Do gamers fear Responsibility? The real problem behind Detroit: Become Human

On May 25, 2018, Sony Interactive Entertainment will release Detroit: Become Human for the PlayStation 4, a Sci-Fi adventure that has been drawing attention from the media long before its actual debut on the market. Latest brainchild of David Cage, one of the most divisive authors in the game development scene, Detroit places it's narrative foundations in real world issues such as segregation and discrimination. Everything is seen through the eyes of three different synthetic characters inhabiting the same society as humans, and serving as extremely advanced, yet obedient assistance tools. As it often happens in science fiction, some of these androids harbour an independent conscience at the start of the story, or end up developing one over its course, which puts their decision making into a different perspective.

The natural expectation coming out of these premises is that of a social and ethic clash that, as far as the genre goes, has nothing really earth-shattering about it. Detroit, though, embraces the challenge of depicting this clash at different scales: the wide context of society, and the isolated domestic spaces where interactions between humans and robots becomes more granular and nuanced. One of these latter instances marked the exact moment where Quantic Dream's adventure really started to make waves: on October 30, 2017, at the Paris Game Week, the team showed a gameplay trailer featuring Kara (one of the three aforementioned androids, and star of a memorable PS3 tech demo back in 2012), the little Alice and her abusive father Todd. Let's take a look at the scene known as Stormy Night, with a due mild spoiler warning from here on:

As you can see, the player's lack of action or proficiency can cause the death of Alice, which is something that didn't sit right with a portion of the media and the audience. During the following months, Quantic Dream received a slate of accusations such as gamifying domestic abuse, taking things too far in the name of spectacle, or even just dare tackling the issue at all. Part of the concern came from David Cage's debated reputation as a storyteller, something he implicitly acknowledged by seeking the help of professional screenwriters for Detroit, which has the vastest script ever handled by the studio. Some outlets (Le Monde, Mediapart) even tried to root the alleged lack of sensibility in bad corporate culture and toxic work environment reports, ending up sued by the developer as recently revealed by Kotaku's Jason Schreier.

Storytelling doesn't just exists
to expose challenges to its audience,
but to pose them challenges too.

On Language and Scope of Game Writing

When I think about good stories, especially in videogames, there's a handful of bullet points that shapes that idea for me in broad, yet recognizable strokes. Not being a storyteller kinda takes some weight off my opinions, but I'm gonna try to sort them into a reasonably coherent whole for the sake of discussion.

In videogames, stories first comes to life as basic ideas about the main characters, their goals and the settings, and the plot gradually unfolds through many iterations to make sure that the technology at hand supports the events. The process involves lots of flexibility from both the creative and technical parts of a team, often working under strict time constraints. So when we come across a well arranged and presented story, it's usually the result of an efficient dialogue between various aspects of development, and the developer's ability to conceal the underlying tradeoffs of said efficiency.

The best stories are arguably those
that provides peripheral events
that are just as carefully
thought out as the main ones,
and thematically/emotionally
tied with the latter

The complexity of the process kinda slants the art of game writing towards being on point with its contents, and making the most out of what you can work with. A good writer can take a single location and flesh it out deeply, inserting elements that hints at its own history and at the same time,  resonates factually or emotionally with the events in the game and/or the feelings of the characters.
Interactions and audiovisual cues goes a long way towards establishing moods, creating anticipation and telling us something about places and persons. So even in relatively limited spaces it is possible to establish what some calls "sense of place", a communicative microcosmos where a player can explore and figure out things that goes beyond his current time and/or space.

As a modern medium, videogames incorporates a rich language derived from photography, literature, movies, music, architecture and more. It's a highly versatile language that demands research, awareness of the scope and goals for which it's going to be used, and the sensibility to make everything - characters, environments, events, motivations, cause and effect relationships etc. - come together meaningfully. However, more often than not, it ends up being utilised far below its potential: what I feel are the best stories manages to create connections - some immediately apparent and some left to player discovery - between the language's elements, mutually elevating themselves towards a sense of richness and depth that is the very spearhead of game writing.

As in any other form of art including an element of composition, good game writing becomes a matter of economy, so it's not entirely wrong to assume the existence of an unwritten rule about the ever looming risk of overexposure: never show what you can hint at, unless it's absolutely needed. With the sensorial arsenal at its disposal, the language of videogames is just terrific at hints, loosening the dependence from words and inviting the authors to choose them carefully. So the game writer mainly provides what we might call a direct view on things and events, but at the same time he can enrich it through other elements of the language to form a peripheral view - something the player feels and can be compelled to explore.

