Hey, I’m Hamish, this is Writing on Games.
One of my favourite books ever has almost nothing to do with its central text.
The titular poem contained within Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire is a fairly short, contained
piece; unworthy of much more than basic critical analysis.
And yet, it is absolutely dwarfed by what could loosely be deemed commentary, courtesy
of fictional academic Charles Kinbote, following the death of the poem’s author.
In his analysis, Kinbote (or whoever he may be) reveals his wildly egotistical and more
than likely mentally unstable side; he may reference the poem every once in a while,
but more often than not his thoughts unfurl into this fragmented mess of universe-spanning
narratives all happening in parallel.
From Kinbote the great academic as he sees it, to Kinbote the ruler of the kingdom of
Zembla, pieces of it are all here, but none of it definitive.
Sorting out what’s real and what’s not, or rather, what’s useful as evidence of
your own theories…
well, that’s up to you.
In short, if the poem of Pale Fire is the book’s text, then the actual story of Charles
Kinbote is uncovered in the book’s paratext – its notes, index, foreword and the like.
It’s metafiction – drawing attention to its artificial nature as a physical object.
You’re merely presented these fragments; what we could call the “game” of the book
then, so to speak, of finding the links between these fragments, is something that happens
entirely of your own volition.
The author, by heavily controlling what information is (and crucially isn’t) available to you,
places faith in your instincts and deductive powers; what theorist Roland Barthes called
the birth of the reader, coming at the death of the author.
Instead of a linear narrative with a start and end point, we have a series of systems
and rules; a means by which another world is created and with which an audience will
interact in order to understand this new landscape they find themselves in.
It’s treating reality itself as a game to be played by an audience; it’s game design.
With 2015’s Her Story, the exact same principles apply: it’s just that instead of being conveyed
through the paratext of a book, it’s a search bar on a computer screen.
Ostensibly the game is a police procedural about a murder; but one that lays its cards
on the table almost as soon as you hit start.
When the interface within an interface pops up and the synthetic CRT glare hits you as
if you were in some poorly lit office space, you’re presented with your main source of
interaction.
Four videos lie in front of you; the word “MURDER” ominously lingering in the search
bar.
Over the course of these four short videos alone, we’re told something of a complete
story – a woman has been informed of the murder of someone close to her, she’s told
that she’s the prime suspect, and that the off-screen detectives more than likely have
her dead to rights.
Within seconds - within the first search term of the game, without even having to enter
it ourselves - we’re given our narrative; it’s a whodunit, where we very quickly learn
whodunit.
So if we find out who the murderer was without doing anything, why are we compelled to continue
exploring the database at all?
Well, because there are still many, many questions to ask; but in the tradition of postmodern
literature like Pale Fire, here we have a game that’s not necessarily concerned with
finding the answers; it’s about deconstructing our very understanding of the world we find
ourselves in, so that we may re-examine the questions we ask of it.
Like Pale Fire’s text is its relatively insignificant poem, we could think of the
“text” of Her Story’s as the act of you typing into a search engine and watching
videos; there’s no objective pop-up telling you to “find the link between these clips,
solve the mystery,” you just instinctually attempt to because you bought this from a
game storefront, you think of it as a game, and games have trained you to solve puzzles.
We can actually link this to a literary concept – that of Jakobson’s dominants; or the
rules and questions we associate with texts in any given literary movement.
In attempting to define what makes a text postmodern, literary theorist Brian McHale
argues that if modernist literature was structured by an epistemological dominant (what we could
term as “questions of meaning,” or trying to find some kind of objective truth about
the world around us), then postmodernist literature marked a move to what he called an ontological
dominant, or questions of being; forcing readers to reconsider the notion that anything can
be truly objective about that world.
Let me put it into language that won’t make you want to eat your own face: think of detective
fiction (what McHale dubbed “the epistemological genre par excellence”).
Basically a crime gets investigated and then solved – what kind of questions do you ask
yourself when you engage with it?
You might ask, what happened?
Why or how did it happen?
Essentially, whodunit?
Postmodern literature, then, would more likely have you asking… in what world is “it”?
