the re-release of Indigo Prophecy or
Fahrenheit if you're outside the u.s.
got me thinking about how rarely we seem
to set games in our present day unless
we're making a war game and how when we
do we rarely do so successfully we're
starting to get better at portraying the
mundane slices of ordinary life which is
great and I think it's going to lead us
to produce games that explore vital
parts of the human experience but today
I want to talk about something else the
thing which let Indigo Prophecy be
successful the thing which I believe
might be one of the keys to creating a
compelling enough hook to make a game
about the modern world marketable while
still allowing its creators to explore
aspects of the life we all know and live
today I want to talk about the fantastic
in 1970 a Bulgarian sociologist and
literary critic names fate on Todorov
defined the concept of the fantastic by
saying in a world which is indeed our
world the one we know when there occurs
an event which cannot be explained by
the laws of this same familiar world the
person who experiences the event must
opt for one of two possible solutions
either he's a victim of an illusion of
the senses of a product of the
imagination and the laws of the world
then remain what they are or else the
event has indeed taken place it is an
integral part of reality but then this
reality is controlled by laws unknown to
us the fantastic occupy has the duration
of this uncertainty the fantastic is
that hesitation experienced by a person
who knows only the laws of nature
confronting an apparently supernatural
event any of you who have played Indigo
Prophecy know exactly what he's talking
about the game starts off in the real
world but then something totally
inexplicable happens are you
hallucinating are you dreaming or are
you insane or have you just been exposed
to a side of the world that you never
believed in do you have to fundamentally
change what you think of as reality
this is a powerful starting point
because it hooks us with a good mystery
it lets us have all the excitement of
the supernatural while still allowing us
to explore our modern-day setting and it
forces us to question reality and
thereby forces us to examine it to put
us in the space where we feel the
fantastic t'adore off says but there are
three conditions that must be present
first that we believe the world our
narrative occupies is the world we know
second that the characters within the
narrative are as
sure of the reasons behind the fantastic
thing they experienced as we are and
third that we accept the events in the
story as happening within the story
rather than simply jumping to poetic or
allegorical meanings for the events in
games we sometimes struggle with each of
these conditions in the case of the
first condition as players we're not
really prone to assuming that our game's
narrative is taking place in our own
reality because of how many games focus
on fantasy or the supernatural I think
we've been trained to just assume that
anything that seems supernatural in a
game is actually just part of that
game's world but it's just how things
normally are there we actually have to
work a bit harder than most other media
to get our audience to stop and consider
whether the magical things happening in
the story are actually happening for
rational real-world reasons games like
life is strange trip this line in the
case of the second condition the
characters in our games rarely seriously
questioned the reasons behind the
fantastic things they experience when
something supernatural happens our
protects you just roll with it often it
very quickly becomes the new normal whoa
I got superpowers
all right let's fight some crimes then
and finally the third condition requires
that we accept the reality of the events
of the story instead of jumping right to
the search for allegorical meaning even
games like Kentucky route zero which are
amazing and do an incredible job
delivering on magical realism still
don't actually put us in that fantastic
space very often
because the nature of the game makes us
quick to look for the meaning the
interpretation for any supernatural
events that happen we jump right to this
search for meta-narrative meaning which
by the way is something I love and I
think may ultimately be even more
valuable than the fantastic I'm just
trying to define the difference between
the two as soon as you start hunting for
meta-narrative meaning though you're no
longer questioning the reality of the
event within the world the character
occupies because you the player are
already outside of that world looking at
it as an interpretive piece of art if we
can deliver on these three fronts though
then we can use this technique to engage
and to explore but there's one more
important piece we have to understand
about the fantastic before we can really
truly utilize it and that's the fact
that the fantastic is the time in which
you can't decide if the events are real
and have a rational explanation or
they're real and your previous
understanding of reality was simply too
limited to include them the key here is
that this is almost always a limited
time both the characters and the play
we'll eventually decide on one of these
two ways to perceive the events they've
been exposed to if the events have a
rational explanation they become the
uncanny and to door offs formulation.if
rather the events are truly real then
the story becomes the marvelous either
of these tacks can make for a powerful
narrative but as the creator of that
narrative you need to decide on which
way you're going early you need to know
when you think the player is going to
come to their decision on it and decide
what their decision means for their
interpretation of your narrative in many
ways you can look at the failings of
Indigo Prophecy
especially later on as a failure on
these fronts what's perhaps most
interesting to me though is how far we
can stretch this concept to engage even
though it isn't the strictest use I
would argue that gone home
uses the fantastic to bring us in and to
keep us questioning and exploring it
takes a subject matter that would seem
dull or off-putting the some but then
brings the player in by starting us with
a disappearance seated in the players
mind is the question of whether this
disappearance is something supernatural
like we'd expect from most games or
simply something natural and the players
character shares this doubt she's a
rational normal person who won't jump to
any wild conclusions or accept anything
beyond her Ken but as she starts to
explore she has these tiny doubts
creepin in the way that they so easily
can in an empty home alone in a storm I
bring this up to show the power of the
fantastic to engage us regardless of
subject its power to turn the ordinary
and the everyday the world we understand
into a place full of mystery and
questions it gives us an entry point
into narratives that exist in the time
in which we live and forces us by its
very nature to question that world it's
not a panacea or even perhaps one of the
most frequently useable tools and the
designers toolbelt but it's one every
designer should have catch you all next
week