Agency and powerlessness
One of the reasons why I believe that the gaming medium is not taken seriously is that its narratives are in most cases immature. Another one is that the gaming medium suffers from cinema envy and cannot let go of conventions that were not tailored for it, and which usually work against its individualities (interactivity being the most cited).
I will focus today on one of the aspects that makes me regard the gaming narratives as immature: misunderstood agency that derails into omnipotence.
Agency was described by Janet Murray, professor of digital media, as "the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices" (Murray, 1998, p. 126). It is your capacity as a player to affect the text of the game. It is the apex of interactivity and the miscarried goal of Bioware. But Bioware's failings have more to do with an issue of player expectation and miscalculation of their own faculties than anything else, and they are not the subject this post.
I completed NWN2 again and rejoiced in one tiny little feature of that game that is missing from more modern MMOs: Bishop. Oh, I would love to see more of him, but not because of what you may think. There is going to be major spoilers now, but I need them to construct my argument. Like Marge in the Simpsons when the Halloween episode comes: take your children to bed before it is too late! Bishop's unavoidable betrayal is what interests me.
It signifies the end of the player's omnipotence to affect everything and everybody around her. It is a "nuh-uh Shepard, you can't have the cake and eat it too". My qualms with Mass Effect were not just related to the failure on Bioware's part to deliver consequences to our choices (even the big decision at the end of ME2 was cosmetic), but also the fact that Shepard was God. Nothing was denied to her, nobody stood in her way that could not be blow away with a shotgun, and she never made any mistakes. I call it immature because it is redolent of an adolescent fantasy or a fairy tale rather than a believable hero's epic. Of course the player, being detached from an emotional investment that would allow the hero to act in an irrational way (who would act as cowardly as Hamlet if there was a video game about it?), the player is not responsible for providing this humanity that leads us down the wrong path sometimes. But NPCs and the plot should. They should remind the player that she is dealing with powerful forces that might be beyond her control, like Bishop's betrayal is.
I like how he justifies it. Even if you pursue the romantic path, which was left unfinished by the developers, by the way, he will not stick with you through the suicidal keep defence, nor through the final battle. In the end, as he gives you the longed-for explanation, he utters: "You see, for every West Harbour that gives rise to someone like you, someone great... there's a hundred of me, that end up going down the other path." That is a very insightful observation on your status as an accomplished hero. I think that it is quite clever in that it makes you realise he is more human than you are. Deeming the battle lost before its end, he escaped the castle to ensure his skin remained adhered to his bones. Plus the whole business of attachment-phobia.
Our avatars feel sometimes inhumane, despite the embodying act that we perform as we play them, because the game provides us uncontested agency, little resistance to our whims. I relished the bold decision of making Aveline unromanceable not because she is a half-orc or because of time constraints (well, perhaps this too), but because Hawke cannot have it all. But we are not quite there yet, and we seem to have taken quite a few steps backwards: enough Renegade/Paragon points, and nobody can resist you: the geth and the quarians can co-exist because you give Henry V-level orations. In NWN2, there were hidden unwinnable checks for Intimidate, Bluff, Diplomacy, etc; after all, did you really expect you could intimidate a dragon, or out-bluff a wizened politician? Or change the bad guy? ;)
I believe this is related to narrative maturity. If we want stories that can stand the test of time and can be justly compared to other works of fiction from traditional media, we need to stop building adolescent narratives and start thinking about the real struggles of humankind. I was once told by a dear friend that was once my teacher, that all the greatest stories engaged with transcendental questions. I add to that: such questions have multiple, contradictory, and ever-renewing answers, and thus humankind will never deplete the pool of themes that can be written about. Open any magnum opus and think: what question does it seek to answer? Do the same with Mass Effect - unity in the face of danger? How to deal with AI? Those are valid questions, but only touched upon very superficially (and simplistically). Read Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds; the Reapers were there (it is not such an original scenario), but they carried deeper philosophical enquiries on their motives which made you doubt the validity of your fight against them.
