Hero Or Villain?"

IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In fictional works, in this case, interactive fictional works like video

games, there are characters in the narrative, and the characters consist of

protagonists and antagonists. A protagonist is described as the center of the story,

the one that is close to the audience and the one who makes a decision and

experience the consequences, however not necessarily the same as the hero.

(Duncan, 2006). A hero is defined as the person that the audience will root and

support. (Vogler, 2007). In many medias especially video games, a hero is often

associated with having a strong sense of justice and always doing for the sake of

greater good (GamesRadar, 2018). The opposite of a hero is a villain, in which

Vogler (2007) describes it as the enemies and the one who stands against the hero,

and the audience will root for their loss. Antagonist, on the other hand, is defined

as someone who stands in opposition to the protagonist, who will also become the

force for the protagonist to develop and move in the story, usually takes the form

of villain but not necessarily has to be one (Blaisdell, 2018). From the definitions,

it is certain that the protagonist, hero, antagonist, and villain, have different

definitions. These definitions mean that everyone who is the center of the story is

a protagonist, but not all protagonist is a hero. The same as an antagonist, who is

someone that stands in opposition side of the protagonist, but not all villains are

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

an antagonist. Because the protagonist is the one who is most often with the

readers of the story and who the readers can relate themselves to (Harper, 2019),

the readers would assume that the protagonist is a hero, while in fact, they are

different even back in Ancient Greece times (Storey & Arlene, 2008). The

protagonist can be a villain, and the antagonist can be a hero, and vice versa, it

depends on what kind of perspective the story takes.

In interactive fictional works like video games, the protagonist that the

players are controlling also has certain moralities that the player can agree or

disagree with. According to Harris (2006), morality is an ability to recognize

whether our actions are beneficial or harmful to other people, to cause happiness

or suffering to other people. Actions committed by humans can be considered

either as of right or wrong because every action has consequences, and whether

the consequences are beneficial or harmful for other people, and humans’ ability

to recognize actions that are good and bad is called morality (Haidt & Kesebir,

2010). In video games, there are many instances where players are encouraged, or

even forced, to do things that are morally questionable (Gotterbarn, 2010). Grand

Theft Auto, for example, is a game that rewards players for doing an act of

violence, racism, and discrimination, or even requires players to do such things to

progress and finish the game (Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Last of Us is also a

game where morally questionable actions are the only way to progress, such as

when the protagonist has to kill fellow survivors of the outbreak and even eats the

human meat to survive (Green, 2015). However, there are also games that players

can enjoy without having to do questionable actions, such as The Sims where

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

players manage a household and help their individuals to survive, without the

need to do something bad.

In Indonesia, with most of its citizens are Muslims, they interpret morality

through the Islamic point of view, while also keeping the democratic principle in

the country (Brenner, 2011). Because Indonesia is a democratic country with

most of its citizens are Muslims, the law that is established in this country is a mix

between democracy and law, which sometimes conflicts between one another. In

consequence, Indonesian’s understanding of morality is a combination of their

own culture, religion, and democracy, in which all three of them may clash. And

when that clash happens, people are in confusion and in separate opinions

between which one out of the three to follow, some follow their cultural

background and understanding, some others follow their religion’s that they

strongly believe in, and the others are following the government’s law. To sum it

up, Indonesia has different opinions about morality, depending on which of the

three aspects that they follow, understand, and believe the most.

Not only people’s own beliefs, but gender differences also affect people’s

opinions about certain problems, and certain people, especially regarding

morality. According to Gilligan & Attanucci (1988) and their theory of moral

orientations, men and women have different ways in case of life orientation, in

this case, the concept of self and morality. Gilligan and Attanucci believe that men

typically have justice orientation (also known as rights orientation) because of

their individualism, defining identity with an occupation, as well as their

preference in fair rules, and regard morality conflicts as an interesting issue of

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

conflicting rights (Walker, 2006). On the other hand, Gilligan and Attanucci

believe that women have care orientation (also known as response orientation)

because they perceive identity as connected with other people and concern with

self as well as others, along with the tendency to keep good relationships in any

situation, regarding morality conflicts as an interesting issue of conflicting

responsibilities (Walker, 2006). Gilligan (1988) also adds that while moral

orientations are gender-related, but they are not gender-specific. This means that

gender is also an important factor in influencing someone’s perspective in viewing

morality issues, because men and women view problems differently, interpret

them in their different way according to their characteristics.

In most videogames, usually, there is a clear difference between the right

and wrong actions when the choice happens, so players can avoid wrong options

at ease and lean more to the correct choice to do, especially when some games are

biased to one certain answer as it hints players to choose one particular, correct

option (Heron & Belford, 2014). Protagonists are controlled by players and are

encouraged to do heroic actions to defeat against villains, thus becoming a hero.

