Trauma in Games: Narrativizing Denied Agency, Ludonarrative Dissonance and Empathy Play
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Trauma in Games: Narrativizing Denied Agency, Ludonarrative Dissonance and Empathy Play by Evgeniya Kuznetsova A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Humanities Computing University of Alberta © Evgeniya Kuznetsova, 2017 Abstract Popular culture often views video games as a source of mindless entertainment, unfit for profound artistic expression. And yet, with every passing year game narratives become more and more complex, allowing developers to tell deeply personal and poignant stories concerning the most intricate matters of the human condition. Of particular note is the rising popularity of games dedicated to topics that are still largely considered taboo in popular media, such as mental illness, emotional and psychological suffering, and the moral and ethical aspects of encountering violence and atrocity. How does one analyze such games and their contribution to popular culture, if they so obviously fall outside the scope of the idea of “fun,” closely associated with game media? A robust analytical toolset for exploring such narratives can be found within the ever-expanding interdisciplinary field of trauma studies. This field combines frameworks and methodologies from a vast number of areas, including psychoanalysis, sociology, clinical psychology and critical literary analysis, to thoroughly examine the psychological, physical and cultural processes involved in human encounters with unassimilable horrors. One of the products of these explorations is the discovery of a large corpus of texts – literary, cinematographic, musical and others – that strive to authentically represent psychological trauma through artistic means. Scholars in this area conduct critical readings of various media to uncover particular devices and affordances that are utilized in these portrayals, with the ultimate goal of gaining insight into the nature of trauma only accessible through such symbolic, largely metaphorical means. However, despite the growing popularity of trauma studies as a field, critical trauma readings of video games are virtually non-existent. This is the main reason for the development of this study. In my research I bring together concepts developed by trauma scholars to conduct literary analyses of trauma narratives, and ii game studies approaches to analyzing games as a storytelling medium. I combine them to argue that games can be read through a trauma lens, allowing researchers to uncover new themes and arguments developed through the process of play. I proceed to argue that games offer unique technological affordances for portraying trauma, inaccessible to non-interactive media. To support this argument I explore the concepts of agency and gameplay-and-story integration as unique storytelling affordances available to games, and demonstrate how their explicit subversion – through deliberate denial of player agency or purposeful introduction of ludonarrative dissonance – can be used by developers to create complex narratives of trauma and suffering. Using the theoretical framework I develop, I conduct close readings of the games Beyond: Two Souls (Quantic Dream 2013), Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics 2013) and Silent Hill 2 (Konami 2001), in order to demonstrate that these games can be successfully analyzed as trauma fiction on par with famous trauma literature and film. With the aim of uncovering new insight into how trauma is represented and perceived in popular culture, my work initiates the process of assembling a corpus of trauma mechanics – uniquely procedural, gamic ways of portraying psychological trauma, which evoke empathy from the player and encourage critical reflection on the experiences they portray. iii No man or woman alive, magical or not, has ever escaped some form of injury, whether physical, mental, or emotional. To hurt is as human as to breathe. (J.K. Rowling, “The Tales of Beedle the Bard”) iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Astrid Ensslin – I still cannot quite believe my luck! Without your patience and understanding, your indispensable expertise and your unyielding enthusiasm I would never have gotten to where I am now. The moment you read my proposal was the moment I finally believed that I could actually do this. I would also like to thank my first reader Maureen Engel for convincing me that I can, in fact, write a thesis and for teaching me how. The world of academia became so much less scary once I met you. I’m grateful to my professors Sean Gouglas, Geoffrey Rockwell, Harvey Quamen, Margaret Shane and Jonathan Cohn, as well as my many colleagues at Humanities Computing, Library and Information Studies, English and Film, and Canadian Game Studies Association, including Maren Wilson, Kaitlyn Ensley, Grady Zielke, Zachary Palmer, Erik Johnson, David Holmes, Ian Morrison, Emily Tyler, Gregory Blomquist, and many others, for talking to me about games and all things related, and in the process helping me become a better student, a better scholar and a better