Choose Wisely: Time and Decision Structure in Life Is Strange

CHOOSE WISELY: TIME AND DECISION STRUCTURE IN LIFE IS STRANGE

Valeria Orlova

A Third Year Research Project in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Studies at The School of Advanced Studies University of Tyumen

June 2020 2

МИНИСТЕРСТВО НАУКИ И ВЫСШЕГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «ТЮМЕНСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»

ШКОЛА ПЕРСПЕКТИВНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ (SAS) ТЮМГУ

Директор Школы к.ф.н., Ph.D. А.В. Щербенок

КУРСОВАЯ РАБОТА

ВЫБИРАЙТЕ С УМОМ: ВРЕМЯ И СТРУКТУРА ПРИНЯТИЯ РЕШЕНИЙ В ВИДЕОИГРЕ LIFE IS STRANGE

50.03.01 Искусства и гуманитарные науки

Выполнила работу Студентка 3-ого курса Орлова Валерия Олеговна Очной формы обучения

Руководитель Алюков Максим Леонидович

Тюмень 2020

DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY

By submitting this research project, I hereby certify that: I am its sole author and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my research project, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices of my major; and that no third-party proofreading, editing, or translating services have been used in its completion. Valeria Orlova

WORD COUNT: 4907

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... 5

INTRODUCTION ...... 6

WHAT IS A VIDEO GAME AND HOW TO ANALYZE IT? ...... 8

METHODS, DATA, AND OBJECT OF STUDY ...... 14

TIME REWINDING IN LIFE IS STRANGE ...... 17

ETHICAL MESSAGES AND REAL-WORLD ISSUES ...... 20

CONCLUSION ...... 22

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 23

ABSTRACT

The video game as an independent object of research appeared in scholarly discussion only in the early 2000s. It still exists in the field where there are no approaches that would allow us to analyze video games in their full complexity. As of now, there are three prominent paradigms for video game analysis in video game studies: narratology (the analysis of narrative elements), ludology (the analysis of mechanisms and rules), and procedural rhetoric (the analysis of persuasion based on following the procedure). While the first two approaches are relatively well established, procedural rhetoric still remains a concept rather than an established theory due to a lack of empirical analysis. The purpose of this paper is to expand and enrich procedural rhetoric as an approach by analyzing time manipulation which has become common in video games. Analyzing the rewinding of time in Life is Strange, I argue that time rewinding in this game works as a procedural technique. This technique allows players to experience the game to the fullest and also works as a method of persuasion in the sense that it gives space to explore and experiment with and learn complex real-life issues, such as bullying and suicide, in a safe environment of the game. My analysis enriches the procedural approach by showing how time manipulation works procedurally and illuminates the rhetorical role of time manipulation in video games.

INTRODUCTION

Discussion on video games among the general public and the first scholars on the subject usually starts with two charges - video games increase violence and are only played by children. Video games were considered a form of entertainment that does not deserve scholarly attention; they still continue to exist in this paradigm for some. These prejudices emerged almost with the birth of video games. The first studies focused on the connection between video games and levels of aggression among players. For example, in the 2010 study, Bushman and Gibson conducted an experiment investigating this connection: participants played a video game for 20 minutes and took a test on aggression after that.1 This work is questionable in terms of an experimental basis, other factors influencing aggression, and the way they articulate their research questions, but it reflects the mainstream of the researches in that area.

Today, it is also clear that the majority of players are not children at all: according to the Entertainment Software Association, the average age for players is 32-34, and this type of activity does not belong only to men – the ratio of male and female players is 54% to 46%. Most of them are middle- or high-income people who have a full-time job.2 This statistical data challenges the myth that video games are a form of entertainment for children.

