A Response to “Is Death In Games Cheap?”

I read a wonderful article by Richard Clark in Gamasutra.  “Is Death In Games Cheap” took an engaging look at how video games handle death and I enjoyed every bit of it.  I do want to expanded, however, on the last section of his opinion piece titled “The Most Powerful Death is Not Our Own.”  He writes there that games do not trivialize death.  I’m not sure I completely agree.

Clark correctly points out that the deaths which really matter in video games are those of non-playable characters (NPCs).  He uses Mass Effect 2 as his example.  Anyone who has read my posts knows how much I love that game and how it speaks to the Human Condition.  However the use of a player’s choices to dictate if a character lives or dies is but one option game writers can use to make us care about an NPC’s death.

Writers can also develop an NPC’s character to the point where we care enough to miss him or her.  To this day, I still feel sad when I think about the death of Eli Vance at the end of Half Life 2 Episode 2.  I cared about him and his daughter Ali and I hated how the game ended with his death, knowing I would have to wait until Episode 3 to find out how Ali will respond to his passing. I ask myself why I liked him so much and I believe it is because he helped me flush out my character in the game, Gordon Freeman. Since Freeman never spoke, I needed the words and actions of others to help me connect with my character. In helping me to get to know myself (Gordon) I got to know him as well.  Eli and Ali Vance allowed me move past Gordon being simply two hands and a gun.

A third way game writers can make us care about a character’s death is to attach him or her to another NPC we care about. While I interacted with Eli Vance, I only got to know Maria Santiago through the flashbacks of her husband,  Dominic. Through his painful search for her I found myself hoping they would be reunited.  I remember playing Gears of War 2 with a friend online and having to pause when Dominic finally found Maria.  Their agonizing reunion also caused me anguish and I realized that all my rooting for their happiness was an exercise in futility.  I never got to know her, but one of the reasons I look forward to Gears 3 is to see if Dominic can find peace now that she is gone.

These characters are the exception to the notion that video games do indeed trivialize death.  Do a few wonderful exceptions mean the whole medium takes a more serious stance on death?  I don’t think so. I’ve probably seen and caused a hundred thousand deaths over the years and I could care less about most of them. I still love Clark’s analysis even if I disagree with his conclusion but at the same time I find it sad that game writers and researchers spend so much time wrestling with a 40-year old medium that is still, for the most part, trying to figure out how to tell a good story.  With death, we have the one thing that makes us all equal being used as a tool for a “re-do” in gaming.  In single-player games, it is a weakness in narrative. In multi-player death is simply a pause in the action.

There is hope however.  Clark himself points out with his final words that all is not lost.  Video games can provide a richer view of death. Further still, one of the comments to his piece notes how death can also be the goal of a game and not just a simple annoyance.  The writer of that post called the idea brilliant. In truth it is a fascinating idea and perhaps as video game narrative evolves someone will be bold enough to embrace such a view.  In the meantime, I will enjoy gems like Mass Effect 2 and I will keep waiting for Half Life 2 Episode 3.

The Incomplete Language of Gaming

Much of the basis for my thinking about the language of gaming from this article by Matthew Sakey.  There is, in particular, one portion of that text I want to focus on.  He writes:

As [Steven] Poole noted, much of film’s critical language can be transplanted without alteration into the world of gaming. Concepts of narrative style, perspective, shot construction, and mechanics should be able to switch parties without too much confusion. But just as film couldn’t use theatre’s language as its own, the inherently more complicated medium that is gaming will need to find its own language for a significant portion – say, more than fifty percent – of its own academic vocabulary. The process will be an evolutionary one.

Sakey does a good job at filling in the history of film theory and how its history matches and diverges from the history of game theory.  I want to look at a different aspect of game theory however.

Perhaps we could best do that by examining two games: Half Life 2 and Mass Effect 2.  HL2, and its sequels episodes 1 and 2, allows the gamer to fill the shoes of scientist turned freedom fighter Gordon Freeman.  HL2 has been hailed as one of the best shooters in recent years.  I played it.  I loved it.  I finished it.  However HL2 is linear in nature. The player moves from one point to the next, overcoming enemy soldiers, aliens, and aircraft all the while.  To developer Valve’s credit, HL2 features some memorable characters, not the least of which is Freeeman’s companion Alyx Vance.

The NPC Vance, based on actress Jamil Mullen’s face, is voice phenomenally by Merle Dandridge. Vance comes across as quite believable and the player finds himself/herself concerned when she is injured.  HL2 contains several other quality NPCs and one could say that the beauty of this game is that as you move though blasting enemies, you also find that you have become immersed in the world of Half Life thanks to the memorable characters you meet.

Many games are structured just like that.  You move from place to place in order to find someone or blow up something or some other goal.  Sometimes there are large set-piece battles and other times there are cut scenes where you receive your next assignment.  Find problem.  Solve problem.  Find new problem.  Now if all games were like that, then it would certainly make more sense to use the language of film to describe video games, at least for content, since the beginning, the middle, and end are always the same.  However games have that one feature that will forever separate them from film: interactivity.

