Mistakes Were Made: Hideous Agency and Catharsis in Fallout 3

This post was written for Critical Distance's Blogs of the Round Table August - September 2014.

In the final year of my undergraduate degree (2008/2009), I took a reading course on game studies with the professor who would eventually be my dissertation supervisor. At the time, I was dealing with some fairly rudimentary ideas about immersion and play and, like many new and isolated game scholars, I could have really used a copy of Frans Mäyrä's Introduction to Game Studies.

But in addition to my relative innocence to the field and my boundless enthusiasm for thinking about play, I did have a small concern. Historically, my ability to aim and my experience with games in which you have to aim specifically at things have been very, very poor. The need to accurately target something in a limited time sets off my anxiety disorder something fierce. To this day, my characters in Skyrim don't use bows. First person shooters remain one of least-played genres in my game library. The dog in Duck Hunt haunts me.

At the same time, young me recognized that I wouldn't feel like I was entering the field in good faith without widening my playing experience to include some of the genres I still don't particularly enjoy. Nowadays, I would thoroughly roll my eyes at the idea that one must play certain genres to have scholarly legitimacy, but actively trying to widen my experience proved useful at the time.
\
It also provided the most intense moment of abject terror and horror I've ever had in a game. Allow me to explain.

I decided to further investigate Fallout 3, particularly due to the fabulous in-game set-up of being born into the world. But as I played through the escape from Vault 101, I accidentally shot Butch's mother. Not used to the game's targeting system (which is easily brought up, provided you know which button to press), I responded to my childhood bully's panicked begging for me to save his mother from rad roaches by firing wildly and killing her. The roaches survived and attacked me.

Upon realizing what I had done, I panicked further and shut off my XBox 360, overcome with horror. I sat there alone in my house, not wanting to even touch the controller. I felt physically ill at what I had done in the game. I had intended to save Ellen, despite the fact that her son was a bully, but her screams and his panic compounded  my own nervousness about aiming and suddenly she was dead. If I hadn't shut off the game system, I probably would have killed Butch, too. ...The roaches were relatively safe, all things considered.

I didn't pick the game up again. Because I had immediately shut off the game, if I restarted from my last save file, it would never have happened. Problem solved, right? But no. I had killed Ellen and for me that was an immutable fact, whatever the game did or did not register. The next time I returned to The Wasteland, it would be because a jerk in a bad suit shot me in the face. Maybe it was sympathy with the long-dead Ellen that brought my particular Courier back from the grave.

Perhaps the worst part of the feeling at the time was that it hadn't been some moral choice I was troubled by, but it was just an accident, one that confirmed my anxieties about my ability to handle a fairly common game mechanic. It simultaneously sparked a panic attack and more broadly fed into my insecurity about wanting to pursue game studies but feeling somehow inadequate as a player and scholar - because I can't aim, because I panic under pressure. For a moment, I had killed Ellen and proven all of those idiotic misogynist steroetypes about girls and games true.

 Hell of a thing to happen because I didn't know to press the right bumper.

Often the ability to provoke an emotional response is a mark of a game's strength, but in the case of Fallout 3, the anxiety kept me from playing the game again. At the time, I wasn't getting any kind of treatment for my anxiety, so it was something of a perfect storm of personal and professional anxities and just plain bad luck - both for Ellen and for me.

At the same time, I look back on this experience as something of a watershed moment for my academic practice. Nothing since - no imposter syndrome, no poorly received conference paper, no taunt on the internet - has ever been as bad as that was. Being medicated has probably helped, but the fact remains that I already experienced the worst anxiety and self-doubt my beloved object of study could muster in me. I had done my worst. Killing Ellen in Fallout 3 freed me to play and study in ways that worked for me, not for some imaginary standard to which I could never measure up.

A happy accident? Not entirely. But like many accidents, powerful.

Sunless Sea: Adrift and Loving It?

Provisions and Some Background Information

I'm a shameless fan of UK company Failbetter Games and have been since discovering their best-known product, the browser game Fallen London. Fallen London is a story-driven game, characterized by clever, dark writing and the occasional tentacle. Based on the premise that Victorian London was sold to the shadowy Masters of the Echo Bazaar, and the city thrives (if that's the word) under the earth's surface, the game is a treat for players who enjoy immersive storytelling and, well, lots of text. After I passed on Failbetter's Kickstarter for Sunless Sea, an exploration and adventure game in the Fallen London world, I regretted not giving them my money.

I picked the game up as soon as it was available to non-Kickstarter backers and, though it was incomplete, sank a great deal of time and brave adventurers into the depths of Sunless Sea. It uses some roguelike elements (permadeath options, for example) and is not as text-based as its predecessor, but I would characterize it as still being primarily about story and the exploration of a dark sea (or correctly, zee) full of terror and opportunity. But mostly terror.

Aye, Aye, Captain?

