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The Player Is and Is Not the Character
Jill Duffy writes "GameCareerGuide has posted an intellectual article about video games which argues there is no such thing as 'breaking the fourth wall' in games. Written by Matthew Weise, a lead game designer for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, the article considers the complex relationship between video game players and characters. Weise says that, unlike in theater and film, video games don't ever really break the fourth wall, as it were, because in games, there is no wall. Players are always tethered to the technology, and the player is always just as much the main character as not the main character. Weise looks at both modern experimental games, like Mirror's Edge, as well as old classics, like Sonic the Hedgehog, to defend his point. He writes, 'Both avatars and the technological devices we use to control them are never simply in one reality. They are inherently liminal entities, contributing to a mindset that we, as players, exist in two realities at once. It's just as natural for a player to say, "I defeated that boss," as it is to say, "Snake defeated that boss," since Snake is and is not the player at the same time. It is likewise natural for a player to say, "I punched an enemy soldier," when in reality, she punched no one. All she did was press a button.'"
Circular logic works because circular logic works because circular logic works because circular logic works because...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
A common pet hate that shows there is a 4th wall in games is loading screens.
You know, those messages on screen while the game accesses the disk, explaining that the game is accessing the disk... please wait... *spins-CD-onscreen*
If it didn't annoy anyone it wouldn't be complained about so much, but I've read complaints about loading screens for over 20 years. Amiga Power magazine wrote an article about why it was a "heartbreakingly terrible idea". The Edge wrote a feature on stupid ideas and included it. C+VG complained about disk loading screens. The official playstation magazine wrote about it and mocked one game's animated loading screen as being "worthy of the CDTV. Yes, Amiga.". And Xboxlive reviews frequently complain about network loading screens that tell you you're playing a game.
Reviews frequently criticised games: "Firstly, it prints up "Loading Please Wait" in between each level reminding us that this is not a fantastic world in which we are an absorbed major player. THIS IS ONLY A COMPUTER GAME. Grr."
It seems like this is an excellent case in point to show that the 4th wall does exist in games. People do get lost in games and anything that ruins a carefully crafted mood is a bad idea. There's no excuse for it.
It's just as natural for a player to say, "I defeated that boss," as it is to say, "Snake defeated that boss," since Snake is and is not the player at the same time. It is likewise natural for a player to say, "I punched an enemy soldier," when in reality, she punched no one. All she did was press a button.
I don't agree with this at all. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything like "Snake defeated the boss." He's a representation of you and can't do anything on his own. You're the one doing the work to finish the game. It makes no sense for me to give him credit for beating the boss.
I think any game developer that is trying to tell a story should be just as wary of breaking the fourth wall as any author/playwright/director. The point of many/most stories is to draw the audience in. The interactivity in games is a much stronger tool than anything in the other forms of entertainment. This doesn't apply to all games, of course, but developers should be careful about breaking that immersion if they're telling a story.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
It's just as natural for a player to say, "I defeated that boss," as it is to say, "Snake defeated that boss," since Snake is and is not the player at the same time.
I have never once heard anyone ever say "Snake defeated that boss". Not once. Not Ever.
I get what the author is saying, but that was a dud example. Depending on the game, the protagonist avatars may be connected to different degrees to the player. Some games like quake, there is only me. My space marine projection is naught but me. Other games like Sam and Max have very strong characters. I control them, at some of the time, but they have their own personality separate from me. And there is a continuum from one extreme to the other.
Most players that I know instinctively differentiate between things the character does as a direct result of the player control, and the things the character does as a result of the game script. And take or deny 'ownership' of the action appropriately. And sometimes they acknowledge the control... like "Watch me make snake jump off a cliff..." But if Snake does something in a cut scene for example, there would be few players who would would say "I did X..." when describing it.
It is likewise natural for a player to say, "I punched an enemy soldier," when in reality, she punched no one. All she did was press a button.'"
This might come as a shock to the article author, but when someone shoots someone in a movie, in reality, no one got shot either.
to counter his point.