person. Many thanks to Dijana Jelača and Danijela Lugarić for introducing me to trauma studies and guiding me through its twisty little passages, for giving invaluable advice and for being excited about my work. I am forever grateful to my wonderful partner Oleg Egorov and my dear friends Jocelyn Beyer, Anna Borynec, Robert Budac, Andrea Budac, Maria Melititskaya, Nikita Nikitenkov, Anastasia Maksimova, Desislava Miteva and Stanislav Makeev for always picking me back up whenever I was ready to give up. Finally, my parents Lev and Irina, and my sister Julia – thank you for believing in me and thinking that this ridiculously ambitious plan to go to Canada made sense in the first place. v Table of contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements v Table of contents vi List of figures ix Introduction 1 Chapter previews 4 Chapter 1: “A wound that cries out”: trauma and narrative in video games 6 A brief history of trauma 6 Trauma narratives 10 Clinical symptoms 10 Agency and trauma 12 Narrativizing trauma 13 The purpose of trauma narratives 17 Games storytelling 20 Ludonarrativity 23 Environmental storytelling 25 Procedurality and procedural metaphors 26 Exploring trauma in games 29 Affordances for portraying trauma 29 Methodology 33 vi Summary 35 Chapter 2: “This is MY life”: explicit denial of agency in portrayals of trauma 37 Agency and games 39 Subverting agency 42 Meaningless choices 44 Denied choices 46 Controllable helplessness 47 Summary 49 Case study: trauma and loss of agency in Beyond: Two Souls 50 Why Beyond: Two Souls? 50 Story 51 Narrative themes of trauma in Beyond: Two Souls 54 Gameplay 57 Mechanical representation of trauma through loss of agency 59 Summary 67 Chapter 3: “A survivor is born”: narrativizing ludonarrative dissonance 69 Gameplay and story integration 71 Ludonarrative resonance 75 The narrative potential of ludonarrative relationships 77 Ludonarrative dissonance 80 Additional affordances for portraying trauma 82 Summary 83 Case study: perpetrator trauma in Tomb Raider (2013) 84 vii Why Tomb Raider? 84 Story 85 Gameplay 87 Survivor narrative 88 Ludonarrative dissonance and perpetrator trauma 90 Summary 98 Chapter 4: “In my restless dreams”: trauma and atonement in Silent Hill 2 100 Silent Hill 2 and its portrayal of trauma 101 Story 103 Trauma narrative 106 Gameplay 109 Ludic allegory of trauma 111 Combining mechanical representations 115 Summary 121 Conclusion 123 Bibliography 128 List of games 141 viii List of figures Figure 1. The player is prompted to press “A” to put the protagonist’s head on the execution block in Telltale Games’ Game of Thrones (2014). 38 Figure 2. Explicitly denied choices in Zoë Quinn’s Depression Quest (2013). 47 Figure 3. The start screen of Anna Anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World (2013). The timer indicates that the player has 8 seconds until the end of the game. 48 Figure 4. Jodie attempts suicide during the physically and emotionally trying mission in Somalia (Beyond: Two Souls). 55 Figure 5. The player is prompted to press the triangle on the controller to make Jodie bang on the closet door to no avail (Beyond: Two Souls). 63 Figure 6. The player as Aiden observes Jodie’s adoptive father say his goodbyes to her (Beyond: Two Souls). 67 Figure 7. Fragment of the narrative flowchart in Chunsoft’s Virtue’s Last Reward (2012). Image from http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=703174 72 Figure 8. The protagonist of Saints Row IV (Volition 2013) chooses between a bill that feeds the hungry and one that eliminates cancer forever. 79 Figure 9. The player controls James from a behind-the-back third-person perspective (Silent Hill 2). 109 Figure 10. The camera is facing James during a tense and claustrophobic sequence (Silent Hill 2). 110 Figure 11. James navigating the underground labyrinth (Silent Hill 2). 116 Figure 12. James enters the Hanged Men puzzle room, which leads to a sudden change in camera perspective (Silent Hill 2). 116 Figure 13. The player is prompted to jump down a bottomless shaft at Toluca prison (Silent Hill 2). 118 ix Introduction In July 2014 I was extremely fortunate to participate in the annual New York – St. Petersburg Institute of Linguistics, Cognition and Culture, where I joined a seminar called Cultural Memory, Trauma and the Body, which was read by Dijana Jelača and Danijela Lugarić, – an illuminating introduction to trauma scholarship that covered a lot of ground. We read Svetlana Alexievich’s The War’s Unwomanly Face about the experiences of female Soviet soldiers during World War II, and watched films like Snijeg, directed by Aida Begić, which explores the aftermath of the Bosnian war. We discussed the Holocaust and 9/11 memorials; we even looked at Soviet war propaganda. And yet, despite this very wide net, throughout the course of the seminar I kept thinking about how we never talked about games, even though all of these literary and visual experiences rang so familiar to me. I remembered losing a child at the start of Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream 2010) and having to live with it through the rest of the game.