That is another reason why the medium is still immature narratively: it avoids profound observation of humankind. And it is such a pity, because the platform is capable of allowing a kind of exploration that novels and films could never dream of: self-exploration. What you choose now, not what the protagonist did then. And you, despite all the choices that are laid out for you, are no God, and will fail and suffer and despond. Even heroes ought to be flawed and powerless sometimes.
What question seeks Planescape:Torment to answer? What can change the nature of a man. This is the game I always turn to for inspiration, and which I believe should be -- story-wise -- emulated by modern developers.
PD: Speaking of Bishop - here's my WoW iteration of NWN2 Bishop. Just by the looks a friend of mine could tell that he was "fallen and/or evil"; working as intended.
PD2: Probably jumping on Darkfall:UW when it gets released. Anybody else will? Any suggestions or advice?
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Good post but I dont think that it’s neccessay movie envy that cause the type of effect you described in the first paragraph rather the fact that games cant decide what they are. Are they movies? Literature-like stories? or a bit of both?
Most would answer the question with the thirdoption but then the question comes how much of answer 1 and 2 are optimal in this mixture. In my opinion games hhave not managed to define themselves in the medium of story and as such they have periods when t hey switch from one extreme to another.
When it comes to the player being a God, it’s simply the easiest way of making you feel heroic, combined with the fact that we seem to have this urge to have happy endings in our stories. It is much easier to sell a story with a happy ending than one with a sad one as you involuntarily become attached to the protagonist and would not want him to get hurt/ die/ [insert any bad consequence]…
Combine that with the fact that games to sme extent are aware of how they are a more individual form of entertainment also very easily leads you to think that not only giving you everything will lead to you feeling heroic and having a happy ending, but also give every player the opportunity to play the game they want to.
It’s a convenient way of stepping out of the trap of getting angry Aveline fans who absolutely wanted to romance her, by saying: “it’s all player choice”.
Lastly I also thnk that the negative outlook on games is also hugely attributed tot the standard forms of media who feel threatenend by it. Hense every male teenager who commit suicide is always highlighted as a computer game addict in the more traditional media like the Daily Heil… sorry Mail.
Roguekish recently posted..Reconciling Gameplay and Story
The “cinema envy” I brought it up in the light of the posts I dedicated to cinematics and voice-acting, which I thought were too filmic for the medium, detracting the player (at least the cinematics, and the voice-acting if it is the protagonist who has a voice over) from experiencing the content first-person and first-hand. That is a cinematic experience, and that is not proper in a gaming environment. But that has nothing to do with my argument here.
My point was – unlimited, unchecked agency leads to unbelievable stories that cannot be made into mature works of art, because that is not how real life works. Of course art is by definition art-ificial, not like real life, but it tries to engage with it in a particular way, offering insight from different perspectives. Which is something games are not doing at the moment, at all. And you don’t have to put the player through a full-fledged tragedy either. There is a middle ground between godlike heroism and average Joe.
Milady recently posted..Agency and powerlessness
As a professional game developer, there ABSOLUTELY is a lot of “cinema-envy” that goes on with a number of game developers. One designer I worked with would talk repeatedly about movie directors and lessons they could teach, but less often about game designers. I’ve known more than one game designer who was also working on a screenplay.
It’s common for one medium to look at another and try to copy it. Movies copied theater for a long time until it found its own language, for example. Game designers look to movies for guidance, partially because it’s a more established visual medium, but also because it has more legitimacy than games have had, so by copying movies they hope to gain a bit of the respect that movie directors get.
Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green recently posted..A look at Guild Wars 2, continued
I will have to think about your general argument. However, I do think you are being a little harsh on Mass Effect. ME does have elements where you can’t have everything. The best example is the choice at Virmire. You cannot save both Kaiden and Ashley, you must pick one. Another example is choosing between the Solarians and the Krogan. Or the fall of Thessia, which you cannot prevent.