The game industry is a big player in the market. Newzoo Analytical platform is forecasting the 2019 global games market to reach $148.8 billion

1 Bushman, Brad J., and Bryan Gibson,“Violent Video Games Cause an Increase in Aggression Long After the Game Has Been Turned Off.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 2, no. 1 (January 2011): 29–32. doi:10.1177/1948550610379506. 2 “2019 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry,” Entertainment Software Association, accessed February 3, 2020, https://www.theesa.com/esa- research/2019-essential-facts-about-the-computer-and-video-game-industry.

with a +7.2% year-on-year increase.3 It continues to capture all new areas and triggers the emergence of new social media like Twitch (live-streaming service for gamers); gaming conventions are increasing in number, and eSports tournaments are taking place regularly.

The impact of computer games on the real world is not only due to the fact that they affect social media and economic markets but also due to another important feature: they construct and transmit messages in completely different ways from literature and movies. This allows them to influence the culture, add new expressions to the lexicon of even non-players (for example, the exclamation "wasted" as a reaction to failure from GTA), and broadcast worldviews of game developers.

All these facts prove that the game industry is huge and has a significant impact not only on gamers but on the world; consequently, the game industry and its impact require more serious analysis. Game studies is the field of research which is focused on an understanding of video games (as well as other kinds of games) and considers them as a complex object worthy of study. The establishment of game studies can be traced back to the first issue of the journal Game Studies in 2001.4 This branch of research is still quite young and not much has been done in it, so there is a lot of space for research. In Russia, video games research is even less common: there are only two significant research centers - Moscow Game Center at Moscow State University and Computer Games Research Laboratory at Saint-Petersburg State University.

3 Tom Wijman, “Newzoo Adjusts Global Games Forecast to $148.8 Billion; Slower Growth in Console Spending Starts Sooner than Expected,” Newzoo, November 19, 2019, https://newzoo.com/insights/articles/newzoo-adjusts-global-games-forecast-to-148-8-billion- slower-growth-in-console-spending-starts-sooner-than-expected. 4 Espen Aarseth, "Computer Game Studies, Year One", Game Studies 1, no.1 (July 2001), http://www.gamestudies.org/0101.

In this research, I will concentrate on how video games transfer messages - on their persuasion system. The essay is structured as follows: firstly, I introduce three main approaches in analyzing video games which represent dominant ideas existing in the field of video game studies. This paper will be mostly concentered on one of them – procedural rhetoric: it will attempt to explore and detail this approach since for now it is rather a concept than an established theory. Specifically, I will apply it to analyze the mechanics of manipulations with time, which have recently become very popular. The object of my analysis is the video game Life is Strange. It is a good case study for exploring time rewinding, since it is one of the most popular games with such ability which also has a strong storytelling element used to explore real-world issues.5 I am interested in investigating the place of this particular mechanic among others, understanding new procedure it builds, and explaining how it works in terms of transmitting messages or rethinking real problems.

WHAT IS A VIDEO GAME AND HOW TO ANALYZE IT?

A video game is a new object of digital culture which does not have a clear definition. There is no consensus on what exactly we can consider a video game. It seems that the computer code, images that are produced on the monitor, the narrative, even the disk itself on which the game is recorded can be called a video game. On the other hand, the game does not exist if no player interacts with it. A video game is a complex object larger than itself because it cannot be reduced only to its parts, and so far, there is no single answer on how to analyze all of the game elements to create a comprehensive analysis. This complexity of the nature of video games has generated many different theories

5 Life is Strange, directed by Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch (2015; France, Paris: Dontnod Entertainment, 2008), Steam.

9 and approaches. In game studies, three dominant paradigms focus on different aspects of games – narrative, rules, and procedurality.

The first systematic approach that treats video games as a serious object relevant to research is narratology. Janet H. Murray in her book Hamlet on the Holodeck writes on the future of storytelling in video games, their connections with books and narratives.6 In her work, she states that new technology is always accepted sceptically by people, but we need to see the new options it offers. She traces the attitude to technology by recalling the books of Bradbury and Huxley. There, technologies are essentially demonized and considered the more dangerous the more convincing they are. These ideas embody the fears that technology will substitute for the existing reality. Video games are just the new medium that can convince you of their reality like nothing else. Murray notes that their peculiar nature is related to interactivity: video games provide the best interaction due to making the player the protagonist/hero.

