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Brandi Brace
THE EXPERIENCE OF CHARACTER AND THE FRAMEWORK OF AN IDEAL PLAYER:
An Enactivist Approach to Character and Theme in The Last of Us
Faculty of Communication Sciences Master’s Thesis April 2020
ABSTRACT Brandi Brace: The Experience of Character and the Framework of an Ideal Player: An Enactivist Approach to Character and Theme in The Last of Us Master’s Thesis Tampere University Internet and Game Studies April 2020
This thesis explores enactivism as a framework to understand player interaction with video games as digital environments. It proposes a theory of an ideal player which takes into context the player’s socio-cultural familiarity, form familiarity, play setting, and player identity. Finally, the theme of good and evil is shown through characters as a contrast of connection and isolation. Enactivism, a branch of cognitive science, explores the embodied interactions that the player has with the characters in a game. This experience will be affected by the context of their own lives. Players enact a new world through engaging with the game (Di Paolo, Rohde & De Jaegher, 2010). In order to look at how the characters in The Last of Us affect a player, personal context needs to be understood. Since enactivism examines how organisms (in this case, players) interact with their environment in order to build an understanding of the world and themselves, it is clear that not only will players bring context to the game, but through interaction with the game environment, they will redefine their own identity (Di Paolo, Rohde & De Jaegher, 2010; Caracciolo, 2012). To draw comparisons to established literary theory, I compare enactivism to reader-response theory and explain the mimetic/synthetic division of a reader’s approach to character. Using this background, I establish the way that theme can be conveyed through character. This is especially crucial in terms of an emotional reaction to character which can affect a reader’s (and thus I posit, player’s) judgement of the larger work (Schneider, 2001). In order to show how enactivism and the ideal player can be applied to an analysis of theme, I use The Last of Us as an example of connection as good and isolation as evil. Deconstructing four scenes, I break down how Joel’s character will be understood by an ideal player who I define, among other factors, as utilizing a mimetic approach to character. I look at how mental models are affected by each scene and break down the narratological and ludic design that supports this change. To finish, I evaluate how cyclical design mirrors Joel’s redemption arc, and the portrayal of character death is an extension of his processing of death. I conclude that without a predefined ideal player, any analysis of any game’s design or theme is dependent upon the player’s own interpretation and is therefore less usable. Furthermore, I show that enactivism provides many potential avenues for exploration of identity formation and cultural change through the themes portrayed in games.
Keywords: The Last of Us, Enactivism, Ideal Player, Mimetic Character, Theme, Connection
The originality of this thesis has been checked using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service.
Preface I want to thank my husband, Jeremy Benscoter, who supported me throughout my time in the master’s program at Tampere. It was not easy being away from home, but having someone who was always supportive helped me make it through. Thank you, Jeremy, for always believing in me, for every hour of video chatting, for all the pictures of our pets, and of course, for your feedback along the way. I will always love and appreciate you. I would also like to thank Leland Masek, Daniel Fernández Galeote, and Essi Jämsä. Your friendship and support were unlike any I have ever known. I am thankful for every tangential conversation and friendly debate. Our moments of laughter, of tears, and of simply being together are some of the best of my life. You defined my experience at Tampere. I am lucky to call you all my friends.
Tampere, 19 April 2020
Brandi Brace
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ...... 2 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: ENACTIVISM AND CHARACTER APPROACH .... 6 2.1. Framework ...... 6 2.1.1. Foundation of Argument ...... 6 2.1.2. Situated in Enactivism ...... 8
2.2. Mental Models...... 9 2.3. Mental Model Overlap: An Example ...... 11 2.4. Themes ...... 12 2.5. Mimetic and Synthetic Characters ...... 13 2.6. Mimetic vs Synthetic: An Example ...... 14 2.7. Ludology and Narrative ...... 16 2.8. Player Background ...... 17 2.9. Restructuring Mental Models: Interaction and Sense-making ...... 20 2.10. The Core of Enactivism ...... 21 2.11. Character Identification, Conflict, and Identity ...... 21 2.12. Conclusion ...... 22 3 LITERATURE REVIEW: CRITICAL ANALYSES OF THE LAST OF US ...... 24 3.1. Prevalence of Comparative Work ...... 24 3.2. Comparison of the Available Work ...... 24 3.3. Evaluation of Comparative Work ...... 25 3.4. Representation as a Force for Cultural Change ...... 28 4 METHODS: THE IDEAL PLAYER AND THEMES ...... 30 4.1. Creating the Model of the Ideal Player ...... 30 4.2. Identifying the Theme ...... 30 5 APPLYING A MODEL: JOEL AND A FOUR SCENE ANALYSIS OF THEME ...... 34 5.1. Implications of the Theme...... 34 5.2. Joel’s Rejection of Humanity ...... 35 5.3. Marlene’s Attempt at Self-Justification and the Upper Hand ...... 35 5.4. Ellie’s Guilt ...... 36 5.5. A Comparison of Frames – Making Sense of Perspectives ...... 37 5.6. Player Response to Joel ...... 39 5.7. Overview of the Ideal Player ...... 39 5.8. Structure of Analysis ...... 42 5.9. The Opening ...... 43 5.9.1. Mental Models: Joel as the Everyman, Father, and Protector ...... 43 5.9.2. Ludic Impact: Playing as Sarah and Joel ...... 45 5.9.3. Thematic Analysis: Sarah’s Death ...... 46
5.10. Part 1: The Evolution of the Ideal Player’s Mental Models ...... 49 5.10.1. Mental Models: Joel projects strength through a lack of emotionality ...... 49 5.10.2. Context: Comparison to the Other Characters Around Him ...... 51 5.10.3. Thematic Analysis: Suppression of Feelings ...... 52 5.10.4. Ludic Impact: Quarantine Zone ...... 54
5.11. Part 2: Ellie Saves Joel’s Life ...... 55 5.11.1. Ellie Keeps Trying to Connect ...... 56 5.11.2. Ludic Impact of Connection ...... 58
5.12. Part 3: David’s Camp: Two Part Analysis ...... 58 5.12.1. Mental Model: An Unrelatable Archetype – Joel in Comparison to David ...... 59 5.12.2. Ludic Impact: Joel’s Vulnerability and Acceptance ...... 61 5.12.3. Thematic Analysis: Innocence: Another Casualty ...... 64 5.12.4. Ludic Impact of Ellie’s Disconnect ...... 66
5.13. Part 4: The Ending, Guilt, and Ludic Design ...... 67 5.13.1. Mental Model: In Their Own Eyes, No One Deserves to Live ...... 67 5.13.2. Ludology and Cyclical Design...... 69 5.13.3. Processing Death: Cutscenes Mirror Joel’s Processing ...... 69 5.13.4. Player Choice is Between Good and Evil ...... 73
6 CONCLUSION ...... 74 6.1. The Mental Model, Context, and Morality ...... 74 6.2. Conveying Theme ...... 75 6.3. Why the Ideal Player is Necessary ...... 76 6.4. Improvements, Limitations and Further Study ...... 77 6.4.1. Gamer Expectation...... 77 6.4.2. Validating Model ...... 77 6.4.3. Further Study for Theoretical Background ...... 78 6.4.4. Limitations ...... 78
References ...... 79
1 INTRODUCTION This thesis explores Joel’s character in The Last of Us as the central, though by no account singular, means of communicating theme. The central theme of The Last of Us is argued to be a presentation of good and evil in which good is equated to human connection beyond dependency at the cost of experiencing loss while evil is portrayed as a focus on survival at the cost of no longer living meaningfully. Major themes such as guilt and innocence will also be discussed insofar as they impact the player’s understanding of this larger theme. To explain and structure my approach, I have created a theoretical model of character analysis that explains how the individual experience of a story, and thereby the understanding of theme, is affected by individual player differences. Based on this model, I explain the ideal player type1 for a mimetic read of Joel in The Last of Us and perform a four scene analysis of the game that focuses on the mimetic read of Joel, specifically his relationships. Throughout the analysis, I explain the elements of the game that would lead to the same thematic understanding if the game were to be approached synthetically. This gives the explanation of both affect and construction. My contributions are twofold: 1.) The creation of a theoretical model of the ideal player. 2.) An analysis of The Last of Us that uses the proposed model. Instead of looking at the game as an artifact or analyzing through author intent, I will look at the game through a lens similar to reader-response theory like that of Wolfgang Iser (1972). In this way, the subjectivity of player experience will become the central factor in analyzing the theme. While a synthetic (formulistic/constructivist) and mimetic (psychological)2 read have different outcomes in terms of experience for the player, I posit that the player most often goes into a game without considering their approach. This is more true for a mimetic player than a synthetic analyst who is more likely to have a predetermined goal, but despite their intent (what I call “Player Identity”), I posit that players are, knowingly and unknowingly, influenced by their current environment and mindset (what I call “Play Setting”) as well as past experience (which includes both “Socio-Cultural Familiarity” and “Form Familiarity” 3). In addition to their own backgrounds and environment, the play experience is based on the player’s subconscious predisposition towards a certain type of approach to character. Any player will attribute a subjectively “bad” experience with character as one that is not successful in communicating via their preferred approach (ie: character does not affect them mimetically or impress them synthetically). These individual experiences direct the initial creation of the player’s mental model representing Joel and affect the changes that they may experience in their
1 In this thesis, the ideal player is defined as the player who can best experience the characters mimetically. I believe that the design of The Last of Us is based around emotional impact. Therefore, while a synthetic playthrough may be some people’s preferred approach, the experience of the character is my focus. The ideal player in a paper that analyzes the stealth mechanics, multiplayer aspects, etc. would be completely different. 2 See sections 2.5 - 2.6 for an in-depth explanation of mimetic and synthetic character. 3 For an explanation of each of these, see 2.8 “Player Background.”
1 understanding of him as a character. In this way, every player will be left with a mental model that is slightly different. I use the term mental model in the same sense as Schneider (2001) who looks at the creation and modification of character mental models specifically. To broaden this understanding, I draw comparisons between his theoretical approach to character and enactivist theory, specifically Carraciolo’s (2012; 2016) work. Focusing on The Last of Us – a linear, non-open world game – provides more similarity among playthroughs than an analysis of an open world game would allow. This consistency allowed me to focus on the commonality of narrative delivery since it is presented in the same order to each player (ie: quests, characters, and locations cannot be experienced in different orders). The only differences in pacing are due to gaming ability and time dedicated to playing. That variance is no different from written works where pacing is determined by reading ability and time available. This differs from watching cinema or television since the delivery of narrative is the same pace regardless of viewer. The Last of Us is a game developed by Naughty Dog, originally released on the PlayStation 3 in 2013, and remastered for a 2014 release on the PS4 (Miller, 2013; Karmali, 2014). Containing elements of survival, stealth, and action, it is, however, most well-known for its storytelling. The game follows Joel who lives through the outbreak of a highly contagious fungal infection, the cordyceps, that turns people into what are essentially zombies. The game begins at the onset of the outbreak and shows Joel’s attempt to escape with his daughter, only to have her die in his arms after being shot by a soldier. The rest of the game takes place twenty years later and shows Joel’s attempt to smuggle Ellie to the Fireflies, a resistance group that is attempting to re- establish a government beyond that of martial law. Ellie was bitten by one of the infected, but her wound healed making her the only person known to the Fireflies who is immune to the cordyceps. The Fireflies want to examine her to attempt to formulate a vaccine. Throughout their journey, Joel attempts to keep emotional distance as he and Ellie experience the difficulties of traveling and living in the broken society. I chose The Last of Us rather than a different linear game for a few reasons. The first is that I loved the game when I originally played it. I emotionally connect to narratives regardless of form, specifically because of my connection to characters. Other games like Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits (Cattle Call, 2003) and the Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007) notably affected me, but The Last of Us stood out. I was so continually emotionally invested. I was blown away by the opening, and I cried with Joel when Sarah died.
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Figure 1 Joel holding Sarah as she gasps her last breaths (Naughty Dog, 2014) I showed this sequence to a number of non-gamers, my father included, who were also appreciative of the emotion it caused them to feel. Some even continued to play the game. Later in the game, I was shocked when Henry shot Sam and then killed himself. I sat there staring dumbfounded. I was annoyed at Joel trying to pass off Ellie to Tommy. I cried as Joel held Ellie after her encounter with David. And at the end when Joel decides to save Ellie, I was there with him, agreeing with his choice every step of the way. In addition to this not-quite-identification but awareness of and familiarity with Joel, I was taken aback when I talked to other people who had played The Last of Us and who hated him. A friend of mine, very similar in age and upbringing, had a vastly different opinion of Joel. I was actually taken aback that she (or anyone really) would think he had done anything wrong by saving Ellie. These differences in interpretation fascinate me. While I do not explore it in this thesis, reflection has led me to believe that a difference in moral reasoning contributed to our difference in understanding. Her and my priorities are also different in terms of connecting with narrative. I focus almost exclusively on mimetic reading of character while she is more interested than I am in the overall state of the world and the wider narrative. It would therefore make sense that she cared more about the untold amount of unknown people of the world while I cared much more about Ellie. That brings me to my final reason for choosing this game – the focus on character. Many of my friends are drawn to synthetic analysis of character. I do think there is much to be gained from understanding synthetic structure from a developer/writer’s point of view, but as a gamer and reader, as well as designer and writer, I do not think it is as impactful to a general audience to be
3 clever simply for design’s sake. I understand the value of narratives that use unexpected storytelling techniques, characters that make the reader uncomfortable, or abstract ways of conveying thought, but I have never reevaluated my actual understanding of something by these techniques alone. Personal connection has always been what leaves the most impact on me. To demonstrate what I mean in a concrete example, in a course I took on Chinese history, the class studied a textbook and discussed many social and political events, specifically in the Mao Zedong era. The teacher encouraged us to contemplate big ideas: internal and international governmental policy, family dynamics, cultural values, and power structures. While it was all important, none of it felt personal. In the same class, we read Wild Swans by Jung Chang (2003). The book is a personal account of the writer’s experience living in China during the Mao era and her mother’s and grandmother’s experiences. It touched on everything we had covered in the class in a personal way that I have never forgotten. While the class discussion has faded, that book changed my life. I feel that if a designer or writer wants to question the form of their chosen medium, that is great. It may well cause discussion among peers. It may point out some new method of conveying feeling or stand as a lasting commentary on art itself. However, for those who want to create a feeling in the audience that will remain with them, for those who want to leave people questioning their own beliefs – their understanding of others, their own place in the world, the reasoning behind their values – having the audience connect with a character will cause people to truly reflect. I want to understand why The Last of Us is a game that changed people’s lives. And I want to know why something that affected me so profoundly could leave one of my best friends believing that Joel’s choice to save Ellie was immoral, and for her, even ruined much of the game. My analysis is based on the belief that to understand a character in any story in any medium, the context of both the player and character must be taken into account. Behavior in one situation will be interpreted in vastly different ways than in another. For example, murder of revenge vs murder for protection. In order to establish context, the analysis has to look beyond Joel’s character and see how he is juxtaposed alongside other characters. Regardless of the alien nature of a setting (the post-cordyceps world), the mental models that are created within the game are permeable, shifting from the fictional to the real and back again. This is because no mental model stands isolated. Rather, individuals form interconnected structures of related ideas, and when they come to a new understanding in one, they may see many aspects of their understanding shift. Other researchers have used literary theory to discuss The Last of Us. None have mentioned enactivism, but they have contained thematic analysis based on literary approaches such as naturalism or ecological fiction (Green, 2016; Farca & Ladevéze, 2016), the question of ludo- narrative dissonance (Pötzsch’s, 2017), and examination of filters (Pötzsch’s. 2017). None of these examine character as the main focus of theme. Harilal (2018) wrote an analysis of the game that focuses on character, but it is on how player’s attachment to character affects their response to Joel’s decision to save Ellie from a moral point of view alone. In contrast to these analyses,
4 when examining character as a means of communicating theme, my thesis attempts to define the player, character, and interaction between them in detail. To finish, I discuss one potential result of clearly identifying a pre-established ideal player when discussing themes and affect. While speculative, the projected possibility shows how the ideas in narrative rich games like The Last of Us are not isolated experiences but rather stories that can transform a person’s understanding of themselves. Looking at the increase in games with “mature” themes (specifically those tending towards a focus on meaningful connection in relationships), I examine an understanding of representation and posit that while one game may incite discussion, the systematic increase in games with similar themes may be correlated with a cultural shift towards a relational focus. This becomes more relevant when the key component of enactivist meaning-making is revisited as one of experience. If a person interacts with the same type of experience over and over again, their understanding of their world may gradually shift. Likewise, the gradual cultural shift may affect designers and players alike. I propose future research looking at player approach to games in real world settings in combination with the play setting, playstyles of their social groups, family beliefs about video game playing, time allotment for game playing, personality type, and other major hobbies. Altogether, this will provide an understanding of which categorical influences in combination with others lead to a preference in terms of game types and, more specifically, which players are more likely to respond to character in a way that leads to reflection and a change in mental models of themselves or the world around them.
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2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: ENACTIVISM AND CHARACTER APPROACH
2.1. Framework
In order to have a systematic approach to character analysis, I utilize multiple aspects of literary analysis to approach a game analysis of The Last of Us. These approaches include critically examined methods of analyzing character-reader interaction and enactivism, a branch of cognitive science which establishes a scientific base for what are mostly otherwise philosophical claims. While my approach is different from others who have examined The Last of Us, I will discuss the reasons for the differences as they relate to the topic of a player’s perception of theme through character. The main difference lies in my proposed model of an ideal player. The model makes it possible to examine characters from games in a detailed and holistic way that acknowledges not only the wider narrative of the game, which is often addressed, but also the background of the player, something that is often ignored but is essential to understanding the impact of a game on a player. Enactivism provides a solid foundation for an approach that examines how players interact with their environments (mediated and non-mediated) to create and then restructure their mental models for understanding character and thus people in general. The specific dynamic shared space between a player and game is my point of interest, with the rest of life experiences, including previous games played, constituting the player’s background experiences and values. Interaction with the game, and thus game characters, shapes and is shaped by a player’s worldviews and will affect individuals differently. From this experience-centric analysis, multiple potential themes emerge that may affect players. I posit that the likelihood of being affected increases as the player’s level of familiarity increases in terms of the socio-cultural representation in game and the player’s ability and preference in terms of the form of the narrative (genre, series, medium, interface, etc.4).
2.1.1. Foundation of Argument
Enactivism is a branch of cognitive science that explores how human beings create meaning by interacting with their environment (Carraciolo, 2012). Since this is a relatively new understanding of cognition, I have positioned this approach alongside traditional literature studies. I draw a comparison to the phenomenological approach of Iser (1972), a founder of reader-response criticism, who sees the act of reading as an exchange between the reader and the text. In Iser’s (1972) approach, it is the exchange that is important – not the game (the text in this case) or the player alone but rather the place where they intersect. This approach, used to explore how readers interact with literature, is exactly what enactivism does on a broader scale. Scholars
4 Explained further in 2.8 “Player Background”
6 like Carraciolo (2012; 2016) have begun to examine what enactivism adds to literature studies. My study expands enactivism even further, into video game studies. I am not the first to look at enactivism as it relates to game studies. Vahlo (2017) holds that it works as a framework “not only because it offers an analytic view on understudied ontology of games as process, but also… investigates the first-person view of phenomenal consciousness.” The focus on the phenomenon of play is directly relevant here since it is focusing on the interchange between the game and player. Vahlo (2017) goes on to stress that video games in the enactivist lens are “a symbiosis between the game and the player.” By shifting enactivist examination of literature to that of games, the difference between the two mediums needs to be discussed. While there are many ways that this may be done, I choose to look at the difference of medium as expressed by Nilsson, Nordahl, and Serafin (2016). Their three-axis model allows for various types of experiences to be compared on the basis of challenge based immersion, sensory immersion, and narrative immersion (Nilsson, Nordahl, and Serafin, 2016). This model is both extremely subjective and flexible: a high experience of challenge-based immersion but not system or narrative could be football, a high narrative immersion but not system or challenge could be a book, and a high system immersion but not narrative or challenge-based could represent a virtual reality experience of an art gallery. While there is no measure of absolute measurement of experiencing immersion, this puts all types of experience in a personally comparative frame. It is worth noting that this system is very similar to that of the SCI model (sensory, challenge-based, and imaginative) of Ermi and Mäyrä (2005), but I chose to use the terminology of Nilsson Nordahl and Serafin (2016) because of the dimensional visual representation that they provide. See Figure 2, below.
Figure 2: Three-dimensional representation of the types of immersion (Nilsson, Nordahl, and Serafin, 2016, p. 118) With that frame for comparison, it is easy to see what makes reading a traditional text different from playing a game. Both can contain aspects of narrative immersion, but the system immersion of games requires some level of technologically mediated environment (a screen,
7 speakers, controller, etc) and the challenge-based immersion requires interactivity with the system. Since I am interested in games not as artifacts but as experiences whereby each playthrough is an individual distinguishable experience, I need to reach beyond an analysis of the game as a narrative to be delivered to instead analyze the process of the narrative being received. This is where the true impact of a game manifests. As Ermi and Mäyrä (2005) state, “There is no game without a player. The act of playing a game… starts having an effect on cultural and social, as well as artistic and commercial realities” (p. 1). As in reader-response theory or enactivist thought, it is not the game or the player, but the interaction between each that is my focus.
