1
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
4
<title>DM4 §48: A triangle of identities</title>
5
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
6
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="dm4.css">
10
<a href="index.html">home</a> /
11
<a href="contents.html">contents</a> /
12
<a href="ch8.html" title="Chapter VIII: The Craft of Adventure">chapter VIII</a> /
13
<a href="s47.html" title="§47: Realities">prev</a> /
14
<a href="s49.html" title="§49: Structure">next</a> /
15
<a href="dm4index.html">index</a>
18
<a id="p378" name="p378"></a>
19
<h2>§48 A triangle of identities</h2>
21
<blockquote>“Queer grammar!” said Holmes with a smile
22
as he handed the paper back to the inspector. “Did you notice
23
how the ‘he’ suddenly changed to ‘my’? The
24
writer was so carried away by his own story that he imagined himself
25
at the supreme moment to be the hero.”<br>
26
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), <i>Three Gables</i></blockquote>
28
<p class="normal"><span class="atleft"><img src="dm4-378_1.jpg" alt=""></span>
29
In books like this one the word “player” is overused. There
30
are at least three identities involved in play: the person typing and
31
reading (“player”), the main character within the story
32
(“protagonist”), and the voice speaking about what this
33
character sees and feels (“narrator”). There is a triangle
34
of relationships between them, and it's a triangle with very different
35
proportions in different games.
37
<p class="normal" style="margin-top:1em">1. <i>Protagonist and player.</i>
38
“What should you, the detective, do now?” asks ‘The
39
Witness’ pointedly on its first turn. Numerous games (‘Zork’,
40
for instance) take the attitude that anyone who turns up can play, as
41
themselves, regardless of gender or attitudes. This is to equate player
42
with protagonist, making them almost the same. Sometimes the equation
43
is actually engineered: ‘Leather Goddesses of Phobos’
44
notices into which bathroom the player chooses to move the protagonist
45
and decides the protagonist's gender accordingly. ‘Seastalker’
46
(Stu Galley and Jim Lawrence, 1984), aimed at a younger audience, asks
47
for the player's name and gives it to the protagonist, too. At the
48
other extreme is Amy Briggs's much underplayed ‘Plundered
49
Hearts’ (1987), which has as its heroine a specific girl whisked
50
away by pirates in the West Indies. Reviewing in <i>SPAG</i> 4,
51
Graeme Cree wrote that:</p>
53
<blockquote>In ‘Zork’, you're just some anonymous guy who
54
was walking by the white house. You have no particular personality,
55
or history before this point. ‘Planetfall’ makes an effort
56
to paint your character with the enclosed diary, but it is all chrome
57
… ‘Plundered Hearts’, more than any other game gave
58
me the feeling of really being inside someone <em>else's</em> head.
59
Throughout the game, who you are plays an important part. Disguising
60
your identity and altering your appearance is important in several
61
places to elicit a desired reaction from other characters …</blockquote>
63
<p class="normal">Either approach presents difficulties. If the protagonist
64
is uncharacterised, the story may lack literary interest. If heavily
65
determined, the protagonist is likely to be highly unlike the player
66
and this risks losing the player's sense of engagement.</p>
68
<a id="p379" name="p379"></a>
69
<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
70
Few players have minded becoming the Reverend Stephen Dawson, the
71
middle-aged clergyman of ‘Muse, an Autumn Romance’ (Christopher
72
Huang, 1998), whose behaviour is constrained by his emotional blockage.