Murray belongs to a group of researchers who study video games primarily as text and narrative. Accordingly, they see video games as a kind of continuation of literature. Logically, the set of tools Murray proposes to use for the analysis of video games comes from literary analysis. In theory, every game can be reduced to the narrative - even Mario or Counter-Strike. Mario tells a story about Italian plumber who heroically passes all of the challenges in order to save the princess; he almost fulfils Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey7. Counter-Strike can be considered as a story about the confrontation between special forces and terrorists. A literary analysis, of course, provides useful tools

6 Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck. The Future of Narrative in the Cyberspace (New York: The Free Press, 2016). 7 Joseph Campbell is a scholar who came up with the idea of monomyth - a single structure for any mythology for building the hero's travels and life. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008).

10 to analyze such stories; however, its scope is limited exclusively to texts and does not cover other aspects of the game. For example, in Mario, the narrative is not enough to understand the arcade nature of this game and most people's specific approaches to play it while waiting in line, for example. Counter-Strike is a shooter where people don't come for the goals of the story at all. Being reduced to a narrative, a game is no longer a game.

While Murray and others analyzed only the narratological dimension of games, ludology (from Latin ludus, "a game") concentrates on the gameplay side of video games. In this approach, the story, the character’s background, and the cultural references do not matter. What matters is gameplay features that define a player’s interaction with the game, structures that allow them to explore the video game’s possibilities. Games are perceived as a set of these structures, elements, and rules. Ludus process can be divided into three steps: the beginning where the rules of the game are established and accepted by the player; the development where the game itself happens; and the result where you can face either triumph or defeat.

Gonzalo Frasca, who is a leading figure in ludology, in his work Simulation versus Narrative. Introduction to Ludology states that games and computer programs in general still share many elements with stories.8 But the whole existence of ludology is based on the need for analyzing games as games specifically, not just their textual characteristics. Ludology intends to complement the narratological approach. According to Frasca, the important difference between video games and other mediums is that they do not just tell stories. Books and other more traditional mediums are representational, while

8 Gonzalo Frasca, “Simulation versus Narrative. Introduction to Ludology.,” in The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf, Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2003), 221-235.

"video games are not just based on representation but on an alternative semiotical structure known as simulation."9 A video game is a way to get experience and participate in actions through a specific set of tools and rules, to create an environment for experimentation.

There are many kinds of different gameplays that make a game, like shooting, competing, or collecting. For example, if we want to apply the ludological approach to the Mario that we discussed earlier, then we will rather look at the means and procedures he has to go through. The gameplay in Mario is based on climbing actions where the main goal is to get to a safe place without losing points as a result of facing the enemy.

There exists a debate on narratology versus ludology opposition among game studies scholars. For some, this debate is real, and differences in the approaches are significant. For others, narratology and ludology are interconnected in so many ways that it makes them two sides of the same coin rather than competitors. One of the scholars who tried to clarify this issue and come to a common denominator is Jesper Juul. He believes that video games can consist of both the game (ludic) and fictional elements. In the book Half- Real Juul writes:

Video games are two different things at the same time: video games are real in that they consist of real rules with which players actually interact, and in that winning or losing a game is a real event. However, when winning a game by slaying a dragon, the dragon is not a real dragon but a fictional one. To play a video game is, therefore, to interact with real

9 Gonzalo Frasca, “Simulation versus Narrative. Introduction to Ludology.,” in The Video Game Theory Reader, ed. Mark J. P. Wolf, Bernard Perron (New York: Routledge, 2003), 221-222.

rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world.10

The unification of these real rules related to the world of video game mechanics and fictional narrative occurs only at the act of playing. The fictional narrative becomes real because the player has to interact with real rules. As I stated earlier, one of the characteristics of the video game is transmitting messages: broadcasting certain worldviews, producing statements. However, if there is no player, then none of the game's elements works. It adds an additional dimension to the analysis of video games – the real world. Mary Flanagan is a person who is engaged in researching how video games affect the reality we live in and how the messages video games transfer change human minds. In her book Critical Play, she states:

Games carry beliefs within their representation systems and mechanics. Artists using games as a medium of expression, then, manipulate elements common to games—representation systems and styles, rules of progress, codes of conduct, the context of reception, winning and losing paradigms, ways of interacting in a game…11

She also believes that games change how we think, gives us a safe place for creating experimentations, reflect social norms, values, and customs.