How can I, whoever “I” am, affect “it”?
Her Story very quickly tells us that she dun a murder, so the game instead encourages you
to ask, well, who is she… or who are they?
Are they?
Which they are we talking about?
More importantly, and as brought into stark focus by the occasional eerie flash on your
screen, who the hell are you?
Suddenly the idea that detective stories are merely epistemological in nature is turned
on its head; most fiction of this type has you start with multiple questions and leads,
that eventually hone to an objective answer about the exact nature of the crime.
Her Story starts with that answer, before continually collapsing into the web of meaning
to be disentangled by the reader.
By leaving out the most particular of key details or giving you no end of red herrings,
the game only encourages this lack of clarity, toying with you in a way almost akin to a
psychological horror; never allowing you to gain a complete foothold in order to encourage
a deeper, more personal connection to the work through interpretation.
For example, as you continue to enter words or names into the search bar and watch the
resulting videos appearing like clockwork, you’ll likely begin to suspect that not
only are these interviews taking place at different times and in different rooms, but
that there might be more than one “version” of the woman involved in the case.
When I noticed this in my first playthrough, I homed in on terms relating to mental issues
associated with split personalities and time after time, continually broadening the scope
of my inquiry, nothing was coming up.
The woman’s mental stability was seemingly never brought into question, because apparently
no questions to this effect were ever asked by the silent, mysterious, off-screen police.
Eventually I caved and typed in “twins,” focusing on what I saw to be the less likely
outcome that they were in fact different people.
Much to my relief, new videos appeared, only for this to be not one, but two videos of
the game literally laughing at me for even thinking that to be the case: “twins?
Are you seriously asking me that question?”
At that point, I felt the creator Sam Barlow at my ear going “I see what you’re doing
there, maybe next time.”
At another point the woman mentions a Ouija board in passing – “ah yes, a hook,”
I naively thought, expecting the game to go into full blown supernatural horror mode,
explaining the uncanny nature of what I was experiencing, but no – it’s the only mention
of anything relating to the occult in the entire game.
The possibility of supernatural occurrences is dangled in front of you, further tangling
that web of meaning; never ruling that possibility out and forcing you to consider it in your
theories, but never giving you enough information to feel 100% comfortable in them.
So you have a murder mystery in which the murder isn’t really a mystery and where
very little outside of that is definitive.
So what’s the point of it all?
Well, if postmodern authors are to be believed, the fact that both character and player exist
outside of a traditional narrative landscape is the biggest piece of the puzzle in and
of itself.
Her Story has you solving a much bigger mystery than a murder; by revealing its hand so early
on, it has you instead formulating your own theories on the nature of an entire created
world.
You use the problem-solving skills you’ve built up from playing other games and interacting
with their systems, just in ways you might not expect from looking at a simple search
bar and watching videos.
You look for little details in the way the woman moves, the date and time, the background,
the way the database is framed, anything you can find to back up your hypotheses.
In discussing which is the “real” story of Pale Fire, for example, scholars Keep,
McLaughlin and Palmer say that “there can be no strict hierarchical ordering because
each is as “real” as the other.
Or, each is as fictional as the other – Nabokov is openly toying with the desire to see reality
as anything but a fictional construct.”
In essence, the right ending is none of them, and it’s all of them.
And as it turns out, Sam Barlow has an idea of what the true narrative of Her Story is,
just like Nabokov had a set idea of who Kinbote was, but unlike Pale Fire, Barlow won’t
tell anyone because it doesn’t matter.
He created systems and rules and provided just enough information to kind of guide us
through it, but ultimately his idea is only as valid as anyone else’s, because it’s
based on his idea of what happens outside of the text we’re presented; outside the
videos and the dimly-lit office.
He has notes on the game just like I have notes, but the game as a package is what it
is.
The playing field between author and reader is truly levelled.
Barlow nor the game ever tell you you’re wrong.
Like there’s nothing instructing you to fill in the gaps between these clips, there’s
also no eureka moment displayed by the game.
Credits roll after the game flat out asks you if you’re satisfied with your conclusion
after uncovering an arbitrary number of videos.