73
But there are players who resent being obliged to identify with gay
74
protagonists. On the whole this is their problem, not the game's,
75
and it was for them that Neil James Brown wrote his pointed spoof
76
‘The Lost Spellmaker’ (1997), the exploit of Mattie, a lesbian
77
dwarf Secret Service agent addicted to sweets.</p>
79
<p class="dotbreak">� � � � �</p>
81
<p class="normal">In an interactive medium, the beliefs and abilities
82
of the protagonist are more than simply a painted backcloth, because
83
the player participates in them. These special abilities might be called
84
the “magic” in the game's model world, in the broadest sense:</p>
86
<blockquote>For magic and applied science alike the problem is how
87
to subdue reality to the wishes of man.</blockquote>
89
<p class="normal">(C. S. Lewis, <i>The Abolition of Man</i>.) In ‘The
90
Witness’, for instance, the magic might be said to be the detective's
91
ability to arrest or call for forensic analysis, and in ‘Ruins’
92
we have the camera and the packing case. The magic is the imaginary
93
fabric of the world, and it is as essential for the magic to have a
94
coherent rationale as it is for the map to suggest a coherent geography.</p>
96
<p class="indent">Because the magic is part of the background, it should
97
not be allowed to become too crudely a way to solve puzzles. An “open
98
door” spell should be a general technique, with several different
99
applications across its game. Better yet, these techniques should be
100
used indirectly and with ingenuity, for instance opening a locked door
101
by casting a “cause to rust” spell on its hinges. And
102
plenty of puzzles should have solutions which don't involve the magic
103
at all, or else the player will start to feel that it would save a good
104
deal of time and effort just to find the “win game” spell
105
and be done with it.</p>
107
<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
108
In a few games a linguistic surrealism is the reality: for instance
109
‘Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It’ (Jeff
110
O'Neill, 1987) is entirely based on puns and the T-Removing Machine
111
of ‘Leather Goddesses of Phobos’ can transform a rabbit
112
into a rabbi. A literary critic might call this a “postmodern”
113
magic, which dislocates language from what is “really”
114
happening in the game. This is exceptionally hard to do well.</p>
116
<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
117
Games with magic in the authentic fantasy sense seldom follow the austere
118
example of Tolkien, where – although there are spells, as where
119
Gandalf sets light to fir cones in (the book) <i>The Hobbit</i> –
120
the sign of a wizard is more often a priest-like ability to question
121
out motives in what people say and a sage-like wisdom about nature
122
and history. Instead, perhaps for easy parsing and convenient subdivision
123
and perhaps simply to imitate Gary Gygax's role-playing game <i>Dungeons
124
and Dragons</i>, interactive fiction has
125
<a id="p380" name="p380"></a>
126
tended to follow the <i>Dying Earth</i> stories (c. 1950) of Jack Vance<a id="s48_fnref1"
127
name="s48_fnref1"></a><a href="#s48_fn1">†</a> where spells are at
128
once dramatic flourishes, complex mental exercises which must be memorised,
129
and highly specific tools with outré names like “Xarfaggio's
130
Physical Malepsy” and “The Excellent Prismatic Spray”.
131
Many schemes of magic have been tried, and naturally each designer
132
wants to find a new one. Sometimes spells take place in the mind (‘Enchanter’),
133
sometimes with the aid of certain objects (‘Curses’);
134
sometimes halfway between (Level 9's ‘Magik’ games, David
135
Williamson and Pete Austin, 1985–6). Keying magic to objects is
136
advantageous because objects are tactile and part of the game's other
137
play. In other respects, too, magic needs to be subject to the discipline
138
of being easily subdivided and described. “Change a belt or staff
139
into a small poisonous serpent” is far more amenable to designing
140
(and parsing) than “convert up to 1000 cubic feet of rock to
141
mud or quicksand”.</p>
143
<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
144
If the map is very large, or a good deal of moving to-and-fro is called
145
for, designers have frequently used magic to provide rapid transport: such
146
as the magic words in ‘Advent’, or the eight colour-coded
147
collars in ‘Dungeon Adventure’, or the teleport booths
148
in ‘Planetfall’ (Steve Meretzky, 1983), or the black and
149
white dots in ‘Adventure Quest’ (Mike, Nick and Pete Austin,
150
1984, 1983). Finding and deducing how to use this transport system can
151
be a puzzle in itself, one whose solution is optional but rewarding.</p>
153
<p class="dotbreak">� � � � �</p>
155
<p class="normal">2. <i>Narrator and protagonist.</i>
156
Some narrators behave like a French “new novelist”, reporting
157
only what the protagonist is currently seeing and doing. Others
158
enjoy access to what the protagonist thinks and believes:</p>
160
<p class="output">Aunt Jemima has two cats, Jane and Austin, but she
161
finds Austin especially annoying – this ought to make Austin your
162
natural ally, but as it is you tend to glower at each other.</p>
164
<p class="normal">Here the narrator of ‘Curses’ (Graham
165
Nelson, 1993) tells the player that the protagonist doesn't like somebody.
166
In a different game this could have been established by events, showing
167
rather than telling. Indeed, the protagonist's relationship with Austin
168
might have been neutral until established by the player's choices.</p>
170
<p class="indent">It is the narrator who speaks the game's opening words,
171
sometimes called the “overture” and conventionally used
172
to say what sort of person the protagonist is, and what he or she is
173
trying to do. Overtures vary widely in how direct and indeed how honest
174
they are. Many, like ‘Curses’, leave the player guessing
175
or misdirect as a form of tease. This is a reaction against the overture
176
style of the 1980s, exemplified by ‘Snowball’ (original
179
<a id="p381" name="p381"></a>
180
<p class="output">The interstar freezer, Snowball 9, has entered its
181
target starsystem. And it will soon enter the star unless you can do
184
<p class="normal">Such directness was itself a necessity considering that
185
players of the day expected any game to be a treasure hunt unless they
186
were told otherwise. The overtures to quest games became highly predictable:
187
here is ‘Enchanter’ (Marc Blank and Dave Lebling, 1983):</p>
189
<p class="output">You, a novice Enchanter with but a few simple spells
190
in your Book, must seek out Krill, explore the Castle he has overthrown,
191
and learn his secrets. Only then may his vast evil…</p>
193
<p class="normal">And so on and so forth. What makes such briefings
194
disappointing is partly that they often run on far too long and are
195
full of words like “dread” and “imbue”,
196
and either take themselves very seriously or, which is worse, don't.
