Week 4 Reading

Watch: Kill the Hero, Save the (Narrative) World – Hannah Nicklin (2020)

In this presentation, Nicklin highlights the importance of the ensemble cast over that of the hero in videogames, arguinig that a “hero” character who can do no wrong and always fights on the side of justice leads to unhealthy expectations and perception of real life. Better and more realistic stories come from many, more flawed characters, rather than one big hero to save the day.

The “Hero’s Tale” is used a lot in videogames, partly because it is a format as old as storytelling itself, and also because a lot of videogame language is borrowed from film, and film tends to represent one single person’s (usually a cis white male) timeline of story for attention’s sake, with a psychological focus, and with everything in the story (all other characters, world, etc) helping the story to progress, serving this one character. But videogames have time to slow down and explore. A videogame’s focus gets fragmented because of its ludic storytelling – affecting pacing and camera and main character choices and dozens of other details. Sticking too close to the hero’s journey in this instance makes the gamefeel boring, and can decouple the mechanics from the narrative, rendering many tasks pointless and only to occupy player attention and not to serve a greater purporse. Straying from the hero’s journey and using a wider array of characters in an open-world plot engages people more.

For videogames, a better template would feature an interplay of community, rather than a focus on one hero. These are some of the benefits:

• Group of characters with the same importance (community)
• Drama arises from community in context (environment, social ties)
• Variety (characters/locations) can tell longer, more complex stories
• Tone can be comedy or drama driven – or switch between plot levels
• Conflicting points of view leaves the player guessing
• No false jeapordy
• Can examine cause and effect over long periods (generational)

Watch: Forget Protagonists: Writing NPCs with Agency for 80 Days and Beyond – Meg Jayanth (2017)

Jayanth highlights the importance of NPC characters, and the importance of playing a protagonist who is able to lose. We want to engage with people who act like people rather than the perfect hero, because otherwise the experience is shallow and unsatisfying – someone real and messy. Using a hero archetype for everything is very limiting. Agency is an effect that means interacting meaningfully with the world.

Agency is an effect that means interacting meaningfully with the world. Passport 2 enacts this by having the NPC’s drive their own miniature narratives rather than have the player character decide everything for them. Additionally, the story options have the player get involved in the revolution, but the revolution would have happened whether or not the protagonist got involved, negating the “one true hero” plotline where one man comes to save the day. It limits the actions and power but not player agency, and gives agency to NPC’s to help them feel more real.

The characters in Dragon Age 2 also feel very realistic because they act independantly of the player. They take action, lie, and bring about unforseen circumstances that you can react to. Many games are designed to give the players exactly what they want uncritically, acting as “entitlement simulators” – this is especially highlighed in romance games where people are skill checks. The NPC desires you only, and has no other desires. In Dragon Age 2, there’s a character who, regardless of whether you romance them, ends up committing an act of terrorism because he is more committed to his ideals than with you – an outcome you cannot change. When this event comes to pass, the other characters judge you for it quite heavily. After all, in the game you were dating a terrorist. They are performing a reasonable reaction independant of your player status that gives the player a hard time.

Some tips on how to write a character with agency:

• Go beyond the power fantasy
• NPC’s are a part of worldbuilding and help the world feel complex
• Do the research! This will make NPC’s more grounded and realistic

Read: Me, on the Screen – Austin Walker, (2013)

This article delves into the issue of how race is represented in videogames using the case study of Animal Crossing. In all Animal Crossing games, with exception of the last most recent one, it is impossible to change the colour of your skin to Black skin tones. The closest equivilent is spending time you could be playing on a tropical island, tanning. In New Leaf, you tan with the hours you play, however the game deincentivises players to do this – villagers will exclaim at how “tired” you look, and that you must need a break – linking dark skin with shame. Maintaining light skin is much easier with players only having to bring a parasol with them. Austin Walker speculates that it wasn’t that Nintendo was being deliberately racist, but that the topic of race was never brought up, by doing so alienating marginalised races.

But sometimes race is more overt than in Animal Crossing. Walker tried to find affinity for Black characters in other games, only to find the representation would be stereotyped. Street Fighter’s only Black male character was a dumbed-down pardoy of Mike Tyson. Barrott from Final Fantasy VII was another bruiser parody. The only Black male representation were dumb muscle characters. Walker wanted to see himself.

These experiences led to some internalised shame in his appearance and identity. He tried to give himself hairstyles that would mimick white hair textures; he second-guessed himself when making a character in Mass Effect because he thought he’d be judged for making a character that looked like himself; he played white characters for years because those were the only ones with good characterisation. Even the Black characters he made himself started to skewed towards racial stereotypes – bruisers and brutes.

This article was published in 2013, and representation has come a way since then, especially in the entertainent industry. But the work is still not done.

Play: Doki Doki Literature Club

Of the selected games to play this week, I chose Doki Doki Literature Club – a game I first downloaded in college, of which I knew very little about other than that it had a “horrible twist”, and ended up loving.

Doki Doki Literature Club by Team Salvato is a visual novel published in 2017, a psychological horror that disarms the player with its school anime aesthetic and cute girls. However lurking beneath the surface, each girl is hiding a dark secret that is slowly revealed over the course of the game. As the game progresses, their flaws become more and more blatent as Monica behind the scenes meddles with the game AI – so that each girl becomes a twisted parody of herself, with the player stuck in the middle. Doki Doki Literature Club employs excellent character writing, foreshadowing each girl’s issues and eventually Monica’s spiral into insanity. What begins as a run-of-the-mill dating sim becomes an exploration of mental health to an eventual horror, all through the character writing.

Extra:

Read: Video Games Are Better Without Characters – Ian Bogost (2015)

In this article, Bogost argues that videogames would be better suited to helping people understand and puzzle out complex world systems rather than focusing on characters to give players a sense of personal accomplishment – and that those stories would be better suited to the more focused TV and literature mediums.

“It is an extravagance to worry only about representation of our individual selves while more obvious forces threaten them with oblivion—commercialism run amok; climate change; wealth inequality; extortionate healthcare; unfunded schools; decaying infrastructure; automation and servitude. And yet, we persist, whether out of moralism or foolishness or youth, lining up for our proverbial enslavement. We’ll sign away anything, it would seem, so long as we’re still able to “express ourselves” with the makeshift tools we are rationed by the billionaires savvy enough to play the game of systems rather than the game of identities.”

Bogost likens player existance to the Sims, “aimlessly wandering”, and while trapped in our self-centred world unable to band together and dismantle the systems that hold people down, and laments a shift in games from system-based mechanics to personal ones.

Reflection:

This week was a difficult one for me to puzzle out, because it was all about creating unique and well-rounded characters – and my gameworld doesn’t have any. Further, I’m not entirely sure if creating a character would fit the theme and world I’ve set up. It is about rigid surveillence systems, which in real life is propped up by faceless companies and conglomerates over years and years rather than a handful of evil CEO’s making choice decisions. While I disagree with Bogost, I did recognise a lot of my game in what he defines games of systems, rather than games of character. The main character is supposed to serve as an avatar, while the Panopticon is a metaphor for a surveillence state, and the antagonist has zero ties to the player character. This is not a problem I have entirely solved yet, and bears thinking about over the next few weeks.