Hunter Schafer, the actor you may know from Euphoria, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, and Kojima Productions’ upcoming Xbox game OD, was recently part of a cover story and photoshoot for Vogue Magazine. Most of these photos show Schafer doing mundane things like reading and picking up trash. But one in particular has caught the eye of the games industry, as it shows her playing a Nintendo Switch, but in a way that seems a bit odd.
The “play anywhere” mantra has been key to the handheld/console hybrid device since it launched in 2017. In Schafer’s case, the “anywhere” is on the ground between a couch and a coffee table. Honestly, that’s deeply relatable to me as someone who would like to rot and play video games wherever the compulsion strikes, and sometimes that’s on the ground in inconvenient places. But in the photo, she’s holding her Switch and looking at something off-screen. The shot almost reads like she’s using the Switch as a controller for a game on a television. That would have worked for a Wii U, which has a handheld tablet as a controller but typically displayed the main action on a TV. The other option is that she’s playing her Switch on the floor, but is watching something on the TV. Who among us hasn’t been grinding out an RPG on our Switch while marathoning something on Netflix? That’s a universal experience.
The photo intentionally plays up the silliness of Schafer’s position, as we’re all prone to lose all concept of sitting comfortably while playing games. So the internet weighed in to praise the realness of gamer rot and also wonder just what could she be looking at. What could she be playing? This is where I’d ask you to weigh in about what game she’s playing, but our comments are still turned off. So just ponder it internally, for now.
Personally, I hope she’s playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in preparation for one day being cast as Princess Zelda in the live-action movie Nintendo greenlit. You gotta study up on the role, and what better way to do that than with a game that Zelda disappears from for dozens of hours?