The game needs to make this fictional world convincing and the experience which the player gets from the game as real as possible. Video games use a specific system of persuasion for sending messages. Ian Bogost is the scholar who has done research on this phenomenon and continues the

10 Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 13. 11 Mary Flanagan, Critical Play: Radical Game Design (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2013), 4.

13 evolution of thought on video games after narratology and ludology. He states that there are three rhetorics of persuasion. Successful rhetoric causes a change in opinion or at least states the idea as clear as possible. The first one is visual - someone claims that grass is green, you look at it with your own eyes, and by seeing the image you are convinced in the introduced statement. The second one is verbal when you are becoming convinced by hearing or reading. But the one on which especially video game's persuasion is based is procedural rhetoric – persuasion by action, following the procedure. In Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Bogost describes procedural rhetoric and how it applies to video games. First of all, there is a difference in Murray’s and Bogost’s understandings of the procedure. For Murray, it is more mechanical and built on algorithms: it means the ability of a computer to execute a series of rules. Bogost extends this notion beyond the core operations of the computer; he believes that video games have cultural meaning. As Bogost explains,

Procedurality refers to a way of creating, explaining, or understanding processes. And processes deﬁne the way things work: the methods, techniques, and logics that drive the operation of systems, from mechanical systems like engines to organizational systems like high schools to conceptual systems like religious faith. Rhetoric refers to effective and persuasive expression. Procedural rhetoric, then, is a practice of using processes persuasively.12

To make a long story short - it means that games create meanings through the processes. Procedural rhetoric is the art of using processes to teach people about other processes. And a video game is the most efficient way to learn about processes because they simulate them. Exploring the procedure in video games

12 Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: the Expressive Power of Videogames (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 16.

14 allows us to capture everything at once, both the narrative and the gameplay. However, the main problem with this approach is that procedural rhetoric still remains a concept, vague and unclear, rather than an established theory due to a lack of empirical analysis.

METHODS, DATA, AND OBJECT OF STUDY

As we found out, one of the main tasks of video games is to convey certain messages and meanings, and they are sending them to the world through the process of playing by using different mechanics. The one that has recently became common within video games is manipulation with time. Time, in general, is an object worthy of being explored because it is something that a person cannot control in real life but only in video games s/he can actually influence it. Only video games create interactivity where movement in time backward and forward can directly affect the content and process of the game itself. And additionally, as Jesper Juul wrote, "the game constructs time as synchronous with narrative time and reading/viewing time: the story time is happening now"13.

Time manipulations usually used for mechanic and gameplay purposes – they allow a playable character to be more powerful, coordinated, more in control. For example, in games like Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne, it creates an easier shooting process by slowing time when somebody points a weapon at the player, therefore s/he has more time to take aim and do a better

13 Jesper Juul, “Games Telling Stories? A Brief Note on Games and Narratives.,” LOGOS, no. 1 (2015): 72, http://www.logosjournal.ru/arch/79/logos-79.pdf.

15 shot.1415 Manipulations with time here make a player better by giving her/him more opportunities to fulfill the goal at the first attempt, and by doing so give more confidence in actions within the game. Strategies and simulators allow you to edit the speed of time in accordance with the task. In The Sims, time can be accelerated by different percentages or completely stopped.16 The video game Braid is a platformer that uses time manipulations on the level of puzzle- solving.17 Player rewind time to fulfill the arcade tasks - jump on and kill the monsters, or to collect bonuses. The majority of games that create experiments with time use this concept mainly as a tool for creating new physical laws and distinguishing its gameplay from other games of similar genres. Here the manipulations with time stay mostly within the focus of ludology because they do not overlap with layers of narrative or bigger meanings. In such games, time manipulation remains a gameplay convention rather than a plot-based ability. However, this research explores time manipulation not only as gameplay, like it was done usually with such games. I argue that time rewinding works as a procedural rhetoric that is capable of message transmitting.

