Game Retrospective: Clickolding
Please be aware that this post contains discussions of disturbing imagery, implied sexual themes, and suicide.
That awkward moment when you put on a short let's play for background noise while working but get sucked into watching the game instead because of how creepy it is...
Clickolding (a play on the word "cuckolding", yes) wastes no time in dumping you into a dark hotel room with a mask-wearing man who wants you to click, click, and click some more—ten thousand times, in fact. While he watches.
All we know is that he'll give us $14,000 if we do so. We can leave anytime, but we need the cash for an operation of some kind. So we do it. Slow or fast, melodic or discordant... It doesn't matter how you click, most of the time. Jazz music, howling wind, and a steady rainfall accompany the noise. It's a unique mix of sounds that, even if you close your eyes to avoid the masked man's relentless stare, makes it impossible to feel anything except the tension in the air.
The masked man occasionally directs you in a garbled, glitchy voice to move to another part of the room or interact with objects like the curtains, a television, and paintings... you know, to create the perfect atmosphere and satisfy whatever thoughts is running through his mind. The writers have already asserted that Clickolding isn't meant to portray any fetish or sexual depravity, but some of the masked man's observations—"The way you run your fingers over [the clicker]... The way its shape presses into you... You like it, don't you."—add several layers of eeriness that rival the intensity of paraphilias.
When the clicker reaches 999, we're confronted with the only jumpscare in the game. The masked man suddenly bolts forward in his seat, reaching out with a shaking hand and desperately pleas for us to wait while the anticipation of reaching four figures finishes sending him into a pleasured frenzy. He doesn't act like this upon us reaching any other angel number (except, of course, 9999).
The masked man's body posture is otherwise guarded throughout the game. At most, he turns his head to keep us in his line of sight and flexes his hands, and his chest heaves with how deeply he inhales and exhales. We never quite make eye contact with him, either. How can we, when his are covered by a pair of unblinking, crossed googly eyes?
His motivation for finding someone to do this inane, unsettling task is revealed in his dialogue.
I had a dream, once. Saw a man in a chair. Completely strong. Completely clean. I couldn't move. He didn't tell me what he wanted. We were alone, in a white void. A sound tried to reach behind my eyelids. I was awake, and then I wasn't, and he was watching me. The man was perfect. I stood there for hours. While he looked at me. While I couldn't move. And he left, and I... I made this mask, but it's—I got close. I almost... got very close.
He's rather abstract about it, and it's not until the end of the game that the full story hits. But here, you still get the strong impression that this dream was transformative for him. It touched him to his core, made him obsessed with trying to become the man in the chair that he'd met in the white void. He wanted to be perfect and strong and clean. He wanted a face like the man's, unreadable and unassailable. I imagine that the sound he half-heard was like a click.
But the masked man's actions aren't a perfect replica by any means. Really, the only similarities are that we're alone and he... sits and stares? In contrast with the white void, the hotel is extremely dark. It makes sense that a deserted place like this would be dark, but I don't think the lack of access to a room with blinding lights and four pristine white walls is the problem. The mask he made isn't white, either. And he's not clean, not with those stains dabbled all over his shirt. Deep down he knows that he can't live up to these expectations he now has of himself. He knows that he's the opposite of man from his dream, though he tries to assert otherwise several times.
You get to feel like this all the time, don't you. Special things. GOOD things. You look at someone like me—and that makes it feel better, doesn't it? Everything running out. Everyone running out, except for you. But I'm clean. And strong. In ways you will never know. The waves inside me would break another man.
In an attempt to make up for his unforgivable shortcomings, to look strong if nothing else, the masked man gives us the illusion of control.
In his dream he couldn't move, but this is real life. We're free to move. We move nonstop as we click (and I'm sure we can't help but shake a bit in fear whenever we're in close proximity to the guy). We chose to come here. We chose to agree with the masked man's conditions, and we chose to start clicking, to not stop clicking. We presumably have a lot to lose if we walk out without the money he's offering, but we can back out of the deal anytime regardless, right? ...Right?
Well, maybe not. At one point early on he pulls out a gun to wave it around, so then we have every reason to believe that he'll retract his offer and maybe harm us if we don't listen to whatever else he wants. His improvised instructions are just as easy to follow. He doesn't desire anything more strenuous than hurting your wrist and fingers by doing the same motion ten thousand times. So we stay and we obey. The only consequence is having to hear more creepy (re: well-written) dialogue.
