Breaking Character

Games are often sold on experiences. How often have you heard a developer say they want the player to feel what its like to be a master assassin or a superhero, to sail the seas or drive a race car. Cutscenes and narrative are what cause the most dissonance between players and characters. They act and react in a way the player might not. But when it comes to games with a strong narrative focus should we be placing so much emphasis on the player? How does it affect a story when the player’s experience is more important than the lead character?

Lets take a look at the opening to Capcom’s first Resident Evil game.

If we take note of how the characters are introduced there is a clear separation from the player. The voiceover says “We’re searching for the helicopter of our compatriots.” It doesn’t expect the character to assume the identity of a S.T.A.R.S. member and never identifies the player as such. The characters act independently.

When remaining members of Alpha Team enter the mansion they hear gunshots from another room and Jill Valentine offers to investigate. Even though the player takes control from there onwards Jill is still an individual. She offered to investigate, not the player. The player is acting on behalf of Jill’s directive. 

So she continues on, fending off zombies and various creatures until finally she succumbs to one two many bites and drops dead. 

And that’s when something really interesting happens.

We’re shown Jill’s lifeless body but the screen says, “You died”

Who is this addressed to? Is it to Jill? That seems a little mean. The poor woman is dead already. No need to rub her nose in it. So maybe it simply means you, the player, in direct control of Jill, have caused her death. You were responsible and therefore died. Despite the game’s cinematic introduction the player has suddenly been directly involved in the game.

The problem is, if we accept this latter understanding, until the next cutscene the character ‘Jill Valentine’ has effectively disappeared. You are now responsible for her actions. She’s just an extension of the player. The game,and the player, are now unconcerned with Jill’s story. ‘You’ died, not Jill. Our motivation is no longer to see Jill survive the mansion but to see ourselves survive the mansion. What is driving the player is not empathy. Its self-preservation.

When Eidos Montreal announced their reboot of the Thief franchise, Producer Stephane Roy said of the game, 

“We want you to play as a thief, but we don't want to force you to play as a thief.”

Obviously this caused some confusion amongst fans. However I think the ones who should be most confused are the game’s writers. What Mr. Roy’s comment conveys is the character of Garrett and the game’s story are second to the players’s experience. There’s no getting away from the fact the character of Garrett is a master thief. His kleptomaniac tendencies are consistent up until the beginning of the game’s story, at which point he might decide to take the day off. 

This give the player the choice of either acting like a master thief - roleplaying Garrett - or playing the game however they choose - roleplaying themselves. This doesn’t just contradict the narrative, it makes one question why there is a narrative at all. We don’t care who Garrett is and we don’t care who Jill Valentine is. We only care about ourselves.

Why do we associate ourselves so closely with a virtual character? While you might see a parallel of your own life story being played out in a film, accidentally pressing rewinding doesn’t illicit a cry of, “Whoops! I went back in time!” So what does it really mean when we say this? Well, I think it’s indicative of a problem with video games and their players. The amount of control we as players have over characters should not be confused with ‘becoming’ that character.

Media Molecule’s Tearaway addresses this concept cleverly. The player takes control of an envelope given life, dubbed The Messenger, who is tasked with delivering itself to the Sun.

Why the Sun? Well, thats where you are.

A hole has been torn in the middle of the solar body, creating a portal from the player’s world to the paper-constructed world of The Messenger. Staring out from the Sun is the player, reflected by the Vita’s front-facing camera. At certain points, the player - called The You by the paper inhabitants - is able to interact with the virtual world via the system’s front and rear touch pads.

You are in total control of The Messenger, but the world’s denizens identify everything The You does to be the only interaction from the player. The Messenger is understood to be totally independent. The game’s conclusion retells the story from a first-person perspective and drives home the point that The Messenger is the hero of the story. It indicates the player had no direct control over The Messenger’s actions. Furthermore the game’s final moments, again from the system’s camera, shows the player and declares, “This is your world.” In other words, you don’t really belong in the paper world. Don’t forget the difference between fantasy and reality.

