Friendship, Ambition, and Second Chances Through the Lens of Gaming and Identity

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Friendship as Foundation and Challenge

Friendship lies at the heart of Tomorrow, grounding the novel’s primary themes and providing the backbone of Sam and Sadie’s shared narrative. Their friendship, however, is far from idyllic, and the novel is strongest when exploring the complex emotions that underlie their relationship—jealousy, competition, dependence, and betrayal. Zevin captures the nuances of deep friendship, where affection can exist alongside resentment. However, there are times when this exploration feels one-sided. Sadie, who sacrifices much for the friendship, often receives less sympathy or depth compared to Sam, whose character is granted more internal focus and emotional weight. While Zevin illuminates the pains and rewards of a creative partnership, her narrative occasionally tilts in favour of Sam’s perspective, diminishing Sadie’s sacrifices and growth within their friendship.

This imbalance can sometimes obscure the inherent value in Sadie’s journey and contributions, presenting her as a supporting player in Sam’s personal growth rather than an equally compelling character with her own transformative arc. Although the novel is ambitious in its attempt to depict a friendship that endures in spite of intense professional and emotional challenges, it could have delved more critically into the ways Sam and Sadie’s friendship constrains and shapes their individual identities beyond the scope of their partnership.

Video Games as Reflection of Identity and Relationship Dynamics

Video games, as both a theme and a metaphor, serve as a powerful narrative tool in Zevin’s story, mirroring the flexibility, complexity, and escapist allure of relationships, particularly those as layered as Sam and Sadie’s. Games allow for reinvention—a fresh life, a different set of rules, or a new approach after a failure. In the same way, Sam and Sadie repeatedly attempt to redefine their friendship, adjusting to new circumstances or trying to work past old wounds. The very process of game development serves as a parallel to their relationship, with each game they create reflecting some facet of their shared experiences and their attempts to define themselves both within and outside of their friendship.

For example, the game Ichigo, which they design early in their partnership, is a masterpiece that explores storytelling through the lens of play and creativity. But it’s also symbolic of their partnership’s idealistic, hopeful beginnings—a time when collaboration seemed simple and full of possibility. As they continue to create together, the games they produce shift in tone, paralleling the ways their relationship matures and, at times, fractures. Games become a medium through which Sam and Sadie communicate indirectly, expressing frustrations and desires that they struggle to articulate in real life. Zevin effectively uses this creative process as a way to explore the interpersonal intricacies between them, making gaming not just a setting or career but a language unique to their friendship.

However, the novel’s portrayal of the gaming industry often skirts around more complex critiques of the culture it represents. While games in Tomorrow are innovative and serve as extensions of the characters’ inner worlds, the book stops short of exploring the ethical or social impacts of gaming, particularly as the industry becomes a platform for both positive and negative cultural expression. The novel had so much potential for a nuanced examination of gaming’s role in shaping modern identity, and I would have loved to see Zevin push beyond the surface to question how games reflect and influence societal norms.

Sexism and Power Dynamics in Gaming

One aspect that Tomorrow did delve into was the portrayal of Sadie as a female game designer, navigating a male-dominated field (something I’ve written about before here) where she faces overt and subtle sexism that threatens her sense of self and professional legitimacy. For example, Sadie’s relationship with Dov, an older game designer who becomes her mentor and, eventually, her lover, highlights the troubling power dynamics that women in creative fields often encounter. Dov’s romantic and professional interest in Sadie begins as an empowering mentorship, but quickly devolves into an exploitative relationship where Sadie’s skills are minimised and objectified. Zevin uses this relationship to explore the ways in which women’s creativity is often intertwined with, and sometimes undermined by, men’s authority, suggesting that women like Sadie are frequently seen not as innovators but, rather, as muses or apprentices, sexualised and overshadowed in ways male creators are not.