2.1.2. Situated in Enactivism
Every aspect of my approach to and understanding of games and character has to do with individual experience and variation. Enactivism’s basic premise is investigating how organisms interact with their environment in order to build an understanding of the world (Di Paolo, Rohde & De Jaegher, 2010). This is a small but central part of a much larger description of enactivism. Prominent enactivist scholars have attempted to isolate the essential elements of their field. Di Paolo5, Rohde6, and De Jaegher7 (2010) all echo the essential notion of Iser holding that, “Meaning is not to be found in elements belonging to the environment or in the internal dynamics of the agent, but belongs to the relational domain established between the two” (p. 40). The main reason for my focus on enactivism is that it establishes identity creation as a war between multiple components of self that are constantly vying for control (Carraciolo, 2012). This aligns well with player interpretation of games since games provide an environment in which to explore multiple versions of self and themes that relate to multiple aspects of one’s identity. Identity creation is an integral part of enactivism. In the process of trying to clearly define enactivism, Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher (2010), define five essential components of enactivism: “autonomy, sensemaking, emergence, embodiment, and experience” (p. 37). Autonomy is essential for identity formation as it allows the system (the player) to build itself by virtue of setting its own limitations (Di Paolo, Rohde, & De Jaegher, 2010). These limitations are related to how a system interacts with its environment, specifically, by regulating how a player interacts with the digital and physical environments that make up the play setting. This is why play setting and player identity are included as aspects of the ideal player (See 2.8). They represent the choices of the player when interacting with the game. It should be noted that much of Vahlo’s (2017) enactivist exploration of gameplay is based on defining the ways that gameplay, despite being an input-output system, maintains its own type of autonomy; he holds that, “single-player gameplay can be understood as a form of social
5 whose diverse background focuses on embodiment (Di Paolo, n.d) 6 who has expertise in many areas including “epistemic constructivism/enactivism,” embodiment, adaption, and perception (Rohde n.d.) 7 an expert in participatory sense-making (De Jaegher, n.d)
8 participation.” While I agree with this line of thinking, I am looking at it from a slightly different angle. I see the game as providing an environment in which the player is able to express their own autonomy. With the focus on a mimetic read, the characters in the game are the focus of “social participation” that is framed within the game as an environment that provides the rules and boundaries of action. Vahlo (2017) looks at the way a player must modify behavior in order to interact with and further the game itself. With my focus on connection, I instead look at the player engaging with and attempting to understand the characters, specifically Joel, as the major force of sense-making and thus mental model creation. These approaches are not mutually exclusive; rather, they support each other. The second aspect in the list is sense-making, and this is the focus of my argument. I use the description of cognitive domain’s mental models (similar to Carraciolo’s (2012) “bundle of values or patterns”) to examine the methods by which players create and modify them to accommodate new information (p. 371). In order to situate my analysis in literature studies, this is where the literary archetypes will be discussed. Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher (2010) hold that sense-making is about the agent (the player) enacting a world. This means that the player does not passively absorb the environment (the game); rather they create meaning through back and forth communication of what they term the “organism-environment system” (Di Paolo, Rohde, & De Jaegher, 2010). This communication is where emergence, the act of meaning creation through interaction, occurs (Di Paolo, Rohde, & De Jaegher, 2010). By looking at cultural archetypes as a primer for the player’s understanding of Joel, the interaction of the ideal player (as defined for a mimetic read of Joel in The Last of Us) with the game environment has a stable base from which to begin an analysis. The digital body that the player embodies has a measurable effect on the player’s behavior, affecting friendliness and confidence, not only within the virtual experience but outside of it as well (Yee, 2010). This could extend the understanding of embodiment even further into the digital avatars a player controls. Due to the scope of this study, I do not examine this aspect of enactivism, but I think it is worth noting as a potential avenue of exploration. Form familiarity comes into play when discussing the experience component of enactivism. It is the act of playing the game – the experience – that transforms the person, not the understanding of what is happening but the act of playing the game (Di Paolo, Rohde, & De Jaegher, 2010). Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher (2010) liken this to the process of becoming a wine connoisseur in that tasting wine and reading about it are very different processes. As can be seen, the basis of this thesis – the model – accounts for each aspect of Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher’s (2010) work. This grounding should provide enough justification for the proposal and the subsequent analyses of mental models regarding character.
2.2. Mental Models
Mental models are explained by Schneider (2001), a prolific literary researcher, as ways of organizing personal understanding of the world by creating manageable groups and subgroups
9 that connect related ideas; these constructions help people make sense of who they are and how they relate to the world (Universität Bielefeld, n.d). Mental models have been used in analyzing readers engaging with texts; these analyses have focused on readers’ understanding fictional “time, space, causation, intentionality, and agent” (Schneider, 2001, p. 609). Schneider’s (2001) work, however, focuses on the creation on mental models in terms of character specifically. In general terms, mental models are a psychological construct. Cognitive psychologist, Johnson- Laird (1983), defines a schema as a mental model that serves as a representational sample; he explains that schema help a person identify something as representative of a larger group. Schema (mental models) can be thought of as a categorical hierarchy of understanding that ranges from general to specific: a schema for humanity, a nation, a region, a community, a family, a household, a role within the family. Schema are nested and interconnected structures used for understanding the world. Johnson-Laird (1983) further explains that mental models are connected to “inferences, instantiations, and references” (p. 245). The image of a thing, idea, or experience is connected to a web of references and familiarities. This only begins to show the complexity of human cognition and the relationship between understanding and experience. For the purposes of this thesis, the archetype is going to be referenced as it connects to Joel’s character. The archetype is a common and often cited schema that was proposed by Jung as a “generic story character” that embodies specific behavior patterns (Faber & Mayer, 2008, p. 308). Useful because of the common presence of these types in narratives, Jung believed that these archetypes were “ancestrally common to all humans,” and as Mayer and Faber (2008) qualify as “problematic,” Jung also thought of the archetypes as part of a collective and therefore racial/ethnic unconscious that existed since prehistoric states (p. 308). While Jung’s basis of the archetype is troublesome for a number of reasons, the idea of the archetypes as common character types is exceedingly useful. Neo-archetypal theory has adapted the ideas and looks at archetypes as mental models that cause an emotional reaction in the observer and which are based on prior “emotional encounters and interactions with similar characters or ideas” (Faber & Mayer, 2008, p. 308). No longer part of a “collective unconscious” that is based on “a network of ‘primordial…mythological images’” the emotional association is established through a person’s previous interactions and experiences (Faber & Mayer, 2008, p. 308). This makes looking at common archetypes across media and media types in general important since what people are exposed to serves to strengthen their emotional connections to those archetypes. Importantly, the emotional response persists between contexts – meaning that triggering the memory of an archetype triggers an emotional response despite situational differences (Faber & Mayer, 2008). Real life associations and characters in games can therefore share and mutually affect mental models. The understanding of characters as archetypes can be utilized by designers to affect players through association. Designers may even use a type of subversion in which a specific character is presented as one archetype when in actuality they are another. By presenting Joel as the everyman but also dropping hints about questionably moral actions he undertook during the twenty years the player does not get to see, Naughty Dog causes the players to be unsure of where Joel really stands. It takes work for the player to identify Joel’s place and establish mental
10 models that are appropriate to his character. I believe the depth of character is what problematizes Joel. Mendez (2017) is perfectly right when she says that “Joel is more than a standard hero character. He’s not inherently good nor bad; he’s human.” This is one reason that Joel causes such a division among players. He is more than the archetype, but that does not mean that presenting him first as an archetype does not have benefits. Setting him up as the everyman from the beginning will immediately cause associative emotional responses in the mind of the ideal reader. The socio-cultural and form familiarity are part of what triggers a positive emotional response to Joel in the ideal reader. Because the emotional responses to archetypal characters are not isolated to a situation or medium, I will look at the overlap between mental models formed within the context of the game’s narrative and within the context of the player’s life. While isolating the mental model of a character has its benefits, it needs to be understood that the game and character will never exist in isolation. In this way, if the player has positive associations with the archetype that Joel presents, the themes that will be discussed later, shown partly through his character, may shape the player’s real-world values. If their background leads to a negative emotional response to the character of Joel (ie: their values are in strong opposition to the theme), the mental model of Joel as an everyman father may be superseded by a different archetype – presumably the outlaw8.
2.3. Mental Model Overlap: An Example
In order to better understand the overlap between a person’s mental model of character and their personal worldview, let us look at the example of a detective character who a player follows throughout a narrative as she attempts to solve a case of a missing child. As the player interacts with the narrative, they become invested in the story and create a mental model of the detective. The preexisting real world model for “detective” includes concepts such as pure intentioned, justice seeking, empathetic, and dedicated. In the beginning of the narrative, this view is supported. If the detective later becomes emotionally overwhelmed and starts drinking heavily and often in the narrative, the player who did not have strong preexisting opinion on alcohol consumption may empathize with the struggle and expand their mental model of the detective to include substance abusing. This may affect the player’s worldview making them more likely to look for root causes in cases of personal real-world experience with those who often turn to alcohol. If instead, the detective is found to have kidnapped the child herself and, in fact, has a bunch of children locked in her basement for the point of torture, the player’s hypothetical value system will be so strong as to not allow the mental model of detective to bend enough to include the category of kidnapper/torturer. Here, the value system breaks the mental model of the character,
8 “Represented in the rebellious iconoclast; the survivor and the misfit. Often vengeful, a disruptive rule-breaker, possibly stemming from hidden anger. Can be wild, destructive and provoking from a long time spent struggling or injured” (Faber & Mayer, 2009)
11 and the player places the character into a new model, now termed “torturer/criminal” with all the concepts they associate from the real-world model including deception, evil intentions, disturbed, etc. To summarize, in the first example, based on a lack of strong values/opinions on the topic, the subtle shift in character to include heavy drinking was not enough to break the hypothetical player’s view of the detective. Instead, the events in game lead the player to potentially change their real-world values. In the second example, the player’s value system was stronger than their empathy for the character, and so their values made them change their mental model of the character. I want to add that a character model may break down in less extreme circumstances than mentioned above. For example, if another player who has a bad history with substance abuse and a very strong aversion to the idea of drinking alcohol plays the first scenario, they may believe that the concept of alcoholic is more definitive than that of detective. In this case, the “detective” model may be superseded by “alcoholic.” In both the kidnapping example and this one, the knowledge of the character as being employed as a detective is still associated with the character, just not as a primary defining role.
2.4. Themes
Mental models are represented as cognitive containers that separate abstract concepts into the associations that the person in question accumulated together through experience and association. Themes are larger ideas that are represented through the narrative and that could impact a player’s view of the world and thus multiple mental models. Put another way, themes are the topics discussed within any work. They consist of a collection of elements (dialogue content, character description, level design, motifs, setting, allusion, metaphor etc.) which build a larger understanding of a given concept. These themes are never concrete, and they will certainly be interpreted differently with each reading/playing experience, often even when the same player is experiencing the same game. They are important only in demonstrating how the narrative can most powerfully affect a player’s perception of the game and thereby their own mental models for concepts related to the narrative. Some potential themes that could come from the example of the detective beginning to drink heavily are coping mechanisms, lack of control, division of work and life, ethical imperatives, or obsession. In the second scenario where the detective is a violent kidnapper, the themes may be that of trusting outward appearance, questioning assumptions, or seeing hidden agendas. Both examples may touch on the theme of identifying motivation for actions, the importance of outcome, or countless other possibilities.
12 2.5. Mimetic and Synthetic Characters
A broad way to define a person’s approach to character is to look at a character synthetically or mimetically. Looking at the dynamic nature of reading, Schneider focuses on the interactions that occur when the reader is attempting to understand a character’s psychological characteristics, emotion, and motivation (Schneider, 2001). This can include a mimetic and synthetic read. In order to explain the person’s approach to character, Schneider (2001) focuses on the mental models that readers have constructed both within and apart from the text: those built from previous social situations and those gained from prior literary knowledge (p. 611- 613). The reader/player’s ability in both categories may affect their gaming experience and thus their emotional response to the game. Whether approaching characters as mimetic representations or synthetic structures, this emotional reaction to the experience is something Schneider (2001) cites as being crucial to the reader/player’s disposition towards the character in that, “readers may pass aesthetic judgements on the presentation of characters” (p. 617). This is certainly true in The Last of Us where headlines like “On Heroics And Agency: A Second Take On The Ending Of 'The Last Of Us'” (Kain, 2013), “Is Joel From The Last of Us A Villain?” (George, 2015), and “The Last Of Us: 10 Reasons Why Joel Was The True Villain” (Cheeda, 2019) show that the topic of character has been discussed continually for the six years since the game was released. Enactivist Caracciolo (2016) explains the two separate approaches to reading character. In a mimetic approach, a player sees a character as a representation of a person thus allowing for a psychological reading of the character (Caracciolo, 2016). In contrast, there is the synthetic character position which holds that characters are simply “‘word masses’… textual functions contributing to a narrative pattern” and which need to be analyzed on their own terms, ie: how do they make us believe they are representing a person (Caracciolo, 2016, p. 5). The synthetic analysis can be seen as an understanding and appreciation of the techniques which lead to the audience seeing the character as a psychologically whole person, while the mimetic is a psychological approach to the character as a person. The synthetic reader is aware of the concept of a mimetic read, but they are not focused on experiencing it. Likewise, the mimetic reader may be capable of a synthetic read but is enjoying the illusion that the narrative is providing. This is not a new approach in literary studies, but it is new in that it unites literary studies with enactivist meaning-making (Phelan, 1989; Vella, 2014). While these views of character may seem oppositional, I contend that there is a need to look at this, not as a definitive separation of what a character is, but rather a set of complimentary approaches to how a reader sees character. Furthermore, I do not think a person has a static approach but a dynamic one that is affected by their mood as well as the content, style, and pace of the narrative. By looking at the different moments through both a mimetic and synthetic lens, one can see how a reader utilizing a mimetic view of character may be affected differently than one who reads characters in a synthetic way. Once again, this is in terms of overall tendency, and may fluctuate throughout a reading. While both are valid approaches, they explain different
13 things: mimetic readers have an understanding of emotion while synthetic readers have an understanding of how emotion is constructed. To explain this further, in a book there is always a synthetic character since there are words that the author uses to create the character. Whether given the depth of a main character or the brief mention of a person passing on the street, the character is constructed through words. In a game, there will likewise always be a synthetic character. It is not represented only by words, but by the many components that create it. Despite the efforts of a reader, a shallowly constructed character is easier to analyze synthetically than mimetically. To illustrate a simple example, the original Pac Man can be looked at synthetically. While he does not have dialogue or a backstory, Pac Man is constructed through his art, sounds, and abilities. From these, one can extrapolate about his character mimetically, but it is less convincing than a more fully developed character. His need to eat dots can be read symbolically as a representation of gluttony. He may also be seen as a thief, murdering the forces that oppose him. Players do know his synthetic construction, but it is not robust enough for us to have a convincing understanding of his psychological makeup. Why is he yellow? Because it makes him stand out on the background? Does it represent his cowardice? While the experience of any character is dependent to some extent on interpretation, the closer a character is designed to represent a real living person, the easier it is for us to read them mimetically. This begs the question, who sees which aspect of character and when? Phelan (1989) quotes Peter Rabinowitz who says that allowing oneself to “participate in the illusion is to enter… the narrative audience; to remain covertly aware of the synthetic is to enter… the authorial audience” (p. 5). What this means is that there are people who play a game and allow themselves to become engrossed by the fiction of it, and there are those who may be analyzing a game in order to better understand how to construct their own. The intent of an audience (“player identity”) – to experience or to understand – will be much of what dictates the approach to character. I do not mean to suggest that only game developers will analyze games synthetically, but in order to do so, one will have the intention of understanding the design above that of understanding the character. Synthetic analysis is the formulistic approach to analysis of any medium.
2.6. Mimetic vs Synthetic: An Example
To illustrate this division of approach, consider the very beginning of The Last of Us. The game opens with a playful and teasing interaction between Joel and his daughter, Sarah, who has been waiting up late to give him a birthday present (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel and Sarah watch television together with Sarah falling asleep and Joel carrying her up to bed (Naughty Dog, 2014). Gameplay begins, and the player takes the role of Sarah walking through the house and witnessing the chaos that has engulfed her world: news reports of an outbreak, explosions outside the window, and finally, her father shooting her neighbor who had been infected by the as of yet unknown cordyceps fungus (Naughty Dog, 2014).
14 The mimetic (psychological) approach here would be to think about what is going through Sarah’s mind. The player may look at the dependence Sarah has on her father emotionally, drawing on their interaction in the first scene and feeling that a loving and affectionate history was established. Through the attack of the neighbor, a mimetic player may also see the now very real sense of absolute physical dependence she has on her father as a protector from unknown horror. The player may connect with her fear and desperation as she, in shock, mutters about having seen the neighbor just that morning (Naughty Dog, 2014). While this psychological and emotional analysis could be taken further this should be enough to demonstrate the concept. The synthetic approach on the other hand would to be to look at how these feelings are constructed. What about the design of Sarah and Joel’s interaction created this sense of relationship and dependence? The lack of representation of or allusion to a mother figure in their lives furthers the primacy of the connection between Sarah and Joel (Naughty Dog, 2014). He demonstrates a parental care by asking why Sarah is not already in bed (Naughty Dog, 2014). He is not angry about this, just tired in general, as can be seen by the way he rests his head in his hands while he asks the question (Naughty Dog, 2014). Once Sarah surprises him, the player can see his appreciation conveyed through a pause in his banter; this pause is quickly followed by a quip which establishes that Joel is afraid of showing emotions blatantly, something that has shaped their relationship (Naughty Dog, 2014). This effect is echoed by Sarah’s easy quip back. “Drugs,” she says when asked how she got the money for a new watch, “I sell hardcore drugs” (Naughty Dog, 2014). “Good,” Joel replies, “You can start helping out with the mortgage then” (Naughty Dog, 2014). This dialogue may convey feeling, but there is more; the way it is delivered, the lightness of the tone, and the animation of the characters establishes an understanding. Joel’s action of putting on the watch and looking at it appreciatively furthers the image (Naughty Dog, 2014). He is grateful to have her as a daughter, and they enjoy the time they spend together. Once gameplay starts, ludology (which will be discussed further in the next section 2.7) comes into play. Here the player moves Sarah, and she walks slowly (Naughty Dog, 2014). A ludic element, this movement choice is something a synthetic reader may point out as an element that will build a sense of fear. The interactions the player has with the environment (ie: turning on the television, then seeing the explosion) have a pacing that builds up tension along with Sarah’s panicked calls for her father which increase over time (Naughty Dog, 2014). When the neighbor breaks through the glass door intent on murder, Joel has the gun and protectively stands in front of Sarah (Naughty Dog, 2014). Despite not being a playable sequence, the player is aware that as Sarah, they would not have survived without Joel. All these things establish the dependence that the mimetic reader recognized. In effect, the synthetic approach justifies and explains mimetic effect, and the level of awareness any player has of these elements will differ between players at different times. Here I would also like to state that a player’s feeling towards a character may be influenced by their valuation of a mimetic or synthetic approach. If a character seems to be created in an unconvincing or implausible way, the audience may say that the character is constructed poorly synthetically thus causing an absence of feeling in the mimetic read. There is a potential for a
15 mimetic read, it would just be more interpretive and have less support constructed within the portrayal. Shallow or confounding characters can be an intention of the creator or a consequence of poor design. Not every unrelatable or underdeveloped character is a bad thing. They can be intentional. Within this analysis, I will assume the ideal player (discussed further in 5.7) has the potential to read the characters psychologically (mimetic potential) and that they have the background and knowledge to deconstruct the game (synthetic potential). In this way, I will be limited only by my own ability to interpret the text.
2.7. Ludology and Narrative
As mentioned above, games differ from books in that there is a technological element (system immersion) and a state of interaction (challenge-based immersion) (Nilsson, Nordahl, & Serafin 2016). Narrative immersion in games is also directly affected by the ludology of the game— the gameplay elements. In any game, the focus may be placed by the designers more on the challenge of a game or the narrative aspect of the game. In some games, it is up to the player to choose how much to focus on narrative or gameplay (ie: whether or not to read the codex in the Mass Effect [Bioware, 2007]; or the books in Fable [Lionhead, 2004] or Skyrim [Bethesda, 2011]; or the artifact descriptions in The Last of Us [Naughty Dog, 2014]). The balance of story and gameplay as well as individual preference changes the way that players will approach the game. A fast-paced shooter may encourage people to ignore the dialogue where an RPG may be played over and over again to discover the possible storylines. Both narrative and ludology are always present in games. A narrative can be inferred even if it is simply found within the progression of the game. For example, the individual player’s story in standalone puzzle games like Tetris (Nintendo R&D1, 1989) or Geometry Wars (Bizarre Creations, 2003) creates a type of individual narrative. Likewise, in a video game, there is always some level of challenge; this may be extremely interactive (ie: Portal [Valve, 2007], Mass Effect [Bioware, 2007], The Last of Us [Naughty Dog, 2014]) or less so (What Remains of Edith Finch [Giant Sparrow, 2017], The Witness [Thekla Inc., 2016]). Looking at this duality, Aarseth (1997), when defining cybertext, remarks that the “consumer, or user, of the text” (here the player) is considered more in the light of cybertexts than even in reader-response theory (p. 1). The claim is that while a reader performs all the activities of reading in their mind, the interactivity inherent in cybertexts and thus video games is ergodic (meaning non-trivial9) (Aarseth, 1997). These two concepts, ludology and narrative affect the pace of gameplay and plausibility of narrative. Ludo-narrative dissonance occurs when there is a conflict between the mechanics and narrative such that the player experience is diminished in some way. Focusing on The Last of Us, there are multiple articles that mention both ludology and narrative (Green, 2016; Pötzsch, 2017)
9The example Aarseth (1997) gives is “(for example) eye movement and the periodic or arbitrary turning of pages” (p. 2).
16 and one article by Hughes (2015) that focuses on ludo-narrative dissonance exclusively. Hughes (2015) complains that gamers have been told that unrealistic elements are acceptable and excusable in games simply “’Because it’s a video game’… This, however, is becoming an increasingly unsatisfying answer” (p. 149). Despite the article’s lack of outside references and support, he sees the need for ludology to support an overall narrative (and vice versa). Pötzsch’s (2017) article puts this more clearly saying that representation of narrative is no longer enough, and “the game theorist must talk about actions, and the physical or gameworlds in which they transpire” (p. 157). Both these analysts show a conjoined approach to ludology and narrative – a need for ludological support of the narrative. I discuss this in more detail in the literature review (3.1). I must stress that both ludology and narrative affect mimetic and synthetic character readings. The synthetic player is not interested in the gameplay in a vacuum; they are interested in the way the actions further the character development and convey a sense of psychological consistency. Likewise, the mimetic player will find it difficult to play a narrative game in which the superhero protagonist is capable of amazing feats during cutscenes but then during gameplay dies from a single bullet. Character and gameplay are intertwined and dependent on each other. Balance that leads to a desired effect is key.
