This Is Not The Final Round

Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow makes a compelling case how games provide liberating alternatives to an uncertain world.

I had seen the book on reading lists and knew it had been a massive hit. I had looked at the bright and cartoonish, vintage gaming cover at my local bookstore. I had read the back cover description of Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow:

Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.

I don’t usually go for love stories so I had concluded that this one was not for me. Boy, was I wrong.

A few months back the book popped up on LinkedIn in a post from Chris Brown, the Commissioner for Chicago Public Library (CPL). CPL had selected it as their One Book, One Chicago title of the year. This meant that one of the largest public libraries in the country had decided to do author talks, book clubs, silent readings, parties, workshops, music performances, history lectures, film screenings and board game nights on and inspired by the novel.

I trust library folks so I decided to follow their advice. I figured there must be something here that I am missing if CPL chooses the book. I mean it is not even situated in Chicago but in Boston and Los Angeles.

So I downloaded the (nearly 14-hour) audio book, put my sneakers and sunglasses on and headed to Santa Monica beach.

Over several weeks, I spent time with Sadie and Max at the beach, at the gym, in the car, taking a walk in LA and in Helsinki, ironing, doing groceries, on the plane and laying on the sofa. The readers, Jennifer Kim and Julian Cihi, deliver a captivating performance carrying us through decades of friendship.

While Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is about game development, it is also about friendship and loss. The book follows decades of friendship between Sadie and Max, two Angelenos who don't seem to fit into many of their circles in Los Angeles or in college. It describes the friendship between a man and a woman in a way that avoids the clichéd will-they-or-won’t-they traps. They first meet at the hospital where Max is being treated and Sadie is keeping company to her sister. After an intense friendship built on gaming together, there’s a falling out between them, which I will not spoil. The friendship is rekindled when they meet while studying in Boston and decide to start building games together. And they are really good at it.

I have worked on youth culture for a few decades, often advocating for a more positive narrative around gaming. Still, Zevin delivers the argument for games in the most moving and precise way I have heard.

The idea is quite simple: games allow us to start over, to play again. They allow us to build worlds that are free from the limitations of our physical world and build relationships that might be difficult to create or sustain otherwise. Zevin’s book is a story of those who feel limited by the strict norms of the physical world who craft worlds of endless possibilities that attract millions to follow. Zevin does not glorify or victimize her main characters but helps us see their brilliance and all their complexity.

Adults usually talk about games through the narratives of violence, solitude and addiction. Zevin’s book swims upstream without being simplistic. Games and the internet more broadly provide worlds with freedom and experiences. They provide more awe, thrill and wonder for teenagers anxious and losing sleep over making the “right” choices for hobbies, college, relationships or career.

Teens are are attracted to worlds where they can meet strangers, try out temporary identities, discuss vulnerable issues under the protection of an alter ego. They crave for spaces to experiments and falter without constant adult supervision and judgement. As danah boyd has so accurately put it: “The importance of friends in social and moral development is well documented. But the fears that surround teens’ use of social media overlook this fundamental desire for social connection.” And most importantly, if you stumble or err in a game, you can always restart.

I am passionate about building social connections in the physical world. But Zevin helped me remember that when we are trying to get teenagers to engage more in the physical spaces, we could start by showing curiosity towars the spaces they enjoy. As Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic, our physical environments, like public spaces, have not kept up in terms of the quality of the experience. The solution is not copying digital experiences but understanding the experience.

If you are a parent, an educator, a library professional or a policymaker, read Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Next to being an incredibly well written piece of fiction, it is a plea for a world where we can take different forms, build magical worlds with others, and start again.

Thank you, Gabrielle Zevin and Chicago Public Library. This is the power of literature and libraries. They can lead you to answers you did not even know you needed.

And thank you, Sadie and Max. When the book ended, I was sitting in my car on a rainy day in West Hollywood. It was an honor to get to know you.