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What sort of Printer are you?
This post is about creating a compelling, immersive experience within videogames. But not all videogames are the same, right? A useful analogy is The Printer - some printers do books, some do T-shirts, some do posters, some print on coffee mugs, so on and so on. They are all printers, but using different technologies and processes to achieve different ends. So keep in mind, this post isn't relevant to every type of game design. The type of Printer (haha Yes! a pun!) I'm speaking to here is the sort who wants to print books, not funny T-shirts. Although, for the sake of full disclosure, I must admit I love funny T-shirts...
[yes, Printers don't write the books, it's an analogy, people - they tear when stretched too far]
2nd Person Singular
The English language novel written in the 2nd person is almost as rare as the Snipe. There might be a million reasons for this (other cultures have lots of 2nders, an important point we'll come back to), but one of the most important is the difficulty of Identification. For any work of art to succeed, the observer must identify with it. But what does that mean? Before we jump into Identification, let's look at the 2nd person and gaming.
Videogames (at least the "book" type, what we might call deep games) are by their nature 2nd person - The player is the "you" to whom everything is directed. There are exceptions (Civilization is definitely more 3rd person - camera angle aside) but generally games are directed at a "you". "You" must rescue the princess, "You" must defeat the alien horde, "You" must drink old coffee and stare at the wall because "you" couldn't find the right red balloon (sorry couldn't resist). You might have to take on a persona to be the "you", but you get my point. =)
So, your team has produced an AAA title with kick-ass gameplay, gorgeous environments, Oscar-worthy voice acting, and a narrative that branches like a century old Oak tree. The player as avatar can act like anyone from Gandhi to Hitler and anything in between. Further, you've only got one avatar, it's Nameless Guy, who never speaks except for grunts of pain and the obligatory "huuh" jump grunt. A recipe for Platinum, right? Then famous Game Designer/Blogger Dirk Daring writes that he found your game utter crap, lacking emotional depth and realistic characterization - and the masses cry "Boo" to your pride and joy, its Metacritic rating is less than Snooki's IQ, and you're hoping that having worked on this project hasn't nuked your career. What the hell went wrong? Well, it's all "your" fault! Now let's discuss Identification...
His Kung Fu is strong...
Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) was a theorist Literary, Rhetorical, Psychological, and Philosophical. Today, his work is probably used most by Rhetorical scholars, in applications from traditional political speeches to postmodern film. His body of work is so rich and varied that I could write entire books about the application of each of his major ideas to videogame design. Right now, I want to concentrate on a brief exploration of his concept of Identification and its relevance to the theory of game design. There are several sites within the Burkean corpus which explicate the concept of Identification, so rather than belabor you with an exhaustive bibliography, I'll just tell you to google him for further research. This Cliff's Notes* version of Identification is taken from Burke's Counter-Statement:
For in the last analysis, any reader surrounds each word and each act in a work of art with a unique set of his own previous experiences (and therefore a unique set of imponderable emotional reactions), communication existing in the "margin of overlap" between the writer's experience and the reader's. And while it is dialectically true that two people of totally different experiences must totally fail to communicate, it is also true that there are no such two people, the "margin of overlap" always being considerable (due, if nothing else, to the fact that man's biological functions are uniform).
p.78
Perfection does not exist!
The idea is pretty simple: the more you have in common with someone, the more powerfully you can communicate with them - the less, well, the less so; there is however, a basic level of human solidarity and thus a basic level of communication. For our purposes, let's consider "designing an experience" to be a subset of communication. The idea of Identification means that when we design an experience, we can expect most players to have a certain baseline reaction to it, but we can never predict the exact nature of their full emotional response. The greatest example of this phenomenon in modern gaming must be the original BioShock, and most specifically the Little Sisters.
Lots, like millions, of players enjoyed BioShock because they felt a strong emotional reaction to the ominous environment and the moral morass contained within. Except that for hundreds of thousands of others, there was no moral morass: most famously, Clint Hocking coined the term "ludonarrative dissonance" to describe his disappointment. Mr. Hocking dissembled a bit by stating that the game was great, except where it wasn't. Lots of bloggers were quick (more or less) to agree. Was the game a failure in some way? Not at all. The problem wasn't a lack of ludo-narrative options, it was a lack of Identification on the part of some players. So how do you design against that? You can't.
Mentioned above was the fact that other cultures have many more novels written in the 2nd person - I'm going make a big leap and say that (modern) English literature is different because the English speaking population is radically heterogeneous compared to every other major language group in the world. Take the Western gaming market, i.e. USA, Canada and Europe, and you've got such a diversity of cultures, and thus a diversity of experiences, that widespread Identification is basically impossible. Hannah Montana seems immensely popular in the context of the American tweener market, but obviously she's not nearly as big a fish in relation to the entire Western music or TV industries (see U2 or the NFL). Teenage girls and creepy middle aged dudes Identify with Mylie, but not so much everybody else.
The Mona Lisa doesn't do it for everybody, so don't expect your game to either.
Bang Bang!
Identification is powerful - just look at the glut of 'realistic' military shooters currently dominating the market. Millions of people (Ok, mostly doods) can Identify with the role of badass soldier kicking butt - not through direct experience but through thousands of indirect experiences (film, TV, childhood toys, etc.). In this sense, Identification is related to the concept of 'suspension of disbelief' - despite 'ludonarrative' gaps, players still find real excitement in the dance of pixels because they can and do put themselves within the game world. If the thrill of the fake kill and the agony of the non-death had no emotional pull, the game wouldn't get played...