2.8. Player Background
Having looked at the game elements that affect player response, the next important aspect to examine is what the player brings with them to the experience. How a player approaches character is affected by the alignment between their own understanding/experience and the way in which a character or narrative is presented. This must be considered when developing an ideal player for any analysis. As seen below, the first step to developing an ideal player is looking at the “focus of analysis.” In section 5.7, this is explained in terms of my own analysis of The Last of Us.
17
Figure 3: Framework of the Ideal Player Below the “Focus of Analysis” box, Figure 3 outlines the four aspects that need to be considered about any player and demonstrates that a change in any of these categories may impact the way that the player conceptualizes and reforms their mental models. Socio-Cultural Familiarity Firstly, the worldview presented in game must be compared to that of the player. The level of similarity will affect whether they view the portrayal of the character as plausible. This idea can be likened to the “folk psychology” that Caracciolo (2016) defines as a toolset that allows people to “predict and explain behavior” (p. 18). This tactic of analysis is also mentioned by Schneider (2001) who brings up social psychology’s recognition of “implicit personality theories” which are “schematic structures of knowledge” that allow people to predict the actions of others through information gathered through interactions (ie: mental models representing real- life experiences) (p. 612). It is undeniable that a person’s social interactions shape their understanding of people and, therefore, will also impact their understanding of character. One possible negative consequence of only consuming media that adheres to socio-cultural familiarity is addressed by Schneider. He holds that, while valuable in predicting interactions, people should be aware of their own personality theories since they may create stereotypes (Schneider, 2001). While I hold that someone with a sociocultural familiarity that matches closely that of the game will have an easier time interacting with the characters mimetically, I
18 also acknowledge that representation of various different outlooks is what will lead change on a societal scale (3.2). While the ideal player in my thesis understands the socio-cultural context of the game, they may not be the population that will be most changed by the experience. My ideal player simply is capable of connection with Joel through a mimetic read of The Last of Us. This ideal player may not even be the target audience for motivating a change in other mental models. Furthermore, as Ermi and Mäyrä (2005) said in terms of player immersion: “Players do not just engage in ready- made gameplay but also actively take part in the construction of these experiences: they bring their desires, anticipations and previous experiences with them, and interpret and reflect the experience in that light” (p. 2). Negative or positive, player’s worldview will affect their experience of the game. Form Familiarity In addition to socio-cultural familiarity, I am going to assume the player in this analysis has a high level of form familiarity: this refers to the level of game literacy10 that the player possesses. In the literary parallel to my approach, Schneider (2001) notes that there is a difference between authorial audiences (trained writers) and narrative audiences (non-professional readers) in terms of structural understanding of a text (p. 612). In terms of video games, I choose not to mimic this division on the basis of game makers vs game players. That is too limiting. Rather, I will look at a spectrum of game literacy to predict the ease with which a player can analyze a character synthetically. As such, the player discussed within this thesis is an ideal player (defined in detail in 5.7). They are aware of how The Last of Us compares to its contemporaries and has a general understanding of games from the last two decades. In this way, the player is able to be critical of the game and draw comparisons when necessary. The reason to establish form familiarity is that every person comes to a game with different ideas on what makes a character believable. Most broadly what affects this is the expectations they have of the medium. To situate this expectation among other character representations, a character in a novel is not expected to be rendered as a realistic drawing and a portrait is not expected to have an elegantly written backstory. A person’s understanding of the medium will affect their interpretation of it.
10 Game literacy is a broad term that, in this case, requires that the player possess knowledge about the game to the extent necessary for them to understand the game to the level of the ideal player audience. Since “ideal player audience” is always changing, I define a literate player as someone who understands a studio from its conception and has interacted with games that can be compared in terms of content and form. This will not include an understanding at the level of technical artists or programmers, but it will require knowledge of the medium itself. Note that this definition looks at game literacy in the broad sense of a player not only being able to “perform in the game world… with the tools they have been given” but also “being able to partake in games media and gaming culture at large” (Vesanen, 2015). I use this broad definition because understanding a game’s comparison among contemporary games will affect how a player interprets the content. For example, playing the NES in 2019 is a different experience than playing in 1990.
19 This can go beyond medium into genre expectations where an abstract painting is expected to have very little realism but trompe-l'œil (another style of art) is expected to be all but indistinguishable from reality. It can become still narrower with understanding being dependent on game series familiarity (ie: Mass Effect [Bioware, 2007]). This may be likened to a familiarity with a specific painter or playwright. In games, players who are more or less familiar with different aspects of the medium will have different expectations and reactions. Those who have played relatively few games may not be aware of the possibilities of the medium and would therefore have less ability to be critical. Player Identity Player identity looks at how the player, consciously or subconsciously, views themselves in connection to the game. It looks at what they are hoping to get from the game, why they are playing it, and how they view themselves as a gamer in general (completionist, role player, speedrunner, community member). This will affect which parts of the game they focus on more, whether or not they are willing to actively engage with the ideas and/or mechanics in the game, and whether or not they are likely to share the gaming experience with others (streamer, social play, solo-play, etc). Play Setting Play setting will affect the experience that the player is able to attain while gaming. It answers questions like: Do they play the game in isolation or surrounded by people? Is their play setting comfortable? Do they feel safe or judged? How much free time do they have to play the game? What kind of equipment do they have to play with? All of these aspects need to be considered by the designer/researcher as soon as they have determined the focus of the analysis. Then, they can examine what mental model/models are most connected to the research or which ones they wish to focus on. I would also like to add that many of these factors have been identified by other scholars. For example, in their concluding statements, Ermi and Mäyrä (2005) suggest that social and cultural contexts play a role as do player attitude, situational context, and experiences with other games. While these are not explored in depth in their study, they match the factors I identified very closely.
2.9. Restructuring Mental Models: Interaction and Sense-making
When produced with the adequate synthetic capability, the characters that players interact with in game can be capable of an easy mimetic read. Interacting with these characters can cause certain players to question their pre-existing ideas and broaden their understanding. In regard to texts specifically, Caracciolo (2016) calls this restructuring of mental models (“readers’ meaning constructions”) “insights” and holds that they may help readers create a new understanding of themselves, others, or the world as a whole (pp. 5, 12).
20 Enactivism holds that one way of expanding and redefining mental models is through experiencing life, but one can never live every experience. As such, another way of expanding mental models is through interaction with the other people or with something else that requires the processing of information in terms of larger context – a character in a story, for example. This is possible because the actual sense-making process is about interpretation, and that is possible through narrative (Caracciolo, 2012, p. 370).
2.10. The Core of Enactivism
Understanding how the jump from sense-making from direct experience to sense-making through interaction with a game is possible requires the enactivist approach to be outlined. To start, there are five core tenets that Di Paolo, Rohde and De Jaegher (2010) lay out: “autonomy11, sensemaking, emergence, embodiment, and experience” (p. 37). I explained how these situate my approach in 2.1.2. These are all interrelated and focus around the concept of an autonomous individual interacting with their environment in order to form and reform their identity – a dynamic, ongoing process. De Jaegher & Di Paolo (2013) clarify their understanding of enactivism as having two core tenets: “First, it posits systemic concepts for understanding social interactions. Second, it examines how interaction affects sense-making” (p. 1). In this process of sense-making, conflict is held to be essential for growth (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2013, p. 2). On a basic level, this need for conflict seems like common sense. Once a person forms a conception of something, the only way growth can happen is to either add to, take away from, or discard entirely a previous mode of thinking. Reinforcement of an idea does not cause growth so much as it maintains a status quo; while beneficial, reinforcement only strengthens a stance, it does not expand it. Discussing the phenomenon of activating mental models for specific characters from a literary point of view, Schneider (2001) calls the process, “literary categorization” (p. 620). A consideration of character creation is which mental models a person may associate with a character and how much a person can expand a mental model (Schneider’s [2001] “individuation”) before causing the model itself to be replaced completely (Schneider’s [2001] “decategorization”) (p. 624). This is not important in regard to the overall narrative or even the theme, but it does have to do with the mental model creation of a character as a supporting structure of narrative and theme.
2.11. Character Identification, Conflict, and Identity
Since I am focused on the interaction between player and character, one source of potential conflict will be with the player identifying with the character, something that other scholars
11 In this usage, autonomous means self-directed activity.
21 (Harilal, 2018) have analyzed in regard to the division of players specifically in terms of The Last of Us. Establishing conflict as a force for change supports the idea that one need not identify with all aspects or even any aspects of a character to be able to engage with them. Schneider (2001) holds that identification is not even the right term to be used in this situation, instead preferring to refer to this phenomenon of reader character interaction as empathy (p. 613). Here, the reader may be able to feel for a character who has made choices that do not align with the player’s worldview. Wishing to maintain a balance of understanding, the player will need to either reason that the character is not the type of person that they once believed, rejecting the mental model they assigned the character (decategorization) or realize their value system can be adjusted to accommodate a newly realized truth thus altering their worldview (individuation) (Schneider, 2001, p. 624). This is when interaction with a character can shape a person’s value system. Caracciolo states that, “One of the core claims of the enactive approach is that an organism’s embodied interaction with the world is instrumental in maintaining its identity” (Caracciolo, 2012, p. 369). In the context of my analysis, “interacting with the world” means engaging emotionally and/or intellectually with the character, and identity refers to the mental models that construct the worldviews, values, and self-understanding of a person (Caracciolo, 2012, p 371). Put in the frame of another enactivist, an “autonomous cognitive system,” here the player, will engage with the game and through the mental exchange and physical act of play that takes place they will, “enact a world or cognitive domain” (Di Paolo, Rohde & De Jaegher, 2010, p. 38). To summarize, as the player interacts with the game and experiences a conflict in terms of the characters, they are structuring and reshaping mental models, specifically those which represent the characters and/or the themes the characters will embody.
2.12. Conclusion
The enactivist approach sees the benefits of mentally engaging with a character as a means for growth. Like the phenomenological approach of Wolfgang Iser on the act of reading as an exchange between the reader and the text, enactivists hold that meaning is found through interaction (Di Paolo, Rohde & De Jaegher, 2010). Throughout my analysis, I will look at what themes the game is potentially communicating to the player because stories are powerful and they help to shape values as individuals and as a society (Caracciolo, 2012, p 368). The identification of themes that may change the player’s mental models is the goal of this analysis. Since through the experience of reading, Caracciolo (2016) holds that one can gain insight into one’s self, behavior, psychological reasoning, and human existence, it is not a far jump to see the parallels in experiencing a narrative in a digital game (p. 15). Whether or not these things will change depend on the recipient, text, and culture within the interaction (Caracciolo, 2016, p.15).
22 Throughout my analysis, I will focus on characters specifically, and my analysis will build on the understanding that characters are two-fold: mimetic and synthetic. The mimetic version of character analysis will utilize more socio-cultural understanding of character while the synthetic character needs to be analyzed as part of a wider game structure that requires different levels of form familiarity. A higher level of both socio-cultural and form familiarity will increase the likelihood of a player experiencing change in mental models in a game with characters that they find plausible. The themes will be shown from a psychological, mimetic stance, and a constructionist, synthetic stance that looks at the gameplay and character presentation. In specific cases I will discuss how the formation of character points towards a seemingly specific audience worldview or how a difference in understanding form may lead to a complication. However, the consistent elements will be a theme shown from a mimetic and synthetic (primarily ludological) interpretation.
23 3 LITERATURE REVIEW: CRITICAL ANALYSES OF THE LAST OF US
3.1. Prevalence of Comparative Work
While the creation of a canon of art and literature has had the chance to evolve for centuries, with texts such as Beowulf dating back over a thousand years, video games have not had the same time to establish a canon (Chase, 1997, p. 10). Many video game histories have used their own criteria to create a discussion around what should be canon (ie: Steven Kent’s 2001 The Ultimate History of Video Games), and exhibits like the Smithsonian are helping to center discussion around what makes a game worth its place in the canon (Chayka, 2011; Sottek, 2012). As these discussions continue and academics examine video games with the same focus and care with which other mediums have been examined, a consensus is beginning to take form. For now, there is a loose, always debatable understanding between gamers, game designers, critics, and academics of what should be included. Because this understanding is constantly evolving, The Last of Us has not been analyzed by many academics. The focus of the studies ranges from situating the game within a literary framework (Green, 2016; Farca & Ladevéze, 2016), moral discussion (Harilal, 2018), and an examination of what realism is within games and how it may affect players (Pötsch, 2017). The interaction between narrative and gameplay is also mentioned throughout the analyses (Farca & Ladevéze, 2016; Green, 2016; Pötsch, 2017). Much of the material in these analyses is different from my own in both focus and approach. The authors each form their own arguments, and the arguments, not their approach is the main focus. In my own analysis, the enactive approach is the focus with the analysis of The Last of Us serving as an example of utilization. This is only one of many ways in which my study differs from the others. In order to explain how this thesis is situated among the other studies, after covering the relevant focus of each work, I will discuss how it most closely relates to my own. What is seen from the overview I provide is the lack of similarity in approach that leads, unfortunately, to a set of analyses that do not engage or overlap much with each other.
3.2. Comparison of the Available Work
To increase comparative clarity, I will identify some specific aspects of other studies of The Last of Us. This involves clarifying what themes the author identifies, whether these critiques relied on a newly established or pre-existing analytical framework, how they discuss the ideal player (if at all), what they have to say about character, and how the authors think the game impacts players. I am not going to discuss game reviews because while they add to many aspects of the discussion, they leave out much of what my analysis relies upon: mainly, a framework and description of the ideal player.
24 After breaking down the studies in detail, I identified the focuses as the following:
Table 1 Breakdown of Comparative Works Author Theme Framework Ideal Player Character Impact Green Naturalism/ Naturalism N/A Not the focus -On Players- (2016) Morality Introspection, questioning morality, and defining identity Harilal Meaning/ Self- “generic” Communities As games become (2018) Community/ Designed player and Joel more immersive Survival/ undefined (VR), identification Moral will increase making Relativism ethics of import Pötsch (Indirect) Self- N/A Community Design impacts (2017) Filtering Designed NOT players’ perceptions Realism / (4 Filters) individual and performance Challenging especially in how Design they view war. Farca & Symbolism Ecological Implied and Not the focus Players “may now be Ladevéze of Nature Fiction and Emancipated inclined to work (2016) Hope Critical Player towards Utopia in Dystopia real life” (Farca and Ladevéze, p. 15)
3.3. Evaluation of Comparative Work
As is seen through the chart, the themes vary considerably, and while nature is the focus of two studies, it is still approached differently within each. This is in part because of the use of different frameworks. Farca and Ladevéze’s (2016) framework and Green’s (2016) are both closely related to literature studies, but by focusing on different comparative aspects (ie: the genre of Naturalism vs Critical Dystopia with a focus in Ecological Fiction), they draw from different elements of the game. Despite the different frameworks, both look at juxtaposition of elements. This comparative focus on theme is related to my own central theme: survival vs connection. Farca and Ladevéze discuss the many oppositions in the game, one of which is survival vs dialogue. The idea of connection lies just below the surface as they then draw a deeper comparison by noting the opposition of city and country. Community and isolation are both seen in the cultural divide. Farca and Ladevéze (2016) call the city an “estranged place” which indicates the clear lack of perceived connection (p. 6). Instead of focusing directly on the human element as I do, however, they go much farther into an analysis that is based on economic
25 critique of “bureaucratic consumer capitalism” (Farca and Ladevéze, 2016, p. 8). They may approach some of the same narrative elements as I do, but their conclusions differ from my own. Comparative elements are also a focus of Green (2016). Where I examine isolation and connection as representative of good and evil. She looks at “the fungus versus the uninfected humans, civility versus cruelty, and the individual versus the group” (Green, 2016, p. 746). She holds that in the world of The Last of Us, morality and community have been destroyed along with shared culture; people now focus on the “survival of the self, at the potential sacrifice of others” (Green, 2016, p. 747). She looks at this as a moral question rather than one of connection and sees The Last of Us as a work that comments on what it means to be human. She does not focus on the way people interact, but her work is still tangentially related to my own approach in terms of sense-making and the player evaluation of theme. She concludes that family “is that smallest construction of human community on which the future rests” (Green, 2016, p. 761). This is closely related to my focus on Joel as a father. Morality is a common theme that is extended beyond Green’s (2016) work, but the moral concerns that both Harilal (2018) and Pötsch (2017) raise are not relevant to my analysis except to say that in both cases if the authors had included the ideal player, it would have made their critiques more specific and thus more usable. The broad approach they employ considers a generalized audience and lends to blanket comments that appear to be unsupported. This is primarily seen in Harilal (2018) who mentions the “generic player’s universal value system” without defining what that is (p. 2). This phrasing creates a sense of confusion that undermines the otherwise well supported arguments she makes in terms an approach to the game that relies on moral relativism. By defining the ideal player in concrete terms, I hope to avoid this confusion and explain the specific ways that individuals may be impacted. Of the authors I reviewed, Farca and Ladevéze (2016) are the most careful and precise in defining the player who is interacting with the game. They describe the “emancipated player” who is defined as someone who throughout gameplay interacts with the implied player12. Like my own ideal player, the implied player here is not an actual person, but the description of someone who is affected by the work in a particular way. The emancipated player is not explained in this work, but rather is explained in detail in Farca (2016) as someone who engages critically with a work in order to allow it to have an effect. It is of note that, like this thesis, Farca (2016) references the work of Wolfgang Iser saying that the reader/player may experience an aesthetic affect that changes them (p. 3). I incorporate aspects similar to both these constructions (implied and emancipated) in this thesis (2.8 Player Background and 5.7 Overview of the Ideal Player). As I said, Harilal (2018) is not specific in terms of defining the player, but she does more than Green (2016) or Pötsch (2017). She acknowledges the “generic player” but does not take the time to detail who that player may be (Harilal, 2018, p. 2, 3, 11, 17). I am left assuming that the generic player is anyone who picks up the controller with the intent to play, but that is due to my
12 The implied player is the “affordance and appeal structure of the game which holds all the preconditions necessary for the game to ‘exercise its effect’ (an aesthetic effect experienced in the act of play)” (Farca & Ladevéze, 2016, p. 2)
26 own interpretation. She does divide players into detached, semi-detached, and fully identified categories (Harilal, 2018). While I have issues with her interpretations of these categories, I do feel that the division gives her work an order that is lacking when no player type is identified. Furthermore, she agrees with the importance of understanding the player as well as the game, saying that “Everything is reduced to the question of the kind of player one is and the kind of moral judgment one brings to the game” (Harilal, 2018, p. 4). This is a sentiment I share and which inspired my desire to create the model of the ideal player. Beyond the comparative approach and definition of player, some authors touch on their approaches to ludology and narrative explicitly. Green (2016) does this in the most detail, and it seems that she feels compelled to take a side holding that the game “should be examined from a narratological perspective, as opposed to a ludological perspective solely focused on the mechanics of game play and in-game goals” (Green, 2016, p. 746). I disagree with this oppositional setup (see 2.7), but it helps her maintain a mostly consistent approach. There are some moments, however, where she – seemingly unaware of the contradiction – includes comments on and comparisons to gameplay. While she may say she is concentrating on the narratological approach, in actuality she cannot avoid the co-supportive stance of ludology and narrative that I adhere to. She even states that, “The gamer, then, participates in the narratological elements by virtue of the game’s mechanics, requirements, and gameplay” (Green, 2016, p. 746). It is this that separates games from other types of media. It adds a new dimension of storytelling – the gameplay experience. And to ignore either the narratological or ludological aspect would be a disservice to the media itself. Whether looking at a game narratively or ludically, player background must be considered. I include this in my model through form familiarity (2.8. and 5.7) and archetypes (5.9.1). Harilal (2018) most echoes my own analysis in her insistence that the context of the player’s life situation be considered. She “recognizes moral codes that are relative to the specific context of the game world” and explains that what is believed to be moral in the “pre-anarchic game world” (the player’s life experience) will be much different in Ellie’s world of The Last of Us (Harilal, 2018, p. 20-21). The morality she espouses is dictated by and should only be judged on the society in which one is positioned (Harilal, 2018, p. 8). In my own model, I propose a more focused type of relativism that examines individual player experience, but it shares this relativistic direction. The final consideration that relates to this thesis is what these authors believe will be the lasting effect of The Last of Us on the players. Farca and Ladevéze (2016) hold that dystopian narratives leave hope for utopias, and that experiencing utopias should lead the players to transform their own world for the better (p. 3). They point out the capitalist critique within the game and end with a suggestion that that experiencing the aesthetic effect will lead to players maybe working towards a Utopia (Farca & Ladevéze, 2016). They say this as a closing statement without much conviction. Pötzsch (2017) likewise examines the game as something that can not only comment on but actually effect societal and/or political change (p. 162). He believes that being aware of the way violence is filtered and having games that challenge the status quo of design will broaden player’s perception of the military action and consequence in particular (Pötzsch, 2017).
27 Like Pötzsch (2017), Harilal (2018) compares The Last of Us with Spec Ops: The Line as an example of eudemonic entertainment (games “intended for personal growth”) (p. 3). Harilal (2018) shies away from making any bold claims but states that there are ethical implications when discussing morality within video games since identification can be intense (p. 15). The idea of change through identification (Harilal, 2018) and individual perception (Pötzsch, 2017) are closer to my own stance than societal/political change (Pötzsch, 2017) or progress towards a utopia (Farca & Ladevéze, 2016). Green’s (2016) stance is the closest to my own; she says that the push of The Last of Us towards player introspection will not only challenge moral beliefs but also the player’s construction of identity. I believe that the act of play and the interaction with the game environment will impact a player’s mental models and thus their own identity. This was covered in my overview of enactivism and character identification (2.10, 2.11). What the comparison of these analyses shows, more than anything, is that games, like all other media (books, film, television), are being analyzed from various unrelated frameworks, in different levels of depth, and without much thought as to how the analyses can be compared to one another. While they all contribute value when looking at the game itself, they contribute very little to each other. Likewise, my own thesis will draw little from existing studies of The Last of Us. Theme is one of the few things that remain consistently discussed, but the themes are closely tied to the framework. Pötsch (2017), for example, does not even identify the theme directly, but rather uses The Last of Us to substantiate a claim about filtering realism. In terms of impact, since the theme is based on a framework, it is therefore a lens to look at the game without much consideration based on the player themselves. The analyses are of the game as an artifact rather than an experience (phenomenological study). Since I am not interested in the content apart from the player, this is of little value to me. What is valuable about the identification of themes is that, in congregate, they point out what type of content is being represented, and this can give a glimpse into cultural change.