Though recently there are games where the lines that differentiate between heroes

and villains are blurring, leaving only protagonist and antagonist, such as a game

by Lucas Pope in 2013 titled Papers, Please mentioned in Heron & Belford’s

research (2014) where the players are given choices that are morally right and

wrong—such as whether or not to let an immigrant with no valid documentations

to run away from the country that is trying to kill her into the country of the

player—but the circumstances happening in the game makes it hard to choose the

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

morally “right” thing. The player will be punished for citation and do not get a

salary to keep their families alive if they let the immigrant in, but the immigrant

will be killed if the player does not let her in. There are also rebel movements

happening in the game, in which players can join if they desire to do so and betray

the country, or to stay loyal to the communist country they work in, or to escape

to another country where things might be better. The heroes and villains' role is in

blur here, and leaning more to protagonists and antagonists and it is unclear which

one is right and wrong since every person has their reasons. Videogames

nowadays are trying to promote moral ambiguity to make the experience realistic

to the players, and to make the game more enjoyable to the players, where the

“right” and “wrong”, as well as who is the “hero” and “villain” depends on from

which perspective the players take, and which side that the players choose.

However, in some instances, there are times when a character does not

have to be categorized in either “hero” or “villain” category. While normally in

fiction, people can clearly distinguish between hero and villain characters, there

are times when the audience thinks that a certain character belongs to neither.

Such characters are called “ambiguous characters”, by literary scholars such as

Ealy (2004) and Strimel (2005), to refer morally complex characters. Krakowiak

and Oliver (2012) later use the term “MAC” that stands for “Morally Ambiguous

Character” to describe them, also categorizing characters that are capable of doing

both good and bad things at the same time as one. Other lecturers argue that even

anti-heroes are considered in this category (Kleemans et al., 2016) even though

according to TVTropes (2020) anti-heroes are different since they are still

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

considered as a hero even though their actions sometimes are not heroic. Heron

and Belford’s research (2014) about Papers, Please game as mentioned above has

a human working as border patrol in a fictional communist country called

Arstotzka as the protagonist, and depending on the players’ choice, he can fall into

this category. Players can choose either to save refugees who are pursued by

murderers, bring justice by detaining murderers, obediently follow all orders from

his country even though some are questionable, or join mysterious rebel forces by

letting terrorist attacks happening at the country’s border, or run away to the other

country. This example shows that there are growing interests in video games in

creating morally ambiguous characters as an integral part of the game, whether as

important NPCs or as the protagonist controlled by the player.

In the case of non-playable morally ambiguous characters in video games,

in the Pokemon Black and White series (GameFreak, 2011), the main antagonist

named N is presented as such. Even though he is on the side of the antagonists, he

has the genuine intention of saving Pokemon and changing the world without

Pokemon being hurt and is friendly towards the players most of the time. Even so,

he still has his antagonistic nature of not wanting to believe different opinions and

ideologies presented throughout the story. N in the game is presented as a

character with a gray morality. However, he is interpreted in different ways by

both the animated adaptation of Pokemon, along with one of the comic

adaptations. In the former (OLM, 2013), he is shown as being kind and friendly,

even barely shows his antagonistic side and sides with the main characters most of

the time. While for the latter (Kusaka & Yamamoto, 2014), his antagonistic side is

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

more emphasized, with him being hostile towards the main characters and does

not show any friendly side until the very end of the story. This shows an example

of a morally ambiguous character, whose morality and personality can be

interpreted differently according to each individual who writes his character.

There are no agreements between the scholars about the issue of morality

and ethics in video games since there are scholars who agree that morality can be

a topic for video games and there are also scholars who argue that the issue of

morality that is brought up in the game is flawed and does not necessarily

represent the morality issue happening in the real world. Kirkpatrick (2011)

argues that there is an ambivalence in bringing real-world issues into video games,

but Murphy and Zagal (2011) argue that by bringing issues of morality and ethics

into video games, while different from the traditional practice, is effective because

players involved in the games feel the experience to be more personal and

emotional, especially when said morality issue is currently happening in the

player’s surroundings and place. Along with the examples mentioned above, the

issue of blurring morality in video games, where the protagonist can either be

“hero” or “villain” depending on the perspective, also heavily presents in a

massively popular worldwide RPG game released in 2015, titled UNDERTALE.

UNDERTALE is an independently developed game (or indie game)

released on September 15th, 2015 by Toby Fox, that tells a story about a human

child who climbed a mountain, fell into a hole, that led to the world of monsters,

met many kinds of monsters as they tried to figure how to return to their home.

However, the player of this game has a big role in deciding the protagonist’s

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

morality: to befriend all the monsters, to kill all of them, or in-between, since

there is no real agreement of whether or not the main character is a hero because it

is up to every player to play either as a hero, in-between, or villain. This game is

split to three major routes according to how the players want to play: Pacifist

(where the players decide to befriend and save all the monsters), Neutral (where

the players save some and kill the others, which also have many variations

depending on which main characters that the players kill or save, and the number

of monsters that the players kill), and Genocide (where the players kill all the

monsters in the underground, not leaving anyone else to live). Because of these

multiple routes of the game and the game has multiple endings as well, and how

the personality of the protagonist is described differently by the other characters

according to which route the player takes, there are different interpretations as of

how the protagonist is good-hearted or not, and there is no real agreement within

the fandom of UNDERTALE as well.