To use the term “interactive” is to use a word that is dynamic in nature.  The meaning differs from game to game.  In HL2 is means changing the environment slightly by moving objects, opening doors, or killing enemies.  As long as you overcome and progress, you will eventually reach the end.  That end never changes.  If the programmers decided that an NPC is going to die, you cannot change that.

As we have seen, Mass Effect 2 is different in that by the end of the game you have decided, by your actions, which NPCs live at the end of the game. You can even lose Commander Shepard and will not be able to import him/her into Mass Effect 3 if you make enough bad choices.  Likewise the ending will change somewhat in response to your actions. Yes, the bad guys will still lose, but there are several choices you must make that will play a significant role in ME3. Also, characters that die are sill dead for the final game in the trilogy.  It is this different that truly separates games from film. The language must accurately express how the player can now alter his/her experience every time he/she plays.  If you look at gaming in that light, then yes, the language of gaming is, as Sakey expresses, incomplete.

So how do academic researchers begin to create this language?  The first thing we have to do recognize where gaming does and does not intersect with other media.  One of my first papers as a doctoral student was to apply cultivation theory to video games.  This theory, first made popular by George Gerbner, was one of the first we learned in communication theory; I used it because most of video game theory has its roots in other media, especially television and film. (If I were to write it today, I might very well ask if playing video games helps to combat the mean world syndrome instead..oh well.)  The quote I pulled from Sakey reminds us that some conventions of gaming and film are the same and that’s okay.  But we think of video games as little interactive movies, we do both media a disservice.

The second thing we must do is play more games.  Or at least make sure our studies involve participants playing more games.  How many studies have you read where participants only played for a few minutes? This may work if the researcher seeks information of aggression levels after a session.  However if we want to know how players feel after completing tough objectives or how difficult it was to make a moral choice or even how they feel about the outcome of a game after playing for 20+ hours then we must be willing to play or watch other plays for extended periods and use our instruments accordingly. I believe these extended sessions will help us see how player input changes not only the outcome of the game and the virtual environment, but also the player himself/herself.  And that will allow us to add to the language of gaming.

The Human Condition

I’ve come across a lot of research that states how games must evolve in order to grow into true entertainment media (read: art).  In writing my dissertation, I cam across a series of videos about game design.  This one speaks about storytelling in games. Note: All the videos in this series are informative, funny, and all are right on point with their messages.

I wrote last time that games are on the cusp of becoming art.  And I do realize that “art” is subjective to say the least.  Well in order to be considered art, a game must effectively address the human condition.  We need to care about the characters and what happens to them.  This applies not only the main character, or the person I play in the game, but also to the non-playable characters (NPCs).  A good example of this concept can be found (almost) in Mass Effect 2.

As many gamers know, in ME 2, you can either import your character from ME1 or you can create your own hero. Your character, Commander Shepard, can be male or female.  You can also select one of three back stories for your hero. As you play through the game, you choose if your character will align with paragon (good) or renegade (evil) actions.  There are benefits to leaning one way and not straddling the middle.  I find I have become quite attached to Karen Shepard thanks to multiple trips through the two games.

In addition, in ME2 you have to recruit a team for a suicide mission.  However each person you add to your team has issues and so you soon find that need to criss-cross the galaxy on “loyalty missions” so that each teammate will not be distracted when final mission starts.

These missions reveal a lot about each character, and depending on what choices you make, can also lead to that character’s death at the end of the game.  Of course one of the purposes of these missions is to get you to care about each character. For example, your first officer, Miranda Lawson, must rescue her younger sister from her estranged father’s agents.  During the mission, we learn a lot about Miranda’s motivation for kidnapping/rescuing her sister years ago and the relationship she has with her father.  However a single loyalty mission is not quite enough to make me really care about her death, if that should happen.

Rather what needs to happen, and what developer BioWare is usually good at, it getting different NPCs to interact with each other during the mission.  The world of Mass Effect is so large that players spend a great deal of time moving from place to place, sometimes in combat, sometimes in exploration. For each mission, you take two team mates along for companionship and to aid in combat.  There are brief periods where your team mates will speak on different subjects.  These however are great places to have extended conversations about things both great and small. The problem with this is that with the different combinations of teammates available, hundreds of lines of dialogue would have to be recorded for the multiple pairings if the writers wanted players to get to know these people better.  That is a difficult, though not impossible task.  BioWare has shown it is willing to go to extra lengths to inserts as many lines of dialogue as possible.  Game developers need to realize that it is in those stolen moments that real characterization emerges.  While ME 2 makes a good effort, more is needed.  Unlike movies, where the viewer can experience everything, the branching nature of the role-playing genre means that players will never encounter some places and scenes.  That’s okay.  There has to be enough there so that I feel like I can’t wait to get to the game to see what happens to Karen, Miranda, and the others.  Once developers can combine that human condition with high production, good voice talent, a superb script and memorable game play, then we researchers and critics will be in a better position to say, yes, this game is art.