the recovering alcoholic who misses drinking because while he was drunk he was funny, popular, and the life of the party. Or that gambling friend that only feels alive when he/she is risking hundreds to thousands on a flip of a card.  This all leads me to question that in a world that we as humans have sculpted and shaped, so many of us are desperate to find some way to escape it. And being that 50 million people are playing an M.M.O.R.P.G.s at any given time, it’s time that this addiction is given very serious thought. 

And this is where most addiction movies lead you. Feeling upset at the state of the world, government, personal responsibility, at yourself for feeling or not feeling sorry for the subject, but not “Second Skin.” I believe the real reason I enjoyed the movie was a small segment that focused on kids/adults that were physically/mentally disabled.

From being unable to speak, to stuck in a wheel chair for the rest of their life, to both. These kids found games such as World of Warcraft extremely liberating. In the game, these kids suddenly had the ability to speak and walk. To be free of judgment. To be free of a world that ignores them and released into a world that cares. Now are you going to tell one of these kids to get off the computer, get outdoors, and deal with the real world? This is a subject worth much more exploration than the documentary allows, as it differs completely from most other addictions. Not to mention all the implications this will have on society as the technology gets more and more sophisticated.

In the end “Second Skin” does what you hope every documentary will do, make you think and keep thinking.*

*Not to worry, the doc also contains nerds talking in nerd speak, people getting married in costume in real life and online, storm troopers, situations that are only funny because you are watching and not experiencing, illegal online “gold farms” being run out of China, pretentious “experts,” and much much more. I would explain but you should just watch it for yourself.

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