Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Finished Paper: Part One!

Gender has long been a problematic subject in video games. The manner in which archetypes of masculinity and femininity are portrayed, the roles that male and female characters play and the way they’re developed as protagonists, antagonists and supporting characters is in equal turn fascinating and troubling. Ever since the obscure Custer’s Revenge, a 1982 Atari based sex game wherein the deceased general avoided obstacles and hazards in order to rape a horrified Native American woman tied to a pole, devastated the image and agency of women portrayed in games, an uphill battle has been taking shape. Occasionally marketing forces have combated the slow progress of the industry, eviscerating strong portrayals of women and transforming them into ditzes, sex objects and pubescent fantasies made manifest. Lara Croft, who began her creative life as a Latina Indiana Jones, became an implausibly physiqued, nude code adjacent target for criticism. And it’s difficult not to see this sort of self-destructive behavior as a necessity of the marketplace when games with strong, grounded female protagonists, such as the critically acclaimed Beyond Good and Evil, bombed so thoroughly in the past.

But of late a renaissance has been underway in games. Female protagonists and supporting characters have been outstripping their male counterparts in complexity and forming the cornerstone of carefully constructed, socially aware stories in high-grossing, critically acclaimed games. Perhaps no series better illustrates the progress that has been made than Portal, wherein the voiceless (usually faceless and ostensibly male) protagonist we all too often see in video games, is given a female face and a name: Chell. Chell embodies and inverts many of the tropes that we, as gamers, have become comfortable with over the years. She simultaneously upholds and violates many of the rules of first person shooters, showcasing a revolutionary new kind of genre, a new breed of storytelling. Through the progress of Portal we see a complex portrait of female sexuality as well as a broader deconstruction of concepts of authority, agency, power and storytelling structure. The manner in which Portal engages these themes represents progress in the games industry’s portrayal of traditionally misrepresented figures while showcasing the narrative potential for games as a medium. But to examine this growth and talk about how story functions in games, we’re going to have to do a little legwork in discussing how narrative functions in other literary models and draw some parallels between that functionality and the functionality of narrative in games.

From Custer to Chell, it’s been quite a long journey, and it is far from over. Masculinity continues to be a pervasive and often limiting trope in the construction of stories within games, and patterns of overt masculine exclusion, evident in games series like Gears of War and Modern Warfare, undermine their own stories and convey simplified fictions of gender. By placing these examples in context with other, more textually noteworthy games we can begin dispelling notions about games as a facile, inexpressive medium and a “boy’s club.” Stupid games will always exist, and all too often dominate discussion about the medium. But when we critically examine titles that display artistic maturity (utilizing the tropes of their medium to their own advantage and telling stories that can exist only in games) it’s difficult not to see growth and development since Custer in both the quality of stories told in games and the way they portray sex and sexuality.

But in order to have a conversation about this subject, we’re going to have to define two terms I’ve used a lot in these first two pages. First, what is a video game? And second, what is a post-structural narrative?

A video game is, for the purpose of our discussion, any game that utilizes multimedia components in order to convey a story or sense of action. These multimedia components are usually arbitrated through a single processing entity, a “computer” or “console.” This entity can be reserved for another purpose: it can be a phone or a home computer used for word processing and email. Or it can be a dedicated device, such as an X-Box or, for older readers, a Nintendo Entertainment System. The platform is simply a means to an end: whether it is built towards one purpose or towards multiple purposes the games themselves are usually best experienced when they’re engaged with without distractions.

Video games normally have narrative elements within them, sometimes strong, sometimes weak. These elements vary dramatically in prominence. Line Rider, for example, is a game which invests itself in the simplest of narratives: you draw a line and a man rides it. On the other hand, Bastion invents a pair of warring societies with identity crises and immigration disputes between them, a cold war parable nested within a rich independent fiction. There is no set standard for narrative investment, simply a concept of interactivity which demands the insertion of a player figure who can, in more conventional literary senses, be seen as a reader.

