This is the Choice of Steins;Gate

Some games are pure entertainment. Others attempt to communicate heavy messages. Both are valid, because they satisfy different needs. Though a rarer, third kind communicates a message that matches its story and characters, whilst also entertaining its players. Steins;Gate is a member of that last class. Its form and its message entwines in a slow, seamless dance that rewards a patient gamer. Before long, it seeps into your bones, until you ponder its existential questions well into the night. Some memories do transcend time.

A trajectory of calculations

Rintaro Okabe is not an approachable guy. He screams incomprehensible phrases, exploits relationships for his own benefit, and treats everyone as an inferior. In his imaginary world, he is a special genius: a mad scientist.

Delusional would be a more apt description; and that’s what many others, including his friends, tell him to his face. That doesn’t bother him. At least he has his lab, Future Gadget Lab, to feed his giant ego. Despite its grandiose name, the lab is a small apartment above a CRT repair shop in Akihabara.

Okabe is a student at Tokyo Denki University, a real-life Japanese institution that specializes in the fields of science and engineering, and it’s his obsessions with inventions, more than anything else, that guides him down his path. It’s a wonder that anyone puts up with him. His lab does have members, though: Mayuri, a self-described hostage, and Daru, a self-described super hacker. Maybe they’re just as delusional.  

Peaks and trails

Steins;Gate starts off slow. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s deliberate in its pacing. After all, the time we spend with someone allows us to get to know them.

In most stories, protagonists are at least somewhat likable, but Okabe appears to be just another jerk, to put it mildly. Some players have struggled to connect with the story because of that aspect. Still, certain causes hide behind his actions.

Delusions can be shields. Okabe’s version protects him from world’s social demands, which he can’t navigate with ease. His possible autism, alluded to by the franchise itself, makes it difficult for him to follow social scripts, so he controls the narrative of conversations with his mad scientist persona. The sad thing is that the strategy pushes people away, too. Okabe is thus caught in a painful loop.

Even though he is intelligent, he hasn’t realized that the people around him also understand his struggles. They might even show him support if he chooses to open up to them. All indicators point to the possibility that most, if not all of them, are also neurodivergent, with a diverse set of personal challenges. Much is left unsaid during their interactions.

A time of thoughts

Above all, Steins;Gate sketches an accurate portrait of geek culture in the late 2000s/early 2010s. A time when people with intense interests, who still faced considerable societal exclusion, clustered together in online and offline communities, where they could create more tolerant environments. Many were undiagnosed and unsupported neurodivergents, because mental health services were not accessible or commonplace. Some, like Okabe, turned to coping mechanisms to survive in a world that criticized their actions.

Technology became an escape for many. It still is. Steins;Gate shows the problems with that option, albeit through its science fiction gadgets. Still, because the gadgets are nothing more than modified normal consumer products, the message is still clear.

Its form and its message entwines in a slow, seamless dance that rewards a patient gamer. Before long, it seeps into your bones, until you ponder its existential questions well into the night. Some memories do transcend time.

The siren song of technological convenience promises so much to us, especially those of us who are neurodivergent, struggle with social interactions, or carry trauma. We could live a different life, it promises. It’s so seductive that we often look past the dangers. But they are ever-present.

In pursuit of those dreams, we often miss the treasures that are right under our noses: our real-life relationships. Sometimes we have to lose them to realize how precious they were to us. Then it is, sadly, often too late to turn back time.

Backdrop for a meeting

Steins;Gate deals with many complex concepts. Kerr black holes, multiple universes, time divergence, and more make appearances in its characters’ discussions. It anticipated the growth of these concepts in many mainstream stories in the years after its first debut in 2009.

In my eyes, that’s not what has solidified its popularity. The reason it has spun off into various types of media, including a live-action stage play, is the human story that undergirds the science fiction elements. It’s about a young person who struggles to define what is a worthy, ethical life. It is something the German philosopher Immanuel Kant also struggled with in his time. Kant wrote in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785):

…I ought never to conduct myself except so that I could also will that my maxim become a universal law.

Kant recognised that it’s important to consider how our actions touch other people. In the internet’s void, we often forget that fact. Steins;Gate visualizes the lack of accountability in modern life through Okabe’s own conundrums. When one recognizes the humanity of others, in how our how our actions touch other people, then we realize how our choices impact our own self-perceptions as well.  

Whispers of a conversation

The game is not a breezy experience. Sometimes it’s difficult, torturous even, to click “next”. In certain moments, it can feel like it savors the pain of its characters. We can only watch the train crash, because the game doesn’t allow us to choose dialogue options or direct Okabe’s actions.

The one way we, the players, influence the story in Steins;Gate is through Okabe’s cell phone. This design choice further reinforces the message of alienation through technology. It’s also a clever way, from a game design standpoint, to immerse us in the story, because the phone is a familiar overlay on the game world. Just like in our lives, we can choose the wallpaper and ringtone of the phone, and answer calls and text messages.

The phone represents the powerful contradiction of modern life: As technology connects us, it can also divide us. Our choices on the phone leads Okabe down certain story routes. Steins;Gate asks to consider the person on the other side of the call.