Deep Dive - Using Video Games to Reclaim Agency
I am incredibly, incredibly privileged at this point in time. Though we are in the midst of a global pandemic, myself and my family are all financially and medically stable and though its exact shape remains uncertain, I have a future ahead of me where I will return to university in September. This is something I'm intimately aware of and I wanted to preface everything I'm about to say by stating this, because I know that for all the struggles I have had in this period, those are basic needs that I have not had to worry about. Regardless though, I have been struggling, particularly psychologically. That state has been far less frequent as lockdown gradually lifts and I can see friends and family again, but especially in the early weeks of lockdown, I found myself totally incapable of finding motivation. Uni work was completed, I was living with my family like a teenager again and I was worried about leaving my little village. In short, I felt like any agency my life had previously had was absent. As you have probably guessed by the title of this post, that solace came in video games. My passion for films, books and TV all remain, but have been dulled compared to the thrill that I can get from video games. They offer me new worlds to explore, worlds I can personally shape and in doing so, help teach me about the value of perseverance when odds seem insurmountable. They have given back my lost agency and I want to share that with you, if you'd be so kind as to let me.
First, we have a pretty simple category: exploring worlds. Most games are constructions of worlds that we, the players, are allowed to explore, within certain limitations and within various levels of fantasy. Think as these as virtual tours of hallowed ground, where you may look to your hearts content, but touching is to be kept to a minimum. For a milder level of fantasy, there's Forza Horizon 4, set in the very real world of the United Kingdom. Obviously, it's a fake version of the UK, as rendering the entire country would be a pointless and boring ordeal for all making and playing the game but the important bit is that it appropriately captures the feeling of exploring the UK. With little brick walls, huge empty fields and an unnecessary amount of roundabouts, it is enough to make any American feel like they're living in Harry Potter land and any Brit want to hit that American on the head and say "nah mate, this is my home". As a twenty year old student, this summer was for me, as for many others, meant to be little more than me dicking about with my mates, exploring this wonderful country we can call home. We don't get to do that this year, but at least I get Horizon as a compromise. To be fair, it's a pretty great compromise too, because real life doesn't let me drive a McLaren through a windmill and off a massive hill. It isn't reality, it's slightly grander than reality and that is the perfect kind of world to explore.
The thing is, much as I love Forza Horizon 4 and Outer Wilds, you don't get to do much to the worlds. Sure, Forza has walls you can destroy and Wilds allows you to pick up a couple of bits and pieces but any impact feels temporary, it's a world you have been allowed to witness and not much else. That changes with these next games, which I've separated into "participating" and "shaping" for reasons that I hope will become obvious. As our first example of participating in a world, let's go to Grand Theft Auto V. The world of Los Santos is one of my favourite in all of gaming, a massively realised game world that I am perfectly content to just drive around with the radio on and whether in single or multiplayer mode, you get to be an active force in the world. Single player has you impacting the world less, admittedly, but you're still pushing forward a story and in the heists, you're the one who decides what kind of scheme you're going to pull. In the multiplayer though, it really opens up. You can become nightclub owners, run a motorcycle club or be a CEO, all options which open up possibilities for their own levels of chaos. Your actions may not change the world but especially with a group of friends involved, it feels incredible to be a chief architect in the chaos of Los Santos.
Clearly the biggest gaming success story of this period though has been Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game that embodies the power of being able to shape your worlds. Conveniently for the purposes of a writer, it doesn't get much more obvious an example than Animal Crossing. In the newest iteration, you arrive at a completely deserted island and are in control of everything that goes on there. You choose where houses go, where little decorations go (although admittedly, my Godzilla statue could hardly be called little) and even teraform the land, moving earth and river to your whims. There is no mystery about why a game all about taking complete control over your world has become so popular in a time when we have all lost total control of our lives and it doesn't hurt that Animal Crossing spices this up with cute animals, bright visuals and very pleasant music that threatens to burrow its way into your skull for years. I will admit though, the game has started to wear on me. Nintendo have been consistently updating the game with new content but the fact that it's like a new life, the very reason the game became so popular, is turning it into a chore. I feel obliged to boot up the game and go talk to my neighbours, pick up fruit and dig up fossils. The appeal is somewhat limited in the long term because of the intense freedom you're given, but you can't deny it is a compelling initial pitch.