Breaking Character

By now everyone should be familiar with the term ludonarrative dissonance: essentially, when players attempt to subvert a game. 

But what about when the game subverts the player? 

A very basic example of this is found in Digital Devolver’s Hotline Miami. The game’s explosions of violence can shock some players, but it’s cartoonish quality softens it enough for a player to find a morbid enjoyment. Silent protagonist ‘Jacket’ seems like a perfect shell for the player to project their own personality onto. However, Jacket still displays free will. We see the results of his independence throughout the game. Days when he isn’t committing mass murder are unaccounted for, yet we can assume he doesn’t spend them standing in his bedroom waiting for a phone call.

At the end of the first level Jacket stops, removes his mask and vomits all over the pavement. He’s horrified by the violence he’s committed. Yet the player is unlikely to have that same reaction. Its a reminder that no matter who you believe ‘committed’ the violence - Jacket or the player - Jacket experienced it and had his own reaction. 

Subversion can be even more powerful when we feel our control is absolute. 

Fallout concludes with the player character speaking with Vault 13’s Overseer. The Overseer, fearing for the safety of the Vault’s population, tells the player character it would be best to never return. Stories of the outside world would inspire more people to leave the safety of the Vault and in turn endanger the rest. Even though most NPCs considered my character a sort of post-apocalyptic Ghandi, he brutally murdered the Overseer. It was not a course of action I had considered. And yet the player character retaliated with brutality. Its a jarring scene not just because of the violence but because it tells the player their control is not absolute.

This is the subtle reasoning behind Quick Time Events. Decrying the simplicity of them is to miss the point. The amount of control is not important but to maintain control itself.

A character in a QTE won’t act without the player’s permission. Instead they’ll stare blankly waiting for a command. The character’s arms raise, forever poised to deliver the final blow to a hapless minion until the player wishes to act. The game has no chance to subvert the player and break the immersion because we are complicit in all the character’s actions.

But subversion of the player can serve as a healthy reminder. As much as one might like to absorb themselves in role-playing a character, we are still not that character. We might confidently declare we know the difference between fantasy and reality but sometimes the lines are a little more blurred than we might admit. Without a kind of distance players can become to attached to their preconceived notions about the player character. When things deviate too much from their preconceptions it breaks the immersion. They’re reminded the character isn’t really under their control.

The controversy following Mass Effect 3 is an example of what happens when players fail to observe distance. The very vocal fans knew they wanted something more at the series’s conclusion. It was too simple. It didn’t tie up all the loose ends. It wasn’t unique enough to their version of Shepard. 

These could still be valid complaints. After all, it didn’t matter if you played an Adept or a Vanguard or an Infiltrator. Nor who lived and who died. The ending played out in only a few select ways and these might not have been adequate considering the variety of play styles offered throughout the series.

What is really important is the characters felt the tale had concluded. They didn’t get off the ship, look at the camera and ask, “Is that all?” However the fan complaints say less about the story and more about the players themselves. What the players really wanted was their own catharsis. 

When the screen fades to black the story is over. Afterwards having a slight disconnect from the characters allows a player to easily extricate themselves from the narrative. For those who craft the gaming experience around themselves it’s harder to accept when the creator wrests back control.

Christopher Nolan’s film Inception ends with a close up of a spinning top, leaving the audience wondering if the film's conclusion took place in the real world or a dream. Reactions to this ending can be compared to Mass Effect’s.

Really it doesn’t matter whether we think its still a dream or not. The characters were satisfied they had woken up and returned to the real world. Our catharsis, our desire to know whether the top falls or not, is unimportant. To react angrily is to fail to understand your role in the narrative. 

There is a reason the viewer, not the characters, are left watching the top spin. Regardless of our experiences or emotions, whether player or viewer, we live outside of the characters.

First Person Problems

Unfortunately, the focus on player experience is actually inhibiting video games.

Dontnod Entertainment, developer of cyberpunk action game Remember Me, struggled to find a publisher because of the game's female player character. Creative Director Jean-Max Moris told Penny Arcade, “We had people tell us, 'You can't make a dude like the player kiss another dude in the game, that's going to feel awkward.'" We’ve been sold so heavily on the 'player experience’ that a simple kiss breaks the game. 