3.4. Representation as a Force for Cultural Change
To expand on the idea of lasting effect – since mental models are the focus of this thesis – I want to briefly touch on the idea of representation. Much has been investigated in terms of the power of media representation, particularly regarding television and film, in terms of representing individuals from groups beyond those of the white (primarily American) cis-male group (Mastro & Tukachinsky, 2011; Scharrer & Ramasubramanian, 2015; McInroy & Craig, 2017). Additionally, the prevalence of the representation of ideas such as surveillance (Lippert & Scalia, 2015), cannabis use (Stringer & Maggard, 2016), and even wealth (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2017) demonstrate that media representation is a powerful tool in normalizing ideas within a society, even when those ideas are not directly related to an individual’s identity.
28 While The Last of Us alone will not be able to stand as a force that changes society, it stands as a representative of a larger cultural push towards the “Dadification” or “Daddening” of games where the relational experience of fatherhood is explored (Harilal, 2018). Games that have been included in this category are Bioshock 2, Bioshock Infinite, The Witcher 3, God of War, and The Walking Dead (Stang, 2016; Cash, 2019; Gray, 2017). But, there are still more to be considered; for example, Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games, 2017) and Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010) deal with father-child relationships. Shortcomings of the movement have been discussed (Stang, 2016; Grant, 2017; Brice, 2013), but in this thematic shift, there is evidence of a cultural push for representations of relationships that have depth and nuance (Stang, 2016). The games in this genre also give depth to masculinity that is so often portrayed as being beyond the need for connection. With this push towards deeper relationships in popular games, a broader audience is exposed to ideas that stress connection to others. The status of The Last of Us as a AAA game that is widely reviewed and broadly played means that the theme is not going to be experienced by a niche audience. Citing a tweet by Naughty Dog, Polygon reported that by April 2018, 17 million copies of the game have been sold (Sarkar, 2018). That sales number is indicative of a cultural change, whether causal or correlational, and individual change is likely to be seen along with it. When looking at the analyses of The Last of Us, the identification of themes that focus around environmental issues (Green, 2016; Farca & Ladevéze, 2016), morality (Green, 2016; Harilal, 2018), and impact (Pötsch, 2017) show that big questions, questions relating to the self and the world, are found in The Last of Us. My own thesis explores the idea of connection beyond the surface of “dadification.” It looks at how the ideal player is someone who will connect to Joel because of a shared understanding of the world and who sees that connection is not a weakness but a strength. Taken alongside the analyses summarized above, the game’s themes show a cultural shift not only in games, but in society. The game is one of many types of media wherein the players will be confronted with the primacy of connection, specifically in terms of family and fatherhood.
29 4 METHODS: THE IDEAL PLAYER AND THEMES
4.1. Creating the Model of the Ideal Player
Before beginning the analysis of The Last of Us, it is important to understand the approach I used when constructing the model of the ideal player and performing the data gathering for this thesis. Creating the model of the ideal player hinged on the research presented in the theoretical background. Through an examination of the theories of reader-response criticism, enactivist critique of literature, and game studies, I synthesized what I felt would be most important to my own analysis. Furthermore, I looked at including information that would help situate any analysis, regardless of the framework (Naturalism, critical dystopia, etc.), alongside others by allowing the change in the authors conception of ideal player to be seen. Because of this, as the model stands it is highly theoretical, and untested. This is simply due to the scope of the thesis. The model of the ideal player should not be seen as a lens that will supersede other approaches. Rather, when authors use the model to define their ideal player, they are utilizing a method that will focus their own chosen lens, whatever that may be. In this thesis, the broad lens is thematic: a comparative examination of isolation and connection. By identifying the ideal player as I do in 5.7, I focus the lens onto a player who is able to connect with Joel mimetically and therefore see his story in terms of isolation and connection. This would allow another author to respond to my analysis and show how a different ideal reader would respond to Joel, how other aspects of the game may affect the player as I defined it, or how their own analysis differs based on an entirely different player. The model provides a systematic, uniform way for researchers to perform comparison without limiting frameworks.
4.2. Identifying the Theme
After the model was created and the theoretical background outlined, I began playing The Last of Us Remastered on the PS4. This was my second playthrough of the game since I played it when it was released. I recorded my playthrough, but due to the time required to edit the video, I never referenced the recording. I also took notes on quotes that specifically contextualized Joel’s place in society and beliefs about himself and the world. I specifically focused on characteristics that placed him in a specific socio-cultural background: blue collar, Texan, gun-owner, rural. This, along with documenting other characters’ reactions and character building moments, environmental design, and ludic design all led to a large amount of information that needed to be organized. In order to cut down on the data I collected, I decided to focus on only key moments of the game. Having a very strong tendency towards mimetic reading of characters, I used my own experience with the game to identify the most (subjectively) humanistic moments. I compared this to some of the more emotional compilation playthroughs on YouTube (QualityReactions, 2015a;
30 QualityReactions, 2015b; REACT, 2015a; REACT, 2015b). I also watched Marz (2017a; 2017b; 2017c; 2017d) playthroughs because she paid attention to the emotional aspects of the games where other Let’s Play videos did not take the story as seriously: Chris Smoove (2013) focused on humor and kept distance from the characters in his videos, Lilia (2017) was mostly quiet with little commentary, Hollow (2019) reacted emotionally but did not have the same level of input on characters that Marz (2017a; 2017b; 2017c; 2017d) provided, Gamefront Walkthroughs (2013) was intrusive with his commentary and did not pay attention to details enough to give much notable feedback, and while Stop Me Oh (2018) had more analysis on character, time limitations kept me from watching as many of her videos. These videos were only used to point out moments that I may have missed, and they served mostly as a reassurance that I chose the most appropriate scenes for a mimetic analysis. In order to double check details, I referenced some cinematically recorded playthroughs (Dansg08, 2013; SHN Survival Horror Network, 2015; and SIMA Games, 2013) that allowed me to quickly re-evaluate specific scenes I wanted to revisit. When possible, I watched YouTube clips of specific scenes that stood out to me (Andrew Puckett, 2014; CommandoKnight200, 2016; Egrka, 2013; FusionZGamer, 2013; GameRevolution GR, 2013; Generic Gaming, 2013a; Generic Gaming, 2013b; Grant Voegtle, 2015; IGN Walkthroughs, 2013a; IGN Walkthroughs, 2013b; Ishkoten, 2013a; Ishkoten, 2013b; Reds 3rd Dimension Gaming, 2013; TheBombayMasterTony, 2014; Video Games Source, 2013a; Video Games Source, 2013b; Video Games Source, 2014a; Video Games Source, 2014b). These were not used as a substitute for my playthrough, but to verify details in the notes that I had left vague or missing (ie: the city the hunters were in was Pittsburgh). Once I identified the scenes that I felt were the most important, I turned to completing a close reading of the game. While I was familiar with the concept of close reading due to my bachelor’s degree in English literature, I also looked at Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum’s (2011) in depth explanation of close reading as it applies to video games. According to their paper, a close reading lays “bare the faults and inconsistencies of a media artifact… [and is] a celebration of the many ways in which a text can create meaning” (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 289). Additionally, the paper looks at other theorists’ approaches, explains how analytical lenses are important, and suggests that more focus needs to be given to close reading as a methodology (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011). Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum’s (2011) analysis of close reading proposed multiple aspects of analysis; “inter-textuality” is defined as what makes close reading a process-driven practice dependent on the change between each reader’s reading and their situation at the time of reading (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 294). In my analysis, I blend this with their explanation of New Criticism which emphasizes the text itself (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 294). While I do not believe the emphasis should be on either reader or text only but the interaction of the two, what I take from their explanation of New Criticism is the understanding that a text must be looked at in the context that the text – here the game – was made, hence my mentioning of the cultural push toward dadification in games (See 3.2).
31 What I did not take from their analysis was the focus on deconstruction (defined as self- contradiction within the text (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 294). While there were moments of contradiction (as in the scenes that focus on gameplay to the detriment of story), I felt that in the context of identity creation, these were less important than the ways in which the player saw the theme emerge from the character of Joel. In an attempt to define narrative and text, Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum (2011) settle on the belief that “a text might be understood as a gestalt of medium and message” (p. 296). This aligns with my belief that ludological elements (medium) support narrative (message) and vice versa. I broke my analysis into parts to support this approach: a section on mental models that focuses on the ideal player’s understanding of Joel (inter-textuality); an exploration of the ludic elements that support the formation of these models (the narrative seen through the medium), and a thematic analysis that draws on the use of a lens for interpretation (a narrative of human relationships as the message). Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum (2011) identified some issues that may arise from a close reading of digital media. To begin, they state that indeterminacy will affect readings (two people may not experience the same things while playing) (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum, 2011). To deal with this, I first situate the reading as that of a specific ideal player whom I control for the variation of by saying that the closer to the ideal player (in the case of this thesis, mimetically reads and connects with Joel in The Last of Us), the more likely this experience is to happen. Furthermore, by choosing a linear game like The Last of Us, there is no open world or possibility of playing certain parts out of order. While there are conversations that players may not initiate, and game artifacts that they may not read, these elements of the game play a relatively small part in my analysis, and the idea that some people may not choose to interact with Ellie becomes a talking point in my analysis (5.13.4). As a linear game, there is little difference between The Last of Us and an annotated translation of a book that has notes on the text. There will be some readers who want the full experience of the information provided and some who want the full experience of an uninterrupted read. The variability is present but limited. The second issue mentioned by Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum (2011) is scope. While this is a concern for many games, I specifically chose The Last of Us for its manageable playtime (less than 20 hours), and linear design. Furthermore, by recording the playthrough and referencing videos on YouTube, it was quite easy to revisit parts of the games I wished to examine in more detail. Difficulty is the third and final factor that complicates a game analysis (Bizzocchi & Tanenbaum, 2011), but here my model accounts for that through form familiarity as described in section 2.8. By having the skill of the ideal player be an aspect that is discussed from the start, difficulty becomes less of an issue for the analysis. In terms of my own experience, as a lifelong gamer, the difficulty of The Last of Us did not distance me from the game as it might some players with less experience. As mentioned previously, this was not my first playthrough either; I played the game through to completion in when it was released for the PS3. In this way, I was able to experience the game as both a player and a critic, something that Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum (2011) refer to as “successful oscillation” (p. 301-302).
32 Like Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum (2011) suggest, I did not find it valuable to imagine a naïve or neutral player as my ideal. Rather, I embraced their explanation of a “performed player stereotype” (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 304). This aligned with my model’s stress on the ideal player as defined for individual analyses. While a naïve reader has their strengths, I believe that an ideal player as I describe them offers more flexibility and usefulness to analysts. In the case of this thesis, my ideal player is assumed to have never played the game before, but they are also assumed to have background knowledge on games in general and of Naughty Dog specifically. This is still a “constructed phenomenology13” as they define it, but it is more specific in design (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 303). Close reading as it is defined here shows the flexibility of the methodology as well as the need for the critic to carefully outline their approach. By first creating my model of the ideal player, I constrain the analysis to a very specific view. Furthermore, by looking at the game through a lens of human connection, I further limit the analysis. These limitations allowed me to identify certain scenes and focus on an in-depth analysis that constructs my argument for how an ideal player who focuses on a mimetic reading of Joel will see him fit their mental model of a good father and the everyman archetype. Furthermore, their existing mental model of father will (if it does not already) expand to include the experience of emotional connection.
13 “A reading of a performative experience. It represents a single reader’s experience of an artifact that can conceivably generate an infinitely varied set of possible experiences and readings” (Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum, 2011, p. 303).
33 5 APPLYING A MODEL: JOEL AND A FOUR SCENE ANALYSIS OF THEME
5.1. Implications of the Theme
Themes in stories are only as useful as the impact they have on the audience. Whether at the individual or societal level, stories give audiences new context to understand the type of person they are or the type of person they want to be. They propose ideas about the world and the people in it. With my focus on character, I will look at how the player’s understanding of Joel helps them consider what it means to be a “good” father, specifically in terms of connecting with other people. It gives players a mirror with which to examine their own life and society. It helps players contemplate what it means to connect with other people. As in most stories, the overarching theme in The Last of Us is one of good and evil, but it is presented as a comparison between isolation and connection, both in terms of societal connection and individual connection. The general theme, good and evil, has been found in countless stories in every medium, and, as in many other instances, the dividing lines in The Last of Us are not clearly drawn. In fact, there is very little traditional “good” to be found, and every character and action requires context to be understood. Good and evil in The Last of Us implies much more than a simple, “Do not do x.” It brings into question whether people without a structured society are inherently selfish, bending to the whims of their basest passions. This harkens back to philosophies such as Hobbes (2018) who holds that government is necessary to maintain order and suppress the natural tendencies of man (pp. 156- 157). The game teases out the many possibilities of societal participation: murderous, cannibalistic groups; Bill’s isolationism; David’s community that silently condones pedophilia; and, in contrast to those, the group where the player finds Joel’s brother Tommy – a society trying to survive in a world where they and their children can be independent and enjoy simple pleasures (Naughty Dog, 2014). While Tommy’s group with its focus on community building and mutual support of the members stands as the “good” option, there is no absolute good or evil. When the player listens to the conversations of the less savory groups, they are heard wishing for the same things Tommy’s community is pursuing (Naughty Dog, 2014). This brings into question why people are good, what “worthy” means, and whether or not a “worthy” individual is worth more than the unproven masses. Should a “good” person attempt to help humanity as a whole despite its flaws? Or should they protect those they love even at the cost of many? The Last of Us does not attempt to answer any of these questions. But it does give the player different perspectives from which to understand the intentions and motivations behind the choices being made by the characters. Often, the “why” is more important than the “what,” and Naughty Dog focuses heavily on the reasoning and motivation behind all the characters.
34 5.2. Joel’s Rejection of Humanity
Joel’s journey is one that starts and ends with value judgements on humanity’s worth. He believes that his daughter, Sarah, is worth his attention and focus, and at least partially because of her, Joel tries to go through life without causing issues (as seen through his conversation with Tommy about needing to keep his job despite disagreements with the contractor) (Naughty Dog, 2014). By the end of the game, it is clear that Joel has rejected humanity as a whole. In his eyes, they are not worth saving, especially at the cost required. He has seen the worst side of humanity and knows what evil exists. This rejection may be in part a rejection of himself. He has been a part of the worst – though to what extent is unknown. After Ellie and Joel are attacked by the hunters in Pittsburgh, she asks him how he knew the ambush was coming (Naughty Dog, 2014). “I’ve been on both sides” he admits, but when she presses him by asking if he killed a lot of innocent people, he simply grunts and tells her she can take that in whatever way she wants (Naughty Dog, 2014). One can imagine that in his years of struggling for survival, he did whatever he felt he had to in order to survive. The only things of worth in his life were Sarah and his brother, Tommy. Little is known about Joel’s life after Sarah’s death, but it is shown that he and Tommy had a falling out (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel witnessed the established orderly government break down, kill his daughter, and devolve into a fractured military state in which people are murdered out of fear (Naughty Dog, 2014). He has seen the dark side of the new society and has, self-admittedly, taken advantage of innocents. He does not attempt to portray himself as without failings, but if he has regrets, he hides those too. Just because Joel is being honest about his dark side, that does not mean he has bad intentions. It also does not mean that those who oppose him are in any way good. While the focus of this analysis is on Joel, comparison and context is necessary for true analysis. Since most of the discussion surrounding morality in The Last of Us revolves around Joel’s choice to save Ellie, in opposition to Marlene, her motivations must be examined as well (Harilal, 2018).
5.3. Marlene’s Attempt at Self-Justification and the Upper Hand
Both Marlene and Joel are old enough to remember the way life was before cordyceps. Joel believes there is nothing that can be done to fix humanity, and Marlene stubbornly refuses to admit this, even when she is beaten down (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel struggles against making connections; Marlene ostensibly makes the connections but is willing to literally sacrifice them for the common good (Naughty Dog, 2014). They are good foils for each other. Marlene, like Joel, has struggled to subvert the established status quo. Instead of working outside of the system and being content with that level of freedom, she worked to overthrow the current system and replace it with something new, a difficult and seemingly impossible task (Naughty Dog, 2014).
35 Through the audio clips found in the level leading up to saving Ellie, the player hears Marlene rationalize the cost of Ellie’s life in return for an attempt to find a cure (Naughty Dog, 2014). She is struggling to convince herself that the price is worth being paid, but she is not just weighing two choices – save humanity or save Ellie. Decisions are never made in a bubble. Marlene has had her people die in droves; she has felt powerless and ineffectual (Naughty Dog, 2014). Her motivation is not just for humanity. It is to protect herself from feeling like a fraud. It is to protect her from the guilt of what seems like needless death. It is to give the Fireflies a bargaining chip no one else has. Whoever holds the vaccine holds the power. While it was never portrayed as such, a vaccine is as much a power play as having weapons stockpiles, except greater in presentation and effect. Marlene’s motivation echoes Ellie’s own who tells Joel, “It can’t be for nothing” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The surgeons also feel this way: “After years of wandering in circles, we're about to come home, make a difference, and bring the human race back into control of its own destiny. All of our sacrifices and the hundreds of men and women who've bled for this cause, or worse, will not be in vain.” (Naughty Dog, 2014) But in addition to Marlene’s responsibility to her people, she promised Ellie’s mother, Anna, that she would take care of Ellie. Marlene’s choice was between guilt over the Fireflies and guilt over Anna. In the end, she makes the decision out of necessity: “I'm exhausted and I just want this to end... So be it” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She did not make the decision to sacrifice Ellie because she thought it was the best one to make. She made the decision because she felt she had no real choice. In comparison with Joel, this does not make her more or less moral. If anything, it means she was not strong enough to make a decision at all.
5.4. Ellie’s Guilt
The third consideration that has been brought up in the end decision is the opinion of Ellie herself. In online debate, Ellie’s lack of input is often cited (Brice, 2013; Hill, 2016). It seems that after all she’s been through, all the player has been through with her, it is forgotten that she is just a kid. With the information she had, she was ready to go through with the operation, but she always assumed there was life afterwards. After seeing the giraffes, she tells Joel that even though she would see the mission through to the end, “Once we’re done, we’ll go wherever you want” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She did not go into the operation knowing what the outcome would be. Marlene disregarded her opinion as much as Joel. In fact, Ellie probably never fully regained consciousness before being put into the operating room. When she awakens in the car, she has no recollection of the Fireflies at all (Naughty Dog, 2014). But should either Marlene or Joel have taken into account Ellie’s feelings? Yes, through the game Ellie had to “grow up” in the sense of putting aside the normal comparatively carefree years of a teenager, but experiencing difficult situations does not mean her brain developed any
36 more fully. If anything, the trauma has made her decision making less methodical and more reflexive. Ellie’s life has been one of loss from the beginning. She has no comparably idyllic past to look towards, so she does not have the same perspective as Marlene and Joel (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is a strength as much as a weakness. She sees the world as it is, but she has never felt truly safe. Her parents are dead; her best friend, Riley, was infected. Ellie lives on. She watched as Tess, Sam, and Henry died, but she continues (Naughty Dog, 2014). Ellie puts on a strong face, not because she is strong, but because she needs to appear that way. Nothing in her life has given her the time or place to be soft, to be a kid. Her opinion is that if she can help the world, she can make up for those who died. She did not know she was going to die, but even if she had, it makes no difference. She thinks that she can make right her friend’s death, her parents’. This type of thought has not come from the long contemplation of someone who has pondered their own motivation. It comes from guilt. It comes from self-loathing. She does not believe she deserved to live, and therefore, she is willing to die.
5.5. A Comparison of Frames – Making Sense of Perspectives
By presenting the player with these different frames of mind, the actions taken by every character take on a more nebulous quality. From Ellie’s perspective, dying to help in any way would give her worth. To Marlene, giving her people the chance of a cure shows that everyone who died for the Fireflies did not do so in vain, that she is not just, “an incompetent grunt,” as she says in her journal entry about losing Ellie (Naughty Dog, 2014). To Joel, saving Ellie means making up for Sarah’s death. He does not want to fail an innocent person who depended on him twice. Each of these characters is dealing with what it means to be a good person. Each one is motivated by guilt to different degrees. Regardless of the outcome, the motivation is what the player is supposed to understand. By isolating Joel and saying his decision was selfish, the assertion hints that a different decision would not have been as selfish. But everyone involved is making the decision from their own life-view. They all have a unique context, and none of them are selfless, not even Marlene, who struggles with her decision even after it is made. By having the players interact with these deep moral questions, they participate in acts of sense- making. This is precisely why the theme is so effective. In my own personal discussions, I have seen the polarization of players that is seen in the excepts below that discuss Joel’s character and decision to save Ellie: “I found Joel to be a straight-up bad person. He’s not complicated, morally gray, or whatever. He’s just a selfish asshole much like many protagonists in video games, and everything that happens in the game is for his benefit.” Brice (2013) “Joel may ostensibly be the hero of The Last Of Us, but the truth is that he does plenty of things that make him more of a villain.” Cheeda (2019)
37 “Joel is more than a standard hero character. He’s not inherently good nor bad; he’s human. He’s capable of judgment and anger, but he’s also filled with love to give for those who earn their place... Joel wasn’t just written. He wasn’t just given a personality. He was given life… He’s so complex and so convincingly developed that descriptions of him sound like you’re talking about a close friend.” (Mendez, 2017) “Seeing Joel transform like this, hearing his small-talk with Ellie on their journey, seeing his story unfold as led me to gain a greater appreciation for the small things in life. We never know what the future will bring. We never know when our time will come. Joel lost everything, but took the time to invest in a child and gained more than ever. We could all take a note from Joel’s book.” (Scarlet, 2015) These responses to Joel, from loathing to seeing him as a close friend, demonstrate the multiple approaches to interpretation that the gameplay provides support for, and the need to interpret is how players build meaning. Enactivism holds that sense-making happens when a person interacts with an environment, specifically one that provides a conflict (see 2.10). Naughty Dog (2014) uses multiple perspectives to create this conflict. They allow the player to see the context of many of the characters’ decisions. Without context, the players are not analyzing the game, but rather looking at a moral dilemma. The question – Does one save one arguably innocent girl or let her die and possibly save the world from a devastating infection? – is seemingly easy to answer. But when looking at relationships, power structures, and potential success, it becomes murkier. 5.5 Isolation and Connection: Protection and Loss By looking at Joel’s character development and the subsequent mental model that the ideal player creates and modifies, I will show how the initial model of father will guide the acceptance and understanding of Joel’s decision to save Ellie. My arguments are based on the understanding that the game equates isolation with evil and connection with good, but in order to better understand this concept, I will explore more deeply what I am going to call major themes. These are connection14, survival, and guilt. A character is always seen in comparison to their environment. In the game, the most evil people are those most lacking in connection while the characters who engender sympathy are those who attempt to experience connection. The issue is that those who pursue survival at all costs eschew relationships, thereby discarding their humanity, and those who experience connection, inevitably experience loss. Throughout the game, connection and survival are portrayed as opposing forces, but while this holds true for a basic pack survival mentality, individual loss of humanity destroys what it means to be human. To explain one interpretation of this game, I will look at key scenes and explain the mimetic read of characters. I will support this with the synthetic elements that are used to create those feelings, explaining how characters are purposefully designed to influence the player to feel a specific
14 Connection is defined here as the desire to be a part of something outside oneself for reasons beyond survival.
38 way. This will show that a mimetic reader is affected by the synthetic design even if the players are not aware of how it is being done. Players focusing on either design or experience will come away with the same understanding of theme, but they will have had different kinds of experiences, and will therefore have been affected in different ways.
