Category: Thoughts

Shifting Protagonist and Narratology

I was reading a post on GameVixen, and started thinking about some of my past favourite games. The most activley adored game, for me, was Chrono Trigger.

And I started thinking about the scene where Crono sacrifices himself to Lavos, and then you suddenly become Marle and get a Crono Doll and swap it in using some magic time-freeze thing (I can’t remember the details, this was a while ago). So here you are, playing the silent protagonist (almost silent, anyway), when suddenly you martyr yourself… and then shift to another character to play? Sounds to me like the Bernard-John shift in Huxley’s Brave New World.

This actually strikes me as an odd narrative device for games. Game narratives have become so Structuralist in their nature, relying on Jospeph Campbell and Aristotle. And poor “Ludologists” throw around the name of their enemy without understanding what Narratology actutally is, and without noticing that so many “Game Design” books talk about story in a way a Narratologist would point at and say, “Oh, how very Structuralist of you guys, let’s be friends!” Whoops.

Well, by the end of this year, they might actually have someone happy to say to their faces, “Yeah, I’ll be your Narratologist. Guess what? You don’t want to throw away stories any more than I want to throw away your storytelling devices, aka gameplay elements.”

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Braid

The other weekend, I downloaded and played through Braid. It was pretty interesting, with the fractured narrative being delivered to you like the puzzle pieces you collected through each stage. The time-rewinding mechanic was really awesome, too: it allowed the game to be challenging, but not in that “restart at checkpoint,” way; and the variations created some very interesting puzzle-solving techniques. The penultimate stage (World 1-1), was clearly the most basic and clever use of this forgiving device.

However, I, among many others, have a gripe with the designers.

In a game that focuses on a desire to undo mistakes realised too late (sounds like hamartia to me!), the player’s incapacity to do this WHEN THEY PUT A PUZZLE TOGETHER CORRECTLY is extremely frustrating. What am I talking about? Well, there are these “hidden extras” found in the levels in the form of invisible stars. Collecting the stars changes the ending of the game. Most of the stars can be collected at any time during the game. But one of them is created by incorrectly solving one of the jigsaw puzzles. Please note that once you put the puzzles together, you can’t take the pieces apart. Whoops. I just denied myself a different ending because I did something right.

Now, I don’t care what wanky excuse the designers come up with, such as, “Oh well if things were done right in the first place, then nothing would have gone wrong.” Ah, but see, they created for the player a moment of hamartia: I put together the puzzle in a way which I believed was right, and yet I’ve done it wrong, and now I have to do it all again? Well, screw collecting the stars. Someone else will do it and I’ll watch that on YouTube.

So, does the player/audience enjoy being the one who has hamartia? Of course not. This is why they could, should, never be the Tragic Hero.

Tick Tick Smileyface for me. Thanks for proving me right 😉

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Tragedy for Social Change

I’ve been absent for a while.  I’m sorry.  I’m going to write up my response to playing a few games of various sizes shortly, but before that, it’s more important (for myself, at least) that I talk about this.

You may recall the post where I talked about Tragedy and the “Role of Games in Personal and Social Change.”  Well, I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the whole “serious games,” thing.  And yet, what is the purpose of Tragedy is to arouse emotions while potraying events that are considered negative in society.  Gonzalo Frasca looked toward Brecht and Boal to find a way to create social and personal change.  However, myth and cautionary tales have been used perfectly well as a form of implicitly enforcing societal expectations and laws.  Is there one amongst us who has not had an experience with some story, whether through literature, film, music, fine art, or performance, that has changed the way we consider our lives?

Therefore, I no longer wish to concentrate on the means without the purpose or the end.  No longer do I wish to position my aim as “making Tragedy playable in games,” or “invoking Catharsis in a game player,”  but rather as updating Tragedy for social change through electronic games.

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Nietzche wrote on Tragedy?

I recently found out that Nietzsche wrote a book dealing with Tragedy.  So I started reading generally about the guy, having only gained a passing glance at his life in Alain de Botton’s “The Philosophy of Happiness.”

“God is Dead,” and then we’ll become Ubermensch?  Totally feminist, practically, and yet, at the same time, Mysogynist?  He’s seriously got the worst case of “nice guy syndrome” I think I’ve ever seen.

I think… I think I may have found my man.  I mean, I’ll be looking to other men, too… Aristotle is a good start.  And I kinda like some of those Structuralist guys.

But he’s my muse.  I think I want to base my tragic hero on him.  Poor Walrus man.

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Two things that bug me in this industry

I apologise in advance to anyone who I may offend in writing this.  It’s just my opinion, which I’m entitled to, but you’re also allowed to disagree 🙂

The first thing is this “Women in Games,” thing.  Don’t get me wrong, I want more women in the games industry.  Two of the most important books that I’m referring to for my Honours project are both written by women (I’ve also noticed that women who write on games are likely to have a background in theatre too, oddly enough!).  But the very idea that somehow girls need to have an equal representation in games sickens me.  That’s not gender equality.  That’s gender bias.  I do not want to see a wave of women and girls entering the industry and being given positions because they are female.  I also don’t want to see the same happen to men.   Are interviewers so incapable of guaging whether a person is capable, seperate to their gender?  I agree that people may have skills that happen to align with the assumed traits of their gender- I know I do.  So what’s the big deal?  I certainly shouldn’t therefore be “female” and only do “female” things.  But I shouldn’t not do “female” things, just because I am “female.”  I’m not against networking with other women or anything like that, but I just hate that we have to segregate in order to integrate.

