The middle portion of Groundhog Day is full of experimentation on the part of its main character, Phil. He breaks a pencil next to his bed to see if it will still be broken the next day. He learns information about a woman to see if he can use that same information the next day. He learns that an old man will die and tries to prevent that death. He dies himself, and learns that the loop continues. Phil pushes the boundaries of his reality and learns their limitations — in other words, he’s learning how to play a game.
It’s a tired comparison, but the opening level, 1-1, of Super Mario Bros. has players learn things in much the same way. You run into something to see what it does: the goomba kills you, the mushroom makes you grow. You learn that you can hit blocks and things will come out of them by trying to jump over a goomba and hitting your head. Trial and error teaches the player how Mario works, just as Phil learned how Groundhog Day works in the same way. He explores his situation much like a video game player would. Another game, Celeste, specifically points out to the player that repetition is the best teacher at the beginning of its second chapter — “The more you die, the more you’re learning. Keep going!”
Game-like “mechanics”, like those that Phil explores in Groundhog Day, in all sorts of narratives. Squid Game is a good recent example. Even outside of the titular “games” the characters have to play, they also agree to a set of rules for those games by signing a contract. It’s a more explicit form of the agreement between players and game designers that happens when a player starts a video game; they agree to play by that game’s rules. Even in some video games, there exist narrative “mechanics” that don’t actually affect gameplay scenarios but are still a rule that the characters have to deal with in-narrative. For example, in 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, the players of the narrative’s Nonary Game are told they have to tap their watches on certain panels in a certain amount of time or they risk death. This is a rule of the Nonary Game that the player has no interaction with, serving only as a narrative device, and yet it is a narrative device which has a game-like quality to it. The whole genre of death games both in video game and non-video game form reflects this.
All of this is to say that, as games increase in cultural relevance they will inevitably affect how people tell stories, even within games themselves and beyond stories about “games”, like Squid Game or The Hunger Games. Groundhog Day is an excellent first example of this, being something which is game-like and is explored in a game-like way. I’m interested to know if anyone can think of more, and to see if more works like it appear in the future.
I absolutely loved how you brought in 999 to the discussion of death games, narrative devices, and time loops – its been a while since I played or even thought about that game, but I see now how interesting it is to analyze here! There’s this super interesting disconnect that you pointed out where the main characters in 999 are playing a game, and we as the players are playing a game, but these ‘games’ aren’t always the same. There’s the player’s game, the gameplay, which consists of puzzles (the characters in-game are also doing these, so there isn’t much of a disconnect here). But there’s also the death game, having to do with the watches and continued survival of certain characters, which is a game only the characters in-game get to play. If I remember correctly, there are even certain pivotal plot points in this death game that the player is forced to bear witness to with no control.
This is taken further in the game that follows 999, Virtue’s Last Reward, where the player gets control of which point in time they can jump to in the game, and which branching path they choose, after getting an ending for the first time. This, to me, seems like a very literal representation of the various branching paths a given ‘loop’ can take in a time loop story, like the different strategies Bill Murray tried in the movie, and how each of those strategies opened up new plotlines and challenges.
Your point regarding the fact that Phil begins treating the time loop as a sort of game is incredibly intriguing, and caused me to consider what the implications of the fact that romance is involved within this game. Time loops are often associated with romance, as the protagonist either has to get the love interest to fall in love with them or declare their own love in order to escape the loop. However, should we really consider time loops to be romantic tropes? The protagonist, by being part of the loop, can achieve almost ultimate agency over their romantic partner by learning almost every detail of their life and personality. Additionally, if time loops are a “game,” are we treating love as the “win state”? This might place the love interest at the lower end of a significant power imbalance, and eventually correlate their emotions toward the protagonist as merely a game achievement.
I really like your detailed reflection on this film and the connection you built between this film and video games. I totally agree that the main character of this film goes through the same experience as players who play videogames: by constantly breaking the rules, we start learn how this world functions and get more acquainted with the environment we are put in. Yet what makes this film different from a videogame is that we as the audience are not given the agency to determine the outcome of the game but watch the protagonist explored the world according to the script. Hence, in some way this film becomes similar to a playthrough—we watch others go through the experience and see them getting more and more proficient in navigating the environment.