Last month, I brought up how games that lack a cin­e­mat­ic style of nar­ra­tive still rely on nar­ra­tive – specif­i­cal­ly, cul­tur­al­ly ingrained nar­ra­tives that are more basic than the mas­sive frame­work of story most films and nov­els pro­vide. These cul­tur­al nar­ra­tives are of con­sid­er­able value to us, since they are essen­tial­ly the bedrock of our soci­ety, the “fic­tions” that we use to sus­tain order in and make sense of our lives. Peter Berger describes these nar­ra­tives as a lit­tle bit beyond what we read­i­ly under­stand as social con­struc­tion – newer, less ingrained ideas won’t have the same uncon­scious qual­i­ty, where­as we tend to accept these base ideas as “just the way things are.” For instance, roles as basic as “friend” and “enemy” are social con­struc­tions, as are the behav­iors we are expect­ed to show to our friends and ene­mies. When I pro­vide for the needs of anoth­er per­son, and they pro­vide back, a bond devel­ops – depen­den­cy and trust fol­lows. What could be boiled down to a knowl­edge of anoth­er per­son (“I know how my friend will react when I show him this pic­ture of a cat rolling a water­mel­on out of the sea”) and sub­se­quent trust in that per­son (“He will talk to me when I need to talk”) is social­ly cod­i­fied into the role of “friend.” Its inverse, the enemy, occurs when per­ceived harm is incurred by anoth­er agent. The fren­e­my is an exam­ple of how this sys­tem some­times breaks down.

But let’s not dwell on that; I know most folks aren’t as eager to delight­ed­ly wal­low in post­mod­ernism and soci­ol­o­gy as I am. What I’m get­ting at is that games all tap into story-space for us, just like every­thing else does. They draw from the same place as the most basic sto­ries we use to describe and define our­selves and oth­ers, latch­ing onto that sense of play and boundary-loosening that we encounter in any art that pro­vides an alter­na­tive world to stand in, and thus an alter­na­tive per­spec­tive against which we can assess our own world. This brings me to my focus. RPG ele­ments have become preva­lent in gam­ing. As one plays, one can expect expe­ri­ence points, unlock­able items, and dis­crete lev­els that unlock new abil­i­ties. Some have argued that this is good, or that this is bad – it is of course com­plex, and there­fore nei­ther. But what I’m inter­est­ed in is what makes these mechan­ics so pop­u­lar. What cul­tur­al nar­ra­tives do RPG mechan­ics tap into? And, know­ing this, what cool things can we do with games to sub­vert that?

When we inhab­it an alter­nate world in video games, it is often via incar­na­tion. We assume an avatar, anoth­er skin and per­sona, which hous­es the set of tools we will use to inter­act with the dig­i­tal world. Sometimes this per­sona is less vis­i­bly human or per­son­al than oth­ers, but fre­quent­ly that avatar will be vir­tu­al skin-and-bone, rec­og­niz­able and under­stand­able and, if not human, meant to evoke human­i­ty. It pro­vides us a per­son­al mir­ror with which we can explore that world, reflect­ing our­selves in the world and also reflect­ing that world back onto ours for our ben­e­fit.

When mar­ried with RPG ele­ments, the avatar’s jour­ney becomes an unceas­ing ascent – the avatar gath­ers power and points that power ever upwards. The slope is grad­ual, but con­sis­tent, and plays into a notion of self-improvement, or coming-of-age.

This slope is total­ly appro­pri­ate for the hero’s jour­ney nar­ra­tive, a nar­ra­tive at which video games have excelled. The hero’s jour­ney speaks to the fac­ing of chal­lenges, and tends to mir­ror per­son­al chal­lenges that we go through. The stages involve ret­i­cence to face a chal­lenge, deal­ing with outer and inner road blocks, and final­ly over­com­ing what­ev­er great obsta­cle awak­ens the hero at the start. Virtually every tra­di­tion­al RPG has a ter­ri­ble vil­lain at its apex, a vil­lain that is the anti-thesis of what the hero is. For these sorts of nar­ra­tives, straight­for­ward RPG mechan­ics suit us well, but not per­fect­ly; an impor­tant part of the hero’s jour­ney is strife, and if the game’s mechan­ics express a cease­less mechan­i­cal ascent then the game must express the “fall” of tur­moil and hard­ship by chal­lenges alone. This is often less effec­tive than instances in which the hero/player might active­ly ques­tion their own resolve and abil­i­ty to see the jour­ney through, as it feels like the out­ward push­ing in and does­n’t have much influ­ence on the inter­nal world of the hero or play­er.

