The Complicit Player: How Assassin’s Creed II, Bioshock and Dark Souls Use Narrative and Gameplay Design to Make the Player Complicit with the Actions of the Player-Character Bradley Geoffrey Mark Muggeridge BA(Hons) Student ID: 20201828 Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Master by Research October 2020 1 Contents List of Figures ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 5 The Complicit Player ............................................................................................................................... 7 Complicity ........................................................................................................................................... 7 Empathy .............................................................................................................................................. 9 Responsibility .................................................................................................................................... 10 Desire ................................................................................................................................................ 11 Avatar ................................................................................................................................................ 12 Text ................................................................................................................................................... 16 Ethics ................................................................................................................................................. 18 Application ........................................................................................................................................ 19 Assassin’s Creed II ................................................................................................................................. 23 The Animus ....................................................................................................................................... 24 Memory Corridors ............................................................................................................................. 27 The Bleeding Effect ........................................................................................................................... 30 Synchronization ................................................................................................................................ 31 Mutual Responsibility ....................................................................................................................... 33 BioShock ................................................................................................................................................ 37 First-Person Shooters ........................................................................................................................ 39 Trusting Atlas .................................................................................................................................... 41 Would You Kindly? ............................................................................................................................ 43 Choices .............................................................................................................................................. 46 Multiple Endings ............................................................................................................................... 50 Dark Souls ............................................................................................................................................. 54 Plot .................................................................................................................................................... 54 Hollowing .......................................................................................................................................... 57 The Design of the World ................................................................................................................... 58 Non-playable Characters................................................................................................................... 62 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 69 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 74 2 List of Figures 1. Model of Complicity.……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12 2. Isbister’s Model of Projection.…………………………………………………………………………………………. 15 3. Model of Complicity with Shadow of the Colossus Mapped.……………………………………………. 20 4. Wander is Entered by Shadowy Tendrils …………………………………………………………………………. 20 5. Ezio In-Game……………………………………………..……………………………………………………………………..24 6. Desmond in the Memory Corridor…………………………………………………………………………………….24 7. Hologram of Minerva in the Vault……………………………………………..……………………………………..25 8. Pause Screen Menu……………………………………………..………………………………………………………….. 27 9. Ezio assassinates Uberto Alberti………………………………………………………………………………………. 29 10. Ezio and Uberto in the Memory Corridor.………………………………………………………………………… 29 11. Atlas Propaganda Poster.……………………………………………..…………………………………………………. 41 12. Andrew Ryan……………………………………………..……………………………………………………….. ………….. 43 13. Little Sister………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 47 14. Doctor Tenenbaum Threatens Jack……………………………………………..…………………………………… 48 15. Little Sisters Attack Frank Fontaine……………………………………………..…………………………………… 50 16. Bonfire at Firelink Shrine……………………………………………..………………………………………………….. 55 17. Player-Character in an Undead State……………………………………………………………………………….. 57 18. Player-Created Top-Down Image of Lordran……………………………………………………………………. 58 3 Abstract This thesis proposes a model for analysing the process by which video games make players complicit in the actions of the player-character (avatar). Empathy, responsibility and desire are the formational elements of complicity and are the concepts I identify within three video games. Katherine Isbister’s proposed ‘levels of projection’ are also used to explain how a player relates to the player-character in order for the exchange of empathy, responsibility and desire to be effective. The games I have chosen to analyse are Assassin’s Creed II, BioShock and Dark Souls, each of which use gameplay and narrative design in unique ways to make players complicit. 4 Introduction Clint Hocking coined the term ‘ludonarrative dissonance’ to describe a disconnect between narrative and gameplay (2007). Hocking’s critique intended to draw attention to the ways in which gameplay and narrative can contradict one other and therefore compromise a game’s capacity to affect the player. According to his criticism, the game BioShock forced a dissonance between the supposed moral questions raised by the story and the necessarily ‘Objectivist’ requirements of the gameplay (2007). This critique formed the basis for my interest in the conflict between traditional narrative and gameplay design and my subsequent interest in complicity as a effect produced by this tension. Play as a concept has been subject to a broad range of critical analysis over the course of the twentieth century, ranging from anthropological studies to economic forms of game theory (Huizinga, 1949: Caillois, 1961: von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944). However, the past few decades have seen a wider range of disciplines offering perspectives on the ever advancing technological, narrative and visual capacities of games. Some examples include: Diane Carr who has written on feminist perspectives of game and character design (2002: 2006), Graeme Kirkpatrick who has discussed games as aesthetic objects (2011) and Astrid Ensslin who has examined the language of gaming communities (2011). Janet Murray argued that games move towards a form of virtual reality in which a player can become completely immersed in a fictional, narrative world (1997). Jesper Juul argued video games are more effective when considering how rules function to create a ludic experience rather than as a means of conveying more traditional narratives (1999). A brief division between these two schools of ludic and narratological thought did characterised a period of game study, but academics generally agreed that it is the unique interaction between these two phenomena that makes video games valuable areas of analysis (Frasca, 1999: Murray, 2005). There is also a large amount of research into the effects of video games on players, including studies into the ways in which games encourage them to ‘immerse’ themselves in game-worlds (Brown & Cairns, 2004: Jennet et al., 2008). This emotional engagement also factors into more 5 recent ethical examinations of player behaviour (Sicart, 2009: Darvasi, 2016) as well as those that concentrate on the player’s relationship to characters (Isbister, 2017). Instead of viewing this conflict as a ‘failure’ of game design, I argue this tension