Saturday, 18 April 2020

Petscop (2017-20)




Petscop is not a film, a television series, even a short film or a commercial. Petscop is a YouTube channel, a Let's Play of an obscure Playstation One game said to be from 1997. "Let's Plays" are videos on YouTube of people playing video games with them commenting on the material as they go along. It might sound banal, but I will admit to having watched a few even as someone who does not consider himself a videogamer. Unfortunately video games do not have as easy a system for preserving old and obscure titles from yore, even if retro gaming is popular and more are being restored, the most interesting Let's Plays for me which create a desire to start playing games again always the ones covering fascinating obscurities. Sadly most are not possible to play or (if Japanese) require you to understand the text, but witnessing them in action they shown how delving into the past and old artefacts is a compulsion regardless of medium.

Petscop, the first video released in March 2017, is an unfinished game and a banal children's title, something I can attest to as of the Playstation One generation. I knew of all the cheap titles released on the system (and filled the magazines eventually to their reviewers disgust) especially in the console's dying days before Playstation 2 effectively shoved it off its mortal coil finally, even played a few. Initially our commentator Paul is playing a cute armless mascot who has to acquire "pets", strange creatures littered around what is meant to be the only level that was fully developed. Unfinished games, or shelved ones, are a fascination for gamers too and the internet has allowed these works to be accessible for many. It is a dreamlike place we witness, a floating world of corridors with an emphasis on purplish pink. Some of the aspects come off as off-colour, like a ball pet who wins awards because she stays in a cage the longest, but the first episode is innocuous...

Well, that is until Paul follows a cheat that he was given a note on with the game, a button combination that opens up a new place underneath the level. Called the Newmaker Plain, it is vast and dark grassy environment with little there. This is where Petscop reveals itself to be a horror mystery that lasted until 2020. Full disclosure, this review will talk about everything explicitly about Petscop, but it is not a puzzle to solve, which might frustrate fans of ARGs (Alternative Reality Gaming), a concept that can link even back to the Blair Witch Project website that tied into the 1999 film, multimedia works particularly for YouTube where fan speculation and guessing mysteries exist. Petscop developed a cult, when the first four episodes were posted online, but it is also elusive in terms of what its themes are. We can confirm its creator as Tony Domenico, who had previous experience developing his own games before he came to this project.


Petscop for all purposes looks like a real Playstation One game. The initial set up is a bright if desolate world of a children's video game, of cute characters and pronounced colours, all with a birthday/party motif like a present on the opening screen or the trinkets that have to be collected being like novelties. Even when one finds a curious form of purgatory underneath, of an elusive windmill and a "tool" which can be asked questions to by a textbook, the mechanics of Petscop can be an actual game. The character moves and interacts with objects, the complexity found in the time delayed secrets or that the game itself for Paul hides secrets even in the secret option when a certain sound in the sound effects option is replaced continually. The only aspect which breaks potential credibility, as Petscop has an officially accepted fan version that can be played called Giftscop1, is when a character named Marvin is introduced whom the player character can communicate to with Playstation controller buttons combinations. That is a bit ahead of us in terms of the plot, but as someone who once played his Playstation quite a bit, those controllers were never designed for anything barring a strange form of Morse code.

Petscop , in both its best aspect but also in a detail that may frustrate some viewers, also is not overtly scary. It has no jump scares, no explicit shock value, and neither does it became a conventional CreepyPasta (online fan spun urban legend) of a cursed video game that leads to death and game characters usually bleeding blood out of their eyes. (Sonic the Hedgehog is a great example of this, if you look up "Sonic CreepyPastas" online, where Sonic becomes the eye bleeding demon soul eater). What is eerie is how slow burn the web series was, especially now I and many do not have to wait to over three months for more videos if longer as the fan base did, with a tale never fully explained and drip feeding a full story eventually to its conclusion.

The one caveat which applies to the first ten episodes, before being stepped back from, was the overt references to a real life case about Candace Newmaker. Newmaker was tragically a young adopted girl whose adopted parents, rather than dealing with her disconnection to them through licensed therapists, went to an unlicensed one and killed her by accident during an attempted "rebirthing" ritual, a scenario which they effectively suffocated her to death under a pillow in a misbegotten and callous stunt which was documented as being cruel anyway. Any knowledge of this case, and now you know, could make Petscop  tasteless as it is initially set up with overt references to Newmaker, as the player character finds a place where (through a changing canvas and extremely long elevator rides) they can wander through rooms of adopted children. Creator Domenico has explicitly regretted using the real life references, apologetic to the point it is on the top of his Twitter account1, and moving away from Episode 11 on with no references at all if possible. I do not condemn the project myself, especially with this creative decision having taken place and the creator himself finding a much more different direction for the better in his own work.


Rebirthing and child adoption is still the theme onwards as, to try to make sense of a fragment of this tale, it is a dark story of a man named Marvin. Possibly kidnapping his daughter because he felt she was the reincarnation of a childhood friend who vanished. This could all be a j'accuse, a mere attack, by another figure who is likely the creator as, whilst we do not see him, we read text written by him in the game. In the first half, most of the episodes are vague with the added context of Paul, a figure whose connection to the game becomes increasingly suspect as he is eventually perturbed by the content, as text bubbles are no longer cute but uncomfortable and the material gets considerably darker. It gets to the point, though a later episode does reveal the truth of what they are, there is even censorship of details too intimate for him which are obscured by black bars.

