Videogame Theory (Part One): Ludology, Narratology and Deus Ex

Originally this post began as an analysis of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which is both a quintessential work of Cyberpunk fiction and an example of something I have yet to think about academically: a video game. As is so often the case with these things, though, the rabbit hole proved much deeper than I thought, and in an attempt to glean a little background information on the current position of video games within the academic landscape I fell headlong into the wonderland that is ludology. Briefly, ludology is the tentative name given to the practice of studying games. Etymologically ludology derives from the Latin ‘ludus’, relating to games and playing, specifically Roger Caillois’ definition of ludus as ‘games with social rules’ - narrowed further by Gonzalo Frasca as games incorporating rules that ‘define a winner and a loser.’ This stands in opposition to paidia - or ‘play’ - games without rules, or rather without rules defining winning and losing. 

Ludology took on its current status as the study of video games in the late 90s, and was born of a need felt by ludologists to define themselves in opposition, or at least apart from, narratology. Not narratology in the more specific, Russian formalist/structuralist sense, but in the wider sense; the study of narratives (ie. film, TV, literature). Early ludologists - people like Gonzalo Frasco - explored an alternative mode of studying video games based on the notion that narratology was ill-equipped to deal with this new and different form. Frasca drew a line between narrative, which he called representation, defined by its retrospective unfolding of events; and games, which are simulations, which Frasca suggests unfold prospectively and offer the possibility of a ‘choice’ not present in traditional narrative. But whilst many ludologists prefer to steer game criticism towards new horizons, I propose in this article to keep the conversation firmly situated in the narrative aspect of games. 

The ludology v. narratology debate is, according to Frasca, a ‘debate that never happened.’ Even at the outset of ludology it was clear to see that the alternative method of study could only hope to complement, not replace, a narratological approach to video games. Personally, coming from an academic, literary background and with no knowledge of game design, the narratalogical approach is one I fully support - especially when approaching modern, story-driven video games like Deus Ex. I don’t believe there is any way to justifiably challenge a narratological approach to video games. Any video game with a defined story (and many without) are at their heart, texts; they are simply texts that operate with different rules to traditional literature - but can’t the same be said of theatre, or TV? All that is required is a little tweaking; a little extra to consider when analysing these new texts. 

To illustrate my argument, lets consider Deus Ex: Human Revolution through the lens of Barthes’ - one of the most prominent narratologists - five narrative codes: the hermeneutic, the proairetic, the semic, the symbolic and the cultural. All five, I would argue, are present in Deus Ex. Deus Ex is, at its heart, a cyberpunk detective story and thus an archetypal example of hermeneutics. From the moment we take control of Adam Jensen we are presented with mysteries requiring resolution - the first book we read, for example, mentions the mysterious ‘patient X’ whose identity is obscured until much later in the game. If hermeneutics builds suspense with mystery, then the second code - proairetics - builds suspense with action: the immediate need to know ‘what happens next.’ Again, Deus Ex is driven by these proairetic moments; moments such as the first showdown between Adam and Jaron, or less specifically, every moment in which Adam interacts with his environment. One could argue, in fact, that while hermeneutics might be the primary narrative code of traditional fiction, proarietics is the primary code of the video game; in which every action - every interaction the character has with his environment - has a reaction. The secondary, atemporal codes likewise persist in Deus Ex. Semic codes - the connotations evoked by story elements - persist in, for example, the concept of neuropozyne and the attention it draws to the theme of wealth and inequality which consistently operates in the background of the game. Meanwhile the over-arching theme of transhumanism and identity is a solid example of a symbolic code. Finally, the background of real technological and social debate which the game logically extends provides an example of cultural codes. 