For my analysis, I will use the elements from all three approaches for analyzing video games which were stated earlier: narratology, ludology, and procedural rhetoric. They will work as lenses in order to examine the messages sent by the video game. Ludology gives us the idea of how the game is mechanically arranged, and from this, we can go into the narrative with the

14 Red Dead Redemption, directed by Steve Martin, Josh Needleman, and David Kunkler (2010; USA, New York: Rockstar Games, 1998), Steam. 15 Max Payne, directed John Moore (2001; USA, New York: Gathering Developers, 1998), Steam. 16 The Sims, directed by Will Wright (2000; California, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, 1982), Origin. 17 Braid, directed by Jonathan Blow (2008; USA, Washington: Microsoft Game Studios, 2000), Steam.

16 knowledge of the specific characteristics of the game, and therefore the narrative analysis will not just be a separate literary part, but a combination of these two meanings. The procedural research will bring a deeper understanding of the way how the game teaches something and through what process. It will also be detailed and examined more on the specific example of my object.

In this essay, I will explore the structure of time in the video game Life is Strange. By July 2015, it had sold more than 1.2 million copies and has several awards.18 A distinctive feature of this game is the fact that the player can reverse time and change his/her decision right in the process of playing. Contrary to the previously discussed games, this one uses time manipulation not only as a feature of gameplay but also for storytelling. First of all, its genre is an interactive cinema with adventure elements whose main focus is exploring the world of the characters, storytelling, and, therefore, transmitting messages. The game explores and approaches some complex and multifaced real-world issues, such as bullying, suicide, sexual violence, mental illness, and loss of loved ones. Time rewinding in Life is Strange is a cornerstone of the persuasive strategy of this game – it is the main mechanism that the game uses to transmit messages. Therefore, it will be a logical case for the analysis of transmitting messages and persuasive techniques of video games, moreover, it will work as a litmus test for explaining the meaning of such mechanics on a more general level.

Life is Strange is developed by the French studio DONTNOD Entertainment.19 This game consists of five episodes released from January to October 2015 and tells the story of the main protagonist's investigation of the

18 Luke Karmali, “Life Is Strange Hits 1 Million Sales, Episode 4 Release Date Announced,” IGN, last modified June 5, 2018, https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/07/23/life-is-strange- hits-1-million-sales-episode-4-release-date-announced. 19 “DONTNOD Entertainment – Video Games Studio,” DONTNOD Entertainment, accessed May 27, 2020, https://dont-nod.com/

17 case of a missing person. The player takes control of Max Caulfield who came back to her hometown Arcadia Bay from Seattle to study. She finds out that she can reverse time while saving a girl from being shot in the bathroom. Max reconnects with this girl who happened to be her childhood friend Chloe and offers her help to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Amber, Cloe's friend for years when Max was in Seattle. The investigation is complicated by the fact that Max gets visions of a huge storm coming towards the town and appearance of strange climate anomalies, such as snowfall on a sunny day, two moons in the sky, and dead animals all over the town. Besides, she discovers the ability to travel to moments from the past through photos and eventually creates several alternative timelines in an attempt to prevent deaths.

TIME REWINDING IN LIFE IS STRANGE

In the previously mentioned games, time rewind is used as an error correction tool. That function is also presented in Life is Strange. Visually, it is distinguished from the normal gameplay. Change in lighting appears on the screen, like highlights that occur in Polaroid photos, and the environment around Max is rewinding back (even the dialogues here are heard backward). The process of time rewinding works in the following way. The player has a goal that can only be achieved by going back in time to correct a "mistake", e.g. fallen beer bottle, wrong line in the conversation, or to transport herself to another territory without facing troubles. The main protagonist can give the right answers in class, impress friends, or insult someone with no harm to herself. Therefore, time rewinding creates a safe place for interactive experimentation by giving a player a room for errors, for wrong decisions. For example, there is a moment in Episode 4 when Max and Chloe need to ask a drug dealer Frank for the list of his clients. It can end up in Frank's injury, death, or peaceful alliance. For the last one, player has to use all the right options in the dialog which will not make Frank angry. And it is hard to do so

