Welcome to Close Reads! In this series, Leah Schnelbach and guest authors dig into the small, strange moments of pop culture – from books to theme songs to viral internet hits – that have dug into our minds, find rent-stabilized apartments, starting community gardens, and refusing to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, professor and video game researcher Melissa Kagen invites us into the virtual kitchen to talk about cake and its ins and outs.
Princess Peach bakes multi-layered, cream-and-strawberry thank-you cakes for Mario when he saves her. The super-intelligent AI GLaDOS rather famously promises the Portal player that cake (and grief counseling) will be waiting for them once the tests are completed (but the cake is a lie – or is it??).
Dozens of time management games with titles like Real Cake Maker 3D Bakery, My Bakery Empire: Cake & Baking, and Cake Maker: Purble Place Pastry Simulator is spreading across PC and mobile platforms, featuring a frighteningly large selection of color, shape and frosting options, which the player must balance against a chaotic collection of customers. The founder of this subgenre—2006’s colorful, bright Cake Mania—features a young entrepreneur named Jill serving up individually prepared cakes to an endless stream of waiting identical red-jacketed lads, more or less patiently, for her to make and box their cakes. orders (there are other customers too, but the lads are the quietest and most pleasant). Cake Mania, which was downloaded more than any other casual game in 2006, was based on the (even more popular) Diner Dash from 2004 (itself inspired by the 1984 arcade game Tapper, where you are a bartender serving Budweiser, and, yes, the game was partially sponsored by Anheuser-Busch, why you ask?). The point is, at the time of writing, there are 362 entries on Steam when I type in the search term “cake.”
Even Resident Evil 7: Biohazard has a cake, albeit a cake that explodes and tries to kill you.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Screenshot: Capcom)
The majority of cakes across game worlds aren’t a huge surprise, despite explosions. Cake is delicious, generic and semi-clear – a generic positive sign, indicating care, comfort and celebration. You have done well, my friend; now you get cake. By this point in gaming history, games for almost everything exist, in so many varied and random combinations. While this multiplicity provides one of the few pleasures of this hellish age, it can be overwhelming, and it’s nice to return to something as serene as sweet, pixelated, icing-covered carb rings. For example, there’s a really awesome and weird game called Alien Airport Run by Dogs right now (2021) with decodable signs in an alien language and 2D stock photos of petable dogs scattered throughout a barren shipping center. And lo and behold, before we’re even out of the tutorial screen: cake.
a cake It is our basis. It feeds us.
In fact, it doesn’t always feed us, which is something particularly interesting about video game cake. Cake in games is often an attraction rather than edible food. It was rumored that the famous Portal cake, the cake that launched a thousand memes, was a lie. A former test subject scratches it on the back room wall of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center – the cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!—warning us of GLaDOS’s gruesome intention to kill us once the tests are over. But when we’ve escaped the testing chamber and killed GLaDOS instead, we’re treated to a candle shot from the Black Forest cake, surrounded by Aperture equipment. Isn’t the cake a lie after all?? We love it.
But consider: does the player ever get to eat that cake? Or even interact with it at all?? Hell no. We were promised a cake, we got none, the cake was a lie, everyone goes home.
This is more common than it seems. In games, the cake (I’m going to go ahead and say it), is more often than not a lie, in the sense that our player character is often not eaten. We may be motivated to perform a task based on the expectation of a cake, which the same character never eats. We may create cake after cake in a manic frenzy, trying to please a demanding sponsor or friend, but none pass our own digital lips (not even the mess, which must be thrown away in games like Cake Mania or Overcooked!). Cake in games is rarely something to eat. We can’t (not even sorry, you knew this was coming) have our cake and eat it too.
But in some beautiful cases, your player character can have his cake and eat it too. In The Legend of Zelda: Breathe of the Wild (2017), Link can conscientiously acquire ingredients from all over Hyrule (cane sugar + goat butter + Tabantha wheat + any fruit, nut, carrot, or monster extract) and combine them. Presto change-oh, cake. He can eat it and gain 1 heart of health, plus a bonus yellow heart. I remember scouring Hyrule for the necessary Tabantha wheat (only available far to the northwest quadrant), unreasonably excited at the prospect of this dish, losing many more hearts in the process than the cake that was eventually provided. So, let it be clearly stated, there are crafting games where a player can craft and eat cake for some kind of sustenance (Minecraft cake falls in this category as well).
Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Screenshot: Nintendo)
And yet. And yet. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that video games are full of the promise of cake than the reality of it. Because (and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this), you are an embodied creature and therefore you will never eat pixels. The closest you can get is when your character eats pixels. If human edibility is fundamental to the fundamental reality of cake, which I’m going to state that it is, then I *think* that every video game cake is, if not exactly a lie, then most of the way towards (ahem) is a Baudrillardian simulacrum .