Even the quarian and geth, which you use an example of Shepard getting everything, I see as more of a counterargument to the central Reaper conceit that artificial and biological life cannot coexist.
Rohan recently posted..Currency Conundrum
You’re right in that, I completely forgot about those two. And yes, I know I am too harsh, that’s why it’s hypercriticism! ;) No, seriously: I am too harsh because Bioware promised to deliver so much, and they had been part of such amazing games, that I am quite disappointed with what they turned into.
Milady recently posted..Agency and powerlessness
I can’t comment on ME3, unfortunately but the issue the article deals with is infinitely interesting to me this very second because of another selection of readings I was just going through.
I think the narrative of our games reflects the desires of their designers. The same escapism players engage in when logging in or turning on the Xbox, designers also indulge while in the process of creating the game. In short, any feeling of God mode is the ultimate manifestation of someone doing the creating. But there’s more I think. Transcendental experiences require transcendental minds and imaginations, and to have that you must be surrounded by many varying perspectives which you respect as a designer.
And that ties in with another problem. A lack of diversity in the industry. The same people are making the same things. I’m not sure we’ll see too much change in our game narratives until we see worthwhile changes in the people making them.
I think part of the problem is that we see games as mass-market experiences. And, the mass market doesn’t want challenging material, they want to have fun. The mass market want to be the ultimate badass that goes in, guns-ablazing, and saves the day without negative consequences. I think people are more willing to read a book that challenges them on a personal level than they are to put up with that in a game. It’s a question of expectations of the audience.
I think there’s also the interactive nature of gameplay. Should someone who is a better player be able to have a “better” experience with less failure? Or does your gameplay not matter to the story because it follows the traditional 3-act structure? What about someone who practices the gameplay? Should they get a more negative story to start, but get a more upbeat story as they get better at the game? How can we even tell stories in games that will last repeated plays like that?
I’m wondering if having a “story power” slider should be placed alongside the difficulty slider. I can set the story power to “heroic” if I want to be the unquestioned good guy, or set it lower so that the game does give me parts of the story where I just can’t walk away unscathed.
Anyway, great food for thought.
Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green recently posted..A look at Guild Wars 2, continued
I had that thought about mass market as well some time ago, as I evaluated my reaction to Bioware. Similarly to indie music bands that become famous and change their style to accommodate a broader audience, the game industry as a whole seems to have outgrown its initial insularity that allowed it to cater to what used to be a minority with very specific tastes, and now intends to reach, as you said, a mass market. And we all know that best-selling is often in direct opposition to ground-breaking and transcendental. Often. And many novels that we now regard as canon were very badly received in their time because the mass market was not prepared for their new insights.
I wandered off a bit there. My point was that as video games become more popular, they also become more conservative and simplistic. That is the reason why us gamers are so hopeful of the indie developers ;).
ME3 does have a “story power” slider of sorts. It’s called “New Game” vs. “Import ME2 save”.
For instance, a non-imported Shepard can’t make peace between geth and quarians. Period. Even with maxed out Paragon/Renegade meters, badass orations and perfect plot choices, one of the races is going to be completely wiped out – and you get to choose which.
Likewise, a number of companions and NPCs who could survive all the way past the endgame in an imported game are going to meet an unavoidable grisly end if you start with a brand new Shepard.
I never played a brand new Shepard even if I didn’t have my saves with me, I just downloaded a save game that had similar choices to mine and edited it accordingly: http://www.masseffectsaves.com/. Many players did the same.
I do not think a power slide is the solution either because, let’s face it, if there is a way you can “win”, you will do all that is in your power to win. That does not account for the fact that nobody, in real life, can win all the time. One of the few valid examples of this in the ME franchise is the Virmire situation, in which you face a dilemma that you cannot headbutt through.
Hm, why does this link back to a page that is clearly not Rowan’s? Well, the original article is here: http://blessingofkings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/agency-and-failure.html