These codes, of course, all relate to the most overtly narratalogical element of the game: the fictional world of the game and the story which unfolds in that world. Like texts, of course, this diegetic element is only one part of the game: there exists also the extra-diegetic world outside the text: the world of the reader (or the projected narratee, if we want to make the distinction). Unlike traditional texts, however, there is a third level to negotiate in video games: the level that mediates between the fictional world of the character and the real world of the player: what we might call the ‘intra-diegetic’ level. This level is comprised of the rules of the game: the options and limitations imposed on the player, the specific map of controls and input commands the game requires. To translate this into the traditional interaction between reader and fiction, this would be the level at which the book directs the speed at which you turn a page or some other, equally absurd, notion. More relatable is this level in that most literary of games: the choose your own adventure novel. In that case, the intra-diegetic level is comprised of the instruction each reader finds at the bottom of the page, neither a part of nor separate to the text: if x, turn to a; if y, turn to b. 

  While the fundamental ways in which games operate may differ from the ways in which films and books operate, games still fulfil a narrative function. The narrative is usually multiplied to offer an illusion of chance for the player - particularly overt in moments such as the ending of Deus Ex, or in the way Skyrim offers multiple dialogue options, but in actual fact inherent to the user-input-oriented nature of gaming - but it persists nevertheless and is still fundamentally finite. Frasca, whilst arguing for an alternative mode of studying games, himself still concedes the narrative quality of games. Frasca also touches upon what I have called the intra-diegetic level of the game-text - which Frasca specifically identifies as manipulation rules (ways in which the developer allows the player to have his character interact with his environment - for example the opportunity to kill prostitutes in GTA), and goal rules (rules which the player must use his character to meet to ‘win’ the game) - and how these rules also serve the narrative function of transmitting an ideology, amongst other things. In Deus Ex the player may defeat enemies lethally or non-lethally: a manipulation rule which emphasises the developers’ faith in the possibility of non-lethal conflict resolution. Likewise the ‘goal’ of Deus Ex - while consistently changing as new information is received - is ultimately to investigate the disappearance of Megan and the scientists. What ideology does this transmit? That the truth should not remain obscured? That grief requires closure? That crime cannot go unpunished? The ideological ramifications of goal rules are manifest. 

What is my point? The argument for a narrative approach to video game analysis is not new. However it is one I needed to make myself in order to provide a foundation for what I hope to do in the second part of this article: to attempt to classify modern story-driven games in their literary context. Can a game conform to the acknowledged standards of realist fiction, or modernist fiction? I would argue that a classic, story-driven game like Deus Ex is fundamentally a modernist work. Of course, if a game can be modernist, there exists the potential also for a postmodern game. My intention is to draw from Brian McHale’s seminal work Constructing Postmodernism, in which McHale spends a great deal of time contrasting the techniques of modernist and postmodernist literature in order to identify the boundaries of the two movements and the grey area in between. McHale’s book is a work of literary criticism, thus it is vital to my attempts that video games are understood in the context of these articles as strictly literary, narrative fictions. Ultimately I aim to briefly cover some examples of modern games employing techniques in the modernist repertoire (as identified by McHale), and to contrast this with the potential for future games to draw from the postmodernist repertoire characterising contemporary fiction, in an attempt to examine what a postmodern game may look like. Currently I believe at least one - but perhaps many - postmodern games exist in the mainstream gaming canon. In the coming weeks I will explore this hypothesis, and in a fortnight or so I will post the second part of this article; hopefully supporting - but possibly contradicting - my current hypothesis.

Cosmopolis [Thoughts]

Another less critically focused ‘thoughts’ post, this time on David Cronenberg’s big screen adaptation of Don Delillo’s near-future sci-fi novel Cosmopolis. This is the first time I haven’t done any background reading for a post (aside from a couple of reviews for context), so expect plenty of oversight and half-assed conjecture. That being said, getting into the habit of working purely on my own intuition will no doubt prove useful, so I expect I’ll try something like this again soon. Note: I’ve not read the book yet, so this post is based purely on the film. 