197
Here is about a quarter of the “overture”, or opening
198
text, of ‘Beyond Zork’ (Brian Moriarty, 1987), a game
199
not meant as a comedy:</p>
201
<p class="output">Y'Gael's dry chuckle stilled the murmur of the
202
crowd. “You forget your own history, Gustar. Are you not author
203
of the definitive scroll on the Coconut of Quendor?”<br>
204
A tumult of amphibious croaks and squeals drowned out Gustar's retort.
205
Y'Gael hobbled over to a table laden with mystical artifacts, selected
206
a small stone and raised it high.<br>
207
“The Coconut is our only hope,” she cried, her eyes shining
208
in the stone's violet aura. “Its seed embodies the essence of
209
our wisdom. Its shell is impervious to the ravages of Time. We must
210
reclaim it from the Implementors, and hide it away before its secrets
211
are forgotten!”</p>
213
<p class="normal">Self-indulgent, self-parodying, slack, told in the
214
past tense, uninteractive and basically dumb. If Moriarty felt that
215
the quest of the game was hackneyed, a better response would have been
216
to restructure the game, not to allow the narrator to show disdain for
217
it. The same author's overture to ‘Trinity’ was by contrast
218
honed to perfection:</p>
220
<p class="output">Sharp words between the superpowers. Tanks in East
221
Berlin. And now, reports the BBC, rumors of a satellite blackout.
222
It's enough to spoil your continental breakfast.<br>
223
But the world will have to wait. This is the last day of your $599
224
London Getaway Package, and you're determined to soak up as much of
225
that authentic English ambience as you can. So you've left the tour
226
bus behind, ditched the camera and escaped to Hyde Park for a contemplative
227
stroll through the Kensington Gardens.</p>
229
<p class="normal">A good deal has been achieved in these two paragraphs.
230
Apart from details – mention of the BBC, of continental breakfasts,
231
of the camera and the tour bus – you know who you are (an
232
unadventurous American tourist, of no
233
<a id="p382" name="p382"></a>
234
consequence to the world), where
235
you are (Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, London, England), and what
236
is going on in the world beyond (bad news: World War III is about to
237
break out). Also, nobody knows where you've gone. In style, the opening
238
of #8216;Trinity’ is escapism from a disastrous world out of control,
239
and notice the way the first paragraph is in tense, blunt, headline-like
240
sentences, whereas the second is much more relaxed. For a second example,
241
‘Ballyhoo’:</p>
243
<p class="output">As you trudge along in the wake of the outflowing crowd,
244
you thumb through your memories of this evening. Your experience of the
245
circus, with its ballyhooed promises of wonderment and its ultimate
246
disappointment, has been to sink your teeth into a candy apple whose
247
fruit is rotten.<br>Never mind the outrageous prices, the Mt. Everest
248
vantage point, the communistically long lines, the audience more savage
249
than the lion act. And it wasn't the shabbiness of the performances
250
themselves that's got you soured on Spangleland. No, instead it's that
251
the circus is a reminder of your own secret irrational desire to steal
252
the spotlight, to defy death, and to bask in the thunder of applause.</p>
254
<p class="normal">Many players will have no desire for any of that:
255
but then the narrator is not talking about the player, only the
258
<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
259
More detailed briefing information, if it is needed at all, can be
260
placed interactively into the game – and not necessarily made
261
available all at once: see the books in the library of ‘Christminster’
262
(Gareth Rees, 1995).</p>
264
<p class="dotbreak">� � � � �</p>
266
<p class="normal">3. <i>Player and narrator.</i>
267
The narrator chooses how much to tell the player and which scenes to
268
show instead. When the game lapses into a cut-scene, a passage of
269
text in which something happens which the player cannot interact with,
270
it is because the narrator has chosen to override the player. Gareth
271
Rees (Usenet posting 8/8/95):</p>
273
<blockquote>I decided not to use this technique, partly because I
274
think it's an admission of defeat, a statement that the medium of
275
adventure games is too inflexible to write the kind of character
276
interaction we want to.</blockquote>
278
<p class="normal">Cut-scenes risk dislocating the player's engagement
279
with the game, and the level of trust between player and narrator. By
280
the end of a successful game, the narrator can take greater risks, taking
281
advantage of friendship so to speak. At the start, and especially in
282
the overture text, the narrator does well to avoid cut-scenes and
283
