This post is part of a series examining the relationship between videogames and the tragic form–today’s topic is the action-RPG Bastion by Supergiant Games.
MAJOR SPOILERS for Bastion follow–as before, if you haven’t played it yet I recommend you do so before reading this post. Continue reading
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This post is the first in a series examining the relationship between videogames and the tragic form–today’s topic is Terry Cavanagh’s excellent action-platformer Don’t Look Back.
MAJOR SPOILERS for Don’t Look Back follow–if you haven’t played it before, I recommend you do so before reading this post. Continue reading
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This post is the introduction to a series examining the relationship between videogames and the tragic form.
The tragic genre, along with comedy, is one of the oldest in Western literature. Classically speaking, a tragedy is more than just a sad ending–it’s a particular kind of story meant to inspire particular kinds of emotions in the audience. A story where the protagonist is miserable from start to finish, with no pretensions to changing their fate, isn’t really a tragedy–it’s just depressing. Similarly, a story that ends in tragedy due to circumstances beyond the protagonist’s control isn’t really tragic, either–that’s just a disaster. True tragedy, as argued most famously by Aristotle, requires that the protagonist bring the ending upon themselves through some crucial mistake or flaw. The tragic ending is a direct result of the protagonist’s own actions, which the audience can only sit helplessly and watch–yet this introduces a big problem for the medium of videogames, in which the audience is the protagonist. The mistake or flaw derives its power from the excruciating if only it leaves in the mind of the audience. If only Hamlet had killed Claudius when he had the chance! If only Oedipus had known his true lineage! If only Eve hadn’t listened to that stupid snake! Yet when the audience is the protagonist, what’s to stop them from avoiding the mistake altogether? How can we reconcile a genre that pre-destines the hero’s downfall with a medium in which the audience influences their every decision? How can we successfully weave together the agency of games with the inevitability of tragedy?
In the following posts, I’ll be taking a look at some games that attempt to do this, analyzing and discussing the various techniques they employ. Over the course of this series, I hope to show that videogames are no more or less suited to the tragic form than any other medium–they simply require different strategies than most narratives employ.
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The richest 1% of America’s population controls a disproportionate amount of its wealth–this is the idea that the phrase “we are the 99%” is meant to evoke. The obvious implication of the Occupy movement’s slogan is that this is a bad thing–but is it? Should we try to fix this disparity? And if so, to what degree? Would a completely even distribution of wealth be ideal, or is a little inequality actually a good thing to have?
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It seems I don’t have anything interesting to say this week. So here’s a list of writers who do!
How about you? Who are your favorite internet writers?
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To the Moon is a very sweet and often sad story about two doctors—Neil Watts and Eva Rosalene—trying to grant the final wish of a dying man named Johnny. The game’s central plot device is a machine that allows Watts and Rosalene to traverse and modify Johnny’s memories, in an attempt to piece together his past and use that information to grant his last wish: a trip to the moon. Johnny himself doesn’t know why he wants to go to the moon, which makes finding out the game’s ultimate goal. As you make your way through his memories, a number of other mysterious objects and places show up again and again, prompting you to discover how all these elements fit together to form Johnny’s life. All of this information—the context that ties the whole story together—is provided exclusively through dialog and cutscenes. The game contains very few elements that could be called “game-like” at all. So why is it even a game in the first place?
Let’s start with To the Moon’s interactive elements that aren’t essential to the story.
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Current conventional models of education place heavy emphasis on the material and intellectual aspects of our world: the realm of facts and figures, action and reaction, of the basic functioning of our external, physical reality. Even our country’s politicians can agree that this system is in grave peril and needs serious reform, but while reformers debate how best to fix its intellectual shortcomings (which certainly do exist), no one seems to be concerned with the far more serious deficits in our system’s personal and social aspects.
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So I recently bought a game I was very exited about playing–I’d hoped to write a review of it here in the next week or two–but when I downloaded it I discovered that I couldn’t play it because my operating system was too old. “Great,” I’m thinking, “so instead of costing me ten dollars on Humble Bundle, it’ll cost me three hundred or something at a Mac store?” Having to buy new operating systems every time the one you’re running gets out of date has always been a scam perpetuated largely by Microsoft’s monopoly on the OS market, but I had never felt it so strongly before. The introduction of alternatives like Chrome OS and the proliferation of always-up-to-date web applications has made this business model seem not only inconvenient and forced, but unnecessary as well. Then, just as I was thinking I would finally bite the bullet and at least see if I could get a cheaper second-hand copy on Ebay or something, I discover to my delight and surprise that Apple’s newest operating system, OS X Mavericks (guess they finally ran out of cool-sounding cats?) is available to download free on the app store! All hail the Age of the Internet! I only hope Microsoft has the courage and intelligence to follow suit with their next operating system.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going off to play Gone Home. Look forward to a review of it here in the coming weeks!
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Are you watching Feminist Frequency? You should be.
I recently came across an episode of the show discussing the concept of “ironic sexism.” What does that mean? In a nutshell, it’s a way to justify the use of sexist (or racist, classist, etc.) tropes and stereotypes by making them so over-the-top, ridiculous, or obvious that they cross the line twice and become acceptable again. The obvious problem with this technique is that what qualifies as “crossing the line twice” is extremely subjective–one person’s “over-the-top” might be another’s “too close to home”–but I think the bigger problem is that it’s just plain lazy writing and lazy thinking. More often than not, this kind of technique is not an attempt to mock or deconstruct the offensive trope or stereotype, it’s simply an attempt to excuse its use without materially altering the nature of the trope. In other words, there’s a not-so-fine line between a sexist parody and a parody of sexism: in the former, the overall content of the movie/show/ad might be over-the-top and ridiculous, but the actual offending trope is played straight or merely exaggerated. In the latter, the stereotype itself is shown to be unrealistic, damaging, or untrue. If this sounds harder, that’s because it is–taking the time and effort to think our preconceptions and biases through is very hard work, but it’s the only way to live fairly.
What do you think? Is Sarkeesian right? Where else have you seen “irony” used as an excuse for laziness, rather than a tool for critical thinking?
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In Search of Secrets 