I feel that narrative rewards in videogames can be just as powerful as material (=gameplay related) rewards: they can help you flash out mysteries, relationships and personalities; they can provide foretelling or explanation for future developments in the story. Building a web of indirect references is an important skill for game writers as it greatly contributes to plot coherence, helping the player feeling invested with the story and the characters. The best stories are arguably those that provides peripheral events that are just as carefully thought out as the main ones, and thematically/emotionally tied with the latter.

#RAPIDFIRE - 6: A tip for morality in games

Game or experience? The Virginia case

One of the things making the indie gaming scene so interesting is that there are very little restraints on what developers can try, both in terms of concepts and form. Of course, such freedom of experimentation is far from a free ticket to attention or success, and I guess the guys at Variable State knew better when they set in stone the design of Virginia. But what's going on with the game, for starters? Well, today's subject is a Steam Greenlight project with an interesting hook (its story is set in the titular American state, and features two female FBI agents dealing with a bizarre case of disappearance) and an approach to game design that focuses entirely on storytelling at the expense of player agency.

What may sound like a walking simulator at first is actually a shade of that genre where dialogues are completely absent, and sound effects are sparse at best: the player is supposed to explore the surroundings, feel the mood set by the music while looking for clues, and use these cues to understand what is happening in the scene. Yes, the experience is structured in discrete, sequencial scenes intersped with various kinds of cuts (temporal, oniric etc.); interaction is limited to walking around and manipulate objects that are essential to the story with a simple left click, and fixed results. Virginia is a game that makes a clear functional point out of its stern linearity.

The whole design is in fact aimed at surrounding the player with a deeply atmospheric story told through non verbal means, where all the beats happens precisely when they have to, and characters emerges from their scripted actions - or the reactions to what little the player can do. There's an interesting, yet stark opposition between the barebone gameplay scheme and a rich visual language sporting exquisite care for framing, lighting, timings and cuts: the scale of variation is purposely leant towards the latter, and as a result, the mood and emotional impact of every scene are bumped up extraordinarily. This is not at all a first in the gaming world, as we often see AAA productions reinforce their climatic moments by briefly restraining the player's agency: Virginia, though, extends this approach throughout the whole span of the adventure.

A working gameplay structure can rely on simple one button contextual interactions, as long as it serves another basic function besides "click here to progress the story", and that's challenging the player on some level

In a touch of cleverness, here and there are scattered some very short scenes that does nothing to push the story forward, but only exists to reveal some facets of the world and its inhabitants: in one instance, the older agent stops by a convenience store leaving you in the car. A few instants later, a blue coupé with some white boys stops by your car, they give you the middle finger and then flee. In a matter of seconds, you get to understand the youngsters' relationship with the law, the female gender and the black people (both agents are black).

As you may have guessed, there's no arguing the validity of this structure in experiencial terms, but whether Virginia constitutes a proper game or not is another matter. There is so little to do in the game that some may feel compelled to say "I could have watched it on Youtube after all"... and yes they could. It's a pertinent doubt spawning a legitimate question about whether interactivity alone can turn something into a game, and if not, what type and degree of interactivity is required for this to happen. In my experience and opinion, a working gameplay structure can rely on simple one button contextual interactions, as long as it serves another basic function besides "click here to progress the story", and that's challenging the player on some level. As far as the demo goes, Virginia technically does this - you have to walk through the scenes and look for that particular clue that triggers the next event - but it's too straightforward in its approach.

Rare is the impression of working towards an objective in this experience, as powerful as the narrative rewards are. In this sense, there's an unavoidable comparison to be made with Dear Esther, a game widely criticized for its structural simplicity, but with a stronger element of challenge in the randomization of story clues at each new playthrough. The narrative may not be as elegantly exposed as in Virginia, but the player is required to reconstruct it and make it come together in his mind, thus bringing a tangible sense of accomplishment upon succeeding. The same basic mechanic, used in a different way, ultimately brings more weight to the gameplay and the meaning of the interactions, making the act of playing Dear Esther more attractive than watching it on YouTube. Virginia stays on the very edge of what we call "games", and does it knowingly.

Going by how favourably Virginia is being received by the specialized press, it can't be said that Variable State's gamble hasn't paid off: it sits comfortably into the wider spectrum of interactive experiences, naturally lending itself to other media such as VR. Ironically, working so well in video form doesn't do any good to its interactive nature.