Now we find ourselves in the weird third category. I've been playing a bunch of games recently and perhaps it's just the games I've been playing or maybe I've gotten worse at gaming as my time in that hobby has decreased, but some of them have been really difficult. These games are using their high difficulty levels in order to make the player have very personal realisations about themselves. Nier: Automata is a perfect example. There were a couple of sections in the game that I found really frustratingly difficult and yet I always knew that there was some brilliant story on the other side of that, always convincing me to push on. The game goes further than that and through its impressively philosophical themes, it studies the purpose of fighting on. Many times in the game, characters lose their reason to keep doing what they're doing. Like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, they find themselves rolling that boulder up that hill every single day, always watching it roll straight back down. And yet, the game explores how they carry on and why they would ever choose to. The real masterstroke in my opinion is in the final ending of the game. I won't spoil it but you are faced with an impossibly tough challenge and after beating it, are presented with a decision that will completely alter the game if you decide to replay it. This decision should be tough and yet, due to the narrative the game weaved, I didn't hesitate. I fought through to the end of the game and was presented with a powerful statement on the importance of our futile lives together and it has stayed with me in the months since I beat the game.
Return of the Obra Dinn uses difficulty to reward you in a very different way. Whereas Nier was weaving this into the thematic thread, Obra Dinn is just a really difficult game. Importantly though, it's a puzzle game and therefore every impossibly difficult puzzle works because its completion is so very satisfying. For the unaware, it is a game about an insurance clerk, sent to a ship on the coast of Falmouth. The ship is deserted and using a magical stopwatch-esque device, you must work out what happened to all the crew by viewing the moments in which they died. Immediately I would say that this is a game you should play because it is so beautifully unique but as for how it applies to this post, there's a few ways. In creating these death tableaus, you are again able to explore a world and find things that written word or the cinema screen could never show you and in fact, only by doing that will you successfully be able to identify all the crew. Speaking of, the aim of the game is the work out who is who on the ship and work out their fate, which is much harder than it sounds. Some may die with a very clear stab wound while someone screams their name, others may disappear between chapters, leaving you to pick up the pieces and work out if they had any distinguishing features to look out for in earlier memories. Vitally, you'll also only be told if you were right after correctly guessing three fates, meaning their identity, manner of death and who (or what) killed them. This leads to some moments of really frustrating guesswork but behind the frustration, there is a euphoric high. The little jingle that plays when you get a third guess right is perfection in sound design and it will cause you to trawl those memories again. Ultimately, you can leave the ship not knowing all the fates but only by working them all out will you be granted the missing chapter, the final piece of the puzzle of the doomed ship Obra Dinn.
We end on Celeste, a pixel-art platformer that perfectly embodies the use of difficulty in gameplay to enhance the themes and story. The story is of a young woman called Madeline, who has just moved to a new town. She is all by herself and doesn't really know what to do, but she decides she wants to climb Celeste Mountain. Why? Well, it seems to be her way of proving her own strength to herself but it becomes clear that even she wasn't entirely sure why she set off on this trip, other than to simply get away. Along the way, she discovers a fellow climber called Theo, as well as an "evil" mirror version of herself. Theo is a bit cringey but means well, accompanying her for much of her climb, whereas Madeline's reflection seems intent on nothing but self sabotage, refusing to let Madeline climb to the top of the mountain. It's not going to need me to point out the metaphor here for mental health, in that the worst enemy Madeline ever encounters in the game is herself. In fact, there is a point in the game where Madeline and Theo sit and discuss her mental health, talking through a moment (seen above) where Madeline has a panic attack and is unable to cope with anything for fear of implosion. Climbing the mountain isn't about climbing to the top of a mountain, not really. It's about setting an insurmountable challenge and somehow, through the pain, making it to the top.
