Even Better Than the Real Thing

Here’s a nice, big, broad question: why do we play video games? Is it for escapism? For a challenge, or sense of competition? To experience a narrative? Obviously, there are as many answers to that question as there are players of games. But one thing all answers have in common, banal as it sounds, is the simple experience of playing games, which is entirely unlike any other form of media. There’s a sense of direct control there, a synthesis between player and avatar, that goes beyond anything else. We may empathise with the protagonist of a film or book, but we are the protagonist(s) of a game, at least for as long as we play as them. Our actions directly correspond to what’s happening on the screen, and even influence the course of the narrative.

This sense of immersion is one of the reasons why I think games can and do provide narrative experiences which are outside the reach of other media (though perhaps not as often as I’d like). At best, games can convey a sense that the events unfolding are happening to you, the player – even if the player is represented by a named character with their own personality*. Inhabiting the skin of Lee or Clementine in The Walking Dead doesn’t make certain decisions any less stressful, nor make the player feel the consequences any less keenly.

This is, of course, the reason why Japanese RPGs (and other story-based games) from Pokémon to Persona ask the player to enter their name at the beginning***. It’s an assumption by the character of the player’s identity, or vice versa. It’s a kind of ritual which demarcates the entering of another space, without losing one’s sense of self (unless, of course, one wishes to, in which case many games provide default names for the donning of an alternative identity).

The upshot, naturally, is that the player will spend the rest of the game being addressed directly by name. This is, presumably, why many traditional dating sims include the name-entering option; it dovetails with the general wish-fulfilment angle of those games. Not to say that that angle isn’t present in other games, of course; RPGs are very fond of having characters say things like “Nice work, _____!” or “I’m so glad I met you, ______!” at every turn – particularly in games like the Persona series, where cultivating friendships (and, optionally, romantic relationships) with other characters is a central tenet of the game.

Again, the point is obvious, but it bears repeating: no other form of media does this. Even choose-your-own-adventure books don’t actually address the reader by name. The barrier between player and game is thin at best; the player is an active participant in the world of the game. They have observable effects on the game world, from talking to NPCs to destroying objects in the world to placing a block in the right place. This, I think, partially accounts for why games can be so therapeutic: the consequences of your actions are always clear, always substantial, from saving the galaxy to finding someone’s lost pet.

What’s more, to further encourage a rapport between player and protagonist, the latter’s success or failure is dependent entirely on the actions of the player. Again, this is something which is unique to gaming. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes will not fail to identify a criminal if the reader is stumped by the clues he finds, but the game version of him will, because his destiny is tied to the player’s wits. Luke Skywalker will always successfully blow up the Death Star; a player might not, and there might well be consequences for that other than having to repeat the level, if the game’s writers and designers are savvy and ambitious enough.

And then there’s the concept of character creation. There are two broad schools into which players fall when designing a character: that character can either be a representation (possibly idealised, to some extent) of themselves, or an entirely invented character****. This is particularly prominent in a game series like Dragon Age, where the player also determines, to a great extent, the personality of their character through their decisions and dialogue choices. Does your character respond as you would, or as you have decided they would? The former is essentially the player playing the game as themselves, while the latter adds a layer of creativity to the process wherein the player’s created character is simultaneously analogous to and distinct from the player themselves; both a representation of the player and a presence in and of themselves. It’s enough to make postmodernist theorists cry.

One of the chief goals of fiction is to draw its audience into its world. By blurring the lines between spectator and participant, games are uniquely qualified to do this. This is not to say that every game does this, of course, nor even every narrative-focused game; there is a strange fetishisation of the “cinematic” in many major big-budget games, especially certain wildly popular first-person shooters, whereby the player is effectively barred from interaction with the game’s world and its story, and is in many cases reduced to watching the game unfold rather than, you know, playing it. Gaming is still a relatively new narrative medium, and there’s untold tapped potential in it.

* - This is one reason why I’m not generally fond of the “silent protagonist” trend. It’s very difficult to convey personality without dialogue, and at worst it can bring about a sense of baffling passivity. Protagonists in games like Dishonored stand about mutely** during cutscenes, twiddling their thumbs while terrible and momentous things happen around them. If the idea is to bring the player inside the character’s head, it backfires, because it’s so strange as to be immersion-breaking.

** - Some fans interpret these characters as actually being mute, which seems to me to be overly generous to the writers (which is, of course, a possible definition of fandom).

*** - And, in some cases, other characters’ names as well, such as the rival in some of the Pokémon games, perhaps purely so that the player can spend the rest of the game being informed that “POOFACE wants to fight!”

**** - Then there’s a third option, which may well be unique to me: create the closest representation of David Bowie allowable by the game’s design tools. It’s the simple pleasures.