Teknoarcanist’s Blog

http://corvus.zakelro.com/round-table/#0309

“Taking Games Seriously, Making Game Seriously: This month’s Round Table challenges you to design a game that deals with a social issue that personally troubles you. The recent months have seen controversy sweep through the video game industry. Whether people are objecting to the use of imagery widely considered to evoke racial stereotypes, or to the gameplay based on violent sexual crimes, or to the fact that anyone would complain about either topic–the discussion has been fierce. This month, contributors to the Round Table are invited to design a game that focuses on racism, rape, domestic violence, cruelty to animals, genocide, or any other serious, and potentially hot-button, topic.”

So I’ve been reading Corvus’s ‘Man Bytes Blog’ for a while now, and I’ve been itching to respond to the monthly gaming roundtable in places I can’t even mention.

In light of the release of those page-turning CIA memos, I thought it might be interesting to see if I couldn’t take a crack at this, and try to outline a way to make being on the receiving end of torture a little more immersive (than, say,  alternating between A and B really fast)–and in doing so, hopefully at least make some dim approximation of the state of mind such practices would bring about, in order to illustrate their monstrosity.

Although the content described here is pretty necessarily not pleasant, I’ve tried to keep the imagery and wording fairly vague.  ESRB “T” is probably where I’d settle reading this at, although the game itself would undoubtedly be considered an “M”.

And away we go!
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BAM!  A light slams on with a sound like a gunshot.  You’re staring into a halogen bulb so bright it’s obnoxious.  You hear your character’s own breathing, and nothing else, for an obscene amount of time–long enough that you’ve begun pressing buttons, and started to wonder: ‘what am I supposed to do’?

Looking around, you get a basic understanding of your position: you’re strapped to a chair, in front of a flood light, in the middle of a black room.

As you mash buttons, the screen begins to move faster and faster; screeching noises ensue.  You’re moving your chair.  Scooting to freedom!

The chair flips and dumps you sideways onto the ground–the shock of impact crushes the right side of the screen into a blurry pulp.  You lay there, again for an obscene amount of time, madly trying to figure out ‘what am I supposed to do’.  Like being stuck in an old point-n-click adventure, you get the feeling that the game hasn’t been explained properly, that you’re not ‘doing it right’; it’s palpably frustrating, and it is a theme which runs constantly throughout the play experience.

Suddenly your chair stands itself up, and the flood light dims slightly.  A silhouette lurches into view.

He begins asking you questions about an event that you, the player, have no knowledge of.  You’re being interrogated for information.  You’re being accused of being party to some atrocity.  They want answers.

After each question, a small dialogue tree appears, shoved off to one side of the screen, and you’re almost never given enough time to read all of your choices before the game wrenches control away again.

You are lain onto a table, and a cloth folded over your face.  A question is asked of you; before you have time to pick a response, water cascades onto the screen.  Your character’s thumping heart gets louder and louder, and begins to increase in speed; it becomes clear that this will serve as your life indicator.  When it becomes too fast, you lose consciousness (see later).  There is no mini-game to try to breathe properly–your ability to stay conscious rides entirely on your ability to give them what they want.

The dialogue choices don’t change after each mini-drowning.  The questions, and even the sound bytes, appear to be looping–asking the same things, over, and over, and over, and giving you the sense (again) that you’re supposed to be doing something different; that you’re supposed to escape this or solve something somehow, but you don’t know what to do.

Every so often, one of the choices will change; maybe the opportunity to lie presents itself.  The first time you choose this new option, the veil comes off, and you’re treated to your captor’s face, and some expository dialogue.  After an impossible question-and-answer, they figure out you’re bullshitting them, and the veil goes back over.

Once again the gameplay loops: you’re asked a question, you’re given choices you don’t have time to read, you’re half-drowned, etc etc.  The next time one of the choices changes and you pick it, you’re treated to another small cutscene, that goes much the same way.  You feel as though you’re beginning to get a hold on the situation.

The third time, your pavlovian response is punished, rather than rewarded; the drownings become more difficult to sustain, and the same loops are undergone over and over and over until the player finally gives up, and succumbs; the player falls unconscious.

BAM.  The lights slam on.

You wake up chained to a wall, staring into a floodlight.

There is a car battery at your feet, with wires running up . . .

The game progresses in this manner, moving you from one horror to the next; as dialogue reveals bits and pieces and you begin to piece together the narrative scenario, the gameplay mirrors it: you feel, almost, as though you’re starting to understand what it is you’re supposed to do.  ‘Positive’ behavior (what the player is supposed to think they’re supposed to do) is rewarded with story information.  Negative behavior is rewarded with repetition.

Eventually, the player has seen all the methods of torture.  They begin to repeat–new interrogators are brought in, asking the same questions from the beginning of the game, as though the player has made no progress at all (you might as well have started a new game, with a different voice actor).

The switches between torture methods get faster and faster, as the player grows more and more agitated and confused.  Eventually, a shift begins to emerge.  Now, rather than trying to get information, they’re trying to coax you into specific responses: admissions of guilt.  These are made to feel as though they will be absolutely climactic; when the player first chooses ‘I did it’, a prompt comes up asking ‘Are you sure?’.   The second time, that, and then another: ‘Are you really sure?’

Throughout this portion of the game, information about the player character is gradually revealed.  You were raised here.  You went to school here.  Such and such relative was killed for such and such a reason.  Didn’t that make you angry?  Didn’t that make you want to do something?

The dialogue, and particularly its intonation, is increasingly cued in such a way that it resonates with the player’s previous experience with ‘amnesiac murderer’ movies and games; you, the player, begin to wonder whether or not you, the character, may have actually done what it is they’re accusing you of.  Could it be?  It would certainly make more sense than what’s happening now, wouldn’t it?  And you want to confess–because it seems, so clearly, that if you do something amazing is going to happen . . .

If, at any time, you choose to exit the game, you are killed.

If you do not confess, after a time, the tortures resume.  They grow faster and harder to sustain, until finally, you are killed.

If you confess, you are made to spell out the entire story of what you did, how you did it, and why, with coaxing and suggestion until you can recite it exactly, word for word, line for line, dialogue choice by dialogue choice.

The light is turned off, and you are unstrapped.  You are dragged across the room by both arms, out the doors, and into the anonymous night.  You are shoved off into the darkness, and begin to walk.  After a time, you gain the strength to run.  There is no one around you.  There is nothing in sight.  You’re free!

As you go, the camera slowly pulls out of first person and into third, to reveal a stumbling, dirty, emaciated figure.

The camera stops pulling back, and you are free to march your character off towards the horizon, and the rising sun.

Then, cross-hairs rise into view.  And you are killed.

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