As technology advances, more ways to convey stories and their messages are created, resulting in the increased availability of messages to the general population. Historically, stories were spread by word of mouth before making the transition to art and written language; however, today we utilize a variety of mediums such as film and animation that have become some of the more popular mediums of disseminating messages over books. There is, however, another medium that often gets overlooked: video games. Games have evolved from playing cards with family and friends to a digital experience that often includes a narrative, or story campaign, meant to take the player to a new dimension of combining gameplay with a storytelling experience. Video games offer different benefits to heighten the experience that has the potential to convey important messages by generating sensations provided from the picture and the act of stepping in another character’s shoes via using a controller to perform the actions as said character, which increases immersion in the experience as well as the overall effectiveness of connecting with audiences. 

Campaigns are structured differently depending on the narrative and themes the creator is trying to portray, most commonly set to play as a given character through their story while performing actions on behalf of said character, which also acts as a piece of the overall message in certain narrative-driven games – like The Last of Us Part II for example. Then there are story-driven games that are more of an interactive narrative, meaning the player’s choices throughout the game alter the gameplay, interactions, relationships with other characters, and provide alternate endings – such as Detroit: Become Human. Different styles of narrative-driven games serve as a message to the player that varies from game to game, and it also signifies the era in which our society is currently in. 

 

Let’s take a game with a strict character-focused narrative, using the player experience from The Last of Us Part II, and examine how the game’s form enacts the message. While most games feed the audience the same stuff on repeat, resulting in the stories being unsatisfying, The Last of Us Part II takes a narrative risk by subverting expectations with a form of gameplay that subconsciously forces players to question their own morality as the game progresses. As what is generally described by Flusser in Our Diversion, humans crave meaningful sensations, and in an era where we have digital technology, the pixels from the images provide those sensations allowing us to have the experience without the meaning (Flusser, “Our Diversion,” p. 110). Given this, that’s where the initial form of video games comes in: although players can’t physically experience the events for themselves, the device allowing the player to engage with the game – a controller or keyboard – is what will give the player the meaning behind the experience from sensations generated through pixels, essentially providing an artificial experience in order to generate meaning to go alongside the artificially stimulated sensations. In games, you play as a certain character and, by using a controller, perform actions on their behalf that can be as simple as walking around the map or as complex as a stealth mission in enemy territory. Most narrative-driven games don’t have player freedom over the story direction, so you’re forced to follow the path the game prompts you to do in order to see the character’s story come full circle. In the case of The Last of Us Part II, the form in which the gameplay is presented is the message. 

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Players start off with playing as a fan-favorite character, Ellie, who’s going about her day when she stumbles across a group of strangers who kidnapped Joel, a father figure to her, and murders him in front of her. Subsequently, Ellie decides to go on a quest of revenge against the murderers of her mentor - a character we come to know as Abby and her friends. At this point, players have only played as Ellie and are right alongside her emotionally, fueled by a connection previously established in the game’s prequel, when halfway through the campaign the tables turn, and now you’re playing as Abby: the person who brutally killed Joel, and the character you’re visualizing as the enemy based off how the game was framed from Ellie’s perspective until now. This is where the form of a strict narrative comes in: you’re being forced to step in another character’s shoes – in this case someone you are skeptical of – to learn their perspectives and experiences. We’ve seen games where you swap between playable characters, so that concept is nothing new, but to use a character that has been ‘justifiably’ villainized with the intent to initially make the audience dislike them in this way is groundbreaking. Neil Druckmann, the creator of The Last of Us Part II, essentially created a new language to tell his story and deliver his message – subverting expectations by forcing players to play as, and grow to understand, someone they otherwise would not attempt to accept – which is important when creating new stories to keep things fresh for the audience (Deleuze, “Literature and Life,” p. 230). While playing as Abby, the character you’re led to direct all blame toward, you slowly realize why she came after Joel in the first place: Joel killed her father who happened to be the surgeon we see at the end of the first game. Now the audience realizes that Ellie is on a mission to kill the person who murdered her father figure just like Abby went on a mission to kill the person who murdered her father - revealing that both characters are in a similar situation and embarked on like quests of vengeance, yet the audience is sympathetic and supportive of one, Ellie, while holding contempt for the other, Abby. Whether the player likes it or not, the form of gameplay is deliberately forcing the player to realize their personal bias and perception largely dictates how one interacts with others and the world which, in turn, then forces them to confront their own morality. 