5.6. Player Response to Joel
As discussed previously, there are critics who believe that Joel, by saving Ellie, commits an unforgivable evil. For the players that wanted to want to save her, however, this is the act that shows his redemption. Much of this difference in interpretation has to do with the players themselves being more or less connected to the characters. Some of this may have to do with personality. Faber and Mayer (2009) showed that certain personality types relate more or less with different archetypes; they completed a study that identified “prototypical archetypes” and demonstrated that certain personality traits (Based on the Big 5) predispose people to be drawn to specific characters. This is not the complete reason for the feeling of connection, however. The player response is also based on form familiarity, cultural familiarity, play setting, and player identity – mainly how close they are to the ideal player type who can experience the characters mimetically. In order to show how these affect character reception, I will discuss how the ludic aspects of the game both help and hinder the experience of narrative immersion15. The story will affect players differently based on their reason for playing and their own backgrounds – their mental models and play experience will dictate what they get out of the game. Since I cannot account for the many play variations that may arise, this analysis simply shows how Joel’s character and the design choices surrounding him affect the ideal player.
5.7. Overview of the Ideal Player
Because the range of play experiences is as diverse as the number of playthroughs, the point here is not to provide an exhaustive list of ways that the character of Joel may affect different people. Rather, the point is to understand the differences between players and what the ideal player is for this analysis. In this thesis, I define the ideal player as someone who is most capable of engaging in a mimetic reading of the game. I posit that through this effective mimetic read, the ideal player’s understanding of Joel as a good father will persist throughout the game while expanding their notion of a “good father” to one that includes emotional connection. Below, I describe the ideal player using the model proposed in section 2.8:
15 as defined by Nilsson, Nordahl, and Serafin (2016).
39
Figure 4: Thesis specific model of the ideal player who reads Joel mimetically as a good father and whose understanding of father expands to include the experience of and need for emotional connection. I propose that the ideal player as defined above will be the most likely to be predisposed to a mimetic playthrough. I specifically do not state that it this is a chosen approach because it is something that is done without conscious thought. Even with an ideal player, synthetic or mimetic analysis is not constant; a person’s tendency towards one or the other, however, is most controlled when these aspects are considered. While not discussed in this paper, it is also possible for players to avoid character analysis altogether, ignoring it in favor of game mechanics (ie: mastery of a hard difficulty or speed running) or engaging socially with other people present during the playthrough (ie: talking and joking through dialog, humorous or mastery-based streaming, etc). I also believe it is worth mentioning that, while I closely fit many of the categories above, I am not the ideal player. All players exist on a sliding scale from most unlike to most like the ideal player. In order to explain my thoughts, I outline where I stand below: Socio-Cultural Familiarity I am not from Texas, and because of that there are things I may have missed or understood differently than a native Texan. However, having grown up and lived almost exclusively in a rural town with blue collar family that holds many of the same values as Joel, I understand his background and outlook very well. In many ways, he even looks similar to my own father.
40 Having visited Texas a number of times, I did not see a reason, in respect to this game, to specify that the ideal player be aware of “Texan” culture as different from “rural American.” All that being said, I take issue with many of the outlooks, values, or assumptions that I have seen in my own culture. I would not say that I have a “strong unilateral bias against this culture,” but I do come into the game with an awareness of the negatives. While I do not believe this affected my view of Joel specifically, I cannot say that for sure. In ways, I think seeing the negative aspects of the culture allowed me to view Joel more favorably. He represents the good I see in rural culture: family focus, independence, self-reliance that develops the capacity to take on most things, a protective instinct, and a lack of fear for standing up to people in power. He still has a stubbornness that makes it hard to change his mind, but I do not see this as an unforgivable flaw. His flaws – emotionally closed, unavailable, and callous – are all results of trauma and pain, and while he may have hurt many people (emotionally, physically, etc), this story is his redemption story and the context of his behavior leads me to question whether he was “wrong” at all. I do think I am very near the ideal player in terms of Socio-Cultural Familiarity, because while I do not agree with everything that Joel thinks or does. I do understand it. Form Familiarity I do not like stealth games and there are areas that became annoying to me throughout my first playthrough. I ended up changing the difficulty to easy through the playthrough I completed for the thesis because the gameplay was getting in the way of my progression. The frustration was taking me out of the mindset needed to appreciate the story. Due to this bias, my experience ludically was much different from someone who chooses to play on the harder difficulties (and who is not removed from the story). I do not think that choosing to play on a different difficulty mode changes the mimetic approach to Joel, but since I hate having to sneak around, I cannot speak to other people’s experiences. I also hate horror games and jump scares. My ability to play The Last of Us at all is what leads me to believe it is not a horror game in any way. The moments exist in the game in such scarcity that I was able to get through it without issue. Perhaps it led me (in my first playthrough) to play more hesitantly than other people, but it was not a hindrance to a mimetic reading of Joel. I am most at ease with the shooter elements of the game and have played many games that have a similar third-person view and weapon system. This made the combat sections of the game fit into the narrative seamlessly. Overall, I am further from the ideal player in Form Familiarity than Socio-Cultural Familiarity, but I was able to overcome my biases by altering the difficulty to focus on the narrative aspects of the game. Player Identity I self-identify as a gamer and had every intention of immersing myself completely in the story and gameplay of The Last of Us. I readily approach all media with a desire to interact
41 emotionally with the work, and this was no exception. I felt no negative outside pressures influencing my playing the game. In my openness to experience, I am as close to the ideal player as possible. Play Setting I was able to play the game with little distraction. While my pets caused some interruptions and my husband was in the room with me for some periods of time, I was focused on the game more than my environment. I dedicated uninterrupted hours to every play session. The one less ideal aspect of the playthrough was the note-taking. While allowing me to reflect, it often pulled me out of the experience itself. I am grateful that this was not my first time playing because the notes were a detriment to the experience. I differed from the ideal playing through the note taking and in the lack of complete focus.
5.8. Structure of Analysis
Having examined the player who this analysis is based upon, the scenes that best illustrate the theme (connection as a means of thriving and base survival as the death of what it means to be human) are the following: The Opening: Game start – Tess and Joel meet Marlene Pittsburgh Hotel: Ellie saves Joel – Joel gives Ellie a gun Winter: Ellie is captured – She kills David The Ending: Joel wakes up with the Fireflies – Game end I will reference points outside of these scenes because there are character defining moments elsewhere in game, but they are not as important as these. The opening breaks Joel. Ellie saving Joel from the soldier is the impetus Joel needed to begin to trust her. Ellie’s encounter with David is a traumatic life changing moment for both of them. And the ending is a culmination of Joel’s life up until that point, branding him as evil in the minds of many, but to others, epitomizing his search for what matters in life. In each scene it will be shown that the mental model of good father is affected by Joel’s unwillingness to connect and his focus on survival. Since everything must be weighed in its own context, I will also mention how other characters are judged as good or evil based on their connection to those around them. In every case, characters who seek connection find sympathy with the player while those who are focused purely on survival are disregarded. Next, each section will look at the ludic factors that support the theme presented through character. Finally, the ways in which the theme was shown in each scene were discussed.
42 5.9. The Opening
The opening scene establishes Joel as a father. Schneider (2001), explains that the first information that a reader is given sets up the initial mental model of that character (p. 619). In The Last of Us, players are initially given the perspective of Joel’s daughter, Sarah, during the night that the cordyceps virus reaches their town. Because of this perspective, the first glimpse of Joel is as a father; this is essential to the player’s mental model of Joel. It is also immediately established that he is a hard worker, but his reason for working so hard is for Sarah. This two-part description (hard-working father) is the first glimpse the player has of Joel. He is getting home late and having an argument with his brother, who he works with. He is heard saying that “the contractor” gets to make whatever decision is being discussed and they need to live with that (Naughty Dog, 2014). While Joel’s brother may have qualms with how their boss is running the business, Joel is trying to maintain the peace because he has responsibilities (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is not something the player needs to infer. One of the first things Joel says is, “I can’t lose this job” (Naughty Dog, 2014).
5.9.1. Mental Models: Joel as the Everyman, Father, and Protector
The ideal player sees this small exchange and sees, in Joel, the people they know or know of. With a rural American background, the ideal player knows fathers who work until they are dead tired, coming home late and exhausted in order to give their families advantages that they did not have themselves. The player infers that the hard job is the best Joel could obtain, that he probably had no formal higher education. His traits – father, hard worker, blue collar, responsible, focused – fit well in the mental model the ideal player has of a father. In the interaction with Sarah, Joel comes off as harsh at first. With his workday and the time of night, however, his exasperated focus on Sarah being in bed makes him a better father than if he had yelled at or ignored her being up late. Once he realizes she is awake to celebrate his birthday, even though he is tired and frustrated, he banters playfully with her and is visibly touched by her gift (Naughty Dog, 2014). When she falls asleep again, he carries her lovingly up to bed, and the player sees that their relationship is good even if it is mostly just teasing and spending time together (Naughty Dog, 2014). As Sarah, the player feels like they can trust him. He is strong but loving, guarded but still appreciative. He did not even remember it was his birthday, and despite being upset about his old watch being broken, he did not replace it (Naughty Dog, 2014). He was probably spending the money on Sarah, rather than himself. The mental model of Joel expands to good father. While very little is known about either character, their chemistry – the trust and affection that they share – is easy to see. Another detail of this opening scene which will become important later is that Sarah’s mother is gone (Naughty Dog, 2014). While the reason why is never specified, there are no pictures of her in the house and Sarah has nothing in her room suggesting that she spends time with her or remembers her in any sense, not even from affectionate stories told by her family (Naughty Dog,
43 2014). It is therefore reasonable to believe that Sarah’s mother left the family when Sarah was very young. This loss, regardless of who is to blame, may have started or strengthened Joel’s need for control and fear of betrayal in relationships. This aspect of his life is never explored, and his way of handling death later in game, with Tess, Henry, and Sam, is to not talk about it and move on. Taking these later reactions into account, it is possible that Sarah’s mother died while Sarah was very young, and Joel just erased her from their life and never talks about her. However, the reason for leaning toward the former possibility is that if Joel cared for Sarah’s mother even half as much as he did for Sarah, there would have been some mention of her from Tommy at some point, especially with Tommy’s recent marriage. This never happens, leading towards the conclusion that it is more likely that Joel’s wife abandoned him and Sarah (Naughty Dog, 2014). As explained in section 2.2, initial mental models often align to archetypes that form the basis of understanding character, and experiences with media allow us to expand and change these models to understand greater human complexity and individuation. To reiterate, I do not consider archetypes as the result of a collective unconscious as Jung believed but rather view them as the result of a collective culture in which audiences are exposed and interact with the various archetypes from birth. Despite the different reasoning behind archetypes, however, Jung’s archetypal characters persist in Western culture and will be pertinent to the audience’s understanding of Joel (Faber and Mayer, 2009). In terms of The Last of Us, Joel is closest to the everyman, an archetype that Faber and Mayer (2009) define as: “Represented by the working-class common person; the underdog; the neighbor. Persevering, ordered, wholesome; usually candid and sometimes fatalistic. Often self- deprecating; perhaps cynical, careful, a realistic and often disappointed humanist.” (Faber and Mayer, 2009) While not self-deprecating, the rest of the description fits Joel perfectly. He epitomizes the individualist mindset of America. A Texan and a contractor, he is struggling but doing his best. He may be seen as an underdog since he is working for a company where there are struggles and his wife has abandoned him, leaving him as a single dad, but he perseveres. The player is supposed to see him as the guy everyone knows: a father, or grandfather, the neighbor that filled their bike tire with air, or the guy down the street that would shovel their grandparents’ sidewalk. Goodhearted but jaded, he probably drinks beer while watching football. In the summer he grills and curses the direction in which society is headed, though being from the South he may not use foul language in front of children or women. He would rather talk about when his kid last changed their car’s oil rather than something more abstract. Considering socio-cultural familiarity, the ideal player knows this guy. Beyond a good father, the second thing that Joel epitomizes is a protector. He is attempting to hold together the things he believes are of value in the world. In the opening scene, it is clear that he values Sarah. Everything he does revolves around her. When playing as Joel, she is the focus,
44 not the hordes of attacking infected. He gives his gun to Tommy, opting to carry Sarah instead (Naughty Dog, 2014).
Figure 5 Tommy holding back the infected while Joel attempts to carry Sarah to safety (Naughty Dog, 2014) Joel does not commit violence to no end; he does it to protect. When Sarah is killed – not by the cordyceps infected monsters but by a person, uninfected, who is mindlessly following orders that are given out of fear in a situation that is out of anyone’s control – Joel loses his daughter and, with her, his faith in anything worthwhile in the world (Naughty Dog, 2014). When he rocks her in his arms, he cries, “It’s going to be okay. Baby, stay with me… Don’t do this to me, Baby, don’t do this to me. Come on” (Naughty Dog, 2014). As he sobs, the ideal player will feel the pain, not just because of the character that has been established, but for the pain Joel feels, the lack of control, that sense of losing the only thing one has, and the broader understanding that the world is against the person that Joel represents. The ideal player will feel the loss as if it happened to them or someone they loved. The mental models being accessed reach beyond Joel himself to the player’s lived experience. While much of Joel’s character is established through traditionally cinematic means, the next section shows that there is more to the way that the player experiences him as a character.
5.9.2. Ludic Impact: Playing as Sarah and Joel
Playing as Sarah at the beginning of the game is a choice that allows the player to see Joel from an outside perspective. The player gets to feel the terror of the unknown disaster from the eyes of a child. Walking sleepily through the house, the player feels the tension as Sarah calls for her
45 father (Naughty Dog, 2014). The terror grows inside of Sarah and, through her, to the player. Her movement changes, getting quicker as she becomes more frightened (Naughty Dog, 2014). Her voice wavers and changes pitch to reflect her fear (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is a purer terror than that of Joel going downstairs and confronting his neighbor outside. It is a terror of someone who depends on another person for everything in their life. It is the terror of someone who has very little control over their own survival. Playing through this rather than witnessing it, also makes the player see Joel as “their father” rather than as “a father.” For the ideal player, this is important since much of their future understanding will attempt to link to their mental model of good father. By having the player take the role of Sarah, little needs to be done as Joel and Tommy both handle the situation. Sarah watches like the player does – as a mostly silent observer. The game limits the player’s control to match hers. Looking around the car while Tommy and Joel talk, the player still embodies Sarah, and that defines their experience (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player feels like a child watching their close-knit rural world fall apart. This one gameplay choice frames the rest of the game. When the player control switches to Joel, the player’s mindset is already that of Sarah’s. While, as Joel, the player would have protected her regardless, the player feels a bond with Joel that would have been different had he not been seen through Sarah’s eyes. Player attention is split between protected and protector. The player identifies with Sarah and thus Joel’s attempts to save her feel like attempts to save ourselves. When player control shifts to Joel, it is of note that at no time is he not holding Sarah protectively (Naughty Dog, 2014). This strongly affects gameplay by once again limiting the player’s actions. Joel gives his gun to Tommy, showing his trust in him, but also making the experience more focused on Sarah than the enemies (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player remains connected to Sarah through Joel, and through this intimacy, the player begins to connect to Joel, not as a fighter, but as a protector. Here, a low level of form familiarity is required since the player is in the first situation where they are able to be killed. Someone with very little form familiarity could become frustrated in this part if they do not understand movement, direction, or environmental clues. This competency, while often taken for granted, becomes essential from this point forward.
5.9.3. Thematic Analysis: Sarah’s Death
In terms of archetype, while Joel is the everyman, Sarah is the innocent16. The things she represents – purity, peace, happiness, simplicity, goodness– die with her in the society (Faber and Mayer, 2009). She serves as a metaphor of what will become the idealized state of the world, a paradise in comparison to life after the cordyceps. Sarah is a happy, loving child who cares about her father and is scared for her own wellbeing as well as his. Not much more is known about her, but her character does not need more than this.
16 “The pure, faithful, naive, childlike character. Humble and tranquil; longing for happiness and simplicity—a paradise. Often a traditionalist; saintly; symbolizing renewal” (Faber and Mayer, 2009, p. 309)
46 Her fear is believable, as is her shock when Joel kills their infected neighbor. Joel is going through the same experience, but as the strong responsible adult, he has to protect Sarah. The perspective of playing as Sarah primes the player for the experience of Sarah’s murder. Her death impacts every judgement call that players make of Joel throughout the game. When she is shot, Joel’s character is inextricably changed. His pain and anger are palpable. The player is helpless as they watch the person he was breaks, and they understand. Who they were dies as well. Like the player, Tommy watches on in horror as his brother’s world is shattered. For this moment, it is essential that the player intent is one of experiencing the emotional aspect of the story as well as the gameplay. If here, the player rejects the emotion being portrayed, they will lose an essential connection to Joel. This is what separates the ideal player from others. A character who will be able to read Joel mimetically, must be willing to focus on the feeling being portrayed. For example, a speed runner may see the cutscenes and dialog as hurdles to manage. A streamer may talk through the scene and make jokes. For this analysis, the ideal player is one who partakes in the experience happening in game. This is the moment that defines Joel’s character, and as such, the motivations of the characters need to be analyzed. Everything the player learns about Joel in the opening scene is defined by connection. He is a family man. He works with his brother and everything he does is for his daughter and their life together (Naughty Dog, 2014). When they escape, it is as a family, not as everyone for themselves (Naughty Dog, 2014). Carrying Sarah, Joel runs to the soldier and expects to find shelter and help. He explains that Sarah is his only concern, “It’s her leg, I think it’s broken” (Naughty Dog, 2014). He was driven to find her safety, and that safe place was an illusion.
47
Figure 6 Joel and Sarah approaching the soldier who kills Sarah (Naughty Dog, 2014) From the soldier’s view, he is handling a volatile situation that could get out of hand very quickly. Presumably very little was known about the cordyceps by anyone. While it was already out of their control, no one knew it. The soldier is trusting his superiors in order to ensure the survival of those they believe they can help. Before shooting, he tries weakly to make a case for Joel and Sarah, “Sir, there’s a little girl… but… yes sir” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then, he raises the gun and shoots (Naughty Dog, 2014). The soldier and his commanding officer chose survival; Joel chose connection. One is viewed as a victim, the other as a monster or at the very best, the tool of a someone in over their head who is making desperate commands. In the decision making of the army, there were no individuals, only more or less likely hosts. When Tommy saves Joel by killing the soldier, it was viewed by the ideal player as warranted (Naughty Dog, 2014). The everyman is the underdog, and the player understands the moral imperative to stand against the powers that disregard perspectives of individual human life. Tommy was protecting his brother. He chose connection and survival. This balance defines the game. As established, this opening sequence establishes Joel in the player’s mind as first a father, then a good father, and then protector. He has made all of his choices up to this point for Sarah. From this initial mental model, the player will be tested to see if the actions Joel takes throughout the game support this reading of him. Based off of the everyman, the mold of a good protective
48 father can expand to include many things, but it will break if Joel’s character takes on traits that more closely resemble those of another archetype.
5.10. Part 1: The Evolution of the Ideal Player’s Mental Models
Understanding Joel’s character involves seeing him in the light of his background and culture. The opening scene and the first chapter serve to show Joel’s transition from the pre-cordyceps society to the post-apocalyptic world in which the game takes place. The connection to the pre- cordyceps world is where Joel will feel the most familiar to the ideal player, and this establishes the mental model that the rest of the game relies upon. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of Joel and the characters around him help the player contextualize a new normal that will allow them to rationalize the changes they see in Joel.
