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 Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)
 Game Set Watch (the Group's alt.game weblog.) |
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Edu Feature: ‘Press The Action Button, Snake: Self-Reference In Games'
by Jill Duffy
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November 25, 2008
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Where does the video game character end and the player begin? Matthew Weise, a lead game designer for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, considers the complex relationship between video game players and characters in a new feature article on GameCareerGuide.com.
Weise’s argument is that, unlike in theater and film, video games don’t ever really break the fourth wall, as it were, because in games, there is no hard and fast wall between the characters on the screen and the player in front of the screen.
There is evidence of a much more complex relationship between the two in all kinds of video games, says Weise, from more experimental modern titles, such as Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and Mirror’s Edge, to older games, like Sonic the Hedgehog and Zork.
Weise disagrees with Ernest Adams, who argues that a player’s sense of immersion is “interrupted” when something in the game reminds them that they are “only” playing a game.
“When a game is self-referential,” writes Weise, “when it acknowledges the technological apparatus of the computer, it can have a profound effect on player experience.” Part of re-interpreting the relationship involves getting rid of this notion of a “wall” that can be broken:
“It is useful to think about the boundary between player and fiction as an elastic membrane — a threshold — rather than a wall, like Adams does. Drawing attention to how this threshold functions through self-reference can actually enhance fiction rather than destroy it. It can draw the player and game fiction together rather than driving them apart.
Conventional wisdom suggests that anything that draws attention to the technology of a medium is destructive for fiction. The characters in a movie, book, television show, or stage production must not ‘know’ they are in one, else they become aware of their own non-reality and everything falls apart. This is typically what's meant by ‘breaking the fourth wall.’
But video games are not exactly the same as these other art forms. The reality-fantasy dynamic in games is complicated by the player, who is always tethered to the game world by an umbilical cord called technology.
In some sense, the ‘reality’ of a game always involves the player, since it would not be a game otherwise. In story-based games players make choices that have meaning and consequence in the fictional world of a game, so they are always a part of the fiction, acting under the guise of an avatar, a digital mask the player puts on to ‘enter’ the fictional world of the game and become part of it.”
The article, "Press the ‘Action’ Button, Snake! The Art of Self-Reference in Video Games,” is now available to read in full on GameCareerGuide.com.
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While I totally agree that immersive reality serves one great purpose in a story and maintaining the fiction is good if that's the goal, I think that breaking that fiction can be an incredibly powerful tool for a kind of video game literary criticism; it's one of the things that allows the genre to be higher art in that it invites commentary. Metal Gear Solid's self-references may remind you that you're playing a video game, but it does so deliberately and with a specific purpose.
http://www.insertcredit.com/features/dreaming2/
I think both views have a place in design. As in movies, there are times when the fourth wall is broken and it enhances the experience and there are times when it interrupts the experience. Games are able to do so in more nuanced ways and the author uses his examples to great effect to point this out.
His explanation of why this technique in MGS actually brings you further into the experience is especially interesting.
If any of you have read his book on game design, there is a hilarious critique on Conker's Bad Fur Day where he lauds the games potty humour. Way to miss the point, buddy, it's called satire. The British use it very well with a little thing called subtlety.
This latest bit takes the cake. Meta-references are a unique opportunity for the game designer to say "Hey, hope you're enjoying my video game". No amount of suspension is going to make me forget I'm playing a video game, so I don't mind the occasional reminder that I'm interacting with a human creation. Most people enjoy human interaction.
Those little moments in a book, movie, video game, etc where the creator says "wake up, this is fiction" really stick with you. They make you laugh, smile, enjoy the irony. The fiction isn't taking itself too seriously and neither should you.
The acknowledgment of the Player's existentialism, and the videogame as a simulation, is used as a relevant plot device of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, but the story doesn't need to support "breaking the fourth wall" for the technique to be successful. A simple conversation with an NPC, in which the PC asks "How can I shoot infinite bullets with this gun?" and getting the answer, "Well, because of the Infinity Symbol on it!" is enough for a good laugh that won't detract from the impact the heavy story has on the Player (MGS3). The same can be said when an NPC warns you not to use a turbo function on certain controllers, because he'll know it and will punish you for it (MGS1). Moments like this only enhance the experience, and are further exposition of how videogames can be interactive in unpredictable ways, where the Player can feel a connection with the videogame being played beyond just the content it brings inside its fictional world, without diminishing such content.
However, I'm not saying ALL games should break the fourth wall. In fact, I am heavily against people saying "don't design this way for any game you make, it's bad. No twinkie." If you're attacking features of games which legions of gamers enjoy and feel are an essential component of a game or game series, then nobody has any business saying it's "wrong." We'll just have to make do that we have our own personal tastes as developers, and that these opinions mean shit when put against the Grand Jury of Gamers who actually play the games we make, and I didn't see the MGS series spiraling downwards financially or critically after breaking the fourth wall liberally in the first MGS, and then continuing to do so in further iterations of the series.
It works for them. It may work for your game, or it may not.