Zevin’s treatment of Sadie’s struggles with sexism, however, is both pointed and incomplete. While the novel acknowledges that Sadie must contend with double standards and scrutiny regarding her appearance and ideas, it occasionally presents these issues through a lens that is more reactive than reflective. Sadie’s hardships and frustrations, while integral to her character, often feel tangential rather than fully explored within the larger context of the story. By not delving more deeply into Sadie’s internalized conflicts, the narrative misses the chance to present a more thorough critique of the ways sexism shapes female identity in competitive fields, reducing a potentially powerful subplot into an underdeveloped cautionary tale of power imbalance and ambition.

Exploring Issues of Race and Cultural Alienation Through Sam

Zevin’s novel also attempts to address issues of race and cultural alienation through Sam who is of mixed Korean and Jewish descent and who grapples with a sense of displacement within both his personal life and his career. Moreover, Sam’s identity as a disabled, mixed-race individual is central to his worldview and his personal struggles, including a sense of invisibility. The gaming industry itself is depicted as largely indifferent to issues of race and representation, reflecting Sam’s feeling of not fully belonging. Sam’s attempts to define himself through his work, partly as a response to his cultural invisibility, is a powerful element of his character.

However, like the theme of sexism, the issue of race is explored in a somewhat cursory fashion, rarely scrutinized with the depth it deserves. Sam’s experiences of cultural alienation are referenced but not fully integrated into the novel’s larger narrative, leaving his struggle with race to feel more like an accessory to his character than a defining part of his journey.Given that Sam’s mixed heritage provides a unique lens through which to examine belonging and identity in an industry not known for its diversity, Zevin’s exploration of race could have benefited from a more nuanced perspective.

Ambition and the Question of the Future

One of the more compelling themes in Tomorrow is the way ambition intersects with friendship and the pursuit of personal fulfilment. Sam and Sadie’s shared goal of creating games binds them, but their diverging perspectives on ambition and success ultimately create a rift. Sadie views game design as an art form, an extension of her creative self, while Sam sees it as a means of personal validation and escape. This difference exposes cracks in their relationship, showing how even shared dreams can become divisive when individual values clash. Zevin’s treatment of ambition does sometimes leans toward a romanticized view of creative pursuit, suggesting that friendship and artistry are enough to counteract the sacrifices and strains of professional life. While I lean towards the slightly more cynical belief, it did lend the novel a hopeful vein amongst the challenges the characters endured.

Their ambitions fuel their bond but also create barriers, especially as they struggle to balance the success of their company, Unfair Games, with their personal needs. At times, both characters are guilty of reducing each other to avatars, idealized versions of themselves, which results in misunderstandings and resentment. The future that once seemed simple and limitless becomes complicated by the pressures of adulthood, ultimately asking them to decide what they truly value and what they’re willing to compromise.

However, while Zevin’s narrative acknowledges that ambition can create distance, it occasionally simplifies the tension between Sam and Sadie’s professional lives and their friendship. Zevin focused intensely on the highs and lows of their partnership but left me whishing she had delved a bit more into the sacrifices and ethical compromises of ambition. This leaves the reader with a sense that the characters’ ambitions are more of a narrative device than a fully realized internal struggle, glossing over the ways ambition often demands moral and emotional concessions.

Structural and Stylistic Achievements

Stylistically, Zevin’s prose is reflective of the nuances in Sam and Sadie’s relationship—sometimes playful, other times painfully raw. The book is interspersed with sections that resemble the non-linear structure of a video game, allowing readers to delve into pivotal moments from multiple angles, much like players revisiting a key level. This fragmented narrative style adds depth to the characters’ inner lives and to the game metaphor, giving readers a unique insight into how memory, choice, and consequence shape their relationship.

This approach also underlines the idea of narrative “levels” within their friendship; the reader revisits their early years and key moments of conflict and reconciliation, creating a layered understanding of their connection. Zevin’s writing is at its best when it captures the unspoken emotions that run through their partnership, making the pain and beauty of friendship palpable.

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Featured Image by Nikita Kostrykin on Unsplash