Games as Literature, Part 1: Playing Your Part

In the first of three blogs, Tijmen looks at S. (2013) and Life Is Strange (2015) and the role they have you play in building a narrative. Without you, there is no story, after all.

A book without a reader is just words on paper, a computer with no user sits there collecting dust. The moment we read a book or play a game, we must interact with the medium that carries it, folding its pages or plugging a controller into your PC. But in a culture so deeply networked, we also participate in communities larger than ourselves when we read and play. Ever written a public GoodReads review or commented on a fan theory about your favorite game? Congratulations! You are part of a participatory culture, as Henry Jenkins (2009) would say.

In my first two weeks of research, I have read S. (2013) by Doug Dorst and J.J. Abrams and played Life is Strange (2015) by Dontnod Entertainment. These are two productions about conspiracies, full of clues, red herrings, and references to unravel. Both let you interact with their content profoundly and have active fan communities to participate in. This blog describes a few ways that books and games can encourage such interaction and participation. 

Navigating the Text in S.

Warning: when you read S., do so on a desk with zero clutter. It’s an odd piece of work, because when you open the casing of S., a book called Ship of Theseus slips out, written by the fictional V.M. Straka. This book’s margins are full of pre-written annotations by two scholars – Jen and Eric – trying to unravel the ‘true’ history of the mysterious V.M. Straka and his connections to a group of revolutionaries. Notes and research documents passed between the two are found physically folded up between the book’s pages (and will inevitably be scattered all over your own desk). Even the central fiction of Ship of Theseus is drenched in themes of disorientation and repeating cycles.

Simply said, none of the storylines in S. (Ship of Theseus fiction, Jen and Eric’s partnership, the history of V.M. Straka) are linear. Parsing through all of the textual elements S. offers feels like having tens of tabs open on your internet browser all at once. It’s no surprise, then, that the notion of hypertext applies wonderfully to the book, a term also used to refer to digital-only texts that are navigated with clickable links. According to literary critic Marie-Laure Ryan, “[h]ypertext is like a construction kit: it throws lexia at the reader, one at a time, and tells her: make a story with this.” Indeed, all materials provided with S. relate to each other and exist in a network, undoubtedly part of the same story. But the order in which they’re connected is up to the reader, able to manifest as countless different narratives.

The network of clues invites collective participation, too. Reading S. requires critical reading in combination with skills typically used for browsing digital sources. Professor Danuta Fjellestad rightfully says that reading S. is a “dance” between digital and print, that should encourage students to “develop and combine digital and print-based literacies” (78). She calls S. a “web-augmented novel” (87), a printed text that works on its own but is helped by online materials. And indeed, you’ll soon find yourself looking up a character’s Tumblr page or a website with theories. Whether this extra material was made by dedicated fans or the authors remains a mystery, but a curious fan is nonetheless rewarded with a storyworld that stretches into real life across various media.

Changing The Game in Life Is Strange

Breaking chronological order is, similarly, the bread and butter of Life Is Strange. You play Max Caulfield, the 18-year old photography student with a freshly unlocked time travel superpower. The game is story-focused and full of choices with (dire) consequences later in the game. But, don’t like the immediate outcome of a choice? Simply rewind time, change it, and go the desired path. Jumping back and forth, weighing and re-weighing choices, Max and the player gather the information required to progress and solve the game’s mysteries.

There is an in-game journal that keeps track of two kinds of information: artifacts the player interacts with and Max’s personal diary. It is where interaction with the game world is rewarded and stimulated by showing what you’ve done so far and teasing secrets yet to be found. Meanwhile, Max’s journal entries are hers alone and at times even question your choices. That makes the journal a conflicted database, partly filled by the player’s interactions and partly filled with Max’s independent commentary. I should note, as Renee Ann Drouin did, that this private journal is an example of a queer archive: a ‘true’ record of somebody that cannot live fully publicly. The player has to decide what to do with all of the information in the database: do you act on the feelings Max has for her lady friend, or have her date a guy she mostly feels guilty for? Do you confide Max’s secrets in people she doesn’t trust? It’s up to you, player.

Interacting with a digital journal helps you build the narrative, but so does participating in a broader fan community – something the game readily invites. Each of the game’s five ‘episodes’ ends with a statistical overview of which choices other players made. A choice-based game teasing you with the choices you didn’t make, as well as a mystery to solve and time to theorycraft as you wait on episodic releases: that’s a slam-dunk in terms of games you want to talk about (and – oh boy! – people did). It’s not just talking, though: fan communities have sway. Sarah Stang, writing on participation in choice-based games, remarks that “developers have even changed endings to games due to player outcry.” Fan communities deliver feedback for developers to take into account, iterate on, or even add into their game with updates. Interacting with fellow fans and developers isn’t just fun, it’s a meaningful act of co-creation.

Of course, all media is participatory. I said it before: a book with no reader is just printed words! I do find S. and Life Is Strange particularly great examples of interaction with the medium and participating in a larger community. Neither has one clear-cut narrative. Instead, both have you interact with a database of information to construct one yourself, and both invite you to participate more intensely via digital platforms. At the same time, there are medium-specific differences in how this is achieved. Life Is Strange is more responsive to player input, with choices leading directly to different outcomes. S. lacks such feedback, but retains its mystique by feeling like a tome that will always have more secrets to uncover. And still, both have built engaged communities that participate in these productions across media. Even long after the creators have moved onto new projects, their storyworlds live on through their fans.