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While the form of The Last of Us Part II is brilliant in that regard, it also alerts us of a change in our environment which is that people are more judgmental of others and willing to be quick to persecute without understanding; this awakening that The Last of Us Part II is trying to generate is something that art in any form should do to yank us out of our own complacency (McLuhan, “Art as Survival,” p. 206). We live in a time where judgement and persecution are a daily occurrence, especially on the internet, and this is especially evident in the response to this game. When the uproar hit the internet, which was general upset about playing as someone who killed a fan-favorite character in addition to the death of said character, people flocked to Twitter to harass the game developers without understanding the reason behind the form or the message it conveyed. Ironic, isn’t it? There are other games that deliver relevant messages through a strict narrative, but The Last of Us Part II is a recent example of how the form of gameplay in a strict narrative format delivers a message that compliments its content well. 

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Strict narratives have their benefits; however, in recent years another form of video game narrative surfaced that revolutionized campaigns and the player experience: interactive narratives. Video games with interactive narratives have a flexible storyline that emphasizes player choices, and the choices the player makes affects the gameplay, relationships formed within the game, as well as the outcome. In early forms of these types of games, if the player deviated from the suggested storyline, circumstances in the game didn’t adapt well and the algorithm broke the flow, but now that technology has advanced, players can choose whichever path they want and the game seamlessly adapts to maintain the flow. Detroit: Become Human, a newer interactive narrative game, heavily emphasizes player choice throughout the experience from choosing how your character responds to others, and this is one of the few games where your actions in general can also affect the game as well as prompt various optional conversations that aren’t always available to choose. For instance, in a case of conversation, there are situations in which the player is placed in a tough situation that means life or death for another character in the game, and you’re responsible if a character lives or dies. 

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Since Detroit: Become Human is an interactive narrative, the game provides four conversational options to choose from that dictate how you respond, and all the options lead to different end results as well as varying conversations with the characters involved in a certain interaction. In most cases, there is one conversational flow that allows for the happy ending while the other ways the interaction could go result in varying degrees of the bad ending, with one being the worst possible outcome. In interactions like this, it really highlights how seamless the conversation plays out despite having multiple response combinations, emphasizing how interactive narratives flow: the player and the game’s algorithm are feeding off each other. The game is actively recording responses and adapting its response to create and maintain a chamber music-like flow similar to a conversation between two individuals. The algorithms awareness of, and adaptation to, the player’s responses and vise-versa creates a perpetual loop of feeding off each other to create new experiences within the game which is also creating a new style of conveying messages based off this synchronization (Flusser, “Chamber Music,” p. 162). 

While this concept incorporated in video games is neat and makes for a fun gaming experience, it’s a reflection of where our society is at today with the current state of our technology and its algorithms. Video games in general record players responses in order to improve functionality; although, the recording and storing of player response data in an interactive narrative serves to create a smarter algorithm that can improve the quality of its outputs to maintain immersion in the game regardless of the path the player chooses. Similarly, our actions across social media and the internet are also being recorded in order to enhance the algorithms to provide relevant ads for marketing, serve as analytics to major companies to learn consumer habits as well as other vital information, resulting in providing a seamless digitized experience. Like in video games, we willingly engage in behavior that we’re aware is trackable, but we are unknowingly changing the outcome of the future of technology, corporations, and social media platforms with the more information we willingly provide. 

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Video games are a modern form of delivering messages but aren’t a replacement for real experiences. Pixels can only provide so many sensations before it leaves the audience craving substance, the meaning behind the sensations, which is what video games were created to do: emulate experience. Combining sensations felt from pixels with a controller to transform the player a grand puppet master over characters in a game places the audience on another level of immersion intended to satisfy having meaning and the experience through artificial methods. This also grants the player an illusion of having complete control over their experience in a game – the same is true in life. In a game, you can run around the map and delay or alter the story progression while functioning within the design of the game, its algorithm. We also do the same in life: run around our corner of the world, that is also a map, and we alter our personal story progression along the way in our interactions with others and spaces around us – virtual and tangible – similar to an interactive narrative. The difference between a video game’s interactive narrative versus our own is we can choose to not function alongside the apparatus that encases the livelihood of society. The form of video games and their narratives directs awareness to the reality of how intertwined our narratives are with worldly algorithms and artificial systems, so it’s time we think more strategically about our own narratives and embrace real experiences versus artificial ones.

 

Works Cited

Deleuze, Gilles “Literature and Life,” in Critical Inquiry 23 (1997): 225-230.

Flusser, Vilém “Chamber Music,” in Into the Universe of Technical Images, trans. Nancy Ann         Roth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). 

Flusser, Vilém “Our Diversion,” in Post-History (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2013).

McLuhan, Marshall “Art as Survival in the Electric Age,” in Marshall McLuhan, Understanding     Me: Lectures and Interviews, ed. Stephanie McLuhan and David Staines (Cambridge,     Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2003), 206-224.