18 from the very first time: usually, the player has to see somebody died during this dialog for quite a while. In this scene, you allowed to investigate all dialog options without having somebody's death because you can simply rewind it. Moreover, time rewinding here firstly teaches that there exists a right approach to people, and, secondly, by stating the result with harm as wrong sets you to the track of peaceful interrogation.

The mechanics of rewinding time makes it possible to take the maximum number of alternative branches in decisions. Yes, it does not create diametrically opposite experiences of completing the game, but it allows you to look at all the available options at once, does not force you to pass the game several times to find out what the other choice would look like. It also brings players an idea that s/he is in control of every possible outcome and has sufficient knowledge for the most balanced decision.

The consequences of certain actions take time, while others give outcomes immediately. When the player makes a decision, the cutscene is turned on, which shows the outcome, and then Max comments on it. Almost all the time in the comments to the decision, Max says that it would be better to do it differently. This is one of the ways that the game, first, encourages you to explore its own capabilities and use this feature, and, second, forces you to make a decision by yourself without prompting about what to do directly, so you have to spend some time making a decision.

However, the main feature of time rewinding in this game is that it works as a tool for making decisions, which, in turn, builds a system of messages about ethics and problems in the real world. Major decisions are often aimed at testing the limits of what Max/player is willing to do to solve a problem. The key dilemmas she faces are the limits of what she will do for the sake of friendship and how far she can go to get to the truth by investigating the case of

19 a missing person. It seems that there are two possible ways – to commit to violence and do whatever it takes or to work on reducing the level of violence. To make fun of Victoria who is usually bullying you, to let your friend beat another bully, to kill the dog of a drug dealer in order to safely go through his stuff. Or to cover Cloe's pot so she would not be slept on the face by her stepfather and believe your friend Kate when she says that she was drugged. But the dichotomy of good and evil is not built directly here. Taking a morally correct decision and seeing more or less positive outcomes make players believe that s/he did everything right, but then the game flips this feeling and therefore complicates the moral system of values. Not taking money from the school fund for the disabled seems like a good thing, but in an alternate timeline the player can find a letter from the school's principal, and it turns out that they don't seem to spend money on the disabled at all; rather, they are all corrupt. After discovering that Max says that it would be better to take this money to help Chloe.

Together, all these situations are based on the key ability of time rewinding mechanics – a creation of another level of approach to decision making. The tension in the game gradually increases and over time the player finds him/herself in more and more stressful situations. S/he needs to decide whether to intervene in a bullying scene, shoot a drug dealer in a parking lot, kill the best friend so that she stops suffering from being immobilized, or steal money from a fund for the disabled. Usually, the tension in a game built on decision-making is based on the limited time to think about a choice. For example, in Detroit: Become Human the running line shows you how time passes and how little do have to make a decision. 20 The choice has to be made abruptly. In Life is Strange, the player has the opportunity, first, to stop before

20 Detroit: Being Human, directed by David Cage (2019; Japan, Tokyo: Sony Interactive Entertainment, 1993), Steam.

20 each choice, take time and actually think since there is no place to rush, and, second, to live the situation and go back. When games like Detroit focus on instincts and quick reaction capabilities, Life is Strange is focused on greater awareness and a much more analytical way of making decisions.

ETHICAL MESSAGES AND REAL-WORLD ISSUES

Life is Strange deals with two categories of messages: ethical concepts and complex multifaced issues of the real world. The whole idea of the game is based on the refection on time and especially on apprehending the past. This is shown primarily at the narrative level: Max is a photographer who often says that she sees the world more through a lens and dreams of capturing memories in photos. Also, a significant part of the talking between Max and her best friend Chloe is based on memories from their childhood, about how they dreamed to become brave pirates. She lives in the past; she dreams of freezing moments in photos. Besides, thanks to the ability to rewind time, Max constantly tries to change the events that have occurred.