If you judged it solely on its standing on IMDB, you might dismiss Cosmopolis without giving it a chance. Going into it I certainly expected another let-down a la The Counselor; a film that overcame even my stalwart McCarthy fanboyism and drastically disappointed. Thankfully Cosmopolis, on the other hand, is exactly as good as its director and source material promise it to be. It’s a coldly beautiful glimpse into the rarified top-level of the capitalist hierarchy and an excellent, nuanced character study of the impossibly rich so far removed from the triumphs and terrors of ordinary society that they are - to paraphrase William Gibson - not really human at all. Pattinson plays the young billionaire Packer perfectly; imbuing each deadpan line with just the right shade of apathy, desperation, resignation or amusement as the situation requires. A host of co-stars all shine - I particularly love Kevin Durand’s imposing but perpetually bemused chief of security - but the true co-star for me is Packer’s limo; a fully ‘Proust-ed’ (cork-lined like Proust’s bedroom study) behemoth resplendent in screens scrolling endless data accessed with the barest flicker of movement. More than half the film takes place in the soundproofed limo and when the doors are shut the city crawling by outside feels an eternity away. In one excellent scene Packer sips vodka and exchanges epithets on the philosophy of capital whilst safely cocooned inside the limousine with his chief of theory; outside his security team go toe-to-toe with anarchists in the midst of a full-blown riot resembling a violent, Occupy-style demonstration gone bad. Like a summer shower the brief flare of violence dissipates, whilst inside the limo Packer and his guest barely blink except to remark on the unoriginality of a self-immolating protester. It’s a stark, pessimistic metaphor: the 99% exhaust themselves in protest whilst the 1% pay them no heed, languishing comfortably in the knowledge that any protest, any uprising or attempted revolution will be utterly ineffective. 

For Packer, the true threat lies inside. Like so many SF stories, man’s demise begins with the ego. Packer’s ego is understandably large and for him the joy of winning anything has long dissipated into expectance. He eats and fucks like an animal, shoots guns and tries desperately to feel the thrill of living again. His marriage - a financial arrangement - is stillborn (though we get the impression he’d prefer it not to be), and his intelligence is so imposing his advisors deny him even a conversation for fear of humiliation. Surrounded by people, Packer is utterly alone. He gambles at the impossibly high-stakes tables of cyber-capitalism and as the film opens he makes his first bad move, underestimating the Yuan and losing untold millions in the process. His ego fractured by this blow, Packer begins to engineer his own demise, all in the name of ‘looking for something more.’ His dissatisfaction is an indictment of the relentless pursuit of wealth to which he has devoted himself. His obsession with the Rothko Chapel - for example - is an obsession to own, not to experience: he has reduced everything in his life to a quantity or an asset and has negated his humanity in the process. Hermetically sealed inside his limousine, Packer no longer shares any commonality with the world outside. 

Packer and his limo experience their demise in sync, at least superficially. In the beginning he is impeccably suited and it is polished to a mirror. As the film progresses he loses his clothes and half his hair and is covered in pie whilst his limo is vandalised with paint and bricks almost beyond recognition. He fucks several women and has his prostate examined and breaks down at the news of the death of a musician and friend. By the time Paul Giammati’s character takes a pot-shot at him in a run-down industrial estate on the edge of the city, Packer is no more recognisable than the vehicle he leaves behind. This close to the edge, having already felt the rush of killing, Packer seems finally to almost enjoy himself; he bounces nonchalantly through the dark alleyways grinning and waving his revolver, finally enjoying the game of life now that the stakes are high enough to illicit a real emotional response. 