In the original Sonic the Hedgehog, if you stopped giving input, after a few seconds, sonic would stare out (presumably) at the player and begin tapping his foot impatiently. Direct address of the audience is, if I am not mistaken, the classic example of breaking the 4th wall.
my pet machine
What, is this some sort of Schrodinger's player?
It's all a bunch of pseudo psychobabble anyway. Plenty of games break the fourth wall, but as this poorly written nonsense says there IS no wall. Which is of course nonsense.
Unless the participant is actively acknowledged, that is a fourth wall.
Metal Gear Solid, Snake never looks out of the screen at you and engages you. I can think of plenty of games where the character you play does. Just like there's a fair few movies where a character breaks the fourth wall.
I mean really, what the hell is the point of the article? Writing for the sake of it offering no real insight or cogent, intelligent thought.
The more I think about it, the more I'm amazed that this made it to the front page. Clearly the key is writing an article that appears intelligent but really isn't is the key.
And I've now spent all this time commenting on an utterly worthless and pointless article that serves no purpose other than to give some random guys opinion. An opinion which is utterly ill-informed, ill-conceived, and totally irrelevant to anything.
Was this you when shopping after playing tetris?
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
The author preemptively counters your counterpoint:
Sonic's impatience (nor anything else about his personality) is not made apparent otherwise. It only becomes evident by watching how he reacts to his relationship with the player. If the player is slow or absent-minded, Sonic isn't happy. This may be a very simple example, but I think it serves to illustrate just how bound up fiction can be with interface elements in games. Sonic is aware of his relationship with the game controller, and with the player, and reacts to them within the psychological parameters set by the game's fiction. Just because he is being puppeteered by the player does not mean that Sonic ceases to be himself. He is holding up his end of the relationship, "So what is your problem?" he seems to be thinking. Should you, the player, fail to perform, he stares at you in frustrated apprehension, as if he were your co-actor on stage and you had forgotten your line in the middle of a performance. Sonic isn't breaking the fiction [i.e., fourth wall] - you are. He's just sitting there, in character, waiting for you to join him in the game world.
(emphasis mine)
It's a complicated argument, but essentially, the author says there is no fourth wall. The relationship between the gamer and the game is different than the relationship between the audience and the conventional theater.
The author acknowledges that the narrative of a game can break the fourth wall (numerous adventure games do this), but he argues that the gameplay itself cannot, because the relation between avatar and player is usually quite interdependent; much moreso than narrator and reader (books), or lead actor and viewer (TV/movies).
It is likewise natural for a player to say, "I punched an enemy soldier," when in reality, she punched no one. All she did was press a button.'"
Likewise, I could say "I punched the monkey" when in reality, all I did was install a keylogger.
This article is a bad rehash of a 2004 Gamasutra article. It doesn't improve much on that article, although it should. There are some significant issues to explore here.
A good starting issue is the relationship between graphical viewpoint and literary viewpoint. In some games, the player has exactly the viewpoint of the character they're controlling. In others, the player is a step back from the character graphically. Tomb Raider is an example. Note that in Tomb Raider, you're controlling Lara Croft, but you're not her, as her commentary makes clear.
Looking out from the character's viewpoint creates the problem that the player sometimes needs a bigger field of view than the screen provides. There have been a few attempts to fix this problem with VR-type hardware, but those are rare, and if you've ever played a game in full gloves-and-goggles VR gear, you know why. Providing view-direction controls is usually painful for gameplay. That's what drives game designers towards a remote viewpoint.
This is completely independent of the literary viewpoint. There are games where the user is the character, there are games where the user drives the character, and there are games like the Sims where the user can only influence the character. These are literary conventions, independent of the graphical viewpoint. There seems to be a convention that if your viewpoint is from the character's eye position, you are the character. Once the viewpoint takes a step back, the possibility of some disassociation from the character is opened up.
Now consider shared virtual worlds with avatars. In Second Life, your avatar is you - no question. Most MMORPGs are like that. Why? Because you're held responsible for the acts of your avatar. If you're a jerk in Second Life, it has consequences. Life in Everquest has duties; when your guild is raiding, you're expected to be there fighting with them.
All this is well known in the game design community. The article doesn't really capture the subtle issues.