In episode three, the narrative of the game story goes to the alternative timeline, which Max creates by going into the past and changing the course of events. She prevented the death of Cloe's father and the game showed the consequences of it in the set changed photos. Firstly, it gives you the impression that it was a good choice – a picture of Chloe in a threatening pose with a knife over a birthday cake, a photo from the funeral is replaced with an image of a family vacation in Paris, a father who spends time with his daughter and wife. But then in the cut scene, Max goes to Chloe's house and it turns out that she was in an accident and got in a wheelchair and became quadriplegic. Her parents are broken because of the medical bills; and Chloe asks Max to kill her. The message conveyed here is that the past must remain in the past. Trying to change something in your life is useless. You need to accept reality as it is. But

21 again - the game does not say this directly in your face – rather, it conveys this idea through procedural rhetoric by allowing you to live the situation and take action yourself.

Moreover, one of the crucial tasks of video games is to create a specific experience for players which s/he may have a chance not to get in real life. Life is Strange creates a safe space for interaction and experimentation with real- world issues. It mostly works with issues of suicide, bullying, and sexual violence. One of the most important scenes and consequences of decisions the game is the suicide attempt of Max's classmate. Exactly in this episode, her super-power of time rewinding fails for the first time. The inability to rewind time increases the tension on this level and makes it clear that this is one of the key points of the game. Rewind time at this moment works as a minus-method – the absence of this option is significant.21 Against the background of having this ability before, the player now is supposed to feel vulnerable and need to be more focused since the consequences will be much drastic. The outcome of this episode can no longer be undone. What does it say about suicide? There is no special power that can prevent people from killing themselves except for human compassion. You can only prevent Kate from committing suicide if you have previously made decisions that show concern for her or empathy, such as erasing derogatory comments from the board in front of her door, answering the phone when she calls, and carefully scanning the surroundings of her room to find out about things that she likes.

21 Minus-method is the absence of any significant elements which are expected. Yuri Lotman, Структура художественного текста [The Structure of Literary Text] (Saint Petersburg: Art-SPB, 1998).

CONCLUSION

Time rewinding works as procedural rhetoric through different processes and functions. It makes Life is Strange different from other kinds of decision- based games because it proposes an analytical approach to decision-making and does not pressure players based on lack of time. It provides a safe space for exploration and experimentations with different issues. Having the ability to rewind time, the game gives the player an option to get as much information for her/his decision as possible and therefore creates confidence in the choice. But sometimes it is used as minus-methods: in the most dramatic situations, it leaves players with full responsibilities and highlights the importance of the moment. Time rewinding is a discourse about consequences and reflection on the web of decisions that are not simply morally evaluated as right or wrong but rather more complicated. This idea was also stated in the Developers Diaries: "life is not always so easy, life is strange and so you have to grow, and I think the game will help people grow".22

22 “Life Is Strange Developer Diary - The Butterfly Effect (PEGI) (Subtitled)” January 23, 2015, YouTube video, 8:51, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72qCP0Sxk1A&list=PLaSQREdOVdpLtD9usEvyOQtG E3Url04EA&index=10&t=0s.

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VIDEO GAMES: Braid, directed by Jonathan Blow. 2008. USA, Washington: Microsoft Game Studios, 2000, Steam. Detroit: Being Human, directed by David Cage. 2019. Japan, Tokyo: Sony Interactive Entertainment, 1993, Steam. Life is Strange, directed by Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch. 2015. France, Paris: Dontnod Entertainment, 2008, Steam. Max Payne, directed John Moore. 2001.USA, New York: Gathering Developers, 1998, Steam. Red Dead Redemption, directed by Steve Martin, Josh Needleman, and David Kunkler. 2010. USA, New York: Rockstar Games, 1998, Steam. The Sims, directed by Will Wright. 2000. California, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, 1982, Origin.