Duke Smoochem: A Tour of the Absurdity of Life on Normal Island

Contemporary Britain is marked by a dizzying mix of cruelty and absurdity. Despite being one of the richest countries in the world, 14 million Britons live in poverty.  However, if you open a British newspaper or turn on the BBC, you are more likely to be confronted with apoplexy at the existence of vegan sausage rolls, than the abject conditions in which many of the country’s citizens are forced to live. Unsurprisingly, a national culture constructed around the bizarre obsessions of an out of touch media-class has become a machine for the creation of real-life farces. Social media only accelerates that machine’s output, allowing for a more unfiltered view of Britain’s reactionary culture, while also permitting an immediacy of response that facilitates an attitude of oppositional mockery that dispenses with the grovelling acquiescence of Britain’s liberal punditry. It has also made another thing abundantly very clear: British people are weird as hell.

It is in a spirit of both mocking opposition to British reactionaries, as well as a sometimes amused affection for the country’s parochial strangeness, that amateur game maker Dan Douglas has created Duke Smoochem 3D. Due for release in late-2022, Smoochem is a mod of 3D Realm’s 1996 release, Duke Nukem 3D. Smoochem documents an absurd slice of contemporary British life by recreating its spaces, as well as ephemeral moments from its (often very online) popular culture and politics. The game promises its players the opportunity to visit places such as a realistic and destructible Greggs or Margret Thatcher’s grave (which doubles in-game as a urinal). Its environments are saturated with references to major and minor events in British cultural life – from the Chelsea SUV driver who made front-page news by ramming her car into climate protesters (‘“Heroic” school-run mum who rolled her Range Rover into Insulate Britain Eco Mob faces calls to be PROSECTUED’ was one rather worryingly fascistic headline) to a filthy kitchen adorned with packets of meat that was the basis for a shitpost with a couple of hundred ‘likes’ from someone trolling a far-right UK journalist.

Currently, however, Smoochem only exists publicly as a YouTube trailer and a continually updated Twitter thread in which Douglas posts machinima-like clips from the game. It is clear from these, that the bleak, blocky environments of the original Nukem offer a perfect canvas for a game set in contemporary Britain’s own austerity ravaged cities. A prevailing architectural aesthetic of sparse, decaying concrete translates very well into such a low-res digital style. The format allows Douglas to respond almost immediately to new events and the thread acts as an archive for both the game and the events and memes upon which it is riffing. It also serves as a dev-diary and a means by which the game’s development is plugged into the wider UK-leftist Twittersphere. Smoochem is thus continually shaped not only by the events of British cultural and political life, but also by their reception in the political communities within which both the game and Douglas are embedded. It is thus an interesting example of the use of videogames to create an oppositional popular culture via processes of détournement, and also a document of that culture itself.

If the project has a wider political utility, it is likely related to this creative function. It is an example of politics as a source of enjoyment and community. The degree to which such online community translates into offline spaces is unclear, but perhaps it can at least help movements endure moments of crisis such as that currently being experienced by the UK left. Unfortunately, however, as Douglas tweets, ‘to fully enjoy Duke Smoochem you need to spend 20 hours a day on twitter’.

 

The thread can be found at: https://nitter.net/dandouglas/status/1448992008983523330#m

All images taken from Douglas’ Twitter thread for the game.

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