Adding to the nature of this, which is where viewer participation comes to play, is where the text accompanying these videos on YouTube suggest that others are involved releasing these videos whether Paul would want them to or not. This can be done in cinema, but online productions have run intentionally with this sense that even the medium itself you can watch videos through can be manipulated and offer much in what if even utterly vague as some of these accompanying messages were. An issue of how to preserve them in the future (alongside Petscop itself) is to be aware of, yet whilst YouTube exists these little touches are interesting, forcing you to read the author's text rather than ignore it for all the mystery it also evokes.

Of note as well is the fact Paul is not just playing this game, toying with the initial medium of the Let's Play where we will have a narrator most of the time talking. He is throughout talking to an unknown listener - Us or another person? - during the first ten episodes. Later he talks to someone we never hear, including referencing and questioning a fan theory he was kidnapped and pulled into a car. Halfway through he vanishes briefly, which lead to that fan theory, silence as we see the game continue on. One video, Episode 16, is literally a flashing message of the game having been left on, two minutes of this that asks that family and police to be called but the console to be left on.


Petscop escalates, and gets weirder and more compelling, when the "Demos" are introduced in Episode 11. "Demo" modes in old games, as I fondly remember, are that if you leave the game at the main menu untouched will go to footage of game play being shown. The demo scenes in Petscop change a considerable amount of the tone as the genre literally turns on its head, showing this had a first person mode and the ability to communicate to other figures with button mashing. As it transpires, when the secret menu is found, these demos are old games files and the puzzle grows in new options. If Petscop was a game, it would be such a fascinating one if you put the time in. Episode 11 also introduces the school which is symbolically of significance for the whole work, in first person with a glitch where it flickers and feels graphically erratic with collision detection issues to add to the ill omen of the environment.

This second half is liable to divide people. Those wanting more answers may be disappointed. Those who came to this, as I did, not expecting answers will be rewarded however in a different way; the plot outline I gave earlier barely covers what might or might not be involved, such as the extent the figure of Marvin who is introduced plays in the game's existence, or the theories that fans have suggested, but an emotional and symbolic conclusion is provided which succeeds. Suffice to say there is a lot to ask, and a question is left on the table as to what Tony Domenico's intention was with Petscop. Entirely subjective, it is however openly dealing with childhood trauma. It may have made a mistake in referencing the Candace Newmaker story, but what it does instead to compensate is very interesting. Structurally, a game about collecting pets turning into collecting three children over its course is a structure to which Petscop  with careful thought tackles neglect and mistreatment in dark stories of emotional bullying or kidnapping, which is very unconventional and could have easily become a crass and cheap shock work in another's hands.

Petscop never becomes crass or exaggerated, and it is poignant one of the biggest moments by the end is when passing a painting in the school (which the player is dragged to continually by an invisible force) you get a scene of the player and an unseen consoler play out, the later encouraging them to play a board game together (disturbingly called Gravediggers, like a morbid Battleship) whilst they ask the player ominous questions. There is no shock or twist, but the jarring change in tone and moment turns it into a huge moment for the production. The climax, which technically exists in two forms, was fulfilling for me too. In game, it involves a transformation machine and an actual use for all those trinkets collected, a sombre and matter of fact end which can be interpreted many ways, but clearly ends as it leads to a quiet stillness outside the school and returning back to the start screen, with the ability to play end credits in the options fully confirming this as the conclusion. The actual ending in 2020 was the video for the soundtrack, which was released to purchase. Mainly empty locations in Petscop, it however has an epilogue which suggests a potential happy conclusion or at least a new place, as family comes to be there for the armless figure in the centre. A cute little yellow blog who, in a running joke turned into a morbid detail, it cannot open doors due to the lack of hands, we follow this sprite during the entire production and it seems a sweet, strange ending that the last figure it meets does not come with a mystery but from a place of welcome arms.

Altogether, Petscop is an achievement. It is one I admire for its labour intensive creation and trying to a take a concept, a Let's Play, and turn it into something unique with a real dynamic weight. Coming to the web project, I did not consider this would take such a mature tone to very adult concepts, and the result is exceptional. It does evoke a concern, again, of how in say ten years a work like this is preserved if YouTube was ever turned off. Even in mere memory, it could easily happen that a work like this could be forgotten in the mass of content that is uploaded every day, but until that point right now this is just an innovative work a cineaste like me can admire as equally as regular cinema. Hence why it deserves to be covered like a film.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Disturbing/Eerie/Slow Burn/Unsettling
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium


========
1) Giftscop did remove elements from the game, like searching the special options, probably due to practicality for those producing that version.

2) The exact twitter post, (which I will link to HERE), is thus:

"Regarding Newmaker references. Most of you know that this was intentional but I wanted to confirm it.
It was extremely stupid of me."

No comments:

Post a Comment