Turn on the TV. I don't know if this place has it hooked up, but... Try it. There it is. Keep it on, now. I like the white noise. It feels like God can't hear you anymore. ...If you're quiet enough.
We reach 9,000 clicks soon enough. For all his ramblings, we still don't know much about the masked man's life. He has a wife, a three-year-old son, and an eight-year-old daughter. They had waited until their daughter was older to have another child, hoping that they would "help raise each other". Supposedly it's his family that has brought him here, because he can't nurture his dream of being perfect and clean and strong with them, not without "keeping it private" or being "willing to cause harm". How would he explain his dream to them? How could he mold his dream the way he wishes to with other people tying him down, depending on him for stability?
The situation becomes volatile when the masked man asks us to sit on the bed, right where we started. He stands up and approaches us, towering over us. He pulls out his gun, rests it on his hip. We click because he demands it. We could stop, but no matter what we do, he says, we can't hurt him. He's too strong and clean to be hurt.
From clicks 9,700 to 9,930 we're under the impression that the masked man is going to kill us with his gun and walk out of the hotel with our money, laughing maniacally about the idiot that fell for his trap. But really, the masked man is unspooling. He can't handle the truth about himself. He can't handle how powerless he truly is to become perfect. He wanted a sampling of what being perfect might feel like, but that experience is almost over.
So he raises the gun to his temple instead. All that's left is to see the clicker tick over and reset to zero.
The game does not allow us to move, interact with the masked man, or look around. We're forced to watch this man beg for permission to end his life in increasingly desperate ways. We're forced to reach the once elusive 10,000th click (or close the game, I suppose).
The masked man's body language in his final moments are hard to read. It's reminiscent to the frenzied pleasure he felt at one thousand clicks, but it could just as easily be him shaking and preparing himself to pull the trigger. He stills himself and thanks us before the screen fades to black and the credits roll.
As with a lot of media, there's more to explore post-credits. We're in the hotel room again, accompanied by a large blood splatter on the back wall, the masked man's corpse, and the clicker set at zero. Even now we're not given the chance to inspect under the bed, grab our money, and call it a day. Not that it matters. Our first instinct is to click some more and see what happens. See if something else coded into the game is watching and waiting.
Those who stick around for a hundred extra clicks are met with a creaking sound coming from the now cracked painting above the hotel bed. Every hundred clicks or so, the painting cracks and tilts some more. The cracks give way to a white light. Compared to the surreal but grounded chain of events that we just experienced, this feels more like a supernatural phenomenon that should induce enough fear to activate our fight or flight response. There's nothing stopping us except for sheer curiosity. A compulsion to click. It's no longer the physical aspect of this whole ordeal that keeps us from fleeing. We've successfully earned the ridiculously priced operation that we need, but that doesn't matter anymore, either. We feel psychologically compelled to stay and click.
When the painting reaches its original position and maximum brightness, we can interact with it and be transported into a white void—the same white void that the masked man visited in his "dream".
The man in the white void greets us with a question that comes off like a statement: "He's dead, isn't he." He hadn't expected the masked man to kill himself. He hadn't expected the masked man to remember him, either. Beneath his obvious amusement, it vaguely sounds as if the man in the white void is impressed.
Apparently, people only see him if he allows them to. He doesn't specify how he chooses those people, but something about the masked man seemed to intrigue him, since he generally doesn't bring anyone to the white void these days. He says this is because we can't control the impact we have on others. This makes me wonder about the other people whose lives he consumed. I get the sense that he feels some responsibility and guilt when he thinks of those lives.
The man in the white void then stands and quickly shifts the topic of conversation to clicks.
He makes it very clear that he's not talking about—or to—the character we're controlling as the player. No, he's talking to us, the human behind the controller. To him we are "THE ONE WHO CLICKS". It's our defining feature, in his eyes. It's not like we've given anyone any reason to believe we're anything else.
Though the man made it sound like he controls how long someone's visit to the white void lasts, he talks extensively about how we can stay and click for as long as we want. He'll watch for as long as we like. We can click in the white void with an audience of one, we can click in the hotel room alone, or we can... stop clicking. Either way, we won't forget him and he knows it. The impact that the man in the white void had on the masked man has spread to have an impact on us. Whether we like it or not, we'll carry on with our lives carrying a small piece of each other. And you know, that sounds fair. The best games leave that kind of lasting impression.
How long will we be willing to click in this white void just to have our existence validated? Spoiler alert: a very, very long time. How long will we click just to see when the man in the white void will award us with more gameplay, if he does at all? Spoiler alert: he doesn't.
And we never do get our money.