OR YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE
Games are like a badly written book that relies on a worrisome death just around the corner to achieve dramatic tension. Death ups the ante. If no one cares about your character, well, their sister could always die. And perhaps it was murder?? Who knows, but the reader suddenly wishes they did, even though two pages before they couldn’t have given less of a shit. Back in my undergrad writing classes, we used to talk about “earning” some dramatic, traumatic event: death, rape, a graphic sex scene, a sudden divorce, a pregnancy. You can do it, obviously, but it needs to be earned, or else it tends to feel cheap. You have to prepare for it, soften the ground, deliver it deftly, massage the aftermath, work it into the whole, and for god’s sake don’t do it too much. To me, the narrative weakness of video games is their constant reliance on death for stakes. The meaning isn’t earned; of course you don’t want your character, your avatar, this literal extension of yourself in the digital world, to die in front of you and remain unavenged. You need to avenge them, like you need to keep reading when the lonely divorcée, missing for a week, turns up bobbing in the icy Chicago river. Because Detective McCall sighs, rubs his forehead with the handkerchief his wife had tucked into his breast pocket that morning. “So what’ve we got, Samuels?”
The P.I. grunts, jutting his chin towards the body wrapped in a plastic sheet, ID tag peeking out like a toe ring. “Missing Person’s case. Florence Reed.”
“Mayor’s wife?” McCall whistles silently. “Holy shit. Where’s the daughter?”
Samuels shrugs, crouching down beside the body. “Just got here.”
McCall flips open his phone, stabs at the buttons. Can’t be long before the press arrives. “Judy, hi, it’s me. Send me the number for Clarissa Reed? Uh huh. Yeah. It’s her, yeah. Thanks.” He snaps it closed, side-eyes Samuels. “How long’s she been missing?”
“8 days. Body hasn’t been under water that long, though.” Samuels sniffs, wrinkles his nose. It’s drizzling, tepid, the air he’s breathing feels like a sweatsock. He’s got a bad tickle in his throat, and doctors it liberally with a nip from a thermos. Gotta get home soon, play with Jennifer before she goes to bed.
A flash goes off, and McCall curses and shoves the photographer back a few steps. “Where’s your goddamn self-respect?” he snarls. “Gimme the name of your paper.”
“I work alone.” The man responds, overcalm, flipping open a notebook. “Would you give me a hand with something, detective?”
“You want to statement, call my office.”
“I don’t want a statement. I’ve got a message.”
“Oh yeah?” McCall crosses his arms, glowers, towers over. The smaller man’s eyes are shielded, cloudy. “What’s that?”
The photographer slowly raises his camera to eye level, right at McCall’s collarbone, and presses the shutter. The dart bisects his throat, bringing a rush of blood pouring over his collar as he falls, gasping like a fish. “The message isn’t for you.”
Samuels, still crouched beside the body, half-rises.
“We’ll be in touch,” the man says, and walks away.
See how easy you can make someone care by killing people? We get attached so quickly! And when the character who gets killed is, by some measure, you yourself, well hell. Who wouldn’t keep going? Salen & Zimmerman talk a lot about how difficult it is to get someone to invest in your game, and that’s certainly true over time; you don’t keep playing just because you’re dying a lot, and dying constantly can take you entirely out of the zone, bore you with its monotony. But a bit of death can cover a multitude of narrative sins.