The final twenty minutes of the film are a powerhouse of acting; a two-man, one act play in which Packer faces disgruntled ex-employee Benno Levin (Giamatti). The two go head-to-head in a sort of mutual analysis-cum-therapy session, in which Packer attempts to deconstruct the fantasy world of which Benno believes himself to be the hero, whilst Benno forces Packer to face the demise he has engineered for himself. Packer quickly realises Benno is not the martyr he believes himself to be; he is simply a weak and bitter old man desperately losing touch with a slick, youthful world. Benno is obsessed with Packer, in his head believing him to be the living embodiment of this world that has discarded him and that no longer makes any sense to him; an increasingly abstract world of cyber-capital and the aggressively excessive consumerism it engenders. Fundamentally, though, the two are alike. Before his haircut Packer pisses in his limo, and at Benno’s squat they both discuss Benno’s improvised waste disposal; and whilst Packer is constantly preoccupied with sex - having it, thinking about it, even talking in its 'throbbing' language - Benno’s sexual anxiety manifests as a syndrome-fear of his penis receding. Remove everything around the two men and they are both living, breathing, shitting, procreating organisms. This is the hard truth Benno faces: he is convinced that killing Packer will be akin to severing the head of the capitalist snake, convinced that it will bring him redemption and martyrdom and fulfil his destiny, when in actual fact this is a delusion, a 'useless fantasy,' and all that is left is the simple fact of murder. 

Benno reluctantly acknowledges his conceits but his fantasy is too engrained, he has devoted too much of himself to his goal and his imagined syndromes too comfortably relieve him of the responsibility of his actions; thus Packer ultimately fails to avoid his fate - but not before he too faces some difficult truths. Having already toppled his empire at the first shock of failure, in Benno’s squat Packer faces the far more terrifying realisation that the world around him is without order or pattern. Inside his limo Packer could predict everything and was surprised by nothing. But outside, his system buckles: Brother Fez dies of a weak heart - surely it should be a gunshot wound? and Benno, a person who should not happen, happens. The Yuan, Brother Fez’s heart, Benno Levin: all represent the uncontrollable, chaotic nature of the universe; a nature Packer (and his real-life financial counterparts) mistakenly denies. 

But what about the very end? Packer dies, certainly; but for most of the film death - or at least the real, intimate threat of death - is his objective, the ‘something more’ he is looking for. He eats, fucks, eats again, fucks again, is tasered, kills his bodyguard, shoots himself; and finally all that is left is death. But conversing with Benno brings Packer to self-realisation. Suddenly the significance of the asymmetric prostate is revealed: it is significant precisely because it is not significant. It’s just a tick, a quirk, a symbol of a chaotic universe impervious to mapping and predicting. Understanding that, Packer is freed from the confines of his limousine - his monument to data and patterns - and thrust out into a world where death lurks behind every door and life is painful and funny and vivid. He says himself his 'situation has changed,' and it has: once a monstrous omniscient ego situated at the center of his own universe, suddenly Packer finds himself one among untold millions, somewhere at the edge of something too big and too chaotic to comprehend. The limousine - the wall between Packer and the world - has disintegrated. The repercussions of this are death; but crucially he achieves his transcendent moment - something his companion Benno fails utterly to do - and thus (I think) Packer achieves a victory, albeit a bitterly pyrrhic one. Packer's chronic fear of death is overcome in these last seconds. As the music rises he opens his eyes to face death, and calmly relinquishes control of his destiny. ‘I wanted you to save me,’ says Benno; but who really saves who?

Man, I really loved this movie, but I don’t think I comprehended half of what was going on. Analysing it without any contextual reading has been difficult too - I’ve pretty much been working out my own thoughts as I’ve been writing and with hardly any editing I fear this post is going to be a touch incoherent and verbal-diarrhoea-y - but relying solely on my own opinion has made for a pretty satisfying, refreshing way of approaching criticism. Definitely something to try again. Also - and I think I must have said this about every film I’ve written about so far - I shall definitely revisit Cosmopolis. I didn’t touch at all on the dialogue in this post, which I found fascinating while watching: the odd phraseology, the occasional specification and the throwaway comments in seemingly important scenes (such as Benno’s remark about mutton right at the end) all suggest something going on with the dialogue that - without a second watch - I can’t quite put my finger on.