The Beginner’s Guide is a narrative video game with no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person whose psyche is slowly breaking down. Along the way, he addresses issues of depression, loneliness and self-doubt.
I remember the moment when everything fell into place and I no longer saw the person as a character, but someone going through the same emotional struggles as me. It seemed that the game raised a mirror and fundamentally changed the way I saw myself. I had been harboring this constant need for social validation and the desire to find meaning when sometimes there were simply none. I didn’t think that when I entered the game I would be shaken or with lessons that I still carry with me today – but I did.
Even before my experience with The Beginner’s Guide, I was fascinated by games that seek to create challenging experiences. I am not referring to challenges in terms of logical puzzles or reflexes of contraction, but experiences that question the way I see, think or feel the world, the game or even myself.
Games challenge us
Some of my favorite games that elicit similar responses are Firewatch, a walking simulator where you play as a fire watcher, and Papers Please, a game in which you are an immigration officer from an authoritarian government that decides who can enter. Each offers challenging experiences from a wide variety of perspectives through player input and mechanics (the rules of the game), allowing for unique gaming experiences.
We know that games can create thought-provoking or reflective experiences thanks to the work of researchers from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Tom Cole and Marco Gillies. While gaming academics Julia Bopp, Elisa Mekler and Klaus Opwis have discovered how a game can cause negative emotions, such as guilt or sadness, but somehow still result in a globally positive, but emotionally challenging experience.
To get to the heart of what makes these perspectives of experiences challenging, from the mundane to what destroys the horizon, I asked players to record, report and reveal their experiences in the smallest details. My first study identified small moments of the eureka type that change the way players interact with the game. I have called these examples “micro-transformative reflection” – micro in the sense that they do not shake someone’s worldview, but are still transforming, as they change the way players act. An example of this is a player who felt extremely guilty after killing an innocent person and avoided killing anyone for the rest of the game.
Many participants began to philosophize on topics of morality, predestination, free will, justice and truth. For example, one participant commented on how the Stanley Parable, which breaks the “fourth wall” by making players battle a narrator, made them confront how much control they have over the choices they make in their own lives. This, said the player, was entirely inspired by how the narrator commented on his choices in the game.
Discovering how they challenge us
At the moment, I’m recruiting for the biggest study I’ve done to date. I posted an ad on a Reddit forum dedicated to games, looking for participants to play a potentially challenging game of perspective for two weeks and keep a diary. I expected an average response, with five to 10 participants willing, but I woke up the next morning with over 500 positive votes (essentially likes that improve the visibility of a post), 126 comments and a massive influx of new participants. This is further evidence of how common these experiences are and why they deserve further study.
The comments were full of discussion about a wide range of games that challenged players in some way. A user left the following comment about his experience with the dark fantasy game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice:
I never had a game that left me with the feeling that the game left. I literally was speechless for minutes when the credits started rolling. It is impossible to describe the type of cathartic sensation that took over me when I started to realize the symbolism of the final cutscene [(a video shown on completion that concludes the game’s narrative)]. It was like all the tension I felt up to that point just disappeared and I really started to cry because it was just wonderful and indescribable.
The game, which was designed to reflect the experience of living with psychosis, clearly provided an emotionally challenging experience, eliciting difficult feelings that can fall on the edge of the life-changing spectrum.
I am more than half of my study, having brought together 11 participants to talk in detail about their experiences. In all of my research, it’s clear how impactful games can be, and I hope my research continues to discover the powerful ways in which games can challenge people’s thoughts and feelings.
This article by Matthew Whitby, PhD student at IGGI, University of York, has been republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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