When the player decides to befriend everyone, then the protagonist will be

the hero, and the monsters who are rejecting their ideas to befriend them will be

the villains as well as the antagonists. However, when the player decides to kill

everyone, then the protagonist will be the villain, and the monsters who try to stop

their massacre—the antagonists—will be the hero. Because of that, people will

have a different opinion of the protagonist’s morality, whether they are a hero or

villain or even neither, considering each person plays UNDERTALE differently

and from a different perspective, according to whichever route that the player

takes. Thus, this study aims to find out the different interpretations of the players,

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

specifically towards the protagonist which will relate to the narrative as while,

since the morality of the protagonist can be interpreted in many ways, whether

heroic, villainous or in-between.

People who are participating in this study is a community of

UNDERTALE players in Indonesia, taken from the Facebook page. There is a

group in Facebook which acts as a hub of where every UNDERTALE fans gather

to discuss the game and its theories, share the fan works, talk about the

UNDERTALE’s creator and his history as well as achievements in video game

history, and just all about everything about UNDERTALE and its creator. Most of

the players who gather there have played UNDERTALE and at least know the

genocide route. Not all of them play the route, considering the damage that will be

caused to the game. There are people of varying ages in the group since

UNDERTALE can generally be played by all ages, even though some of them

also would rather not say anything about their age.

UNDERTALE Indonesia Community is a fan page existing on Facebook.

It is established in 2015, the same year where UNDERTALE is released at Steam

for worldwide consumption, and until this point of writing it has 1.1k likers as

well as 1.2k followers. It is dedicated as a gathering hub for UNDERTALE

Indonesian players to gather, post anything related to UNDERTALE, including

but not limited to discussions, fanworks, etc. Until now, likers and followers of

the fan page are still actively posting their fan-created contents into the fan page,

even though the activity has been rather slow because the hype for this game has

been slowing down significantly after five years, even though it is generally still

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

beloved with fan contents and discussions ongoing, especially considering the

creator of UNDERTALE is in the progress of making a new game.

This research aims to answer: “How do the players respond to the

personality of UNDERTALE’s protagonist?”. Thus, the objective of this research

is to learn about the player’s response to the main protagonist of UNDERTALE’s

morality and protagonist, as well as the players’ perspective in understanding the

protagonist. This research will be using Stuart Hall’s Audience Reception theory,

along with Hero’s Journey by Christopher Vogler as supporting theory. This

research will also be using the qualitative method and using reception analysis as

the approach because of the aim of this research. Along with that, the method of

selecting respondents will be using purposive sampling, following several certain

criteria, which will be explained along with more details of the theories and

methods in the next chapters.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

This research aims to answer this following research question:

1. How do the players respond to the personality of UNDERTALE’s

protagonist?

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

1.3 Purpose of the Study

And thus, the objective of this research is:

1. To learn about the players’ response to the main protagonist of

UNDERTALE’s morality and personality.

2. To learn about the players’ perspective in understanding the protagonist.

1.4 Significance of the Study

This research will be beneficial for three aspects: the researcher, the

UNDERTALE players, and the cultural studies community. The researcher will

find benefit through this research by learning many ways of people interpreting

the protagonist of this game because of their ambiguous nature. UNDERTALE

players will also find this research significant by learning that every other player

has their own opinion about the protagonist of UNDERTALE, and it also depends

on which route of the game that each player decides to play and which route of the

game that each player favors the most among the three. For cultural studies

community, this research is also beneficial for showing that not every protagonist

in video games has a morality that everyone can agree of, that every player of

UNDERTALE has their own opinion to the protagonist of this game, and this will

also push the interest for students of cultural studies to do further research not

only about this game but also other independently-developed games, especially

using Hero’s Journey theory and learning about morally ambiguous heroes.

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI IR - PERPUSTAKAAN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA

1.5 DEFINITION OF KEY TERMS

Audience: The group of people that witness certain work, and act

as a necessary force in a work of media, as well as the writer’s

partner and co-creator in the creation of meaning. (Ede, 1984)

Hero: The person that is always right, a friend to all of their

teammates, morally superior, and most often is also the protagonist

of the story, with some exceptions (TVTropes, 2020).

Interpretation: A certain communication strategy that has the

purpose of translating certain information so it can be understood

by other people. (Veverka, 2019)

Morality: The concept that distinguishes between proper things to

do and the improper things to do, oftentimes are derived from

religion, society, culture, and each individual’s belief. (Long &

Sedley, 1987)

Protagonist: The main character of the story, the person whose

perspective will be the focus. (Blaisdell, 2018)

Villain: The person that creates the conflict and problems in the

story, and the one that audience will root for their loss (TVTropes,

2020)

SKRIPSI "HERO OR VILLAIN?"... DITYANING PRESVIANTI PUTRI