Will there come a time when narrative games can offer us a genuine feeling of attraction towards their characters?

I’ve recently been musing on the lack of character within our video games. To avoid any confusion, know that I refer to online and offline video games but not online-enabled encounters between individual players, which can spawn quite deep and engaging drama on their own, probably irrespective of the gaming platform. I want to understand if narrative games can ever support something film takes in its stride – empathy with the characters. Why? Empathy is just one of the devices cinema uses to draw audiences through a narrative, and it deepens the impact a piece can have. It can be formed through engaging plot or story, but most interestingly to me it can also be a little erotic.

Whilst there are long-raging arguments about the portrayal of women in games, from the skin-deep female Samus Aran to everyone’s favourite scapegoat Lara Croft, I’m interested to know if a game character can one day enthrall me. I’d like a female lead who’s attractive and knows it, but doesn’t flaunt it – mature, likeable, respectable. There are also some brilliant arguments about morality in games amongst which I hold Manveer Heir‘s in good regard. But what could it mean to the player faced with a life-or-death decision if the plot involves characters to which they genuinely hold some attachment?

Amélie and Lost in Translation are just two films in which I fell in love with the female lead in some way. As cinematic works, both films deliver attractive actresses whom we quickly engage with at the surface level, in order to recognise that their characters are lovely. There’s narrative too of course, though this takes more time to endear us while a pretty face can sway us in a heartbeat. The ultimate result of both plot devices is that I, the viewer, want no ill to come to either Amélie or Charlotte and I will watch the fim right to the end in order to see that done. Our attraction to these characters is what sustains the narrative, therefore the films exist upon that premise.

So if games too are to offer engaging narratives, should they attempt to better characterise, or even eroticise their characters?

In my reading on this subject, I came across a 1973 paper entitled Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, by Laura Mulvey. Although the paper is mostly an application of Freudian and feminist theory to film, it offers some fascinating examples of erotic cinematography and what it does to its audience (by this, I mean any film which uses eros in its makeup – not necessarily erotic cinema itself). What’s important to bear in mind, given how different cinema and games are and should remain, is how one might apply lessons in erotica to interactive play, rather than tacking one medium onto the other with FMV sequences, for example. Luckily, the key device Mulvey identifies is identification, and games are getting pretty good at that.

Mulvey cites two types of audience-character identification within films:

• Scopophilic instinct, in which the audience gleans pleasure from seeing someone on-screen as a sexual object. We watch a man or woman who knows him or herself to be desirable. Examples would include Moulin Rouge! (right), and Barbarella.
• Ego libido, or letting the audience identify with characters on-screen. We watch and relate to someone watching somebody desirable. This is quite common and is almost always hung on the male character, who actively engages with a passive woman. It could be framed as voyeurism or a one-to-one encounter.

To my mind, only the second category really applies to games. Scopophilia relies rather more on the passive watching of a narrative, while some games specialise in manipulating ego. Some films, such as Mulvey’s cited example of Vertigo, will take a first-person perspective on such encounters, but it’s a tough device to pull off in film. Gamers are already hard-wired to identify on some level with a third-person avatar. Were they allowed to identify more often with NPCs this way, I believe it could make for some memorable encounters indeed.

Let’s say you’ve adopted a role as gunslinging outlaw of the Wild West, visiting a bar in town for the first time. At this point, all you (the player) know is what you’ve played up to now. There isn’t necessarily one overriding mission or reason for you being in this place.

You (reading as the on-screen avatar) come face to face with an attractive barmaid, and she welcomes you in with a subtle, charming wink. Some of the bar patrons behind her can be seen to look up at her. They admire her, and may very well be regarding you jealously. The barmaid moves away to serve the drinks she’s carrying, looking back with an inviting smile as she regards you a second time.

As you inevitable move to the bar (as is cultural habit, for “the glamorous impersonates the ordinary” – Mulvey, 1973), raised voices can be heard from a booth in the far corner. A brawl ensues, and the barmaid you just met is heard to scream and drop her drinks tray.

What I’m suggesting here isn’t particularly complex, for some games already create encounters in this vein. Some fascinating emotional and moral complexes can be exploited by these encounters, however:

• Unless the player is not immersed for whatever reason (say, an interfering user interface or jarring cut from FMV), it’s quite likely they will respond to the barmaid’s cries. They will not require an on-screen prompt or mission statement beforehand.
• Most players would assume, given the context, that a Western bar brawl will involve guns. If the game does not arm them on an events trigger – such as by moving from a cutscene to a UI with bullet chambers, health bars and kill points seen on screen – will the fact the player has been allowed to meet one or more of the lively patrons of this bar cause them to think even for a second about pulling their gun or not?

This point raises one element I’d particularly like to highlight – it matters not whether the inevitable happens and the player joins the fray, or indeed if preservation somehow enters them and they sit it out, so long as they’re later aware a decision was made, and that it was weighed emotionally. We could only enjoy such options in a world people somehow care about or lust after.

To expand on the mechanics of play, however:

• I’ve known some games to feature fights in which at the moment ‘bad guys’ appear, the innocent bystanders become invincible, run away or worse, disappear altogether. If characters like the enchanting barmaid are unable to escape, will that prevent players from pulling the trigger? If they’re accidentally (or intentionally) shot, will the player feel genuine remorse?

Again, it doesn’t matter half as much whether the barmaid is killed or not – it’s the player’s reaction I’d like to test.

Without wishing to cast insult or sound egotistical, I cannot imagine these dilemmas playing out in the stereotypical game environment we know today. In fact I’d believe that a half-dressed barmaid too obvious in her flirtatiousness would fall under the player’s on-screen crosshairs and be killed, but not missed.

It is true that budgets and a stricter focus on gameplay (such as the mechanics of firing and reloading) may limit the depth of character we can portray in our incidental NPCs. I’m not saying there aren’t reasons for what goes on now, and nor m I saying that they should stop. Just as with cinema, I believe it’s likely that such games would represent an avant-garde, alternative branch of the medium. Die Hard would not be the fun film it is if the directors used Saving Private Ryan styled cinematography to frame each terrorist’s death.

Relating to these characters places great stock in narrative as the game’s foundation, rather than its play mechanic. Modern titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Bioshock and Call of Duty claim the crown in this field so far but these are games for whom, despite attempts to deliver gripping storylines, the qualitative measure is placed on total play time and the level of graphical detail. It’s a cultural quirk I believe can be excused, but heaven forbid we consider Peter Jackson’s King Kong a better film because it’s an hour longer and boasts a higher CGI budget.

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Josef von Sternberg, an Austrian-American director known for featuring Marlene Dietrich in his work, is said to have welcomed his films being shown upside-down, so that “story and character would not interfere with the undiluted appreciation of the screen image.” Perhaps if we too decided to play narrative-rich games for their narrative delivered in a truly visual form, rather than worrying about goals and rewards, we too could find a new, immersive and ultimately beautiful medium.