I was recently made aware that Life Is Strange: Double Exposure has a character just like me. I don’t just mean that they say things similar to me or even dress the same. I mean that Moses from the newest Life Is Strange game looks just like me (at least when I’m freshly cut and trimmed) and he even has my ding dang name! Sure, I’m Moises and he’s Moses, but if you anglicize my name, it’s the same shit. I don’t know whether I should be flattered, or get on the phone with some lawyers.
I’m only joking about the lawyer bit. I’m a writer who lives in New York, I’m too poor to even play at getting legal representation. Most I could do is ring up some friends who went to law school and poke around before they realize they should be billing me for the consultancy. With that option completely off the table, I’ve fully given into flattery.
Moses seems like a sweet and decent enough guy. He’s a good friend of both Max and Safi in Double Exposure, and seems to embody some of the same ideals and passions that I do. A video from the developers and publisher gives a brief introduction to the guy, who’s apparently a physicist and a nerd, highlighting his love of set rules, games, anime, and other dorky shit. He’s a heavy-set dude too, and is rocking countless layers just like I do. This, folks, is what it feels like to be seen.
Moses is such a stereotype, and it’s got me excitedly kicking my feet over here because it feels like the crystallization of a wonderful new stereotype. I love the fact that he’s such a nerd, for example. Growing up, media made me believe that nerddom was a lifestyle for certain kinds of people, and I didn’t necessarily belong to them. Of course, my lived experience quickly suggested that that notion was entirely a farce—the biggest nerds in my life were the other brown and Black kids I argued about Dragon Ball and Star Wars alongside at lunch or recess. Moses strikes me as a guy I might’ve met in exactly that way.
Similarly, I love that he’s a full-blown physicist. There were occasional scientists and computer geniuses played by minorities growing up—the most obvious of which these days feels like Samuel L. Jackson as Arnold in Jurassic Park—but once again, those occupations were largely communicated to me as roles for more privileged people than myself. Flash forward to the present, and some of the dearest people to me (not to mention some of the smartest folks I know) are Black doctors. Years ago, we were drinking ourselves silly in their dorms playing Super Smash Bros. and now these incredible people are saving lives, and they could still probably find the time to whoop me. And I play games for a profession! They contain multitudes, and so do I. And by extension, Moses does too.
I don’t know Moses, I haven’t played Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, but I love him already because he represents all these positive changes in how people like me are perceived while also looking exactly like me! I don’t always see myself in a great light, and so it’s wonderful to have a carbon copy of me that does look and sound like a person worthy of admiration. I don’t know man, this kind of affirmation is a luxury in games, and I’m going to take advantage of it for as long as I can.
I, as well as numerous other marginalized folks in and around the games industry, have bemoaned the fact that there have never been enough people who look and talk like us in video games. I can’t begin to describe the psychic damage you unknowingly take when your favorite hobby and pastime rarely reflects your reality. It’s made the last few years of increasingly diverse main characters and wonderful customization tools a boon, but I’ve never been able to look at a character I didn’t sculpt myself and truly say, “Wow, that’s me,” till Moses here came along. To all the white people who’ve enjoyed this feeling for about as long as there have been games, I see you, I get it, and I’m not letting this go.
I don’t even care that Moses is second fiddle to some white girl’s story. I really don’t. I don’t always want to be the main character, I just like feeling like I have a place in all of this that I didn’t have to fight abnormally hard for. And Moses feels like that. I didn’t labor to make him a thing, I didn’t fight to conjure him. He just is, just like I just am. And that is more than enough.
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