What makes any page turner so irresistible? The desire to know what happens next. For not knowing what transpires next would leave us forever wondering, dissatisfied at not knowing what happened. Suspense and foreshadowing are a couple devices used in compelling storytelling to capture the imagination of the audience. Combine this with the interactivity of a video game, and it becomes addicting to see what is next in the game.
In Jagoda’s piece on “Digital Games and Science Fiction” he writes, “While a science fiction novel may describe a world and imagine character interiority, a science fiction game generates a world for navigation, invites participatory role playing, and requires actions in pursuit of objectives”(148). In the science-fiction(or speculative fiction) genre, games often offer a constructed world to the player to explore, going beyond the pages of a book, and complicating the way we experience the genre. With the dimension of player choice and agency, there is still the same curiosity to see what is past the next door, to move past the next level, to defeat the next boss. And with this added participation, the viewer becomes the player, wanting to get to the next level. How does this interactivity change our drive to know what is next, that is unique from other media?
One possible route to explore is how interactivity uniquely gets the player to emotionally invest in their avatar. While not unique to roguelikes, this genre of games often gets the player to emotionally invest in their character. In Hades, you become attached to Zagreus and the various characters you encounter along the way. Whenever there is an avatar, the audience is compelled to identify with them, especially as they control their avatar and make their choices. For example, you name your character in Rogue, and through gameplay become attached to the cursor navigating the procedural death labyrinth. Even if they aren’t anthropomorphic, we become distressed at their death, and revel in their success. Like our favorite character in a movie, only we get to make the choices within a designed space. And how does this affect the way we process narrative, it varies game to game, like with Rogue, we don’t have a narrative but can create one, supporting the idea that interactivity uniquely gets the player emotionally invested. (Kind of like how when I play the sims I create whole stories around my sims, even though this is not in the game except in how I choose to play).
What makes roguelikes especially satisfying is the replayability for the experience of new narrative events and character development. Not only do we replay because we want to repeat the same experience, but to find new treasures, ways of playing, and parts of the story. This makes the replayability of games, with roguelikes being an exemplary genre for this, more apparent than any other media. We rewatch movies and TV shows because we enjoy their repetition and sometimes notice a new thing here and there, but with roguelikes, their interactivity combined with randomness makes replayability a vital aspect to their genre.
Image cred: https://kidmograph.tumblr.com/post/128716584719/0pt10n
Happy Rogueing 🙂
I completely agree that the exploration of environments, bosses, mechanics, etc. is a huge component of the enticement of roguelikes! There’s another aspect of the addicting nature of roguelikes that you touched on with the mention of the player’s attachment to the avatar. This aspect I find is what really pushes the player to continue exploring and pushing themselves, and that’s the progression of player comfort. When I mean comfort, I don’t mean that the player grows complacent and numb to the mechanics and levels, but rather they develop a fluidity, whether it’s with player movements, enemy attacks, environmental traversal, etc. as well as the narrative elements (including the avatar!). Their growing and refined toolkit and understanding build confidence that allows and empowers the player to push themselves–to go further and faster.
After a long day and wanting to wind down with at least some feeling of accomplishment, roguelikes are a great way to feel productive in a comfortable “body” and environment!
I totally agree with this. Even though some roguelikes are rather technical, after enough time spent in a game, you get a certain sense of ease when playing it. Speedrunning is also a sort of extension of this feeling, even though it lacks the randomness mentioned in the post.
Adding on to the speedrunning comment, I was thinking about how speedrunning has a lot in common with some of the genre conventions of roguelikes we talked about this week. This summer, I spent some time trying to learn how to speedrun Minecraft. Speaking purely to the emotional effect of speedrunning, the feeling I got when I lost a run to a death in that game (even though I could, if I wanted to, keep playing) was very similar to the feeling of losing a run in a roguelike. I think the fact that both roguelike and speedrunning communities use the same word, “run”, for attempts at their game is telling. It’s also worth mentioning that roguelikes often have pretty sizeable speedrunning communities. I think this makes sense, since roguelikes (especially the ones that lean into the difficulty the genre is known for) already demand high skill from their players, so of course some of those players will want to see just how skilled they can become.