Players were told they would want to “protect” Lara Croft in the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider. The game's Executive Producer Ron Rosenberg said that players, “don't really project themselves into the character...There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'" It still follows the same idea that video game characters can’t operate on their own. Players either become the main character or invent their own role to maintain a position as the primary actor.

Oculus’s Rift and Sony’s Morpheus VR headsets have the potential to exacerbate this problem.

Meeting player expectations of ‘virtual reality’ means first person experiences. It allows players to more fully envelop themselves in a role. But the connection to tying their own movements to the avatar means becoming a pre-determined character can be disconnecting. When players look down they’ll want to see themselves, or at least a version of themselves they have personally tailored. 

The few exceptions will be the iconic characters: Batman, Master Chief, Samus Aran etc.

If some individuals think male players will feel awkward watching their avatar kiss a member of the same sex, imagine how they think those players will react experiencing it through their avatar’s eyes.

If first-person VR headsets are the future of video games, its possible we’ll see games further watered down to the few committee-approved genres those in charge think the audience finds acceptable.

The Real World

This might all seem to be a purely academic concern but it does have negative consequences in the real world.

One of the most notable instances of this is the furore directed at former Bioware writer Jennifer Hepler. In a 2006 Reddit post Ms. Helper suggested games could allow players interested primarily in a story to skip over combat and gameplay. When someone brought these comments to the attention of the wider community some years later, the loudest response was far from supportive. Commenters and critics, for the most part, held it up as an example of the rampant sexism in the gaming community. While some of the abuse Ms. Hepler was subjected to was sexist in nature, I think the motivation for it was much more selfish.

Surely we’ve all played games without combat or puzzles or complete freedom of movement. So it would be strange to think that simply talking about being able to skip gameplay is worth such abuse. But gameplay is not what’s really in danger. Ms. Helper proposed placing less emphasis on the most interactive portions of games. The portions that make players feel powerful. Whether male or female, adolescent or adult. We all want to feel powerful in some way.

What Ms. Hepler suggested jeopardised that power. She proposed taking away the ability to feel like the fastest, strongest or smartest person in the room. When people feel their power is threatened, they act out. Not always based in logic or reason. Sometimes instinctually. Because of that many might not have even known exactly why they were offended. But they were. 

And they latched on to any perceived surface-level flaws and attacked relentlessly. This in no way justifies or excuses the terrible abuse that was launched at a fellow human being, nor does it dismiss the very real problems in this industry, but it might explain the twisted motivation behind some cases.

Another example is Treyarch’s Design Director David Vondehaar, who faced similar threats last year.

The Call Of Duty developer announced an update which would balance online play, including nerfing damage and rate of fire for several weapons. Not a huge deal. A few weapons getting tweaked for balance seems reasonable. However the announcement caused players to “lose their shit,[Link]” threatening Mr. Vondehaar and his family.

A totally outrageous reaction to such a small change but let’s consider what this means for players who use those weapons frequently in competitive play. The power they had over their competitors (quite unfairly it would seem, since the weapons were nerfed) was jeopardised. To some players what Treyarch announced wasn’t something to make competitive play fairer for all. Mr. Vondehaar was taking away the power some players felt they had over others. 

Again its the inability to distinguish fantasy from reality.

We often associate that inability with extreme cases like gaming addiction or violent outbursts. We know the difference because we would never do such things. But sometimes the result is much more subtle. It doesn’t just mean the ability to distinguish between inflicting virtual violence and real life violence.  It also means to be able to separate oneself from an onscreen persona. Rather than thinking about video game characters as an extension of the player, we should regard ourselves as facilitators. 

We need to give a game’s narrative room to ‘breathe’ by allowing the characters to exist on their own. Our role as players is more akin to the writer than an actor. We shape the narrative without having to become the narrative. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with becoming immersed in a game; to feel totally enveloped in a fictional world or story. But it is still possible to immerse oneself in a story without drowning in it.