In gen­er­al, though, RPGs are great at express­ing the hero’s jour­ney. By tying the play­er to the avatar, RPGs allow the play­er to expe­ri­ence that per­son­al growth first-hand. The state of self is the focal point of the game’s mechan­ics, and such is that focus that expand­ing the tool-set of the avatar can become an end in itself (see WoW). RPGs are more than just watch­ing num­bers go up because those num­bers are attached to our own self-definition. The avatar rep­re­sents a space of play in which the self can play and become not-self, but that play also indeli­bly reflects back on the self. We spend time play­ing a game, and expe­ri­ence “our­selves” improv­ing in con­crete ways. Some would argue that this isn’t a real improve­ment, but I think that’s a fool­ish way of look­ing at it; our res­i­dence in video games is cho­sen and not inescapable like our fleshy exis­tence, but that does­n’t mean it’s not real. Improvement is improve­ment to the human brain.

Indeed, improve­ment is espe­cial­ly impor­tant for social nar­ra­tive I want to exam­ine most, the American nar­ra­tive. The nar­ra­tive of the self, com­posed of our own mem­o­ries and the sto­ries that other peo­ple tell to us about us, relies on cul­tur­al nar­ra­tive to bol­ster its weight and real­i­ty. The American nar­ra­tive is often one of self-improvement – themes of dom­i­nance, com­pe­ti­tion, and know­ing and increas­ing one’s own strengths are pro­lif­ic and inher­ent to most of our lives. Roleplaying mechan­ics effort­less­ly tap into this drive, giv­ing us a chance to prove our­selves in a dig­i­tal uni­verse. We expe­ri­ence a vir­tu­al ascent that can be as com­pelling and ful­fill­ing as a job pro­mo­tion or win­ning a pick-up game of bas­ket­ball and, depend­ing on how social the game is, expe­ri­ence this ascent in the eyes of oth­ers, as well.

Look at the myth of the self-made man who grew up with noth­ing and achieved every­thing in the field of his choice. It’s an espe­cial­ly American tale; we’re obsessed with class flu­id­i­ty, even if our sys­tems are less suc­cess­ful at facil­i­tat­ing it than they might be. This same nar­ra­tive is expressed in every RPG mechan­ic. Nobody starts at level 20; every­body begins at level 1, on the same basic level, and they will often make mean­ing­ful choic­es as they grow and devel­op that will deter­mine their iden­ti­ty and long-term suc­cess. Most expres­sions of lev­el­ing up are noth­ing less than the American ideal – World of Warcraft is a bet­ter expres­sion of America’s social val­ues than America has ever been.

Of course, this pic­ture of the human expe­ri­ence is incom­plete. Life is not an unceas­ing ascent toward per­fec­tion, and every indi­vid­ual suf­fers and loses ground. It is these expe­ri­ences that RPG mechan­ics fail to cap­ture.

This is not, in and of itself, a prob­lem. Stories are focused expe­ri­ences, and don’t need to cap­ture the whole of human exis­tence, and role­play­ing games as cur­rent­ly envi­sioned don’t strict­ly need to focus on these descents. But that does­n’t mean they can’t, nor that it isn’t fer­tile, com­pelling space for new art. But it will require chal­leng­ing the basic for­mat of RPGs in order to ade­quate­ly address such themes.

Let’s look at Mass Effect 3. Its arc is large­ly one of descent – Shepard is exhaust­ed, and the stakes are no less than the fate of all sen­tient life in the uni­verse. Through dia­logue, voice-acting, and visu­als, the play­er watch­es as Shepard starts to lose her con­fi­dence, her reserves, and her allies. It’s a story that has just as many notes of tragedy, if not more, than notes of hope; its a story of des­per­a­tion. It’s also well exe­cut­ed, with one excep­tion – mechan­i­cal­ly, Shepard only grows more pow­er­ful. Mechanically, the game is an ascent, and then Shepard is abrupt­ly cut down in her prime.

This is a prob­lem of form over­rid­ing intent.

Imagine a Mass Effect 3 in which the play­er is con­stant­ly los­ing lev­els, forced to decide which tools to give up just as Shepard is forced to make hard choic­es. This grates against com­mon knowl­edge, and may not even be a good idea (though I real­ly love it), but imag­ine a Mass Effect 3 in which the theme of sac­ri­fice is not just expressed by the devel­op­er, but is a lived expe­ri­ence for the play­er.

Mass Effect 3 is an incred­i­ble game even with its reliance on the unceas­ing ascent of tra­di­tion­al RPG mechan­ics, but it’s not all those mechan­ics are capa­ble of. Games are noth­ing less than a col­lab­o­ra­tive story between the devel­op­er and the play­er, and exist some­where between the devel­op­er’s bound­aries and inten­tions and the play­er’s lived expe­ri­ence. RPG mechan­ics are a pow­er­ful nar­ra­tive tool, but let’s play jazz with them. Human sto­ries are so much wider than pure ascent, and new takes on old mechan­ics can prove a bedrock for incred­i­ble new expe­ri­ences.