I am not making any conclusions. The conclusion is cake.
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Melissa Kagen researches and teaches interactive storytelling, TTRPGs, escape room design, immersive performance, and critical game studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She received her PhD from Stanford, and her first book, Wandering Games, is coming out October 2022 from MIT Press, and is available for pre-order now. She likes cycling, eating vegan food, and collecting notebooks. You can find her online at her website and on Twitter.
slang the butt. See the full dictionary entry below. Read also : The 10 Favorite Video Games of All Time: 8th place. Frequency of Words.
What is a cake used for in Minecraft?
What is a cake and what do they do in Minecraft. Although cake is food in Minecraft it can also be used as a decorative piece in the game. On the same subject : EA is reportedly producing a Black Panther video game. It’s the only food you can’t eat while holding, in order to eat a cake you’ll need to put it on something first. Cake can destroy falling blocks if placed under them like a torch…
Why can’t I eat cake in Minecraft? To eat a cake you need to place it on the ground. After it is installed you can eat it by repeatedly tapping it. Don’t long press it because that won’t work.
What animals in Minecraft eat cake?
Adult pandas are looking for bamboo and cake to eat. On the same subject : The 10 Best Deck Building Video Games, Ranked… Lazy pandas:
- Identifiable by their smile.
- Lie on their backs.
- Slower than usual pandas, making them the slowest ground mob in the game.
- Do not follow a player who is holding a bamboo while he is lying on his back.
How much does cake give you Minecraft?
Cake is the only food that must be placed in order for players to eat it. A player can eat each slice almost immediately, and regains about 1 hunger bar.
How many times can you eat a cake in Minecraft?
A cake can be eaten up to 6 times. Each time a small slice is removed it heals 1 food bar. After everything is eaten, the cake will disappear completely. Cake will also restore your hunger satiety by 0.4 per bite, which is very low compared to other foods.
What year is Portal 1 set in?
200- This is the period in which Porth is installed. It takes place some time after the Combined invasion of Earth.
For how many years did Chell sleep in Porth 2? It seems likely that she has been asleep for perhaps 20 years (If this is correct, it could connect the Portal 2 timeline to Half-Life 2: Episode Three).
How many years does Portal 2 take place after Portal?
Portal 2 takes place in an unspecified period of time, somewhere between 50 and 50,000 years, after the events of Portal, which saw Chell destroy the sentient computer GLaDOS, and land outside the facility, only to have dragged her back inside Aperture Science where she was. eventually placed in a Relaxation Chamber…
What is the time difference between Portal 1 and 2?
So with that we can conclude that Porth 2 was installed 2 months after Porth 1 in 2010.
Why is Aperture Science abandoned?
By the 1970s, Aperture Science was financially unstable. The Olympians, astronauts and war heroes used as test subjects were replaced by vagabonds who were paid $60 for their time. Aperture Science would continue its research and create a Gel Drive.
Does Aperture Science exist? Aperture Science, Inc., often referred to simply as Aperture Science or simply Aperture, is an American scientific research corporation whose laboratories and administration are located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Where is Aperture Science Laboratories?
Built in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, USA sometime after Aperture Science was founded in 1943, the Aperture Laboratories is the company’s main headquarters.
What did Aperture Science do?
Aperture Science was founded as Aperture Fixtures in the early 1940s by Cave Johnson. Aperture Fixtures was primarily devoted to the manufacture and distribution of shower curtains – a low-tech gateway between the inside and outside of a shower with Cave Johnson winning the ‘Shower Curtain Salesman 1943’ award.
Why was old aperture sealed off?
A number of products stuck in the development stages and recalls issued for health and safety violations hampered company profits. While the company was under intense scrutiny for the recalls, Johnson ordered Test Shaft 09 sealed in 1961 to cover up early unethical scientific projects.
What does eat your cake mean?
The proverb literally means “you can’t have your cake and eat it at the same time”. Once the cake is eaten, it’s gone. It can be used to say that one cannot have two incompatible things, or that one should not try to have more than is reasonable.
What does a cake mean to a person? Name. nice butt. Lil’ momma got the cake. See more words with the same meaning: buttock, butt, ass.
What does I wanna eat your cake mean?
phrase If you think someone wants the benefits of doing two things when it is only reasonable to expect the benefits of doing one, you can say they want to have their cake and eat it.
What does eat cake mean in slang?
One such expression of elation is ‘Eating cake.’ Eating cake in ordinary layman’s language is quite simple but its euphemistic meaning refers to sexual intercourse on the beach. Instead of saying sex on the beach humans often refer to the following exclamation to convey the same meaning.