Exploring Worlds
First, we have a pretty simple category: exploring worlds. Most games are constructions of worlds that we, the players, are allowed to explore, within certain limitations and within various levels of fantasy. Think as these as virtual tours of hallowed ground, where you may look to your hearts content, but touching is to be kept to a minimum. For a milder level of fantasy, there's Forza Horizon 4, set in the very real world of the United Kingdom. Obviously, it's a fake version of the UK, as rendering the entire country would be a pointless and boring ordeal for all making and playing the game but the important bit is that it appropriately captures the feeling of exploring the UK. With little brick walls, huge empty fields and an unnecessary amount of roundabouts, it is enough to make any American feel like they're living in Harry Potter land and any Brit want to hit that American on the head and say "nah mate, this is my home". As a twenty year old student, this summer was for me, as for many others, meant to be little more than me dicking about with my mates, exploring this wonderful country we can call home. We don't get to do that this year, but at least I get Horizon as a compromise. To be fair, it's a pretty great compromise too, because real life doesn't let me drive a McLaren through a windmill and off a massive hill. It isn't reality, it's slightly grander than reality and that is the perfect kind of world to explore.
Outer Wilds returns to me that cherished feeling of discovery.What if you weren't just exploring a familiar world though, what if it was a brand new world? And what if it wasn't just one world, but multiple worlds? That is there we find Outer Wilds. Wilds is an indie game all about exploration and I will apologise upfront because the joy of the game is in knowing very little about it, so everything I say will make the game slightly less magical. There is an "ending" to Wilds, an ending both frustrating and rewarding, but it was a game that never got better than just simple exploration of the solar system you found yourself in. You're a helpless alien, sent off on his first mission into space, only the sun explodes in twenty two minutes and you're stuck in a time loop that will send you back to the start whenever you die. And yet, casual exploration is the name of the game. There's a handful of planets around and all have countless secrets to explore, as well as their own little "gimmicks". One planet has hurricanes that pick up islands, another is paradoxically large and my personal favourite one has the core of a black hole, slowly sucking in pieces of the planets exterior. Each and every one of these worlds is painstakingly hand-crafted and I've felt few bigger thrills in gaming than picking away at these planets until I find a new and intriguing secret. That thrill impacted me so much that I have recently been having dreams about getting to explore new worlds in similar ways, which is both a little damning a report on how rad my life is, but nice for the developers, whose work clearly paid off. Having been on a year abroad for the last academic year, it's been a sharp shock to go from discovering new things most days to sitting in the village I've lived in all my life, but Outer Wilds returns to me that cherished feeling of discovery. No other game feels like this and right now, it's those new sensations that I'm really pining for.
Participating In and Shaping Worlds
The thing is, much as I love Forza Horizon 4 and Outer Wilds, you don't get to do much to the worlds. Sure, Forza has walls you can destroy and Wilds allows you to pick up a couple of bits and pieces but any impact feels temporary, it's a world you have been allowed to witness and not much else. That changes with these next games, which I've separated into "participating" and "shaping" for reasons that I hope will become obvious. As our first example of participating in a world, let's go to Grand Theft Auto V. The world of Los Santos is one of my favourite in all of gaming, a massively realised game world that I am perfectly content to just drive around with the radio on and whether in single or multiplayer mode, you get to be an active force in the world. Single player has you impacting the world less, admittedly, but you're still pushing forward a story and in the heists, you're the one who decides what kind of scheme you're going to pull. In the multiplayer though, it really opens up. You can become nightclub owners, run a motorcycle club or be a CEO, all options which open up possibilities for their own levels of chaos. Your actions may not change the world but especially with a group of friends involved, it feels incredible to be a chief architect in the chaos of Los Santos.
As far as using gameplay to enhance narrative, [What Remains of Edith Finch] is one of the very finest examples I've ever seen.Regarding participatory stories though, I'm especially partial to What Remains of Edith Finch. Unlike GTA V, this game is incredibly linear, guiding you quite strictly through a series of stories that build to create a narrative about the Finch family. However, the master stroke of the game is how it gets you to participate in the stories, making you feel (however false the idea may be) that it is you who is in control of the story. Whether chopping fish, pushing your legs forward on a swing or orchestrating a bathtub symphony, the story only moves forward because of you playing the game. With something like a film, you don't have to remain engaged to keep the story going. If you tune out for a few minutes, no loss, the film has carried on regardless. Through the forced engagement of this interactive medium though (which never once feels forced), you are put into the literal perspectives of a selection of characters, allowing you to live out a series of tragic lives. As far as using gameplay to enhance narrative, it's one of the very finest examples I've ever seen and it made me feel like I was the one there, creating the stories I was playing. Edith Finch is simply a masterstroke in player engagement and agency.