And that brings us to the concept of post-structural narrative. In literature, this term is used to define narrative modes that attempt to redefine or defy conventional ideas about narrative, eschewing conventional narrative structure in order to reinvent the means by which a story is told. These forms almost always demand more attention or action from the reader in order for meaning to be uncovered within them. In video games, this term can be applied in a considerably broader fashion than usual. In video games, post-structural narrative is the norm, and not the exception. If we look at games with this in mind we can see them not simply the unique means they employ to convey narrative experiences, relying on input from players, who effectively serve as reader figures.

This is what sets them aside from other narrative forms: no other narrative form relies on user input in the fashion that video games do (spare possibly the poem, which I’ll bring up shortly). Prose requires the participation of a reader figure who, while somewhat active, remains less active than the player in video games, who is constantly asked to define the narrative as it emerges. And film relies heavily on passive reader figures, keeping its viewers uninvolved and removed from the subject matter at hand, but in order to tell a story effectively in a game, you must involve your player. Failure to do so can make a game boring or tedious. Henrik Schenau-Fog articulated as much introducing his 2011 study on how to best facilitate player engagement in games:
By their very nature, good games need to be engaging, so game designers use this knowledge to create great game experiences. It is not enough to motivate a player to begin playing – if the engagement is not sustained, the player will not keep playing (1).

Schenau-Fog proceeds to define the various ways that games achieve this goal of engagement, outlining a very thorough list of mechanisms for engagement, of which narrative is but one of many, and not a prominent one at that. It’s not hard to see why he’s concerned with this as a designer and developer of games and really, it’s not surprising that this sort of experiential feedback drives most developers. It would be shocking if it did not: people don’t generally want to experience experiences that aren’t engaging.

This means that games don’t necessarily need strong narratives, so much as means by which to engage their players. As such some games tell stories with such loose structures you’d have to be super generous to call them narratives (man shoots gun, man dies, man reloads gun and walks on) simply because they allow a facile means for them to engage players in the short term. This sometimes takes the form of an appeal to the lowest common denominator and isn’t demonstrative of the potential of the medium to tell a story, though it does elucidate the somewhat problematic relationship that many game designers seem to have with storytelling. But storytelling can be a key factor in engaging players, especially in a broader sense than the immediate one Schenau-Fog investigates, and so games often contain rich narrative frameworks for players to interact with. Let me showcase this by telling you a little more about a game I mentioned earlier in passing, Bastion.

Bastion is a 2011 action game (developed by the hilariously named Supergiant Games) with a top down view and freeform story that iteratively develops as the player explores the world. In Bastion players are given verbal and visual feedback based on their actions. They learn new things about the world around them as a result of their explorations, where they choose to go and how they choose to overcome obstacles. While there is an overarching narrative the player engages, a story with immutable elements as dramatic as the end of civilized life, there are smaller events within that storyline that the player exercises agency over, events that then impact the narrative experience of the player. These events vary in gravity from deciding the fate of a major character to uncovering details of characters lives through drug induced hallucinations to choosing to pick up a very large hammer at a particular moment, but each of these choices provides the player with agency within the narrative and alters the way Bastion tells its story. Bastion’s process of iterative storytelling demonstrates how the player participation can explicitly impact the narrative of a game. But even if this explicitly collaborative process is absent, narrative in games is collaboratively shaped between players (readers) and designers (authors). When we look at them with this in mind, games come into focus not only a medium of entertainment but also an extreme example of a certain vein of literary thought.