If you’re not, that’s fine; go back, search the database until you are.
With that in mind, Her Story is truly an anomaly; it’s a game that can last days, hours or
minutes – entirely dependent on your satisfaction with your theory.
Hell, after going back and examining it again, I’m left with even more questions than I
had before thanks to details I’d previously missed.
I’m still mulling it over.
I may not be interacting with the software; I may not be typing into that search engine,
but my mind is still piecing together previously insignificant parts of the narrative.
Pale Fire is one of my favourite books because the freedom its narrative affords had me so
invested that I think about it to this day.
In a similar way, thanks to the game’s uniquely postmodern presentation, I feel like maybe
I’m still playing Her Story.
So the keen-eyed among you might notice that this is, in fact, a revision of my very first
video on the channel, uploaded three years ago now.
The original is basically unwatchable, it’s bad, don’t go back to it.
I just thought that given the channel’s recent anniversary and the fact we’re about
to hit 100000 subscribers, it’d be neat to go back, completely rejig the script and
give those ideas the presentation I thought they deserved, to exemplify, mainly to myself,
how far I’ve come in terms of writing and production values.
It turned out to be way more work than I had previously anticipated, but I like to think
I can chalk that up to higher standards across the board.
I also thought that, given the occasion, it’d be nice to give something back and recommend
some other smaller channels that deserve your attention.
Core Ideas has a real knack for covering the parts of media you might not expect.
Like, I bet the first thing you think of when you see Halo Reach isn’t the body language
of its characters but, hey, my boy makes a super compelling case as to how it really
helps sell the game’s story.
Maybe check out his video on the music of Dragonball GT where you might be able to hear
me mispronounce a certain attack.
There are certain creators that I jokingly ask when their next upload will be but when
it comes to Chadunda, that longing for new videos couldn’t be more real.
He doesn’t upload often but when he does, you know you’ll get an incredibly concise,
conversational and informative look on a game.
His game of the year video had me legitimately welling up.
He’s genuinely one of the best writers on this platform; he never wastes a word and
it’s something I admire a great deal.
Long form videos are something I struggle with; it takes a lot to keep me interested
for that length of time, so when a video from Lambhoot makes an hour pass by in what feels
like minutes, it’s a sign that you’re onto a winner.
His highly technical breakdowns of games from a software development perspective regularly
have me questioning my views on games I adore, but it’s the way he’s able to merge this
with his insane sense of humour that keeps his videos consistently engaging.
He has definitely the most underrated channel on YouTube so go and check him out.
In a similar vein, it’s easy to forget that most of us video essay dingos have no idea
what the actual process of making a video game is like.
The notion that I criticise games without having made them myself is something I genuinely
struggle with.
Which is why when someone like The Playing Field comes along, I really pay attention.
The dude works at Warren Spector’s company OtherSide as a level designer, so you know
his level breakdowns of immersive sims and the like are coming from a place of genuine
authority.
And finally HeavyEyed, whose videos on the context and design of Modern Warfare or the
history and problems of Starfox got me thinking differently about how we talk about games,
is one of the main reasons I’m glad I started doing this, as unbearably stressful as it
can often be.
The dude is one of the nicest I’ve met and is a constant reminder that the best part
of starting the channel has been the people I’ve been fortunate enough to come across.
You all make this worthwhile.
Thank you.
So with that out of the way I’d just like to thank my patrons who genuinely make this
all possible.
I absolutely would not be here if it weren’t for your incredible support.
Special thanks go to Mark B. Writing, Nico Bleackley, Rob, Michael Wolf, Artjom Vitsjuk,
Spike Jones, TheNamelessGuy, Chris Wright, Dr. Motorcycle, Ham Migas, Travis Bennett,
Zach Casserly, Samuel Pickens, Tom Nash, Shardfire, Filip Lange, Ana Pimentel, Jessie Rine, Brandon
Robinson, Justins Holderness, Peter, Christian Konemann, Cameltraffic, Nicolas Ross and Charlie
Yang.
And with that, I’m Hamish and this has been Writing on Games.
Thank you very much for watching and I’ll see you next time.