I’ve been re-reading a book I read for my thesis, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, and I’ve found some of the passages that never made it into the thesis, but heavily influenced my current assertion that when playing a game, you are not playing yourself, but a character based in some way on a mixture of your expectations and what is presented by the designers. First let me quote*, then let me explain.

I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention. I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. If you, reader, couldn’t help picking me out amongst the people getting off the train and continued following me in my to-and-fro-ing between bar and telephone, this is simply because I am called “I” and this is this only thing you know about me, but this alone is reason enough for you to invest a part of yourself in the stranger “I.” Just as the author, since he has no intention of telling about himself, decided to call the character “I” as if to conceal him, not having to name him or describe him, because any other name or attribute would define him more than this stark pronoun; still by the very fact of writing “I” the author feels driven to put into this “I” a bit of himself, of what he feels or imagines he feels.(p14-15)

Calvino writes the actual main plot of If on a Winter’s Night almost entirely in the second person, referring to things you are doing, including telling you that you are now reading the novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and while the assertions Calvino makes about you may or may not be true, they are easily accepted as fact, because the portrayal of “you” as the reader character is very easy to get lost in.

The actual novel beginnings are combination straight novel writing and the “experimental writing” seen above: breaking the barriers between the various levels of reader and author to try to expose just *how* novels are actually read. Another example from another novel beginning later in the book describes the what you are actually reading, and yet when engrossed in the book, you can actually believe you are actually reading a book rife with description, even though Calvino himself offers very little description of the scene.

An odor of frying wafts at the opening of the page, of onion in fact, onion being fried, a bit scorched because in the onion there are veins that turn violet and then brown and especially the edge, the margin, of each little liver of onion becomes black before golden, it is the juice of the onion that is carbonized, passing through a series of olfactory and chromatic nuances, all enveloped in the smell of simmering oil. Rape oil, the text specifies; everything here is very precise, things with their nomenclature and the sensations that things transmit, all the victuals on the fire at the same time on the kitchen stove… Here everything is very concrete, substantial, depicted with sure expertise; or at least the impression given to you, Reader, is one of expertise… (p32)

Much of the book is like this, and parts that aren’t are still referring to you, as reader, making assumptions about your life and telling you just exactly what’s happening to you. This is ludicrous obviously; you’re not in a book store returning a book by Italo Calvino called “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” because it’s a shoddy printing, you’re sitting in bed, reading the book itself. Yet, as reader, I had no problems accepting that this was exactly what was happening. I was not really the “you” of the book; the “you” was a character.

Basically, Calvino was taking advantage of, as well as pointing out, is the structure of communication as it flows from author to reader. Here’s a diagram from my thesis (stolen from Narratology I believe):

The “you” is really the Narratee, being addressed directly by the narrator. The book also interestingly blends the narrator who speculates about the implied author, the person or caricature who wrote the narrator as “I” from our first quote; this author may have imprinted a piece of himself on that narrator known as “I”, but the “I” (and the reader for that matter) can only speculate. We form our own opinions about the implied author, and they may match up with the real author.

Or they may not.

So what does this have to do with games? And why did I say in my last post that game designers should probably read this stuff? Because think about the implications this same model has on even the most simplistic first person shooter. As a player, I am not Master Chief. When I tell my story about a game session, sure I may refer to what happened by saying “I did this” or “I did that,” but I didn’t really. What I did was manipulate a controller, and a character on screen responded. But, couldn’t that character refuse? And would there be anything wrong with that? I say no, but why I say no is a much longer blog post than I’m prepared to write, so instead let’s look at it another way; let’s look at it from the perspective of aesthetic believability.

Let’s say I’m playing Sly Cooper. Sly is a nimble thief, I am not so nimble, even with my thumbs. If I almost cause Sly to run off a cliff, I’m not going to be totally miffed if Sly, as a nimble thief, is able to catch himself, and in reality I may be miffed if he doesn’t. Even though I technically gave the direction to run off that cliff, Sly “refused,” because, really, running off a cliff is just not something Sly would do. Go the other way. Sly is a nimble thief, and everything about his art style says he is a nimble thief. Does the animation style and characterization of Sly make me play the game a different way? Is the animation a type of self fulfilling prophesy (communications theory / psychology coming in)? What about in Ico? Do I (as player) play Ico differently because of the perceived affection between Yorda and Ico? I know I did, and it made an immense emotional impact.

So when I play a narrative game, am I me? No, I’m not. Just like Reader from If on a Winter’s Night is not me, Ico is not me, Sly is not me, and Master Chief is not me. Even in a role playing game where you are encouraged to “form your own character,” do you really play a complex social being such as yourself? Would you even want to? Or would you rather play a character? The mage. The thief. The warrior. In Morrowind, which aside from leveling was really classless, did you play as you? Or as your class?

Granted, the concept as a whole isn’t that simple, especially because this post is really centered on the linear model presented above, but I’m working on an interactive version of the model and the complete “player as character” concept. It’ll just take a while.

*note: quotes are from the version linked earlier on Amazon, and page numbers reference pages in said version.