Narrated Mechanics: The Witness, Everything, and Walden
Over this past year, two of my favorite interactive experiences have incorporated non-traditional storytelling. What I mean by that is instead of using narration, cut-scenes, or ‘characters,’ these games (if I dare call them that) use audio recordings to not only contextualize what the player is experiencing, but also to provide meaning, where innately, there might not be any. The two games I have in mind are Jonathan Blow’s The Witness, and David O’Reilly’s Everything. The Witness is an exploration based game set on a deserted island where the player solves abstract logic puzzles. Everything is an Academy Award nominated interactive art piece that allows the player to explore the universe from different perspectives, supplemented by philosophical concepts and dialogues, both textual and audio, to enhance the player’s experience. Tracy Fullerton’s upcoming game Walden uses similar narrative tactics as well. Although the title is automatically infused with some natural meaning, I’m interested in the way the game tells a story and creates meaning–namely, largely supplemented, it seems, by audio clips. The intention of the game is to imitate the immersive nature experience of Henry David Thoreau, who spent the summer of 1845 living self-reliantly next to Walden Pond. He is known for his thoughts around human relationships with nature, technology, and governments, which which the game hopes to inspire its players.
Walden, The Witness, and Everything all have voice recordings to go along with the game’s ‘exploratory’ experiences. Although, technically, these games do have win states, getting to the win state is not necessarily your goal, it is simply a means to provide closure to the experience. You may be thinking, wait, closure is the win state and goal of most games; however, in these exploratory experiences, where the player has a considerable amount of freedom to set out on any task at hand, their ‘goal,’ the ultimate win state, is no more meaningful than the actual goals the players themselves have set out to accomplish in this virtual space. Only once they feel fulfilled and done with the game (provided they didn’t quit) do they set their eyes on the more free-roaming and relaxed nature of these curated experiences. The game asks players to not just rush through the game consuming the narrative beats, like linear storytelling games often do. Instead it asks for their attention, in the case of all three of these games, through voice recordings.
I will say that technically, The Witness has a narrative that allows players to completely skip the audio logs, but it is likely they will encounter them elsewhere eventually. The recordings talk about real life perspective, written by scientists, astronauts, and ethicists. Although, the game has no apparent connection to these subjects, the game’s mechanics and environment allow players to make these connections themselves, allowing for players to create or ignore meaning in their exploration of an island filled with puzzles.
With Everything, the dialogue boxes, although not technically audio recordings, help teach the player as well as provide thought provoking dialogue about the experience the game provides. However, playing in everything has more meaning when you find and are listening to the audio recordings of the philosopher Alan Watts. The game’s mechanics, and dialogue suddenly become more meaningful. This isn’t black magic, or voodoo in game design that automatically makes things more meaningful. Players are innately searching for meaning within these experiences, and these audio logs are the easiest way to inform the player about the kind of philosophy they should be thinking about while playing the game.
Audio recordings don’t make a great narrative by themselves. In fact, there are plenty of games with audio recordings that only provide back story that players don’t even care about. The reason these audio recordings reinforce the meaning behind the mechanics is because these games allow players to more deeply explore what the game has to offer. In this way, players are constantly finding different perspectives, and are thinking about what this dialogue has to do with the game. The audio recordings and dialogue provide players with a deeper understanding and epistemology of what the game is about.
Though not crucial in linear storytelling games, if an exploratory game is meant to invoke player transformations, it makes sense to offer players narrative in the form of audio to get the player to reflect on their experience in a meaningful way. This allows for the game to ultimately convey its purpose to the player more clearly and in an integrated way.