5.10.1. Mental Models: Joel projects strength through a lack of emotionality
After the time jump of 20 years, Joel wakes up and the player sees him react not unlike the ideal player would expect. There is a soft knock on the door and when he opens it, Tess, his smuggling partner and romantic interest, is there scraped and bruised (Naughty Dog, 2014). Seeing her state, Joel is upset, which he shows as anger and frustration; this is something rural people are trained to expect from masculine men since they are not supposed to talk about emotion or feeling which could be portrayed as weakness (Naughty Dog, 2014). It fits Joel who is already established as someone who does not talk about his problems or feelings: first telling Tommy they would talk about the contractor tomorrow, then brushing off Sarah’s question about it being a rough day (Naughty Dog, 2014). The claim about rural men viewing emotionality as weakness is more than anecdotal. Levi Gahman (2017) performed a study on masculinity, disability and place; the “country boys” interviewed were, like Joel, straight, working/middle class, and white (54 out of 60). To summarize the general response of participants when asked about their emotions and bodies, Gahman (2017) quoted a participant who said, “The most important thing you need to know… is that country boys don’t like to talk about their emotions and bodies” (p. 710). When discussing the men’s behavior in focus groups, Gahman (2017) described them as “measured surrounding emotion (unless expressing anger or disagreement)” (p. 707). While this anger is obviously a problem in terms of how Joel connects with others, it is a character trait that needs to be understood in context that those with experience or deep understanding of the rural environment will be less likely to react strongly to. For the ideal player, this may make Joel harsh or hard, but it does not make him “bad” and if anything, sadly, it strengthens their understanding of him as a father.
49
Figure 7 Joel in The Last of Us Remastered (Naughty Dog, 2014) To expand on this context, it is important to note that when the title screen read “20 years later,” it seems to me that it meant exactly 20 years later. This means that the day the game starts is his birthday and the anniversary of his daughter’s death. When Tess walks in, Joel demands to know where she was, and when pressed about them needing to do “the drop” together, she says, “Yeah, well, you wanted to be left alone, remember?” (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is probably a habit of Joel’s each year, and through Tess’s angry sarcasm the emotionally closed aspect of his personality is further cemented (Naughty Dog, 2014). Even if they are romantic partners as well as business partners, he does not share his emotions and feelings with her. From the alcohol that was seen on the table and the gasp as though from a nightmare when he wakes up, he is more than likely not even allowing himself to process them (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel’s hardness is more than emotional. Shooting his neighbor had been shocking and terrible for him and Sarah, but now he thinks nothing of asking Tess if she killed the two men that jumped her. She laughs sardonically when he asks, “Are these assholes still with us?” (Naughty Dog, 2014). They are both used to the cruelty and danger of the new world, a world where being infected is the biggest fear and basic society has broken down. In order to not be taken advantage of, Joel and Tess have both become killers, though for what is seen in the game, “murderers” may be too much of a stretch in terminology. They are surviving together without the emotional connection that could give their existence meaning. They are in a dangerous job, smuggling things like weapons and pills, but while it is not known why Tess made her choices in life, it is easier to speculate why Joel made his (Naughty Dog, 2014).
50 In terms of moral judgement, the player cannot judge Joel and Tess as smugglers alone since, in this world, very little is known about what passes as a governing (and thus regulating) body. To subvert that system is not inherently morally “wrong” even if it is against a regional rule. The title of smuggler alone cannot even begin to predict Joel, or any person’s, morality. To muddy the moral waters further, as the game continues, Joel is seen to have a history with the Firefly resistance, even if he is not currently on good terms with them. In many ways, in the ideal player’s worldview, this makes his criminality the moral imperative. An underdog standing up to tyrannical rule is something the ideal player was taught was right and necessary. As Joel and Tess walk the streets, the player sees that there are very few options for the survivors, and the understanding that Joel is doing the best he can in a broken world is reinforced. Long lines to get food, curfews, shortages, fear, and an explosion then skirmish between the military and Fireflies all build the image of a false safety on the brink of collapse (Naughty Dog, 2014). The lack of opportunity in this new world furthers the understanding that Joel and Tess do not have a favorable alternative to the profession they have chosen. Because of this, finding out Joel is a smuggler in no way breaks the player’s understanding of him as a good though perhaps overly-protective father struggling with the loss of his child. In his position, the player assumes he is doing the best that can be expected. Joel has gone from living his life for another (Sarah) to having no direction at all. When Joel is given the task of getting Ellie to the Fireflies, he does it for the reward: the guns that the Fireflies promise him and Tess. He does not want the job, resents being a babysitter to Ellie and up until Tess’ death, he has no intention of getting involved at anything more than a surface level. As Tess says when trying to help him accept the situation, “She’s just cargo” (Naughty Dog, 2014). All of these feelings towards Ellie do not detract from who the ideal player sees him as. His pain was caused by losing his daughter. The fact that it still affects him so greatly just reinforces the fact that he was and is a dedicated father. His approach to the world as a go-it-alone because everyone is out to get you has been justified. What he has suffered since Sarah’s death is not known, but it can be assumed from the overlaid transmission of the Fireflies on the opening credits that it was not easy. By choosing to go with Ellie, Joel is choosing to open himself up to a situation where he does something more than survive. Whether it is seen as an attempt to follow through with Tess’ last request or a lack of direction that means he mostly acts on inertia, he is no longer just surviving. He will not be making deals for ration cards. He has a goal to motivate and guide him. This is not yet a connection, but it is something more than survival.
5.10.2. Context: Comparison to the Other Characters Around Him
As with the soldier who shot Sarah, in this opening scene, the soldiers who are managing the quarantine zone are protecting people’s lives. They are attempting to ensure survival, but it is done in a way that fosters a feeling of fear rather than safety. They scan people and immediately kill those who test positive for cordyceps (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is a procedure that guarantees no one turns, but it is also one that has the potential to be abused. The procedure
51 leaves no room for the consideration of broken equipment, false readings, or, as in Ellie’s case, immunity. In the opening scene, walking past the line of kneeling people, the one civilian even pleads, “The test is wrong!” (Naughty Dog, 2014). This could be desperation, but the player does not know that for sure. The military is not presented in a way to engender sympathy. They do not care about individuals; they do not focus on connection. They are present to maintain control and help people survive. That is it, a bare minimum. In a world like this, many people rationalize their behavior as necessary for survival, but that does not mean they accept their way of life without reservations. The older generation remembers a life where connections were more than a liability. Tess for one, is aware of the issue with how they live within their society. When she is yelling at Joel right before he finds out she is infected, she screams, “What do you know about us? About me?” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She adds “We’re shitty people Joel! It’s been that way for a long time!” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She lived her life to survive, but without finding meaningful connection, she acknowledges the moral issues she struggled with. Joel’s protector instinct is what shows he has not given over completely to the survival at all costs mentality. He was angry at Tess even though she succeeded in getting the ration cards because he wanted to make sure she was safe. This level of care for other people is the only part of his humanity that seeps through the anger and pain. Later as Tess is telling him to run, even knowing she is infected, he mutters that he can fight with her. Like the soldiers who seek to gain control through violence, in this moment, Joel is shown to have no control over the world. He feels that violence is his only recourse. Even if he killed every soldier chasing them, there would be nothing he could do to protect Tess. But violence is the last tool that allowed him to feel some minimum level of control. It is a visceral impulse. He rationally knows he cannot save her, but he can fight which would feel like doing something.
5.10.3. Thematic Analysis: Suppression of Feelings
Tess and Joel’s interaction is just another supporting detail for how the player views Joel’s interaction with Ellie. Not wanting to get emotionally attached to a teenage girl who is close in age to his own daughter when she died makes sense for Joel’s character, especially now that the player has seen his change from the intro scene. His emotional wall was present with Sarah, and it was obvious with Tess. He had a falling out with Tommy who was his last connection to his old life; so, the emotional barrier would inevitably be present with Ellie. Their relationship is very perfunctory, and follows the rule that Joel established right after Tess died: “You don’t bring up Tess, ever. Matter of fact, we just keep our histories to ourselves” (Naughty Dog, 2014). This focus on suppressing feelings as a means of getting through life is one of the tenets of the survival end of the connection spectrum. Joel needs to be able to get on with life and that means not wasting time mourning things that cannot be changed. Things like death. Ellie has been exposed to death her entire life, but she still seeks connection with the living. She is fiercely protective of Marlene who has looked after her since the death of Ellie’s mother, Anna (Naughty Dog, 2014). Ellie is aware of and attentive to feelings – her own and other people’s – even if only to the most extreme (ie: mourning the loss of someone close). In a rare moment of
52 vulnerability, Ellie admits to Sam that her biggest fear is “ending up alone” (Naughty Dog, 2014). In a world of infected monsters, a lack of connection and loneliness is the thing she is most concerned about.
Figure 8 Ellie overlooking the river at the end of the game (Naughty Dog, 2014) As soon as Tess is dead, Joel falls back on the understanding that he is the one who is in charge, capable, and knows everything. With Ellie this is understandable. She is fourteen years old and has limited life experience. Expecting her to act like Tess would be irresponsible and unrealistic. Expecting her to have essentially no emotional reaction to anything, however, is a little harsher. The ideal player understands that this harshness represents not an intended coldness, but rather a projection of perceived strength. The ideal player understands that in rural culture the suppression of one’s feelings is seen as a strength. A recent study by Cheesmond, Davies, & Inder (2019) reviewed eleven articles published from 1999 to 2017 on rural adults reservations about seeking mental health; it was found that stoicism is one of the four “attitudinal barriers” that were mentioned in all but one of the articles. The review of “stoicism” fits the description of Joel’s behavior quite well. The article explains that stoicism is seen as “self-sufficiency” and “fierce independence” which stand as ideals in rural culture, particularly in regard to masculine identity which is associated with, “strength, independence, and denial of weakness” (Cheesmond, Davies, & Inder, 2019, p. 49). Even the ideal player who notes the type of emotional damage this treatment may have on Ellie, sees that his harshness is just another consequence of emotional isolation and an attempt to control uncontrollable situations. The player understands that Joel has not learned healthy coping
53 mechanisms and is projecting his own pain at her. This actually fits in with the everyman’s cynicism. Joel is still a good father; he’s just a good father whose prolonged, unacknowledged mourning manifests as anger. This is not an excuse for his cold behavior, but for now, the ideal player can give him some leeway. After all, Joel has not accepted his role as surrogate father to Ellie. Even much later in game, he is fighting off any parental attachment. Attempting to pass her off to Tommy, Ellie confronts Joel afraid of being abandoned, and he answers her vulnerability coldly: “…You’re not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad. And we are going our separate ways” (Naughty Dog, 2014). His pain is still too fresh, and remembering his daughter dying in his arms, it is hard for the ideal player to hold that against him, even if it does cause them to question him. This is where some internal conflict may arise, even with those players who are very close to the ideal player. This conflict is also where modifications of mental models may be primed. The player waits for him to give in and realize there is still life to be lived, love to be given, and connections to be made. The player’s judgement is being held because while the ideal player still sees Joel as a good father to Sarah, his behavior towards Ellie is lacking. His treatment of Ellie is where he begins to crack the mental model the player has for him. To Ellie, he is not a good father, and that is what the ideal player is hoping will change.
5.10.4. Ludic Impact: Quarantine Zone
The slow walk through the quarantine zone gives the player a chance to see the world in which Joel operates. While the player follows Tess, they can listen to people’s conversations, and get an understanding of the morale of the population. While walking, though Joel has done nothing violent, if the player bumps into a guard, they will push Joel back. Do it again and they shoot him. The guards may be overreacting, but their job is not to find out what is wrong with anyone, it is to prevent the cordyceps from spreading. There is no reason for them to take chances in this world. Preserving human life means killing those that might be infected, and in a hostile world, control is sought through violence before understanding. Seeing this in a cinematic is one thing, but testing the boundaries and being killed makes the entire quarantine zone feel less safe. While some of the other indications may be easily overlooked, by playing the game, the tension that the military projects more immediate. The player guards their behavior because they feel unsafe. While I do not have time to discuss the scene in detail, later when escaping Pittsburgh, Joel verbalizes his feelings towards this approach. Seeing the dead in the cars that litter the streets Ellie asks, “What happened here” (IGN Walkthroughs, 2013b). If the player chooses to respond to Ellie, she adds, “Your fellow hunters do this” (IGN Walkthroughs, 2013b)? Joel is quick to reply: “Cute. And no, my money’s on the military… can’t let everyone in… Dead people don’t get infected. You sacrifice the few to save the many” (IGN Walkthroughs, 2013b) “That’s kind of shitty,” Ellie says, and Joel’s reply is simply “Yeah” (IGN Walkthroughs, 2013b). His reply is tinged with the bitterness he feels for the military that was willing to sacrifice the life of his daughter and himself for the chance that they were infected. Much is felt in that “yeah”: his
54 anger, resentment, and hatred for those who stop looking at people at human beings and instead view them as potential threats. This could have been another cutscene, but instead, this is another example where having the player walk through the broken cars and bodies is more impactful. The player feels the emptiness more because no matter where they look, there is evidence of the sheer lack of empathy. Playing the game through Tess’ death is another aspect where the very act of playing changes the tone of the game. When the player is running with Ellie, Tess is still alive. Ellie is shaken by leaving Tess behind. Gunshots are heard, and Joel tells Ellie, “Just keep pushing forward” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Without pausing gameplay, at the balcony overlook Tess’ body can be seen; Ellie laments, “Tess…” but then adds seconds later, “They’re gonna be here soon” (Naughty Dog, 2014). By not making this a cinematic, the player, like Ellie and Joel does not have time to process the death. It becomes something they have to compartmentalize. While the game gave the player time to grieve for Sarah, Tess was not given that luxury. The world has changed. This is discussed in much greater detail in section 5.13.3. Much of the gameplay between the opening and Tess’ death consists of the difficulty common to stealth games sneaking around Robert’s men or soldiers, or the runners and clickers (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player is solving simple puzzles that add to the game only in that there is diversity of play (Naughty Dog, 2014). If the player’s form familiarity is not high enough, here the monotony and difficulty of some of these parts takes away from the story more than adds to it. This establishes both Joel and Tess as capable survivalists, but it also makes the game more about competency than connection. The player has to put effort in these moments into remembering the stakes. When Tess is alive, she often takes Ellie with her, eliminating the player’s need to focus on anyone but themselves. When they are all together, Ellie is neither a liability nor an advantage. While this indeed makes the gameplay easier, it makes Ellie of no importance in these sections. The focus is on the player overcoming obstacles on their own; it mimics Joel’s understanding of the world. The only thing that matters is how the player performs. As Joel and Ellie build a connection, Ellie slowly becomes more important to the gameplay. She begins to give Joel ammunition and even jumps on the back of attackers distracting and stabbing them. The ludic importance of Ellie is a metaphor of connection. Her importance increases to the player as her importance increases to Joel. This is seen more in the next section.
5.11. Part 2: Ellie Saves Joel’s Life
Ellie is a hero17 archetype in the making: “courageous” and “impetuous” from the beginning, she becomes a “warrior,” “rescuer,” and “crusader” (Faber and Mayer, 2009, p. 309). Her task to prove her worth as the definition says is obvious from her approach to Joel and herself; her
17 “Represented frequently by the courageous, impetuous warrior. Noble rescuer and crusader; must often undertake an arduous task to ‘prove their worth’ and later become an inspiration. Symbolically the ‘dragonslayer’—the redeemer of human strength” (Faber and Mayer, 2009, p. 309).
55 immunity is “the redeemer of human strength” (Faber and Mayer, 2009, p. 309). That being said, she is developing into the hero from a sad broken echo of the innocent archetype that Sarah represented. No longer pure in the sense of the pre-cordyceps world, she is still faithful, naïve, and childlike; unsure instead of humble, anxious instead of tranquil, she still wants happiness and simplicity, and her existence as immune is representative of a renewed paradise (Faber and Mayer, 2009, p. 309).
5.11.1. Ellie Keeps Trying to Connect
Despite Joel’s emotional wall, Ellie’s sarcastic banter and playfulness mirrors Sarah from the beginning. She has to put up with Joel because he is her protection and guide on a difficult path, but she also keeps talking to him because she has the childlike amazement at seeing the world for the first time. Her persistence continually requires Joel to acknowledge and engage with her. Joel’s biggest issue with Ellie is balancing protection and trust. Despite attempting to avoid attachment, Joel cannot help but feel protective. This is two-fold: he has a natural instinct to protect, and it is easier to believe a child deserves and needs protection. Ellie is perceptive, and she sees that to Joel people are only as worthwhile as they are useful. She does not know his past, so she takes this at face value. Joel makes it known that he does not believe that Ellie is competent. The danger of this is seen early on when on the way to Bill, Joel needs to shoot attacking infected while hanging upside down as Ellie tries to cut him down. Ellie is completely unable to protect herself, but she manages to keep her cool and save Joel. Here Joel begins to develop a seed of trust towards Ellie. Yet even after this, when Bill tells them to “gear up” and Ellie tries to take a gun insisting she needs one, Joel shuts her down immediately: “No you don’t” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She asserts that she can handle herself, but he does not waver in the slightest. Despite this interaction demonstrating a lack of trust, the protective instinct that it shows is the first thing that will begin to redeem Joel as a father. The player has seen that Joel is in pain and has seen him shutting everyone out of his life emotionally. The only way for him to be redeemed is to let someone in. Most of Joel and Ellie’s relationship evolution is slow (and thus believable), but a big moment that pushes their relationship forward is when she saves him from being drowned in the hotel in Pittsburgh (Naughty Dog, 2014). As mentioned above, she has been demanding a gun to help protect them for some time and keeps being denied. However, when Joel drops his gun during a scuffle in the hotel, Ellie appears, picking it up and shooting the man who is attempting to kill him (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel rips himself out of the water and immediately looks over to Ellie who is standing shocked at what she just did. “Man… I shot the hell outta that guy, huh?” she says looking stunned (Naughty Dog, 2014). At first Joel sounds approving as he replies, “Yeah, you sure did,” but when Ellie’s emotions start to kick in and she sits down saying she feels sick, Joel’s head whips around and he falls back to the only emotion he knows: anger (Naughty Dog, 2014). He chastises her for not staying back like he told her (Naughty Dog, 2014). That was the rule after all: what
56 he said was supposed to go (Naughty Dog, 2014). His initial reaction hints that he momentarily considered leaving her with the gun, symbolic of his trust in her, but afraid for her, he turns around and takes it. There is a lot going on in this moment. Joel may be upset that Ellie is being forced to lose her innocence, that murder is her only means of survival, and that he cannot protect her from the world as it is. He may also feel that her “feeling sick,” a completely understandable emotional reaction, shows that she is not able to handle killing people, even to protect herself (Naughty Dog, 2014). He may be angry at the world because it is destroying all that society once stood for: kids being kids etc. All these feelings result in him angrily telling her that he’s lucky she didn’t accidentally shoot him (Naughty Dog, 2014). Far from a thank you, he calls her “a goddamn kid,” and further separates her level of ability from his (Naughty Dog, 2014). Since Ellie is not one to back down, she pushes the subject, making it obvious that she knows that he would have died without her. Here as elsewhere, the acting behind the scenes shines and Joel’s eyes dart back and forth as he realizes she is right (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player sees some of his humanity come back at this verbal loss for words. He knows that she is right, but true to his form, he ignores it and says, “We gotta get going” (Naughty Dog, 2014). He never wants to talk about anything that is slightly uncomfortable, and this is something that haunts him. He cannot protect people in this new world. He could not protect Sarah or Tess, and now Ellie has shown that she is capable. She had to be his protector. In the next scene, Joel has had time to process his feelings. They stumble upon more sentries and Ellie thinks he is going to leave her behind again (Naughty Dog, 2014). After another outburst where Ellie demands that it makes more sense to let her help, Joel does just that; he hands her a gun and acknowledges her ability by saying that she seems to know her way around a gun (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is a moment of validation for Ellie, but she shows her maturity by not being too sure of herself. When she says the only rifle she ever shot was a BB gun at rats, instead of insulting her, Joel acknowledges her maturity by saying that “it’s the same basic concept” (Naughty Dog, 2014). This exchange is dripping in rural American culture. Firstly, he uses the word “reckon,” immediately reminding the player that Joel is from the South (Naughty Dog, 2014). He then shows her how to hold the gun and cautions her about the kick and leaning into the stock (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is a speech that all rural kids have heard from someone. It is recognizable. As he walks her through using the gun, his eye contact shows her he believes she is competent (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player expects him to tell her she has to respect the weapon, like the traditional talk that is given to kids learning how to use a gun. Joel does not do this; he does not have to (Naughty Dog, 2014). She knows, and he is acknowledging that. Once Ellie says, “I got this,” Joel leaves and gives her the closest thing to a thank you he can: “Just so we’re clear… It was either him or me” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Through all this, the mental model of father is brought back to the player’s mind. He is stepping back into the role, consciously, and that means opening up. This is the closest to vulnerable the player has seen Joel since Sarah’s death. It is not much, but it is something. Ellie sees it too: as
57 he swings down to take on dozens of enemies, she looks after him and says, “you’re welcome” (Naughty Dog, 2014).
5.11.2. Ludic Impact of Connection
The issue with Joel’s approach to the world is that with Ellie seeking his approval, whether or not it is intentional, Joel is not teaching Ellie to be kind or good. He is not demonstrating how to experience connection within a harsh world. He is teaching Ellie how to survive, and despite her willful, often confrontational manner and her disobedience when it suits her, Ellie wants Joel’s respect. Still, when she kills a person for the first time it is not to protect herself; rather, it is to protect Joel. In this, she demonstrates the same impulse Joel has – to help others. Here, she, like him is combining the need to survive with the need to connect. Once again, the game uses ludic elements to mimic what the characters are feeling. When Joel is attacked by the soldier on the ladder, it first looks like it will be a cutscene; however, by using quick time events, the player is forced to feel the same limitation of movement that Joel feels (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player’s options, like his, are greatly limited. It feels futile to smash the buttons in an attempt to defend ourselves. The perspective of the camera as the player grasps for the gun adds to a sense of futility: it is too far away (Naughty Dog, 2014). When Ellie grabs the gun, the player is not comfortably sitting and watching a cutscene. They, like Joel, gasp in relief because they were just smashing the square button like their life depended on it (Naughty Dog, 2014). As the cutscene begins again, Ellie is seen; Joel and the player are saved (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player, like Joel, gets a chance to breathe. These minor design choices greatly impact the feeling that the player has towards Ellie. It makes the player’s experience an approximation of what Joel felt. Knowing that, the frustration the player feels at Joel not giving Ellie the gun, at not trusting her, is compounded. It echoes the war Joel is having with himself. Where the player may think that Joel is being stupid, he is fighting a war between further ruining Ellie’s childhood, and a realization that he will not always be there to protect her. The player’s anger at Joel is nothing in comparison to his anger at the world. After the following scene where Ellie is given the gun, Ellie begins to take on more responsibility, helping Joel kill enemies and defending him when she can. This addition is not necessarily addressed in the story, but ludically, the player begins to depend on her. The player, like Joel, begins to see her as more and more capable. Already helpful for accessing places Joel cannot reach or fit, Ellie is now an asset in combat. Her presence in gameplay is indicative of her closer relationship with Joel. When she is not with Joel, the player feels her absence more, they feel more exposed. Without her, the player feels alone.