Video games aren’t the only narrative medium that require the participation of reader figures to be realized. We can lay the same claim at the feet of poetry, where the reader’s participation is critical to, in the words of Ruth Needleman, “recreate the poet’s poem” (559). Needleman, in investigating the poetry of Octavio Paz, delves into his treatment of the reader and his at times conflicting attempts to engage the reader along a path of potential enlightenment while simultaneously permitting them to generate their own meaning from his work. In Needleman’s estimation, Paz’s poetry became a collaboration of sorts with its reader, requiring, even expectant of the reader’s effort towards grasping its meaning in order to attain some sort of fulfillment, “...provid[ing] the structure which should direct the reader on a path towards spiritual englightenment” (559). What Needleman’s statement implies (and what Needleman seems to deliberately avoid confronting) is that the reader will bestow meaning upon the poem, making it into a piece of collaborative art, one that requires the participation of a reader to reach fruition. Needleman finds this potentially problematic: she worries that readers might not “get” the meaning as intended. I’m not sure this is such a bad thing, and the less intended meaning, the more freedom provided by the form.

To contextualize this in our investigation with games I’m going to divide poetry into two really big, broad categories: explicitly narrative and non-explicitly narrative poetry. Simply put, explicitly narrative poetry engages in a storytelling tradition whereby the poem attempts to convey a story of some sort with character who may or may not be directly named or even clearly identified. Non-explicitly narrative poetry eschews narrative to achieve its ends, usually in order to generate an interpretive dialogue surrounding a set of themes, feelings or emotions that the author attempts to invoke or communicate. Both of these forms require the influence and interpretation of a reader figure or group of reader figures in order to reach fruition.

In non-explicitly narrative poetry the reader figure is especially important, as the reader figure is the crux upon which the poem rests: without a reader, the emotions cannot be transmitted by the author and the poem cannot operate. Even when the transmission does not occur exactly as intended, as Needleman worries, so long as some transmission occurs we can perceive the poem as some sort of success. Poetry which deliberately attempts to eschew narrative can transmit feeling badly, but so long as it delivers some sort of feeling it has delivered a poetic payload of some kind. Simply by evoking feeling in a reader or listener, the poem has succeeded. Non-explicitly narrative poetry can, of course, by merit of this flexibility and fluidity, have narrative elements imposed by readers. It could even be argued that this must occur to some extent, that the reading of the poem forms a sort of super-narrative structure which the poem then occupies even if an internal narrative of the poem itself is unavailable.

Explicitly narrative poetry can also possess this reader introduced narrative superstructure, but it contains within it the framework of some sort of conventional narrative, albeit one which may have unclear or fluid characters, plot and reasoning governing its narrative structure. This narrative structure usually (but not always) makes it easier to access a poem’s functionality, to comprehend the intended purpose of the author and form a connection with the author’s emotional work within the poem. It provides readers with context which, in Needleman’s view, might circumvent challenges to understanding the poem. By providing readers with a context through which their reading can be directed, poets can more readily shift attention to subjects they choose, more easily introduce and attach explicit meaning to symbols and ground readers in a context with which they feel more comfortable: that of a familiar narrative storytelling tradition. Of course, there’s a trade-off here: non-narrative poetry cannot be accused of bad storytelling, whereas narrative poetry can and, let’s be honest, often should.

If you attempt to tell a story, you risk doing it poorly. It’s a risk that can be circumvented by refusing to include or involve a conventional narrative in a work, favoring instead a focus on emotional transmission. A poorly told story can fight itself, while a poem which does not attempt to tell a story cannot fail in this respect. Even if it fails in its purported purpose, it may not fail at all in a greater sense if a reader finds or imposes value on the work.

Which brings us back to games.

A great portion of storytelling in games is poor. It is often clumsily executed. Characters are often broadly drawn and arbitrarily given to surreal action. Dialogue is often stilted and unbelievable or lacking in flow. Plotting will sometimes be sloppy, with a focus on guiding players through a series of interesting or attractive set pieces sometimes distracting from the actual telling of a conventional narrative story. Gregg Cox of Press X or Die wrote an engaging screed illustrating how some of this can be owed to the way that writing works in games: it’s often a process begun after the fact, to contextualize a finished product rather than as a part of a bigger creative process. Sometimes poorly constructed dialogue is used to fulfill a purpose in a game, to inform players of conditions. Cox thinks this is, to some extent, bullshit, even if it’s understandable, and sees it as undermining the capacity of games to tell stories, but the experiences contained within them still remain intact.

