This week in class, we spent time going through some examples of close readings of games, specifically Braid and The Return of the Obra Dinn. It’s still mind-boggling to me just how much depth can truly be achieved through this creative outlet than I realized before, even without necessarily intending to communicate the different conclusions that people come to when analyzing games. I think, however, as Professor Jagoda demonstrated during class, one of the most striking ways we can interpret/understand video games is through the relationship they have to history.
When discussing the historical details and aspects of Obra Dinn, we started small by grabbing bits and pieces of context about the historical time period it was set in, from highlighting the significance of the year 1807 and the piece of legislation that was created during that time, all the way to the historical concept of insurance, especially in relation to tragic events like the Zong Massacre. Despite not necessarily intending to make a claim about our idea of insurance and how it relates to how our values of human life have changed (or not, in some cases) over time, Thursday’s close reading of Lucas Pope’s work with Obra Dinn demonstrated how these historical elements can enhance or even create an argument about how to live out our shared values.
This idea of video games and their relationship to history came to me after going to WBEZ Chicago’s public event this Wednesday at Logan with Dr. Eve L. Ewing (who herself is an alum and an assistant professor here at UChicago) about her book of poems, 1919, which focuses on the Chicago race riots of the same year, and the report titled “The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot” by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations that offered suggestions to prevent these things from happening again. One of the most striking insights that Dr. Ewing gave during the discussion was that it can be misleading in many ways to think of time and history as strictly linear; she highlighted that thinking of time and history in this way makes us predisposed to assuming that there is progress, when in certain situations and areas of society, that hasn’t really been the case. Dr. Ewing urged the audience to instead see time as cyclical — to understand the patterns and reoccurences of history, so as to better identify not only the bad things that have persisted over time, but also the good things, so as to encourage more of the good. For example, while there continues to be a disenfranchisement of Black citizens not just here in Chicago, but across the country, those who are bold and willing enough to stand up for fairness, equality, and humanity also continue to exist. By emphasizing and building on our knowledge of these things, we can make the cycle of history move in a more positive way. As Dr. Ewing put it Wednesday evening (I’m going to relay it as best as I can remember it since I don’t think there’s any footage for me to make sure I’m getting the exact words right 😂), “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that ‘The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.‘ I agree, but we need to bend it.”
Seeing history and time itself as having more of a cyclical nature meshes very well with the way video games are created and closely read. I think a very literal metaphor for this cyclical nature of history are the roguelikes we played last week in class, and even the game Braid to a certain degree, especially with its mechanics and conventions (e.g. rewinding time, books before the beginning of each world to explain plot, ordering of worlds as 2-6 and then 1 at the end) that themselves challenge and expand our notions of time and how it affects our ability to move forward and most importantly, learn from our mistakes. Specifically, on that note about roguelikes, the very objective of these games is for you to improve and adapt after each run you go through — or in this case, each cycle you go through. You are creating your own personal history when you play these games (or any game for that matter), and by being aware of how you navigated the game’s design, mechanics, or story, you have a growing pool of potential solutions and improvements to make meaningful progress. If there’s one thing I’m learning so far about video games in this course so far, its that whether intentionally or not, this medium is just as effective as any in pushing us to think about the past and how it informs our present, so that we can keep innovating and creating a better future.
I also recommend reading 1919 if you get the chance — Dr. Ewing is a brilliant poet!
It’s interesting to think of roguelikes as a continuous history instead of resetting every time you die. In Hades, for example, your experience builds based upon items that you collect during the run. In a sense, it’s cyclicality presents the player with multiple chances to grow from their mistakes and learn – just as studying history allows cycles to break, so too can that be applied to a roguelike.
I like the idea of constructing your own history as you cycle through a game. All games have repeated elements and mechanics, obviously more so for roguelikes, but as you said even in games like Braid. As a result we can observe our own progression outside of the game as a player, our relationship with the mechanics and how we evolve as we become more familiar with the game. This is certainly in the mind of designers as they make games so they can advance the difficulty alongside the player’s skill level increasing.
I think it’s interesting how games can be a reflection of our history but also how it engages players to reflect on their own choices. I think that as a result, we can understand a certain situation or event in history better while also exploring morality. It definitely can be an effective element in games and has the potential to push society toward a “better future” as you mentioned.
I really like your points here. You draw a very strong connection between historical cycles and videogame play cycles, but do you think that in order for players to connect the two, there should be some explicit connection drawn by the designer between the game world and history? Does a game with intentional historical connection like Braid encourage players to think more about the parallels than a more fantastical-world game like Mario, or will both encourage the kind of growth-oriented thinking that might encourage positive historical change? I think there are good arguments to be made for both sides, although I might tend towards the second viewpoint — I think games have great potential for encouraging deeper thinking even when they seem to have little to say in a procedural-rhetoric perspective about history.
I really like your ideas on how history, and our game play, can change how we live our lives/ how our values can be affected by understanding a certain history. Isolated from game play, history can act as a guide of what not to do by educating people through actions committed in the past. In tandem with game play, history and decision making combine, providing an in-depth experience that a book cannot offer. In the sense that as we play a game, our decisions have ramifications, leading to us having a dialogue with the history employed in the game. This form of dialogue could serve to benefit the process of betterment you mention in your post.