Clearly the biggest gaming success story of this period though has been Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game that embodies the power of being able to shape your worlds. Conveniently for the purposes of a writer, it doesn't get much more obvious an example than Animal Crossing. In the newest iteration, you arrive at a completely deserted island and are in control of everything that goes on there. You choose where houses go, where little decorations go (although admittedly, my Godzilla statue could hardly be called little) and even teraform the land, moving earth and river to your whims. There is no mystery about why a game all about taking complete control over your world has become so popular in a time when we have all lost total control of our lives and it doesn't hurt that Animal Crossing spices this up with cute animals, bright visuals and very pleasant music that threatens to burrow its way into your skull for years. I will admit though, the game has started to wear on me. Nintendo have been consistently updating the game with new content but the fact that it's like a new life, the very reason the game became so popular, is turning it into a chore. I feel obliged to boot up the game and go talk to my neighbours, pick up fruit and dig up fossils. The appeal is somewhat limited in the long term because of the intense freedom you're given, but you can't deny it is a compelling initial pitch.
The world of Revachol may not be made by me but I run in there like a vodka-smelling bull in a china shop and make my disgusting mark.In more traditional genres of gaming though, the RPG (standing for Role Playing Game) is the home of total freedom and no RPG has ever kept me enticed like Disco Elysium has managed to through lockdown. The basic setup is that you are a cop waking up after an apocalyptic bender, finding a corpse hanging in the garden of your motel that you should probably investigate. Everything else is decided by you. Play the game as a superstar hotshot or a depressed communist, it's entirely your choice. As such, even though moving through stories that the writers have painstakingly crafted, you feel like you're really swaying what's happening. I've only played the game through once but I would be willing to bet that even if not much of the overarching plot changed, you would still find that two different playthroughs had completely different dialogue and character interactions from start to finish. In a time where settling down to read or trying to get involved in a boxset has proved really tricky for me, a game like Disco Elysium arrives with a brilliantly realised world that I can not only lose myself in, but also poke around to my hearts content. The world of Revachol may not be made by me but I run in there like a vodka-smelling bull in a china shop and make my disgusting mark and not only do no other mediums offer that, few other games offer it like Disco Elysium does.
Perseverance is Worth The Fight
Now we find ourselves in the weird third category. I've been playing a bunch of games recently and perhaps it's just the games I've been playing or maybe I've gotten worse at gaming as my time in that hobby has decreased, but some of them have been really difficult. These games are using their high difficulty levels in order to make the player have very personal realisations about themselves. Nier: Automata is a perfect example. There were a couple of sections in the game that I found really frustratingly difficult and yet I always knew that there was some brilliant story on the other side of that, always convincing me to push on. The game goes further than that and through its impressively philosophical themes, it studies the purpose of fighting on. Many times in the game, characters lose their reason to keep doing what they're doing. Like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, they find themselves rolling that boulder up that hill every single day, always watching it roll straight back down. And yet, the game explores how they carry on and why they would ever choose to. The real masterstroke in my opinion is in the final ending of the game. I won't spoil it but you are faced with an impossibly tough challenge and after beating it, are presented with a decision that will completely alter the game if you decide to replay it. This decision should be tough and yet, due to the narrative the game weaved, I didn't hesitate. I fought through to the end of the game and was presented with a powerful statement on the importance of our futile lives together and it has stayed with me in the months since I beat the game.