For Western market games that wish to engage players in more complex ways, like Fallout 3 or Fable II, the designers must take into account the variegated nature of Identification - regardless of what specific design choices are made, some players will love the game, and some will hate it, and there can be no single magic formula for getting more of the former than the latter. But the first and most important choice may be this: do we want the player to Identify with an experience (being a badass soldier), or with a character (Sam Fisher). Based on the history of Videogames so far, it's pretty damn hard to do either well, and even harder to do both.
Thanks for taking the time to read this ramble!
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- Games are /constructed/ in the second person, but they're almost never /experienced/ in the second person. As a developer, I'm saying that "you" must go down the mine and "you" must kill the monster, but as a player "I" go down the mine and "I" must kill the monster. (Or "Fred" must go down the mine and "Fred" must kill the monster in the case of third-person games, which are both constructed and experienced in the third person.)
- I suspect the reason why we don't see a lot of second-person fiction (in English, at least - I'm not qualified to comment on other cultures/languages) is exactly the same as the reason most first-person games without a dialogue system use a silent protagonist: (Anglo-American) people generally don't like being told how they feel. In a first-person game where the protagonist speaks without player control, it only takes one badly-judged line to completely destroy the player's identification with the protagonist. (This is the one major weakness with the Mass Effect conversation wheel - occasionally it throws up a "whoa, I did NOT mean to say that".) It's probably telling that one of the commonest uses second person fiction is in choose-your-own adventure books, where the reader retains agency.
@Matthew - on your 2 observations (both very astute):
1) That's actually what I was trying to say, but I guess sometimes I get a bit too clever for my own good. The designer is "speaking" in the 2nd person to the player, thus the player is the "you", but of course the player experiences the game as an "I". This is analogous to the 2nd person novel, where the author writes in the 2nd person ("You're not the type of person who'd normally be in a place like this..."), but the reader takes on the role of the "I" being addressed. I think that even in your example of "Fred", successful immersion takes place only when the player identifies with Fred as an "I", thus becoming the designer's "you", regardless of the camera angle(s) employed. Wow, sorry that was convoluted...
2) Again, this was kinda the point I was trying to make - Identification (and thus immersion) is broken when the avatar demonstrates a reaction or behavior that isn't within the "margin of overlap" between the character and the player. Americans (of all ethnicities) take a lot of pride in their individuality - combine that with the plethora of American sub-cultures, and it becomes really difficult to create a deeply rounded character who speaks to a large population of the gaming community. Excellent point concerning the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books (loved 'em as an eight year old!)! I'd planned to mention them but was quite tired after getting the baby to sleep that I'm just happy that the dang thing was partially comprehensible.
As Stephen points out with the comment about Master Chief, a "tabula rasa" character might be less likely to break immersion than a developed character with dialog, but that's because the level of identification is so basic that it's almost meaningless. This is certainly a core problem for game designers who want to create dramatic play. Whereas the 2nd person approach to a novel is fighting an uphill battle for reader identification (at least in our culture), it's part of the fundamental nature of (most) game design. Designers have become quite good at creating Engagement, but Immersion seems to be trickier (at least on a mass scale - thus the F'ing genius of Fallout 3). I just wanted to spark a little discussion on the topic, because it's so basic that it's in danger of being overlooked - thanks for joining in!
"While a concrete reality exists because it exists, a fictional reality [such as a game world] exists only by virtue of the fact that it is narrated." (Kate Hamburger)
2nd person novels make you question who you are while also leaving hints of who the narrator is. In games, I never wonder who the Designer is. I'd need to question who's the camera man or who is narrating before it's considered 2nd person.
That aside, I think your idea of communication and common experience is the idea of the Collective Unconscious (Jung). I'll admit I've only taken one philosophy course back in college, but I've studied a bit of his work outside of class and it's quite interesting.
Things like mass media and popular culture ingrain people with false experiences. Remember when you were 4 and you got lost at Wal mart and you had to wait for the cashier to call your Mother over? Remember how scared you were? How happy you were when your mother came by and how scared she looked? You may never have experienced this personally, but you can feel it just as readily because of its common portrayal.
You can create compelling familiar characterization (every FF game, pretty much) without being overly vague (Link, Master Chief). You just have to make sure it's compelling to a wide audience, not simply drawing heavily on your own experience.
Remember that time you wrecked your brand new sports car and met your future wife when she was a hot nurse? No... it's too fantastical (on top of being gender targeted).
@Daniel
The thought of camera as character is a really cool idea - that could make for a really interesting experience, but its realization in an engaging game might be difficult.
As for my analogy of designed experiences and the 2nd person novel in relation to Identification, I was thinking more along the lines of the novel "Bright Lights, Big City" and less like novel "Complicity"; the difference between the two, which both make use of the 2nd person, is that in the former it is a device for creating empathy with a character who may not be sympathetic to many readers, whereas in the latter example it is more of a device for creating tension and confusion, which is more in line with your take on the 2nd person perspective. I think we're both right =)
In short form: the idea behind the "2nd person" analogy is that author is attempting to establish a deep link between the character and the reader, just as the designer attempting to create a character/narrative that compels the immersion and engagement of the player, and I've chosen Identification as a concept for understanding the phenomena that make such an endeavor successful or not. Identification is actually pretty different from the idea of the Collective Unconscious, in that CU assumes that there is a sort of field of unified human conscious from which we are all individuations, whereas Identification assumes a more material basis for human solidarity (biological form and cultural co-membership).
Thanks for the insightful comments!