The other thing that annoys me is this, “Serious Games Movement.”  Okay, I get it.  Developers have an ethical responsiblity for what they produce.  But that doesn’t mean we should neuter the fun, indulgent side of games.  There’s been a lot of discussion on this lately, a lot of which I agree with.  It’s not like I’m not doing anything that will challenge the gamer’s morality.  It might!  It might not!  Maybe it has another purpose…  But whatever the purpose of Tragedy, I will find it.  But back on Serious Games…  I just find the whole thing so navel-gazing.  They all tend to be activities, not games.  And the ones that are games seem to be kinda… ranty.  You know, like they’re making sure you’re aware you’re learning something.  Same thing with “Edutainment.”  Obviously you’re going to learn from the entertainment!  So why do we have to make it obvious, the focus, which only serves to turn us away from how much we’re enjoying things?

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Tragedy

So I’ve been happily going about my Honours research and preparation, talking about catharsis, games, films, plays, etc etc etc, and suddenly, today, it hits me. I talk to my supervisor and then to one of my tutors, and they both say the same thing, “It sounds like you’re more interested in Tragedy than Catharsis.”

They’re right!  I feel like I’ve taken the longest route to get there, and I’m not throwing out any of my ideas.

But now, instead of thinking, “What causes Catharsis, specifically Aristolean Katharsis?”  I am thinking, “How can I make Tragedy playable?”

What is even more exciting for me is reading the transcript for the Friday 27th March morning panel at GDC 2009, focusing on The Role of Games in Personal and Social Change.

It seems like my research is going to be very timely, and hopefully very relevant.  No pressure or anything! 🙂

Two quotes that particularly caught my eye…

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Rosencrantz and Guildenstern did it for Stoppard

On Friday, I was telling my friend Kristov and his lively wife about my Honours topic.  Kristov brought up a play that I’d forgotten about, which I had to go pick up in order to  revise it and think about how it could help me.

I was telling Kristov and his wife about the Postmodern Literary convention that states:  there are no new stories, only new ways of telling them; this is often evidenced by a typical story being told from the opposite persoective, for example, Pride and Prejudice from Bingley’s perspective.  Immediately, he said, “Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead!”

Rosencrantz and Duildenstern are incidental characters in Hamlet, and in 1967, playwright Tom Stoppard saw fit to reveal their story.  The characters’ lack of self-knowledge is played up more than I would ever want to, but the play reveals how even an minor role is often fleshed out in an actor’s mind.  It also shows how little is needed to create a “character.”

More on this later.

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Brenda Laurel: Why didn’t girls play video games?

Found: A talk by Brenda Laurel from 1998, entitled Why didn’t girls play video games?

She discusses her research methods, outcome, and reception, including explaining the 4% who gave her negative feedback.

I’d just like to contrast this with Gonzalo Frasca’s comment on Super Princess Peach.

I personally think that Super Princess Peach sounds like a lot of fun.  She’s a princess, not a regular little girl.  Like in the Princess and the peach, where the poor Princess was identified because she couldn’t sleep while there was a single pea placed under all those mattresses.  What do Frasca and Bogost really expect Princess Peach to do?  Suddenly grow balls and turn into the female version of Mario?  Turn into animals like Mario does, only to have it suggested that she is dressing herself up in a sexual way by making herself “animalistic”?  I’m sure if there was a game called, “Super Princess Daisy,” you could do all those things.  She’s a saucy, tomboyish brunette.  Just listen to the differences in their voices in Mario Party DS.

I think what I’m trying to get at is that men who are interested in Serious Games shouldn’t try and judge what effect a game like this will have on a young girl.  We like to role play much more than boys (anyway, the boys would just come in pretending they had a gun to kill something with… but you don’t see anyone crying about that stereotype in FPS games targetted to adult men), and we certainly understand that Princess Peach is a certain idea of a character.  We’d rather be our own selves, our own unique Princess.

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HOTEL DUSK – Room 215

I just looked over at my stack of DS games, and sitting on top is possibly my favourite: HOTEL DUSK – Room 215.

I’m trying to think back to why it was so enjoyable to play.  There were parts where the characters simply ranted at you, and you had this feeling of, “OH MY GOD, I DON’T CARE~!”  Which is annoying, right?

Well, somewhere along the way, they decided to make Kyle Hyde, the player-character, totally dispassionate towards other people, unless they happen to be able to help him.  He’s putting together a puzzle, and only listens and makes nice just in case someone happens to know something that could help him.

He’s the strong, silent type, who is far from having no character.  However, he’s pretty much as passive as the player is when it comes to people’s personal stories, and this comes through in his characterisation.  He wants to find out secrets, and he only listens to sob stories because he feel obliged to.  He’s far from uncaring, though, and pretty much everyone he meets seems to like him, and he likes them.

I’ve got to say, the characterisation of Rosa and Louis were awesome, too.  They were my favourites, but whoever the translators were for this game, they were top-notch.

I’d highly recommend this game for anyone who wants an adventure game with fairly logical puzzles and engaging characters.

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