Return of the Obra Dinn uses difficulty to reward you in a very different way. Whereas Nier was weaving this into the thematic thread, Obra Dinn is just a really difficult game. Importantly though, it's a puzzle game and therefore every impossibly difficult puzzle works because its completion is so very satisfying. For the unaware, it is a game about an insurance clerk, sent to a ship on the coast of Falmouth. The ship is deserted and using a magical stopwatch-esque device, you must work out what happened to all the crew by viewing the moments in which they died. Immediately I would say that this is a game you should play because it is so beautifully unique but as for how it applies to this post, there's a few ways. In creating these death tableaus, you are again able to explore a world and find things that written word or the cinema screen could never show you and in fact, only by doing that will you successfully be able to identify all the crew. Speaking of, the aim of the game is the work out who is who on the ship and work out their fate, which is much harder than it sounds. Some may die with a very clear stab wound while someone screams their name, others may disappear between chapters, leaving you to pick up the pieces and work out if they had any distinguishing features to look out for in earlier memories. Vitally, you'll also only be told if you were right after correctly guessing three fates, meaning their identity, manner of death and who (or what) killed them. This leads to some moments of really frustrating guesswork but behind the frustration, there is a euphoric high. The little jingle that plays when you get a third guess right is perfection in sound design and it will cause you to trawl those memories again. Ultimately, you can leave the ship not knowing all the fates but only by working them all out will you be granted the missing chapter, the final piece of the puzzle of the doomed ship Obra Dinn.
We end on Celeste, a pixel-art platformer that perfectly embodies the use of difficulty in gameplay to enhance the themes and story. The story is of a young woman called Madeline, who has just moved to a new town. She is all by herself and doesn't really know what to do, but she decides she wants to climb Celeste Mountain. Why? Well, it seems to be her way of proving her own strength to herself but it becomes clear that even she wasn't entirely sure why she set off on this trip, other than to simply get away. Along the way, she discovers a fellow climber called Theo, as well as an "evil" mirror version of herself. Theo is a bit cringey but means well, accompanying her for much of her climb, whereas Madeline's reflection seems intent on nothing but self sabotage, refusing to let Madeline climb to the top of the mountain. It's not going to need me to point out the metaphor here for mental health, in that the worst enemy Madeline ever encounters in the game is herself. In fact, there is a point in the game where Madeline and Theo sit and discuss her mental health, talking through a moment (seen above) where Madeline has a panic attack and is unable to cope with anything for fear of implosion. Climbing the mountain isn't about climbing to the top of a mountain, not really. It's about setting an insurmountable challenge and somehow, through the pain, making it to the top.
Sisyphus does keep rolling that boulder up that hill and it seems like the frustration will never end. Yet if you give up trying, you'll certainly never make it to the top of the mountain.Which brings me onto the actual gameplay of Celeste. Platformers are a pretty well known genre, made famous by the family friendly likes of the Super Mario franchise, games so pleasant that anyone of any age could enjoy. In the last decade though, they've also been a proving ground for indie developers to create very difficult levels, with iconic examples like Super Meat Boy and Cuphead delighting and frustrating audiences in equal measure. Celeste joins those ranks, being made of a series of tricky (yet importantly, fair) levels, with bonus challenges that are even harder to accomplish. The importance of the game being difficult is because of the story. Madeline's climb up the mountain is incredibly difficult for her and by making the gameplay as difficult as it is, the developers have allowed us to empathise with her. In an absolutely ecstatic final section though, when (I guess spoiler alert) Madeline is able to summit the mountain, we discover the value of fighting through the difficulty. Right now, things seems pointless and frustrating and just really really tough. There doesn't seem to be much reason to fight on, as governments who won't listen to us keep mishandling a virus that can't be reasoned with. But Celeste argues otherwise. In its own way, it posits that yes, Sisyphus does keep rolling that boulder up that hill and it seems like the frustration will never end. Yet if you give up trying, you'll certainly never make it to the top of the mountain. It's hard work, no one ever said it would be easy, but the great news is that it's worth it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, the top of the hill, whatever metaphor you want to use to frame it. Only by persevering through the difficult time are we going to be able to find ourselves in a time that is good. Perhaps not good in the same ways it once was, but good regardless. And as Nier: Automata teaches us with its beautifully profound ending, it's okay for us to lose our purpose, as long as we never lose sight of the people around us, who instil in us a new sense of purpose, with which we can rebuild our world.
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