Predestination in Video Games, RLST 245 (short post)

One of my favorite philosophical subjects is that of predestination, primarily because “predestination” is continually supported by psychological research that operates under the assumption that human behavior is governed by reactions to stimuli. A vast amount of people, however, still prescribe to the intuitive concept of free will. This comes out in the very way we communicate with each other. For example, very few people would prefer saying “I saw ice cream, and because I like ice cream, was motivated to purchase ice cream” over the simple “I decided to purchase ice cream”. In fact many people who I have talked to about free will and psychology prefer the notion that they are independent of external influences.

Naturally, the development of video games reflects this folk-logic, and caters very much to providing options to the players. Games like the Elder Scrolls franchise presents a starting player with a wealth of options for developing your character, from customizing the appearance of your character, to determining wether your will play as a stealthy rogue, or a destructive mage, or a tough warrior (or some obscure combination). Even further, developers like BioWare build their games around branching narratives and meaningful decisions that allow the player determine the course of the plot. However, it is ironic then that even with such personal customization, players frequently choose the same play-style or appearance each time the start a new game. And even though we feel like we may have changed the story of a game, the developers have prepared that alternative narrative in anticipation that we would choose it. So it begs the question, how much are we really choosing, and how much are we playing out our favorite, comfortable roles, or making the choices that the developers have made for us.

I would be arrogant, though, if I said that this discussion is ahead of video games, since there are two popular games that specifically seem draw attention to our anticipation of free will, one through its plot, the other through its gameplay-narrative. Those games are Bioshock: Infinite, and The Stanley Parable.

BIOSHOCK: INFINITE, SPOILERS! Bioshock: Infinite tells the story of Booker, a free-lance detective who is troubled by the guilt of losing a woman. He is offered the chance to redeem himself by rescuing a young woman from the clutches of a religious prophet named Comstock. Upon rescuing the girl, Booker finds that she has the remarkable ability to breach alternative realities, effectively allowing her to “alter” realities to become more preferable. However, these changes often have unpredictable and unseen consequences. There is a point in the game when the girl confronts the player with a choice as to which necklace she should wear: a bird pendant, or a cage pendant. In the end of the story, the Booker discovers that the that the girl is his daughter, but also that Comstock is in fact a future-Booker. The people who hired him to rescue the girl are in fact working for his future self, thus creating an infinite loop (hence the name). Where the games true power emerges is in the player’s realization that all the choices they’ve made, the alternate realities, the necklace, and his own choice to “rescue” someone, all contribute to an unbreakable loop of linear reality, in which everyone makes exactly the same choices as before.

THE STANLEY PARABLE, SPOILERS! The Stanley Parable, on the other hand, takes its gameplay in the opposite direction. Gameplay is reduced to first-person exploration, but the true fun comes in the variety of unusual choices and their laughably-surprising consequences. It is the story of a man named Stanley. Stanly is a boring office worker who finds his building eerily abandoned, with no clue as to why. What makes this game so unique, is that everything you do is narrated or commentated by an omniscient man who seems to be controlling the world around you. Thus the gameplay comes from a cycle of reactionary behaviors between the narrator and the player. For example, when you come to an open room, you see two open doors. The narrator pointedly says that “Stanley went through the door on the left”. If the player goes through the door on the left, the narrator continues narrating as usual, but if the player goes through the door on the right, the narrator gets frustrated and tries to convince the player to return to the original path via a later door. The game continues like this, with the narrator providing an obvious choice, and the player either complying or deviating. Regardless, the player ultimately leads Stanley into one of 14 separate endings, each one driving home the point that each choice exploits the player’s frustration at being told what to do. The predictable ways that the player reacts to an omniscient narrator are poignant examples of why having options doesn’t necessarily mean that our psychology affords us much of a choice.

While both of these games handle choice in a vastly different way, they both challenge the player to think about how our behaviors may be beyond our control, but even that within that control, the results may not change anything in the end.