5.12. Part 3: David’s Camp: Two Part Analysis
The part of the game with arguably the most emotional impact comes when Ellie is taken by David and held prisoner. Despite the focus being on Ellie. This is the moment when Joel moves from living for survival, to living to ensure Ellie experiences more than survival. As I have said,
58 Ellie’s importance to the ludic experience mimics the closeness of her relationship with Joel. After saving him from a life-threatening injury (a piece of rebar through his side), Winter begins with the player in the role of Ellie (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is the first time the player controls Ellie, and it symbolizes that the father-daughter relationship has been accepted fully.
5.12.1. Mental Model: An Unrelatable Archetype – Joel in Comparison to David
While there is much to be discussed about this scene that a synthetic analyst will notice (symbolism of the rabbit as Ellie’s innocence, the association of death and winter, Ellie as the phoenix rising from the ashes of a fire, etc), this type of synthetic read is not the realm of the ideal player. Instead, I have chosen to focus this section on the foil to Joel’s character – David. The most important aspect of David is that, unlike most characters in the game, his perspective is never given to the player, not even in whispered overheard exchanges like many of the other antagonists are granted (Naughty Dog, 2014). While other antagonists talk about bettering lives through simple pleasures, David’s only goal seems to be making Ellie, as the others in his camp say, “His pet” (Naughty Dog, 2014). His one moment of arguable “depth” comes when he says, “I really wish you hadn’t killed James. He’s a good kid, just doing his job” (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is whispered to Ellie as David hunts her in the kitchen, but its sincerity is diminished since he had no outward reaction when James was stabbed, and this is delivered as empty banter (Naughty Dog, 2014). Showing all the signs of a violent sexual predator, David is the only character that wholly appears to be nothing more than a shadow archetype, defined by Faber and Mayer (2009) as being “represented by the violent, haunted, and the primitive; the darker aspects of humanity. Often seen in a tragic figure, rejected; awkward, desperately emotional. Can be seen to lack morality; a savage nemesis.” (p. 309) David is all of these things: seen to be eating other human beings, preying on young girls, and lashing out violently when his whims are opposed (Naughty Dog, 2014). There is a bit of nuance that adds to his espousal of this archetype. As opposed to other characters, his lack of connection with humanity does not seem to stem from a fear of dying or being infected (Naughty Dog, 2014). This may be the result of long suffering. Like Joel, he may no longer have anything to live for, but he may also just be incapable of empathy. The degree to which he displays sociopathic tendencies points to deep underlying mental problems that probably exist alongside and not in consequence of the spreading of the cordyceps. The conversations of the town’s people and the cult-like messages hanging in the restaurant seem to suggest that David was manipulating others into allowing him to molest and torture children (Naughty Dog, 2014). Since Ellie would be his “newest” pet, these previous kids are presumed to be dead. David is using the disaster of the world to fuel his most deranged wants. He is as
59 unconnected from society as possible because the opposite of connection is not disconnection, it is the attempt to destroy society itself. As a comparison to Joel, David is invaluable. It is necessary to note that Harilal (2018) quotes critics (Kollar, a response to Escapist Magazine, McShea, and Campbell respectively) who have said that Joel makes the player feel like “a bad person doing bad things,” “a cold, cruel man who is undone by a single virtue”, someone with a “rough demeanour and questionable choices,” and in the most extreme case that “we’re watching the emergence of a psychopath” (p, 11, 12, 10). However, I argue that these players do not have an adequate amount of socio-cultural familiarity to understand Joel’s context. To connect with Joel is to understand his reasons for doing what he does. On the other hand, the ideal player’s reason for thinking that David is a monster follows the same lines. They cannot understand his context because they are not given it. The ideal player sees him as a monster not only because he is preying on children and leading a band of hunters that kill and eat other people, but because the player has no understanding of his past and therefore no connection to him. While Joel says he has been on both sides, the ideal player doubts the extent of his involvement on the other side. What he did is not as important as why he did it. It is hard, nigh impossible, to equate the protector Joel with a predator Joel, and if he did have a moment of poor judgement, the Joel the player knows now is changed. Is this a rationalization? Yes, but it is one that the developers intentionally encourage. Naughty Dog (2014) purposefully depicts David without any regret, without any emotion, without any redeemable quality because in this game, and his purposeful unprovoked maliciousness towards innocents is the truest evil. When compared to Joel, who has only written off society because of their lack of humanity, the differences are seen quite starkly. The Joel the player knows does not kill anyone that has not first threatened him or someone he loved. The kill closest to outright murder is that of Robert at the beginning of the game, and he had sent assassins after Tess. Joel usually kills to protect someone from imminent danger. Something similar could be argued of David. He kills to feed the innocent. Yes, he may be killing innocents, but it is to protect his own people. He is still arguably a protector. This, however, is a weak argument. Joel kills when the physical well-being of someone he cares for is threatened directly. David chooses to kill because murder is not something he has felt was worth trying to avoid. Where Tommy’s community has gardens and is setting out to be self-sufficient, David is killing and eating people with no sense of regret. The line that is crossed is all about context. Joel values human life when he is given the choice. David ignores the fact that there is a choice, and every decision he makes is for himself. David highlights the best parts of Joel. He helps the player identify more with Joel whose harsh actions may be judged differently out of context. He highlights the motivation for Joel’s acts of violence. In a way, his lack of humanity is what lets more players – even those who are farther from the ideal player – understand Joel.
60 5.12.2. Ludic Impact: Joel’s Vulnerability and Acceptance
The entire premise of Winter occurs because, by necessity, Ellie takes over as Joel’s protector. Joel is now completely dependent on her. In his most vulnerable state, she supports and cares for him (Naughty Dog, 2014). Her deal with David to get penicillin is all that keeps Joel alive (Naughty Dog, 2014). When Ellie realizes she was followed after bringing back the medicine, she leads the men away from Joel, keeping him safe once again (Naughty Dog, 2014). While it results in her capture, this move saved Joel’s life (Naughty Dog, 2014). David’s people left Ellie alive, but Joel would have been killed on sight (Naughty Dog, 2014). This season cements the fact that Ellie can survive on her own. It also makes it painfully clear that survival is not enough. The first scene is symbolic of the end of Ellie’s youth and innocence. A pure white rabbit comes out of its burrow, sniffs the air and is immediately killed (Naughty Dog, 2014). The red blood on the white fur is all the more striking. Ellie is that rabbit, a hunted creature, and the interactions she has with David destroy whatever innocence she still had. To bring the comparison of Ellie and the rabbit into sharper focus, during the fight in the kitchen, David calls to Ellie saying, “Run little rabbit” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Everything she did up until being captured was to protect Joel or herself, but the moment she killed David haunts her because her rage and fear came out in a monstrous though understandable eruption of emotion (Naughty Dog, 2014). Throughout this season, Ellie is pushed towards survival, but it also brings out Joel’s fatherly instincts like never before. The season starts with the player as Ellie, a tactic that is used to leave the player in a state of uncertainty about Joel’s condition, but eventually, the player returns to Joel’s perspective (Naughty Dog, 2014). The back and forth between Joel and Ellie demonstrates that they have come to rely completely on each other. The emotional wall that Joel had has been broken. He is no longer someone on a delivery mission. He is a dad. Driven to save Ellie, everything Joel does is motivated by his love for, and therefore connection to, Ellie. He is ruthless and violent. He takes prisoners and tortures them to find out where his newly accepted daughter-figure was taken (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then, he kills them without a thought (Naughty Dog, 2014). Was it necessary? Maybe. They could warn the town of his approach, hunt him down, or go move Ellie. There were other ways he could have approached the situation, but for the ideal player that is not really the point. The morality in The Last of Us is not about saving the most life, it is about Joel as a father. It is about maintaining connection. While there is more to be said, much of the beauty in this scene comes not from the story but the ludic presentation of the story. I will first discuss the perspective switch and then examine the stealth fight with David. The scenes played as Ellie are tense. She escapes David and heads off into a snowstorm where seeing is difficult (Naughty Dog, 2014). All she has is a knife (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player feels the tension of not knowing where they are, of not having the safety of a well-stocked backpack (Naughty Dog, 2014). The point of sneaking around as Ellie is to feel scared and vulnerable.
61 As Joel, given all the equipment and supplies, the player takes on the protective aspect of his character. The ideal player embraces Joel’s newly accepted role with fervor. This is what they were waiting for. The ability to act on the emotion they wanted him to feel is invigorating. Where Ellie needs to hide and sneak around tactically, Joel is able to throw nail bombs and molotovs with abandon (Naughty Dog, 2014). Granted, this focused disregard for people who he has no connection to may be a part of his character that is less than morally acceptable in most contexts, but these people kidnapped his child, and the ideal player understands why they will pay. In the family centered rural context, this is the most justifiable anger of all. The fight between David and Ellie is framed as a hunt. The bloodthirsty predator after his prey. The creepy and cringy nature of David as a person adds to the fear of getting caught, and dying in this section only makes the next attempt scarier. As David kills Ellie, the camera hovers on the details: his hand on her shoulder as he stabs her through the chest (Naughty Dog, 2014). Additionally, the only way to kill him is through close combat. David has Ellie’s gun and all she is left with is the knife (Naughty Dog, 2014). Having to get close to this terrible person causes the player’s heart to race. The necessity of repeatedly getting the jump on him keeps the player on needles for the entire fight. When Ellie finally injures David enough for the next part of the fight to trigger, Ellie is thrown to the ground dazed (Naughty Dog, 2014). She awakens to find that David is still alive (Naughty Dog, 2014). In this moment, the player, exhausted from the adrenaline of the fight, expects a cutscene, but instead they are given control to crawl towards a machete that is seen in the distance (Naughty Dog, 2014). The very controlled limited action in the scene alludes back to when Joel saw the gun in the puddle as he wrestled for his life (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player may expect Joel to show up. Having just played as him finding the burning building, they know he is close; he does not come (Naughty Dog, 2014). Instead, David awakens and taunts Ellie as she crawls (Naughty Dog, 2014). At one point he makes the very applicable remark, “You think you know me? … you have no idea what I’m capable of” (Naughty Dog, 2014). David straddles Ellie and attempts to strangle her, but in a series of quick time events (once again used to convey Ellie’s lack of movement options) Ellie grabs the machete and kills David (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then, in sprays of blood, she keeps swinging, brutalizing his corpse (Naughty Dog, 2014).
62
Figure 9 David grabbing Ellie right before she kills him (Naughty Dog, 2014) In the most emotional cutscene of the game, Joel arrives. He pulls a terrified Ellie off of David saying, “It’s me. It’s me. Look” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Her strangled, “He tried to…” is met with Joel letting go of any hesitation of connection; his last reservations fall away with a reply that will emotionally cut through the ideal player: “Oh baby girl” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Despite insisting to Tess in her death scene that they were survivors and despite his insinuation that that was enough, what he saw in Ellie chopping David’s head into a pulp was not the birth of a survivor, it was the death of innocence. Up until now she had killed as a reaction or to protect herself and Joel. While killing David was necessary and done to protect herself, the unleashed emotion allowed her to fall into her anger, fear, and disgust at this monster. If left unchecked, he saw that it was the first action that would lead to her destroying herself. Watching her break broke Joel. Watching her desperation and fear finally solidified what he had been feeling for months. No longer was he the man who tried to abandon her at Tommy’s in order to rid himself of a connection that was growing too strong (Naughty Dog, 2014). No longer is he the man that keeps everyone at arm’s length, who is so hard hearted as to respond to Ellie’s heartfelt explanation of her fear of abandonment with, “…You’re not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain’t your dad. And we are going our separate ways” (Naughty Dog, 2014). No longer is he selfish. He sees her fighting for survival and wants her to do more than survive. So, in the most powerful scene of their relationship, the music begins, very reminiscent of Sarah’s death scene (Naughty Dog, 2014). Players are given a moment to experience the pain and love that Joel and Ellie are experiencing. Joel holds Ellie as she breaks down, and he looks
63 into her eyes, establishing connection. “It’s me,” he says grasping her face and letting her see him, to know she is safe (Naughty Dog, 2014). She crumples into him, finally able to let her guard down, and Joel holds her: “Oh, baby girl. It’s okay. It’s okay” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She says his name, and the audio cuts out. No one needs to hear the words that are said. Eye contact and the sight of Joel talking let the player know that he has got this. He will protect her. He has finally admitted he loves her.
5.12.3. Thematic Analysis: Innocence: Another Casualty
When Spring starts, the dynamic between Ellie and Joel changes. As the scene opens, Ellie is looking at an etched wall depicting a deer (Naughty Dog, 2014). She is thinking back to her encounter with David which all started with her hunting the deer. There is no music, no sound except slight wind; then, Joel screams Ellie’s name (Naughty Dog, 2014). As Ellie turns to look at him, he says, “Did you hear me” (Naughty Dog, 2014)? Ellie’s reply is calm and unconcerned, “No. What” (Naughty Dog, 2014)? As they travel to the hospital, Ellie is forlorn. She looks down, walks slower, and does not keep up well (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel on the other hand, is uncharacteristically chatty. He is breaking the earlier rule, talking about his past. He tells her about playing the guitar and wanting to teach her. More than just talking about the past, he is making plans for the future. Ellie is barely listening, and Joel, for once, seems to understand that this is a result of trauma. He does not push her or get angry. He just keeps trying. Multiple moments are woven into the play of the game, making walking around an enjoyable experience of Joel now seeking connection. When Ellie mentions the airplane dream in an optional conversation sequence, Joel listens and asks her to tell him about it (Naughty Dog, 2014). He is showing interest. The dream is an obvious metaphor of losing control and not knowing what to do. It shows symbolism of living in a world one does not understand. What is endearing about this exchange is that Joel simply responds that “dreams are weird” (Dansg08, 2013). His response might not be extensive, but he did respond, and his interest was more important than his input. In the quarantine zone, Joel talks to Ellie more than normal. He notices when Ellie is sitting by herself. He notes that she seems “extra quiet today” and she apologizes (Naughty Dog, 2014). When he says, “It’s fine,” it is him admitting that he is not able to help in this situation, but he still wants to acknowledge her pain (Naughty Dog, 2014). It may also be an understanding that he is partly to blame. He has made her push her feelings down for so long that now she is doing it without thinking. She does not want to share her thoughts and feelings, and why would she? He has made her suppress feelings about Tess and Sam and everything else, and now that she is withdrawn, he is realizing that it is a problem. Perhaps he is seeing that it is his problem as well.
64
Figure 10 Ellie sits while the player explores the quarantine zone (Naughty Dog, 2014) When the giraffes appear, there is a glimpse of Ellie as she was, a promise that she is still in her body and has not been destroyed by the trauma she has experienced (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel sees this too, and as they are about to leave the rooftop, where Ellie is just quietly watching the giraffes wander around the courtyard, Joel tells her they do not have to go to the Fireflies, that they can just go back to Tommy’s and “Be done with this whole damn thing” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Ellie’s reply shows that what haunts Joel haunts her too: “After all we’ve been through. Everything that I’ve done…” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She sighs, perhaps reflecting on killing David and the others in his camp, seeing Sam and Henry die because of the cordyceps, knowing her best friend, Riley, died while she herself lived. The guilt is what haunts her: “It can’t be for nothing” (Naughty Dog, 2014). She leaves and Joel looks down at the giraffes, the symbol of Ellie’s joy and youthfulness, of wonder and awe and all the good things she could have in life (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then, he follows her. Traveling to the Fireflies from the start of Spring, the player is given time to focus on character and not fighting. The music sets the tone of introspection, giving the player time to breathe (Naughty Dog, 2014). The weight of the relationship is felt to change. When Ellie gives Joel the picture of Sarah, after the day and presumably months of seeing Ellie slowly withdraw into herself. He does not get angry, instead he just says, “no matter how hard you try, I guess you can’t escape your past” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then he adds something that shows great growth: “Thank you” (Naughty Dog, 2014). He understands that this was done to help him and, for once, accepts it graciously.
65 5.12.4. Ludic Impact of Ellie’s Disconnect
To further the sense of Ellie’s disconnect, the game begins to cycle back to the playstyle of the beginning of the game. This cyclical design style is discussed in detail in 5.13.2. Where in the start of the game, the player did not rely on Ellie and did not notice her absence (when she was with Tess instead of Joel), here, in the second Spring, Ellie’s absence is noticed. In the Quarantine Zone before the giraffe section, when Ellie does not respond to Joel’s comments, the player feels Ellie’s emotional distance (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then, when the player needs her to get a ladder and she does not react to us pressing the button to boost her up, the player is dramatically taken aback (Naughty Dog, 2014). This interaction is more effective than a cutscene that shows Ellie being sad; it is a complete breakdown of ludic expectations. The player has hit the boost-up button numerous times. First, Tess had promptly responded, then Ellie took on that role (Naughty Dog, 2014). When the player was partnered with Sam, even he reacted quickly to the prompting to be boosted up (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is the first time in game that the player expects to progress and is held back because of another character’s lack of response (Naughty Dog, 2014). Ellie’s mental absence is felt in this scene more than her physical absence had been when she was with Tess. This is because of her connection to Joel and, therefore, her connection to the player through Joel. To further disrupt normal play, when after being coaxed to move forward, instead of gently handing down the ladder, Ellie begins the normal routine then drops the ladder, says, “Oh my God,” and runs away abruptly without explanation (Naughty Dog, 2014).
Figure 11 Ellie and Joel watching as the herd of giraffes walks away (Naughty Dog, 2014)
66 In an unexpected change, Joel is left to pick up the ladder, place it, and hastily follow after Ellie who, without slowing, says, “You’ve gotta see this” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player’s and Joel’s worry eases when she does not sound injured or panicked (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel follows and relaxing music plays letting the player know that Ellie is not in immediate physical danger (Naughty Dog, 2014). Still unsure about what Ellie has seen, the player is relaxed enough to reflect back on the odd interactions and also remain curious about what is happening. Once again, the act of play itself has demonstrated connection more surely than traditional narrative could alone.
5.13. Part 4: The Ending, Guilt, and Ludic Design
While I have focused on the shifting of the mental model of Joel in the other sections, in the ending chapter, he solidly stays a father in the eyes of the ideal player. Some parts that may challenge his position as a good person (but not good father) include his murder of the surgeon and optional murders of the nurses. For the ideal player, however, his protective rage will not be a surprise. It should not be a surprise to any synthetic analyst either; after all, Joel has made his beliefs on the greater good clear throughout the game. So here, instead, I focus on guilt and blame in terms of the mental model of Joel.
5.13.1. Mental Model: In Their Own Eyes, No One Deserves to Live
Guilt is highly interpretive in a story that is not omniscient in perspective. The characters’ thoughts are not seen; the player can only infer them. Because of this, meaning is ascribed to actions they take, attitudes they may demonstrate, and things they say. In The Last of Us, something as subtle as body language may dictate whether someone is thought to be feeling guilt or not. In terms of Joel, his entire life has been spent dealing with the loss of Sarah, and it is not hard to see that he has suffered guilt. He says it himself at the end of the game when he is talking to Ellie after everything is over. “I struggled a long time with surviving,” he says as he touches the now broken watch that Sarah gave him, “and you… no matter what you keep finding something to fight for” (Naughty Dog, 2014). It is unclear what he was fighting for during the 20 years that went unseen. From the conversation with Tommy it seems that he was the one that was in Joel’s protective grasp (Naughty Dog, 2014). Then it was Tess, though she held her own and challenged Joel’s protective nature. But what is clear in this end comment is that Ellie is his new reason for living and living fully. He is attempting to protect her now, even from herself. Joel’s choice to save Ellie is what most people jump on as the defining moment that makes them see him as evil or, at the very least, not good. This is seen in the reviews that Harilal (2018) uses in her article when discussing player response. The negative critics note that Joel is a sociopath and/or psychopath who is saving Ellie for selfish reasons, that he is using her to assuage his guilt
67 from not being able to protect Sarah, and that he is a murderer incapable of love (Harilal, 2018, p. 10-13). The argument is that he kept her alive for himself to feel better. This line of thinking ignores the fact that letting her die could be argued to be done only to make Joel feel better for having saved humanity. It relies on a utilitarian ethics system and ignores alternative views and context. Since a discussion of systems of morality and ethics is outside the scope of this work, suffice it to say that everyone in The Last of Us has a motive for everything they do, and by the nature of the self, that outcome will affect the decision maker in multiple ways (see sections 5.2-5.4 for more on individual motivation). Defining selfishness is also outside of the scope of this thesis, but beyond that, in terms of a player’s mental model of Joel, it is irrelevant. Letting Ellie die would have been Joel acting against his own conscience. He has no faith in the world and no faith in the greater good. In his mind, the Fireflies have achieved nothing in their quest for power except pain, and it is not within Joel’s character to believe their mission was worth Ellie’s life. Sacrificing her was never even an option. She gave him a reason to live again, and the reason for that feeling needs to be examined. Ellie made Joel feel worthwhile not because she needed his protection to survive, but because she made his life more than survival. She was a real connection that went beyond a predefined goal. To say that Joel even had a concrete goal is tenuous. Before finding out that Tess was infected, he was ready to go back to the quarantine zone, but at the end of Tess’s life, all she sees is the pain she has caused. During her argument with Joel, she mutters under her breath that “this [Getting Ellie to the Fireflies] is our chance” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The way she says it, soft and wistful makes it seem that she means it is their chance for redemption, to make up for all the pain they have caused in some way (Naughty Dog, 2014). While for Tess, a cure was the answer, to the ideal player, Joel’s redemption comes not from saving the world but from accepting his role as father and getting through his own pain. Killing the surgeon, killing Marlene, killing the soldiers, these were not acts of malice (Naughty Dog, 2014). Every decision was made to protect Ellie. Yes, Joel could have subdued the surgeon, but he had no time to waste. Ellie’s life was in danger, and in every decision, the player needs to view him as he is – a father.
