In Gone Home we play as Katie, a 21-year-old who has just arrived at her family’s new home from an expedition to Europe to find them missing, and the house abandoned. However, while we do control Katie and learn a few tidbits about her from our explorations of the house, the most important character in the game is Katie’s younger sister, Sam. It is through Sam’s journal entries that we learn what happened, and come to understand Sam as a character and empathize with her.
Katie’s role in the game is far more amorphous. We learn almost nothing about her for the entire duration of the game. The only information we are given comes from some old photos of her as well as some childhood artifacts, such as a drawing she made of the family dog and a track team trophy. Though we hear Katie’s voice as we interact with items throughout the house, we never see what she currently looks like. It is implied that she is somewhat close with her family, especially with Sam, but little is revealed beyond that. Katie essentially functions more like a non-character, a mere avatar for the player. So what is her purpose?
While I think there are some flaws the role of Katie in the game, there are also aspects of her relatively undefined identity that add meaning to the narrative. For example, much of the reason why we know so little about Katie is that this new house contains almost nothing of hers, and the few reminders of her come from her childhood. This sense of missing helps to characterize some of the family’s dysfunction. In one of the journal entries, Sam discusses how her parents are in denial about her sexuality and want her to be well-behaved (and also straight) like she used to be. This desire to prevent their children from growing or changing seems to also apply to Katie. Additionally, the narrative notion that Katie has never been to the house and therefore feels completely out of place there provides a compelling argument for the game’s structure. Neither Katie nor the player have any prior knowledge of the house. Therefore, when the house’s layout feels confusing and frustrating, it is also a reflection of Katie’s experience.
Another interesting aspect of playing as Katie is her capacity for destruction. As Katie, the player can throw almost any object on the ground, turn on faucets, leave doors open, and generally cause chaos around the house. Though we don’t witness Katie emotionally reacting to hearing Sam’s journal entries, the mechanic of destroying the house feels in line with Katie’s most likely emotional state.
However, I also had one significant issue with playing as Katie. At times, the game almost felt voyeuristic, as we heard Sam’s entries and rifled through her things without ever participating in her story. The story being primarily told through audio did help combat this, but I couldn’t help but notice the sense of distance between the player and Sam’s story. Though Sam’s tale of queer self-discovery was central, it also was far-removed from Katie and therefore from the player. I experienced moments of discomfort with the way that Sam’s story was meant to be consumed rather than experienced. This tension has caused me to wonder about the game’s target audience. Ultimately, I believe Katie serves as something akin to a neutral mediator. She can serve to further emphasize the affective power of the game’s queer plot, but can also be used by straight audiences to distance themselves from fully engaging in the game’s queerness.
I like how you thought of her as a neutral mediator, though, because it seems very possible. I also think that maybe the lack of characterization can be seen as a way of feeling like you are a part of this dysfunctional family who truly doesn’t know one another, hence the reasoning why you are searching through the house revealing secrets that you never knew before; you are playing as Katie but also you yourself have implemented yourself into the game as a character once you started playing. As you get immersed into the story, along with Katie, you are discovering these secrets and realizing the people you thought you “knew” were never really the people you thought you knew. I hope this makes sense, but this was a really good analysis!!
I really appreciated this analysis of Katie’s character — I found especially interesting your interpretation of Katie’s ability to destroy the environment, it wasn’t something I’d tried to think about diegetically beforehand. One aspect of the game that I felt while playing was I think connected to your description of Katie’s voyeurism. I’d like to take this one step farther and propose a sense of meta-voyeurism that I felt in moments when Katie’s character was disconnected from the player. This comes up throughout the game when you see Katie’s thoughts about various objects in the house — “It’s that postcard I wrote” or “It’s that book that dad wrote.” Clearly, Katie is intimately familiar with these objects but I, the player, have never seen them before. This servers to distance me from Katie, and start to feel like I’m snooping on her experience even while Katie is snooping on her own family and on her sister’s relationship. This was definitely emphasized when you pick up the page in the basement where Sam describes some _private_ thoughts and Katie refuses to read any further. You see Katie’s response of “I’m not reading that.”, but at least at first there’s a sense of disconnect between her actions and your thoughts. You didn’t choose to stop reading, Katie did. I’m not certain of the analytical consequences of distancing the player from Katie, but it was definitely a feeling that I got while playing the game.
I find it interesting that you thought that Katie’s non-participatory role in Sam’s story detracted from her overall role as the protagonist. I felt that, bar being in the position of Sam herself, we couldn’t really get much closer to her queer realization then through Katie journey through her new home. Being in the position of picking up the queues from the items we see around us, read the notes that are left for us, and listen to the audio from Sam’s final journal, we effectively go through Sam’s journey as we travel through the house, albeit at a much quicker speed. I do think it’s key to think about who the target audience of “Gone Home” is given the role Katie plays as a neutral observer (my guess is that it’s mainly aimed at straight audiences). I, however, disagree with the interpretation that Katie can be used to distance themselves from the game’s queerness. In order to progress to the end of “Gone Home”, Katie must continue to follow the trail of clues left by Sam describing her relationship and eventual eloping with Lonnie, effectively making Katie the vehicle by which players consume the LGBTQ+ message central to “Gone Home”.