Are We What We Play??

Are We What We Play?
This 1UP article is one of the best pieces of videogame journalism I've read in some time. And it really did get me to think about how and why I play videogames. I've read and re-read the four unique essays contained in the article, comparing and contrasting to my own experience, and it's made me realize two things.

The first is that most Japanese games completely fail at making any sort of player/character connection. I'm trying to think of any Japanese game where I, personally, felt a connection to a character that went beyond a passive, "member of the audience along for the ride" role, but I'm drawing a blank.

I'm currently--slowly--making my way through Persona 3: FES. This is one of those Japanese games where your character is, essentially, a blank slate. You determine their "personality" with responses you give and the decisions you make. However, the closer a game gets to non-linearity, the more stifling and obvious the limitations become. I was playing the game as if I were the main character. How would I act in these situations?? Well, it turns out that I can't fully play the game like it was me, because I'll never finish its plot if I do. If I had my way, I'd never go into the game's dungeon. Instead, I would focus on studying, the track team, and playing the game-within-a-game MMORPG. Yet every month you are forced into a story scene in which you have to go fight enemies and then a boss in a mini-dungeon. If you neglect leveling up your characters too much, you might get completely stuck and have to start over. Meanwhile, your interactions with the characters in-game don't seem to have much effect other than letting you make new and better Persona fusions. If you ignore people or never talk to them to begin with, they don't hinder your progress or try to poison other people's opinion of you. Instead, you just won't be able to make the Persona fusions that their friendship would grant you.

It's not like I have a choice, pretty boy.

This isn't to say that Persona 3 is a bad game, because it's not. It represents a very unique RPG that combines a dungeon crawler with a dating/life sim. However, it is an odd beast in that it's a Japanese game where you help shape the main character but none of those decisions feel important or game changing. Sure, Western developed RPGs with moral choices and more-open-ended character develop will ultimately condense into totally good/in between/totally evil archetypes, but at least it's something you do. When I'm an anti-social jerk in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Fallout, my decisions have real consequences both for the story and the world I'm inhabiting. You are always saving the world in Persona 3 and almost every other Japanese RPG. You are always the good guy in Persona 3 and almost every other Japanese RPG. Again, this doesn't make them bad games. It just nudges them further to the "fun games" side as opposed to "games I can relate to and/or take meaning from" side.

Oh, I haven't left the Light Side...yet.

The second thing I want to talk about is World of Warcraft. You aren't making decisions in the game that effect the story or your character's personality. The quests you take--which ostensibly are the story--don't let you decide whether your character is evil, good, or in between. However, everything else about it will do this, whether you know it or not. Do you gank other players?? Do you heal and buff random people while running around?? Do you never group with anyone?? Do you take advantage of your guild, if you have one, or are you the person who's always selflessly giving up items and money to help others?? At the same time, which class you play reflects your personality in some way. While it is fun to try all the classes--and I have--it's worth noting that which one(s) you stick with can say something about you. Are you the 'take charge' type?? You're probably a Warrior, the class that almost always leads when your group is doing dungeons. Are you the helpful, support-oriented type?? You're probably a Priest, the main healers/buffers. Are you the "I can't commit to just one thing and want to be flexible" type?? You're probably a Druid. Or perhaps it goes the opposite way: you play in the game what you wish you were in real life.

Moreover, all of these things help create the story for you. For me, and I'm sure many others, the "story" of the game isn't the quests. I would wager that 98% of WoW players completely skip the lore and explanation that accompanies the quests and just want to get to killin'. There has been a lot of the talk recently about how games tell stories and how they should tell stories, and I think this game is of a mind with the "the environment you inhabit and the choices you make create the story" viewpoint famously put forth by Ken Levine, the main mind behind BioShock. The story of my Dwarf Hunter's journey to level 70 wasn't the story of the quests, but the story I experiences in the places I went, the players I helped or harassed, the silly stuff I did in towns (naked, drunk dancing and boxing in Ironforge is always fun), the dungeons my guild ran and the funny/frustrating events that transpired there, and so on. I would actually say that WoW requires a lot of imagination from the player, because when I'm in the ruins of some Troll temple, the explanation I come up with by looking around me is always better than the lore/quest text that accompanies it. Just as things are always more terrifying when you can't see them and/or have no knowledge of what precisely they are, the setting and story of a game is (usually) better when you are making it up yourself.

Yeah, I posted the screencap I took when I hit 70. Deal with it.

The odd thing is, when I play Western style RPGs, I tend to go down the "total jerk" path, and I think that might be as much a reaction to the "goody two shoes" path I'm railroaded down in Japanese RPGs as much as it is my own inner dark tendencies. I say this is odd because when I play WoW, I'm actually altruistic, because I feel that the things I do in the game will reflect on me in real life. I know some of the people I play with, so I play the game like it's really me. Which is stranger yet, because in my mind I think of myself as a selfish prick but I'm always giving away items to guild members or helping them with difficult quests.

So, maybe it's not so much a case of "we are what we play" as "what I play can be who I am or what I want to be."