68 5.13.2. Ludology and Cyclical Design
The ending of The Last of Us is very much a return to the beginning. The cyclical design is not only told through the traditional aspects of narrative, with Joel accepting his role as a father, it is also portrayed ludically. The design is as follows:
Play as Protection Play as Protecting Dependence Dependence Protecting Daughter (no Loss Shifts to Loss Daughter (no Daughter Increases Decreases Daughter combat) Connection combat)
Sarah Joel and Player Ellie walking Tess fight Ellie starts Joel is Ellie walking Joel carries controls withdraws Joel carries through for their to be more fighting to to Tommy's Sarah Ellie in and stops Ellie house own helpful save Ellie (home) combat responding (home) survival
Figure 12: Cyclical design of perspective
What this shows is that the creators of The Last of Us were aware of the form that perspective takes and how that would shape the player’s view of Joel. The player begins from Sarah’s perspective as she looks to her father in their home, and then in the car leaving home. Joel carries her when she is unable to walk; he runs towards the military for protection. Sarah is killed, and 20 years later, Joel fights for his own survival. When forced to escort Ellie she becomes more helpful as their relationship deepens. The very center of this cycle is when the player perspective switches between Ellie and Joel. She takes over the role of protection, and the switching perspective between her and Joel shows the lack of barrier between them. After the winter scene, the reverse of the first half of the story begins. Ellie becomes withdrawn due to trauma; this results in her being less helpful during gameplay. She is taken from Joel when they reach the Fireflies. Now he must fight for her survival. Having saved her from death, he picks her up and carries her running from a military force instead of towards one. Next, they are in a car riding towards home, and the game finishes with the player once again in the perspective of Joel’s daughter. This time though, they are not fleeing their home, they are returning to it. The cyclical nature of ludic design mirrors Joel’s redemption story. It shows how he was broken and a return to who he was. This is demonstrative of one of the strongest ludic supports to narrative in The Last of Us: Perspective.
5.13.3. Processing Death: Cutscenes Mirror Joel’s Processing
This idea of player perspective is about more than the player avatar and how that frames Joel. The time when the player is not playing is just as important as the avatar when they are. The ludic design is, in part related to the design of cutscenes. In The Last of Us, the cutscenes are what pause the ludic experience. However, they also intensify the impact of gameplay by allowing the player to slow down and think about the concepts that the story depicts. A cutscene
69 gives players time to process and react. This process is necessary and cathartic, and the choice to give the player that time or not affects the way they process what has happened in game. This choice to allow for processing is shown in The Last of Us through the amount of time given to the player after character deaths. To begin, the time given to process Sarah’s death is extended; the scene lingers on Joel and Sarah (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player may at first think Sarah’s wound will be superficial then that there will be some miracle. However, the reality sets in as the music plays and the player is given time to see the pain (Naughty Dog, 2014). They feel this all the more because there is no pressure to react. The cutscene allows them the shock of the moment; it can be processed. Joel’s world has just ended. The title screen flashes and the intro video plays (Naughty Dog, 2014). The mashup of the radio messages shows snippets of the next twenty years; it’s mangled and confused, a blur representing Joel’s processing of his daughter’s death (Naughty Dog, 2014). Twenty years later, Joel is seen to have never healed. Like the player, he is still processing Sarah’s death – or rather, he is trying not to. The next death is that of Tess, and there is no time to process the loss (Naughty Dog, 2014). Leading up to her death is an emotional rollercoaster. She convinces Joel to leave and allow her the chance to die on her own terms: she is angry; she is passionate; she is hopeful; then, she is gone (Naughty Dog, 2014). Tess is not given a cutscene (Naughty Dog, 2014). During gameplay, the player can choose to look down at her corpse from the balcony above, but if one lingers too long, the soldiers catch up (Naughty Dog, 2014). Walking along the upper balcony, Ellie comments on Tess’s death, but her “Oh my god… Tess,” is nothing to the soul ripping pain experienced during Sarah’s dying moments (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player moves on, because they have to. Even Ellie knows it. She immediately follows up her comment by saying, “They’re gonna be here soon” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player moves forward because, as Joel, that is what had to be done for the last twenty years. The shift in gameplay lingering on death echoes the way that Joel deals with his pain. When Joel and Ellie finally break out away from the soldiers, Ellie attempts to console Joel, but is met with, “You don’t bring up Tess, ever.” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player never glimpses any sentimentality or mourning. Joel just makes himself move on; ignoring the pain is how he deals with the pain (Naughty Dog, 2014). Ellie initially attempts to connect, to show sympathy to Joel after Tess dies, but as shown above, he immediately puts up the wall, demanding they keep their histories to themselves (Naughty Dog, 2014). Tess’ death can be argued to be Joel’s pain, not Ellie’s, but the next set of deaths, that of Sam and Henry, were shared by both Ellie and Joel. When Henry kills his infected brother and then commits suicide, there is still no time for player reflection; the player sees the suicide and is immediately looking at the next section screen that reads “Fall” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The game moves on. The player is given as much time to reflect as Joel gave himself and Ellie. They are forced to move on, because they are survivors. Connection allows for pain, so by ignoring and suppressing her pain, Joel unwittingly punishes Ellie for connecting.
70 In this first Fall scene at the hydroelectric dam, even though months have passed since Henry and Sam’s deaths, if the player clicks to comment on the teddy bear grave, Ellie says, “I forgot to leave that stupid robot on his grave. What should I do with it” (Naughty Dog, 2014)? Then when Joel does not really respond she continues, “What? I want to talk about it” (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel is very direct with his reply: “How many times do we have to go over this? Things happen… and we move on” (Naughty Dog, 2014). His reply mimics the design of the gameplay. Obviously, this is not the first time this conversation has come up between Joel and Ellie, and even strong-willed Ellie has begun to surrender. Instead of fighting back, she just gives in saying, “You’re right. I’m sorry” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The last season is, symbolically, the second Spring, and in it, Joel has realized the value of connection and does all he can to reach Ellie who is now suffering from all the trauma she has undergone. This prepares the player for the last, and most personal death – Marlene’s. While Ellie is unconscious during the entirety of the hospital scene, Joel, in an effort to save and protect her, kills dozens of soldiers, the doctor, and Marlene (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel has killed many people. He has lost many people, and as expected, he just moves on. In this last act though, Joel cannot move on. There is a cutscene where he is seen talking to Marlene in the parking garage; the view shifts to Joel driving in a car (Naughty Dog, 2014). He is giving Ellie a false account of what occurred at the hospital. The cutscene flashes back to the parking garage where Joel shoots Marlene; then, returning to a view of him lying to Ellie, the memory of shooting Marlene causes Joel to stumble over his words (Naughty Dog, 2014). His speech is slow and deliberate as he continues to tell Ellie the false story, but in his eyes, the player sees the impact it has on Joel (Naughty Dog, 2014). The garage flashback is not just a cutscene, it is Joel’s memory. His mind is flashing back to that moment, to his decision to kill Marlene.
71
Figure 13 Joel, right before he shoots Marlene. In the present with Ellie, Joel doesn’t tell her about the proposed operation or Marlene’s willingness to let her die (Naughty Dog, 2014). He doesn’t tell her about the people he killed or about denying Marlene’s final plea that he let her live (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player may recall Tess saying, “We’re shitty people Joel, it’s been that way for a long time” (Naughty Dog, 2014). The caveat is that the ideal player never thought of Joel as a good person in a traditional sense. It is not that the ideal player made a judgement call that Joel was “bad” or “good,” it is that he was more than either of those. He was first and foremost a father. He shared the mental model of someone they cared for, someone who cared for them. The ideal player did not have to make a judgement call; Joel was a father, a protector. True to himself, that is exactly what he did by saving Ellie and what he did by lying to her. He hurt himself in the process, but he protected her. To help Ellie feel less responsible for the human race, Joel tells her that the Fireflies have stopped looking for a cure and that there are dozens of people who are immune. In this, he hopes to give her back a shred of the life that she lived before, the one that was worth living. He does not want her to die so that others can survive. He wants her to live and connect so that she has meaning in her life and that he can keep his. In his past, Joel may have made choices that the ideal player objectively finds wrong or questionable, but they will never see that in the lasting view of him. Barring the surgeon (and nurses if the player chose to kill them) he never killed anyone in-game except those who stood in the way of his own safety or the safety of those he cared about. As Joel finishes telling Ellie the account of what happen he says, sincerely, “I’m sorry” (Naughty Dog, 2014). One more
72 flashback plays as Joel drives on. The player sees Joel back at the hospital. He places Ellie in the backseat of a car, walks back to Marlene, listens to her request to let her live, and shoots her in the head (Naughty Dog, 2014). Why? “You’d just come after her,” Joel says without question a moment before killing her (Naughty Dog, 2014). Joel chose Ellie over Marlene, but Marlene chose to sacrifice someone she loved, someone who trusted her. Joel chose solidarity; Marlene chose betrayal. This cutscene after Marlene’s death, in its length alone mirrors the fact that Joel is finally beginning to process his feelings and process his guilt. Instead of the cutscene moving on as it did with Sam and Henry, instead of just including Marlene’s death in gameplay as with Tess, Naughty Dog (2014) weaves Joel’s past with his present. For the first and only time since Sarah was killed, the player sees inside his head to the fact that he is haunted by what he felt he had to do. But he did not do it for himself alone. He did it because even though the world has changed, he refused to give up on what once made human beings worth saving – their connection to one another.
5.13.4. Player Choice is Between Good and Evil
The Last of Us is a linear story; the player can not impact the path of the game (Naughty Dog, 2014). This reflects the fact that Joel cannot impact his world. Just as Joel is powerless to protect Sarah and Tess or save Ellie from her pain, the player is powerless to affect the story. However, also like Joel, the player has a single choice in the game, one that does not affect the outcome but does affect the experience – the choice to connect. Every time that Ellie reaches out and comments on the world, a green triangle icon indicates a choice to listen to her (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player can choose to interact or ignore her (Naughty Dog, 2014). They can choose to progress through the game focused on survival (obtaining the next goal), or they can choose to connect. Though decidedly cruel, the player can even ignore her attempt to give Joel a high five at the dam (Naughty Dog, 2014). The game does not force the player to interact with Ellie, though it would have been easy enough to just play these recorded interactions (Naughty Dog, 2014). This is not a random choice. The game is trying to show the importance of choosing connection, and by making the player actively seek out conversation, this is communicated more clearly than could be done in a book or movie. The player must actually make the effort to connect. While not as obvious, this is also seen in how the game allows the enemies’ conversations to be overheard (Naughty Dog, 2014). Nothing forces the player to listen to the banter between the people Joel and Ellie are up against. If the player goes into each scene with guns blazing, they may never know that the Pittsburgh Hunters are excited that they got a projector working and might be able to watch a movie (Naughty Dog, 2014). The player never has to engage. In the end, they are given the same choice as Joel: to connect, experience emotion, and change or to survive, complete objectives, and move on.
73 6 CONCLUSION
6.1. The Mental Model, Context, and Morality
Having looked at the moments in game that most closely deal with connection, the changes in the ideal player’s mental model of father are clear. First establishing that a good father is equated with an emotionally tough, hard-working protector, the game challenges the mental model of the rural everyman father by carving room for connection and emotion into the definition. It allows the ideal player to come into moral conflict with the ideas of lying, killing, and even torturing if it means protecting a loved innocent. The player will come to accept that these actions were taken of necessity and provoked, that morality and human connection are intertwined. In the end, it makes the player question whether or not being a good father and a good person are mutually dependent, and when the player realizes that a good father need not be a traditionally good person, it may make the player question higher moral values, like the validity of utilitarianism or common good as ways of judging the morality of actions. This may have lasting impacts on how they perceive people in their day to day lives. The player’s mental model of Joel as a good father is maintained, but their mental model of good father gradually changes. Joel remains a good father throughout by first matching the player’s understood definition and then slowly challenging it. As Joel eventually chooses individual connection over human survival, it is reinforced that a good father protects and opens up to those he loves. It is important that the last playable scene is not one of violence. The player is running from soldiers in an attempt to save the child in their arms. The last thing in the game is not a victory, it’s a conversation. One in which Joel is not only protecting but sharing himself and his own feelings. Yes, he is lying to Ellie, but he is lying to preserve her hope and her future. The player is left with the impression of a relationship that stands above all the violence. The ideal player is left knowing that this relationship is what is most important. It is what every scene examined in this thesis builds up to. Many people think that saving Ellie is the wrong choice, but their opinions are irrelevant when looking at the ideal player’s interaction with Joel as a mimetic character. The ideal player, understanding the context of the post-cordyceps world, sees Joel as a broken man but also as a father searching for redemption. The tension they feel towards him only strengthens the narrative power because the conflict requires that they expand their mental models to fit the new world. Joel remains, throughout, a version of the everyman father that the ideal player recognizes and sympathizes with. The player’s mental model expands to show that right and wrong are contextual. Meaningful connection is shown to be the most important thing.
74 6.2. Conveying Theme
Isolation and connection are the major themes that are explored throughout this thesis. Joel is the focus of the analysis; however, there are many approaches to conveying theme that are established through his character but seen to go beyond him. The game relies on context as a major point of tension. Every action, except arguably those of David, is contextualized as understandably motivated even when desperation plays a role. This thesis looks at Joel, Marlene, and Ellie’s motivations in detail and briefly notes aspects of Tess’s and the antagonists’ motivations, among others’. The player is left not with an absolute sense of right or wrong but an understanding that motivation dictates behavior and that any behavior whether friendly or hostile needs to be examined in light of individual perspective. This context is best seen through the intimate understanding of Joel’s background and can be contrasted with the player’s lack of understanding David. Additionally, showing the history shared by Marlene with both Ellie and Joel, leads to a greater level of understanding in terms of her motivations than those of a more minor character like Tess. Context leads the player to easily label Joel as worthy of forgiveness for actions that they see as monstrous in David or other enemies. Marlene’s similar behavior, as when she threatens Joel’s life, is viewed with more nuance than would be granted David but also with less than Joel. Context, perspective, and an awareness of them both are what is shown to affect the ideal player’s judgement. Morality becomes more about a person’s situation and relationship to those around them than an absolute. The central connection – the relationship between Ellie and Joel– is seen in every scene of the analysis. Trust grows and blossoms into a relationship of meaning and love. This relationship develops amidst intense pain and loss but grounds both Ellie and Joel into a small piece of life that is worth continuing to fight for. Every scene, though encapsulating another painful experience of the post-cordyceps world, is actually just a canvas against which Joel and Ellie’s relationship can be foregrounded. Their connection, a redemptive story of Joel returning to fatherhood is the crux of the theme of narrative in The Last of Us. Beyond context, the player is shown the redemptive arc of Joel ludically, through the mirrored framing of events with Sarah and Ellie. The game design allows for Joel’s isolation to be seen in direct comparison to his redemptive connection with Ellie. The images of home and military are echoed as are the physical experience of carrying a child through dangerous environments. While subtle, this cyclical design leads the player to see Joel as returning to what he was at the beginning of the game, a father fighting to give his child the best life. In contrast to connection, the game shows isolation through the time spent allowing the player to process death. Also cyclical, Sarah and Marlene’s deaths are given time to be processed. Those in the middle, Tess’s, Sam’s, Henry’s, and the countless others, are presented within gameplay or given no time after the occurrence to come to terms with. This experience of being rushed through death, as a player, is another way that theme is portrayed ludically. This is directly connected to Joel’s lack of processing emotion and needs to be seen as an extension of his effect on Ellie.
75 Finally, the player is seen to be placed in a position where they are unable to affect much in terms of the narrative. This is representative of the little freedom that the characters themselves have within the world they live. Constantly at the mercy of the many terrors of the world, the characters must fight just to survive within their constraints. The only meaningful choice that Joel has beyond mere survival is that of connection. The player is given the same choice. This is seen in seemingly inconsequential moments: the option to communicate/interact with Ellie or the moments spent listening to the NPCs in the world as they banter amongst themselves. Having no impact on the story itself, these moments will impact the player’s experience and understanding of the world. By connecting, the player views Ellie and, yes, even the enemies in the game, as individuals with depth. The world becomes more than a battle arena. It is given life through the newfound meaning. In the end, Joel may not have saved humanity, but he saved his own humanity and gave Ellie another chance at finding her own path in life. This type of choice, the choice to love, is all that would even make the human race worth saving.
6.3. Why the Ideal Player is Necessary
The first main contribution I made through this thesis was the creation of a proposed model for the ideal player. This is directly connected to my second contribution – the analysis of theme in The Last of Us. The ideal player is necessary for both understanding theme and explaining potential identity formation. Without allowing for a flexible ideal player who can be defined by the researcher at the beginning of each analysis, the enactivist model of analysis loses all of the usability that I designed it to have. Without an ideal player, the interpretations of a game are endless. The question of theme becomes instead an argument of player type, background, or play setting. Instead of debating how a category of player may be affected, the debate becomes about the player category itself. By using the model of the ideal player, all the many variables are clearly set: socio-cultural familiarity, form familiarity, player identity, and play setting. Furthermore, all of these subcategories are accounted for in the basic tenets of enactivism. By specifying an ideal player, the argument about theme becomes about which aspects of the game convey the proposed theme best and whether or not the design choices are appropriate for that theme for that player. It may even be useful to identify multiple ideal players in order to compare how different players may be affected by different design choices. By minimizing variance, the central examination (whatever that may be) comes into focus. The method of developing an ideal player gives the researcher a lens that can be used in connection with other frameworks and approaches. It is not limiting, only clarifying.
76 6.4. Improvements, Limitations and Further Study
Going forward, I would like to do a more thorough literature review that links the different approaches to theory of mind to show how they connect to my proposed model. I would also like to examine moral theory in greater detail in order to examine it as a primary subcategory of socio-cultural background. While this could eventually become tedious, I believe these two areas to be of great import: theory of mind for the research based support it would lend to the model and moral theory for the specificity with which a gamer’s approach to judging the characters in the game may be examined. I specifically want to look at utilitarianism and the ethics of care since they seem to be at odds in many of today’s narrative rich games.
6.4.1. Gamer Expectation
In ways, games like The Last of Us which rely on shooter/stealth violence mechanics may predispose players to expect to commit violence in game. It could be argued that this lessens the shock value when characters commit violence. Thus, the fluidity of mental models from game to life may be brought into question. For example, while one would not expect a little girl to shoot someone, when Ellie does it to save Joel, the player praises her bravery rather than worrying for her mental health. I do not explore this aspect in detail. However, I do think that the expectations of gamers are being challenged more and more frequently, and that, more than the medium of “video game,” the narrative itself more strongly dictates the player reaction to character actions in game. Games like Gears of War (Epic Games, 2006) or Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar North, 2015) put the focus on gameplay before narrative, but games like Mass Effect (Bioware, 2007), Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010), and The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2014) despite being violent games put the story above the mechanics. While many people expect games to be violent, it is up to the developers to set the tone of the game. Narrative focused games like Life is Strange (DONTNOD, 2015), What Remains of Edith Finch (Giant Sparrow, 2017), or The Walking Dead (Telltale Games, 2012) are redefining what gamers can expect, and the expectation of violence becomes less prominent based on the game’s presentation. I expect that the blending of genre and expectation will only become less clear as time goes on.
6.4.2. Validating Model
After having a more solid groundwork on which the model rests, I propose future research looking at player approach to games in real world settings in combination with the play setting, playstyles of their social groups, family beliefs about video game playing, time allotment for game playing, personality type, and other major hobbies. Altogether, this will give me an understanding of which categorical influences in combination with others lead to a preference in terms of game types and, more specifically, which players are more likely to respond to character in a way that leads to reflection and a change in mental models of themselves or the world around them.
77 I also feel that there will be more demographic categories that will need to be accounted for when creating an ideal player for a thematic analysis. Factors such as age and gender may be large determinants of player response, and by not accounting for them, I know I have left a gap in the definition of ideal player. In order to account for these, subcategories in socio-cultural familiarity could be created. I would then like to create a questionnaire which gauges a person’s response to character and measures different aspects of their life based on the model (socio-cultural elements, form familiarity, typical play setting, and player identity). Using factor analysis, I would then be able to create a survey that more concretely identifies ideal players for specific circumstances and situations that designers want to create. With enough of these questionnaires, I believe the predictive ability of the congregate information would be usable for designers who wished to tailor characters to specific audiences.
6.4.3. Further Study for Theoretical Background
In terms of enactivist identity formation within digital environments, there is still a large gap in literature which will need to be explored, and, in order to include another perspective on this topic, I would like to look at the Proteus Effect18 in more detail. I would compare this to player- avatar relationships (Wilde & Evans, 2017; Blake, Hefner, Roth, Klimmt, & Vorderer, 2012) in order to examine whether there is a greater connection to the understanding of enactivist embodiment in a digital world depending on the presentation of the player-avatar in the world.
6.4.4. Limitations
There are many limitations of this study. To start, I am proposing a model that is purely theoretical. While based in a somewhat robust amount of research, the model itself remains completely untested. It positions thematic evaluation to be comparative, but the legitimacy of the comparative constraints is questionable. In terms of impact on mental models, literary studies have looked at the idea of lasting effect. I have found various studies but need to look at them in a more focused and directed manner. For example, there are studies on literature’s effect on empathy towards animals (Wojciech, Pawlowski & Sorokowski, 2016), novels’ connection to empathy and altruism (Keen, 2007), and stimulation of emotion in players (Frome, 2007). Claims made about resulting real world change or action on the part of the audience are not consistent (Wojciech, Pawlowski & Sorokowski, 2016; Keen, 2007). However, I felt that more research was necessary before attempting to make any strong claims on the subject.
18 The Proteus Effect refers to the phenomenon whereby players in different environments took on different aspects of their character-avatars. For example, taller avatars made the player gain more self-esteem and confidence. These effects did not only affect the players in game but remained afterwards in real life interactions (Yee, 2007).
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