Other dialogue driven mediums can’t withstand this kind of punishment. A TV show, film or play with bad dialogue or character development or a reliance on cliché is almost always seen as a bust of some sort. But a poem which tells a stilted or poor story can still succeed in evoking an emotional response, at informing and experientially enriching its reader. Yusef Komunyakaa’s prose poem, “Grenade”, for example, has all of the worst elements of a clichéd story within it: it utilizes a ready-made image to showcase an emotional payload which connects to said image. But Komunyakaa’s words carry a bitterness, even a sort of dismissiveness towards the man who has sacrificed himself. His sacrifice is illustrated simply in the phrase “& one throws himself down on the grenade.” and revulsion and depression, rather than lionization, stem from this image of sacrifice (32). Lines like: “You wish he’d lie down in that closed coffin, & not wander the streets or enter your bedroom at midnight.” carry with them a pathos that, had Komunyakaa used a more distinct or less familiar image, might alienate readers (32). But by treading through familiar and taking us in a new direction Komunyakaa plays with expectations of readers, turning their hope for redemption into revulsion at both the gesture and the speaker’s response to this sacrifice. The clichéd purpose is, by merit of clever framing, put to original and effective use.

We can see this pattern echoed in games. Take the Assassin’s Creed series. The story in these games is flat out bad. Plot twists are telegraphed and many characters are nebulously developed, if they are developed at all. Historical figures are inserted into the plot, often to little effect spare that of a celebrity cameo. And some characters are simply inserted so that set pieces can be included in the finished product. My personal favorite example comes from the final moments of Assassin’s Creed 2, which involve a romp into the Vatican where the protagonist, Ezio, is prompted to fist fight with the Pope in order to acquire his staff (in the story of the game, a powerful alien artifact which allows Ezio entrance to a secret underground data storage facility) before descending into the basement of the Vatican for the games’ climax.

This should sound pretty ridiculous and, in the game’s execution, it is. But the game does not fail because of these unfortunate patterns in its narrative structure. Rather, the play of the game, the means surrounding these at times unintentionally absurd structures, showcase an overarching method which saturates the game: a message that the refutation and refusal of authority and its structures without adherence to a newly constructed structure is a powerful and potent approach to life, one which gives its adherents great power and allows them a unique and rich experience within this context. Ignoring the plot is, in a sense, a part of maximizing this lesson as you are asked, again and again, to simultaneously construct and dismantle authority structures and figures as they inevitably turn on both you, as player and character, and themselves as both narrative figures and narrative devices. Veteran game reviewer Tom Chick put it wonderfully:

Ubisoft is clearly enamored of the "Lost" school of storytelling, stringing together vague and vaguely outrageous bits of info that may or may not come together; but we won't know, because by the time it does or doesn't come together, we will have forgotten the bits of info. It can be intriguing, but it doesn't make for much of a story. [...].
But an amazing open world with a game in it as good as Assassin's Creed II doesn't necessarily need a good story. This gloriously interactive, breathing marvel is leaps and bounds ahead of other videogames, and it's yet another instance of the geniuses at Ubisoft Montreal schooling the rest of the industry. Until someone else out there can take me to a place as grand as Venice, I shall think of Assassin's Creed II whenever I hear Arthur C. Clarke's axiom that any sufficiently awesome videogame is indistinguishable from magic.

Here we see a link between the emerging medium of video games and the established medium of poetry, that the driving impetus of both is not the creation of the object but the experience of interacting with it. Chick’s words are a little tongue in cheek, but they also show genuine love and articulate that the experience of a game is more than the sum of its parts - that the potency of a game comes from its ability to transmit a sense of place or experience, rather than necessarily stemming from things like brisk dialogue or sharp plotting. Which is really cool, I think. When games are crafted, lovingly crafted by massive teams aware of the importance of the player, amazing experiences emerge. And when these games construct their narratives with awareness of both the structure and tropes of the medium they’re working in, these narratives showcase the truest potential of a medium.