Writing about games » Digital Spirit Guide

“Are videogames a storytelling medium?” That is the question that kicked off this site. I’d been invited to speak at a small digital media event called “Television is Dead,” here in Sydney. I fought the urge to run screaming, and instead gave some thought to what I’d like to talk about. I started thinking about how games fit into Joseph Campbell’s classic Hero’s Journey narrative structure, and what I came up with was something like this:

As humans, we have a very long history of storytelling. In fact, some have suggested that it our defining feature as a species. Science writers Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen believe that humans should be classified not as homo sapiens, but as pan narrans – the storytelling ape.

In the days of hunter–gatherer societies, the primary storytellers were shamans. Their role was to protect and guide the tribe by communing with the spirits, and one of the ways they did that was to take a whole lot of hallucinogenic substances and go into trances. In the trance state, the shamans believed that they ascended to heaven, via the underworld, and spoke to the gods (or spirits). They would then return to the world of the living, and impart to their people the wisdom that they had received, in the form of stories.

Over the centuries, stories have evolved to cover all kinds of ideas and subject matter, across all human cultures, but what is interesting is what has stayed relatively consistent. In 1949, Joseph Campbell published “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, which is an attempt to draw together those features of stories that have remained consistent across the world and the centuries. The result is this idea of the “Monomyth”, or “Hero’s Journey”.

Should games always be created to be accessible? Or is there something to be said for making something that erects barriers to the “ease of use” of the player?

Watching the Director’s Cut of the film Donnie Darko was a strange experience for me. The original was (and remains) one of my favourite movies of all time. I found it profoundly moving and satisfying despite the fact that I couldn’t really have spelled out what was happening with the rabbit and the drugs and the discussions of time travel. I was excited to see what would be revealed once Richard Kelly had the budget and freedom to express his original vision.

It was fine, I guess. If I hadn’t seen the original, I probably would have loved it. The time travel stuff was much more overt, and it was clear that there was now a “correct” way to interpret the film’s strangeness. But a good chunk of the magic was gone. By adding material and making things “clearer”, he had robbed the film of something important and meaningful. At the same, this was a surprise to me.

I’ve been thinking about how similar phenomena apply in games. This line of thinking was precipitated by two unrelated things I’ve happened across recently.

The first was a complaint about Dark Souls that came up on my Facebook feed recently. The poster was arguing that combined aspects of the game – from the brutal difficulty to the lack of tutorial and clunky interface – amounted to bad game design. Clearly, there are contexts where all of these things could be considered to be bad design, and yet they have in no way blunted the critical and player acclaim for the game. Dark Souls’ Metacritic scores are mostly in the high 80s, with only some aspects of the PC version’s port drawing serious criticism. So have the Souls games succeeded despite their “flaws”, or is there something else going on? Continue reading »

[This post contains no story spoilers, but does contain discussion of game mechanics which could be considered slightly spoiler-ish.]

This game series adapts to the choices you make. The story is tailored by how you play.

This is the message that greets the player at the beginning of every episode of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game. But is it true?

After finishing the final episode last night, I resisted the call of the pillow and had a bit of a dig around some spoiler-heavy threads on the game’s official forum. Like me, most people had really enjoyed the experience, but there was one recurring negative response. In essence:

“The decisions I make don’t actually change anything! Everything’s the same at the end! Telltale are liars!” Continue reading »

Today’s blog is the first in what I hope will be a long series of guest posts discussing games which have had a significant impact on the authors’ own life narrative. In this biographical piece, Katherine Owen describes how one series of games has helped her cope with – and grow through – her chronic injury.

For years there has been unceasing and usually negative media attention on video games and the perilous effects they are said to have upon impressionable young minds. Computer games certainly did affect my mind in a profound way, though with a different outcome than that which is commonly feared. One series in particular, a role-playing/adventure hybrid called Quest for Glory, changed my life for the better and convinced me that anyone can help to make the world a better place.

It’s 1993. I’m thirteen years old, and my favourite cousin is in town. He’s just been to the games shop, where I know he was picking up the latest instalment of the greatest of all game series: Quest for Glory 4. I walk in into the bedroom, hopped up on excitement, and freeze. There on the computer screen is … what?

Definitely not the painterly pixels of a QfG game, that’s for sure. Instead, a strange fleshy pustule fills the screen, more lifelike than anything I’ve ever seen in a game. I felt a flash of disappointment. Then my cousin hit the spacebar, and it passed – the player view rose to overlook a forsaken plain, awash with the tortured cried of demons.

The age of heroes had ended, and the time of space marines had begun.

Game Designers are digital spirit guides

Dark Souls and Darko: In praise of obfuscation

How Telltale’s The Walking Dead tricks us into feeling

Gaming and Heroism: How video games changed my life for the better

How Doom killed Quest for Glory, and why you should help reincarnate it