As ever, I greatly enjoy Failbetter's inclusion of a non-binary gender option. At the beginning of the game zee captains choose a form of address  (Sir, Madam or Citizen) and a portrait to represent them. Delightfully, whatever form of address you choose doesn't affect which portraits are available to you. It's an open-ended approach to gender that I wish more games would embrace. Similarly, the option for a harbour romance with a Likely Lass or Dapper Chap isn't limited by your gender.This inclusiveness is typical of Failbetter and I wish more games would emulate them.

The Early Access release means that Sunless Sea is in something of an extended beta with a shifting list of upcoming updates. Some updates have been more encouraging than others - the introduction of map shuffling before all the of the map sections were complete was a frustrating addition. Depending on your map configuration, some destinations might be across empty sections of placeholders (think "Here be monsters" but with nothing). In a game where food and fuel are precious commodities and your terror meter is almost continually rising, these empty map sections significantly impact play.

Additionally, the introduction of the map shuffling worked against some of the game's efforts to balance the difficulty of early stages of the game (a lucrative, early-game only trade route may be simply inacessible to a nascent seadog). In-game grinding can be a bit of an issue, necessitating following particular trade routes ad nauseum, though I suspect that additional content (particularly that of random events) will strengthen the sailing experience.

Mutiny on the Zee

Watching Sunless Sea's progress, particularly through its Steam community, has been a lesson in the benefits and dangers of having customer input be such an intimate part of the beta process. In response to vocal player concerns, Failbetter is dramatically rehauling the game's combat system. This effort has pushed back other content updates, delaying the final release of the game.

While Failbetter's responsiveness to player input is laudable, I have to admit I'm more interested in their vision of the game than the version of it rejiggered to please Early Access players, particularly those who might rather be playing FTL. Don't get me wrong - I really like FTL, but the Fallen London universe deserves an adventure game that suits its unique flavor.

Is it completely naive to sigh and mourn the artists' vision(s)? Probably at least a little, particularly given that I assume the folks at Failbetter are quite happy to make a product that their customers enjoy. Having the Early Access option shows their interest in fan input and let us not forget that writing "Don't listen to me. Don't listen to anyone. Do what you want" is still a kind of input.

Final Ship's Log

I have to admit that as a player who didn't mind the old combat system, but hungers for new content and better balancing, that my voyages in the 'Neath have been fewer lately. I am, however, looking forward to the game's final release, currently slated for early December.

I might just hang up my sou'wester and penchant for cannibalising my crew until then, though.

Cross-Pollination: Friendship and Creativity in Arts and Criticism

I recently had a Twitter conversation about the ridiculous demand that critics and artists shouldn't be friends, or that these friendships should be reported, scrutinized, shamed and generally treated as somehow unethical. Unsurprisingly, this brief conversation took place in the context of the ongoing campaigns of harassment largely directed at female game developers and critics. A great deal of incisive and excellent analysis of this parade of hatred masquerading as concerns about ethics has already been done so I won't attempt to add to that body of work.

However, I'd like to talk about friendship.

I was particularly struck during the exchange by the reminder that some have claimed that friendship between artists and critics (or artists and artists, journalists and academics, et cetera) is wrong, that it is some kind of breach of integrity.

Don't make connections, some individuals have said, don't be friends with each other. If you must have a friendship, treat it as a moral lapse. Be alone. Feel alone. Feel alone and all the more vulnerable to the harassment we are aiming at you.

Friendships come in a staggering range of types with so many areas of overlap that 'types' isn't really the right word at all. The sheer variety of the positive human connections possible when people like each other is astounding. There are so many ways to like and love, to be liked and to be loved. And they are deeply powerful.

The things that have really changed me for the better in my life have consistently been my shared affections with other people. And while not everyone necessarily finds friendship so important and transformative, many do. For some of us, our friendships (in all their variety, with partners and family members and chums) have kept us alive.  To devalue that, to attempt todefine it as something wrong shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of affection. Friendship is not cronyism or collusion. Friendship is the extending of care and respect to others that sometimes we can't muster for ourselves. It is often the best of us, shared with the people we care about.

And friendship is powerfully creative. Friendships are to creativity what pollinators are to flowers. When you positively engage with someone, when you know someone this way, you share ideas, inspirations and challenges.  You open like the petals of a flower. You make new things out of what your friendships give you, or sometimes what they take away (friendships aren't perfect). A comment from a partner inspires a game. A concern about a friend prompts a blog post. Friendships enhance our creative output. To demonize friendships is an attack on not just the personal health of the people who take strength from them, but it is an attack on creativity.

And while creativity is pretty much everywhere, in areas like game development and game criticism, creativity is absolutely essential. The demand that you stop connecting with other people in your field or that you must view your relationships through a lens of shame is an attempt to hold you and your creativity hostage.

So, here's my pitch. Make more friends in gaming. Cultivate  more positive connections. Be proud of your friendships, whatever form they take. Explore the possibilities of shared affection by engaging with people you admire and people who admire you. Find strength and inspiration in your connections. Give it right back to the people you care about.

Make art. Make essays. Show them to your friends.