Why So Serious?

The term “serious games” is problematic. We play for fun and enjoyment, yes, but the idea behind serious games is that they are somehow more impactful…more real…than other games. But these games also try to fill a void that is lacking in the world of AAA titles and platformers.

Serious games are games that tackle difficult problems, “gamifying” them in order to bring awareness with an interactive edge. But a lot of the narratives in these games are difficult (if not impossible) to build into mechanics. For that reason, a lot of these games tend to follow the choose-your-own-adventure model, walking the line between game and interactive fiction.

Games like Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest and Christine Love’s Analogue: A Hate Story and Hate Plus are amazing visual novels. Quinn’s Depression Quest puts you in the shoes of someone struggling with severe depression. Each screen moves you through moments in your day, offering you choices on how to respond to responsibilities and problems. On every page, however, some objects are there but simply unavailable. You can see the “right” path. You (as player and character) know the fastest way out of your slump…but you can’t choose it. The game has multiple endings, some better than others, but none offer fairy tale happiness. It is raw and real.

Love’s Hate Story series, on the other hand, comes a bit closer to being a traditional game. You play as a futuristic archeologist (of sorts), sent to investigate a found space ship to figure out what happened to it and why it was abandoned. Due to technical difficulties, you can’t board and you are forced to conduct your search electronically with the help of the ship’s two AI personalities. There is more freedom for the player and there are a few choices that change the game play (not just the endings), but in the end it is largely a “game” of reading. This is not necessarily a negative–for gamers like me, the narrative is often the main draw–but it does raise an interesting question. What is a game?

Are pieces like September 12 or (TW for rape) The Day the Laughter Stopped games? They are thought-provoking, powerful, and narratively engaging (even if September 12 has no written text for game itself). But they aren’t fun and, perhaps the most important, there is no real replay value.

Screenshot 2015-03-17 09.19.06As gamers, we know that games aren’t always fun. There are games that make us want to tear our hair out, throw controllers, and storm off in a ragequit. There are heartbreaking moments where the narrative makes us cry–or at least spend hours and hours fruitlessly trying to bring Aeris back to life. “Fun” is more the after-effect, tied in with satisfaction for a job well-done, success against challenges, and decent-enough controls and feedback that you don’t give up in annoyance along the way. And that’s where I struggle with the idea of serious games. They are trying to do something vitally important (something I’ve argued for in previous posts), but there isn’t really a challenge to overcome. In many ways, your path is set.

The result (for me, at least) is something with little-to-no replay value. For me, games like FFVII and the Xenosaga series are infinitely replayable. The story, the mini-games, the grind…they are all worth revisiting. Some things stay the same, but there is enough complexity to make each game something new–its own experience. Serious games, however, stick in my mind. They are memorable. But I only ever go back to them if I’m sharing with a class or using them as an example. In fact, many times it feels like there is no real point in playing a serious game once you figure out the message it is trying to convey. No matter how beautifully written or constructed, these are often one-shot experiences, constrained by lack of budgets and a severely narrowed focus.

NoOdHMLSo what do we do? I desperately want to see more diversity in the stories we tell through games. Series like Squaresoft’s Final Fantasy and Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls deal with some incredibly serious topics, but unless it involves fighting (or, sometimes, sneaking), “serious” issues are really only dealt with in the narrative. The game mechanics aren’t really effected by the topic at hand.

But even if AAA games haven’t quite stepped up to the challenge yet…they’re getting closer, and plenty of smaller games are already tackling this beautifully. Papo & Yo is a tragically beautiful look at children of alcoholics. To the Moon struggles to explore the pain and love we deal with when someone dies. Spec Ops: The Line and Alice not only talk about PTSD, but show it through the limitations of the main character. It’s the same thought as minimizing the gender gap–its not enough to pepper the landscape with female bodies. They have to be real. They need strengths and flaws and backstories and identities, and those identities have to matter.

It’s a challenge. It means telling stories in ways we haven’t before, and that can be technically difficult. As a teacher, programmer, and web-designer, I know the joy (and importance) of strategic borrowing. We don’t want to reinvent the wheel…we want to build on what came before. Adding new narratives and player characters means stepping away from that template and trying new things that may or may not succeed at first–but its an important step, because games can humanize issues in a way that novels will always fall short. They are interactive. By playing, you put yourself in control of the situation (however illusory that control is). If you play as someone who is physically disabled, a rape victim, an alcoholic, a survivor of trauma, a civilian in a war zone, you become them for a little while. And games–excellent games–make those things both more and less than a label. Because it’s not enough to know that rape happens and its bad. We have to understand that the people behind these issues are just that…people. Flawed and ugly and strong and beautiful people. That I will replay.

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