Apricot’s post mentions how roguelikes play on the desire to know what happens next, comparing it to a book where one keeps reading to solve mysteries set up earlier in the book. I think this is where the emotions of playing a roguelike and speedrunning a game diverge — in a roguelike, you don’t know what’s going to come next, whereas in a game you speedrun, you’re likely to know *exactly* what’s coming next.
oooh, interesting comparison to speedruns. I wonder what this reveals about both gameplay experiences.
Couldn’t agree more. I totally experience this when playing Hades. Also as I mentioned in my post, randomness is a key factor why people are willing to spend so much time on roguelike games. Besides, I really love your “Rogue” background picture! Ver
thank you! ʕ·͡ᴥ·ʔ
With the nature of roguelike gameplay, and all aforementioned aspects in your post, I find roguelikes utterly addicting to an almost unhealthy degree. Perhaps that’s just in the nature of wanting to explore the unknown, especially in a game like Hades that reveals tens of hours of unique storyline and narrative that keeps the player going back and trying to get further in order to see more of the narrative, and with this I can almost propose that roguelikes are one of the most addictive game genres. Every time I die in one, I just keept telling myself ”one more time, I’ll get further this time”, over and over again until I’ve spent hours on honing skills in said game. For what? I wonder if it’s part of how competitive I or other people may be, and the feeling of dying just spurs players to try again and prove to themself or whoever that they *can* get further. And then, of course, there is the narrative of roguelikes–with Hades, I found myself almost intimidated by the level of interactivity and unique dialogue lines, wanting to keep playing just to make sure that I’d see everything. A third point I could make as well is the unpredictability of roguelikes, as I feel like players of such games perhaps want a break from a predictable life just to play something that is new to them, every time. This could also be an appeal of roguelikes over other games, as I often find myself reminiscing and wishing I could go back and play a game I love as if I’d never played it before.
Yup, I relate. It can become quite obsessive. Wanting to see every little interaction and complete everything.
I totally agree on all of these points and feeling like each run you are almost creating your own narrative keeping the replayability super high. I think that’s why even when sometimes games like Hades can feel a little frustrating, it never feels stale.
This concept of roguelikes taking up so much time is super interesting!
I find that with roguelike games, where your character inevitably dying is in many ways a feature of the game, the progress between each attempt is all part of the experience. Each attempt takes a substantial amount of time, but the primary semblance of “progress” is only trackable when playing multiple runs. Taking a look at the game Rogue, for example, the game is figured out by trial and error and exploring the game. The pleasure derived from discovering different features of the game incentivizes the player to keep playing, with the goal being figuring out how to play the game to the fullest extent. Once the players figures the game out, the pleasure is then derived from making as much progress in the game as possible. The game is largely based on luck as well; having an unlucky turn on Rogue will quickly push a player to play another round in hopes of better luck and more progress. On Friday’s discussion, my group compared this risk to gambling, and it makes the gameplay of Rogue and Roguelikes with these qualities super addicting. The time required of playthrough is built into such games, but also directly linked to what makes the game so much fun. The payoff of progress or winning the game is rewarded in return from the time invested to reach these goals.
This also makes me think of how casinos try to keep people playing for as long as possible, so they make sure the lighting is consistent in the building, so you don’t notice the passage of time, and other things. Lol, funnily enough in the percy jackson movie, another greek mythos inspired story, there is a casino scene like this. They take the lotus if I remember correctly and lose all sense of time in the casino. Kinda like I can be playing Hades one minute and then realize hours have passed.
I really liked your discussion on why we become attached to roguelike protagonists! I think Binding of Isaac really sort of typifies what you’re talking about, in that we are, literally, playing as a small crying baby. We become attached to Isaac through his struggles, through his played-for-laughs trauma, and so on. I also think that attachment to our video game protagonists is often enhanced by the idea that, in theory, they’re almost never doing something you don’t want them to do. That is, as opposed to movies, TV shows, books, etc., where characters can and often will make decisions that any given viewer could vehemently disagree with. Zagreus chooses the upgrades we choose, romances the characters we romance, and maneuvers the underworld in the way we would like him to. When we lose, in theory, there’s no one to blame but ourselves–not some much more frustrating plot contrivance or rom-com-esque misunderstanding.