presumptions. Thomas Nilsson advises designers to</p>
285
<blockquote>Create an image of him or it [the narrator] and stick to
286
it. Receiving comments about your (limited) progress in the game might
287
be funny, as long as they are not out of character.</blockquote>
289
<a id="p383" name="p383"></a>
290
<p class="normal">Indeed many narrators are self-effacing and unintrusive
291
so long as the player pursues the “correct” line of choices,
292
but immediately emerge as wry, sardonic or knowing once this line is
293
deviated from. The tiniest phrases betray this:</p>
295
<p class="output">><tt>wave</tt><br>
296
You wave, but nobody waves back. Life's like that.</p>
298
<p class="output">><tt>look behind hanging</tt><br>
299
Nope, no more keys.</p>
301
<p class="output">You are falling towards the ground, wind whipping around you.<br>
302
><tt>east</tt><br>
303
Down seems more likely.</p>
305
<p class="output">Austin, your incorrigible ginger cat, lounges around here.<br>
306
><tt>austin, go south</tt><br>
307
I can see you've never had a cat.</p>
309
<p class="normal">‘Kingdom of Hamil’; ‘Sorcerer’;
310
‘Spellbreaker’; ‘Curses’. It is no coincidence
311
that these responses are often jibes at the player's progress. Like
312
the player, but unlike every character in the game (including the
313
protagonist), the narrator knows that it <em>is</em> a game: it's the
314
narrator who announces the rules, awards points and offers clues. The
315
un-mimetic passage from ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy’
316
quoted in the previous section…</p>
318
<p class="output">Ford lowers his voice to a whisper. “I'm not
319
supposed to tell you this, but you'll never be able to finish the game
320
without consulting the Guide about lots of stuff.”</p>
322
<p class="normal">…is funny (if it is) because Ford is usurping
323
the narrator. Nobody would turn a hair at the more conventional
326
<p class="output">Ford hands over the book and turns away.<br>
327
[Please type “consult guide about stuff” to look up its
328
entry on “stuff”, and so on.]</p>
330
<p class="normal">Indeed in some games it might be said that the parser,
331
who asks questions like “Which do you mean…?” and
332
in some games speaks only in square brackets, is a fourth character,
333
quite different from the narrator.</p>
335
<p class="indent">Playing games with the narrator is one of Steve Meretzky's
336
favourite comic techniques. Here is a more moderate, more typical example:</p>
338
<p class="output">(It's no wonder this section of Mars is considered the
339
Ruined Castle Capital of the Solar System.)</p>
341
<p class="normal">More moderate, yet even in ‘Leather Goddesses
342
of Phobos’ such a remark feels the need for parentheses. It is
343
only in parody that the narrator goes in for commentary full-time.</p>
345
<a id="p384" name="p384"></a>
346
<p class="aside"><span class="warning">▲</span>
347
This is a common tactic for designers of juvenile or silly games, who
348
hope thereby to suggest that because the game is knowing about its
349
shortcomings it is therefore more sophisticated, more mature. But
350
it seldom is. Cf. the numerous ‘Zork’ pastiches which
351
were intended to be parodies, or Big Al's ‘BJ Drifter’
354
<p class="aside"><span class="warning"><b>•</b>
355
<b>REFERENCES</b></span><br>
356
For surveys of the quite extensive range of approaches to player identity
357
in the canonical games, see ‘Character Gender in Interactive
358
Fiction’, parts I and II, by Doug Anderson (<i>XYZZYnews</i>
359
3 and 6) and ‘Player Character Identity in IF’, John Wood
360
(<i>XYZZYnews</i> 9). Notable gender ambiguities include the ‘Snowball’
361
trilogy, whose protagonist is one Kim Kimberley, and ‘Jigsaw’,
362
which attempts a romantic sub-plot without specified genders on either
364
<span class="warning"><b>•</b></span>In later life, W. H. Auden (1907–73)
365
considered the ghostly identity narrating a poem to be one of its two
366
gifts to the reader: “The first question [the reader asks] is
367
technical: ‘Here is a verbal contraption. How does it work?’
368
The second is, in the broadest sense, moral: ‘What kind of guy
369
inhabits this poem?’ ”</p>
371
<hr class="footnotebar">
372
<p class="aside" style="margin-top:0"><a id="s48_fn1"
373
name="s48_fn1"></a><a href="#s48_fnref1">†</a>
374
Though Dave Lebling cites the <i>Earthsea</i> novels of Ursula K. LeGuin
375
as the main influence behind ‘Enchanter’.</p>
379
<a href="index.html">home</a> /
380
<a href="contents.html">contents</a> /
381
<a href="ch8.html" title="Chapter VIII: The Craft of Adventure">chapter VIII</a> /
382
<a href="s47.html" title="§47: Realities">prev</a> /
383
<a href="s49.html" title="§49: Structure">next</a> /
384
<a href="dm4index.html">index</a>
added
removed
inform-6.31.1/manual/s48.html
