Broken Age – Interactive Digital Narratives

Final Game Log

We spent a lot of time talking about gender and feminism in class, because of this I had a feeling that it would be a common topic to blog about. I was curious what my classmates would come up with in terms of games that addressed or failed to address this topic. In my mind I had already picked games such as GTA and Gone Home, which fit both sides of the spectrum for how they approach these two major subjects. I was reading through people’s blog posts, and found that Samantha, Emi, and Luke all wrote about misrepresentation of women in videogames. Sam Wrote about Grand Theft Auto, a game the, unsurprisingly, was a common topic in class and in our blogs. I agreed with most of what Sam wrote as GTA is well known for its objectification and misrepresentation of women. Emi chose to write about Bioshock which surprised me. I had never thought of Bioshock as a game that sells masculinity. Her post made me think more about Bioshock Infinite more than the original, which she wrote about. The “little sisters” are just little girls, yet in Bioshock Infinite you have a female follower that is very powerful and eventually changes the outcome of the game. Lastly in Luke’s post he wrote about a game I had never heard of called Broken Age. His analysis was investing especially his statement about how girl’s common role in most science fiction games. All of these were strong points that I hadn’t necessarily considered when playing through games. I typically, subconsciously, turn a blind a blind eye to this topic as I do not look forward while I play a game.

What surprised me the most about reading through people’s posts was the level of detail and range of discussion. People were writing about things ranging from Chris’ article on perspective within Skyrim to Jasmine’s post on Rhythm Heaven. I learned a lot and enjoyed scrolling through people’s blogs. Chris wrote about my favorite game of all time and yet he still noticed things that I had overlooked about the impact of changing perspective. Jasmine wrote about a game I had never even heard of, yet I still was interested in reading what patterns and ideas she had noticed in her play-throughs. Overall these blogs helped me learn more about the the gaming industry. I was able to see patterns across games and platforms. It helped me connect much of what we discussed throughout the year into the real world.

The Growth of Female Sci-Fi Characters, as Seen in Broken Age

In, “No Business in Space? The Female Presence in Series Science Fiction for Children,” Karen Sands details the history of female characters in the science fiction genre from the 1940s to the mid-1990s. Though a bit dated now, the article serves as a great comparison for how far female characters have come in children’s science fiction stories in recent years. While the article focuses on literary female characters in the science fiction, I chose to use the article for insight on the female protagonist in the videogame Broken Age, which was released in 2014.

At its heart, Broken Age is a science fiction game. Broken Age tells the story of two teenage protagonists, a male named Shay and a female named Vella. While Vella’s narrative begins in a traditional fantasy world, Shay’s narrative is firmly rooted in science fiction, taking place in a spaceship as Shay is on a mission to help his home planet of Loruna. The two narratives seem to have no relation, as the player progresses through the game, Vella and Shay’s paths cross and Vella take up residence in the science fiction world. As such, Vella can be used to illustrate how improved the female character is in the science fiction genre.

Vella, seen here, is the female protagonist of Broken Age

Though Sanders mentions that females were beginning to receive better roles at the time of her publication (1997), she outlines two major problems associated with female science fiction characters. First, female characters in science fiction stories are always characterized by their communication skills (Sanders 22). Regardless of their intellect (as female super geniuses and ordinary girls were common tropes at this time), female characters were always highlighted for their ability to communicate than their male counterparts who had more central roles and solved problems with their intellect, ingenuity, or physical skills (Sanders 17). Sanders explains this trope by saying that females, “solve mysteries (without using scientific knowledge),” by helping “to bring people together through their power to communicate” (19). Secondly, Sanders discusses the problem of female character rarely having, “the opportunity to work alone to show off their capabilities; girls and women are still under the direction of men and boys” (22).

Fortunately for Broken Age, Vella’s storyline actively works against these tropes. Vella’s communication skills are not highlighted as her strongest asset. In fact, Vella is a poor communicator, as seen by the way Vella is unable to effectively convince anyone of the problems with the Maiden’s Feasts and the mogs. Vella never solves a problem through communication; Vella actively chooses which object in the environment and in her ability to solve any predicament she is faced with. Similarly, Vella always solves problems on her own. There is no male character to claim Vella’s success, or to give her orders. Thus, Vella does have the opportunity to work alone and proves the worth of female characters, even in a science fiction setting. A stark contrast to the characterizations Sands describes, Broken Age shows just how far female science fiction characters have come.

Even when she enters an unusual science fiction world, Vella is the one who solves her own problems

Works Cited

Sands, Karen. “No Business in Space? the Female Presence in Series Science Fiction for Children.” Foundation 0 (1997): 15-24. ProQuest. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Image Sources

https://www.cosplay-it.com/en/cosplay/10332/vella-broken-age
http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPad/Broken+Age/feature.asp?c=65109

Classifying the Pointing of Broken Age

During my playing of Broken Age, I was interested in the way that the game’s format as a point-and-click game affected the game itself. As a point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age requires the player to use the computer mouse to interact … Continue reading →

During my playing of Broken Age, I was interested in the way that the game’s format as a point-and-click game affected the game itself. As a point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age requires the player to use the computer mouse to interact with the world. I found this method of playing to provide a new element to the game itself, slightly altering the games classification when using Roger Caillois’ four classifications.

Using Roger Caillois’ classifications of games from his work, “The Classification of Games,” I noticed that Broken Age is clearly an agôn game. According to Caillois, agôn games are competitive games in which the player seeks to prove their superiority, be it superiority of speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, or ingenuity (131). In Broken Age, the player seeks to prove their superior mind by solving the puzzles presented to them while progressing through Shay and Vella’s narratives. Solving the puzzles require the player to obtain objects and talk to various characters, all by clicking on them.

Broken Age does provide clues as to what objects to interact with and what non-player characters to talk to in order to gain the skills or objects needed to solve the current problem or puzzle. Through conversations with the non-player characters, Shay or Vella, and by extension the player, can hear helpful hints as to what type of objects they should be trying to find. While sometimes this is enough to aid the player, the game adds another layer of help.

This image show the gameplay of Broken Age. In this screenshot, Vella is attempting to obtain that golden egg, and must use the ladder she previously obtained that is in her inventory at the bottom of the screen.

As a point-and-click game, the cursor is an extremely important part of Broken Age as it leads to the completion of all the game’s actions. Typically the cursor looks like a normal mouse arrow. However, when the player hovers the cursor over an object that can be interacted with, the cursor changes into a starburst-type shape, cluing the player in to the fact that the object or character can be interacted with.

This image showcases the described cursor change in Broken Age. In the bottom left of the screen, the cursor can be seen in its starburst form, showcasing the ability of the covered dish to be interacted with.

This cursor changes provides the game with another of Caillois’ classifications: alea. According to Caillois, alea games are all about luck and chance, “winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary” (133). Thanks to the ability of the cursor to change and clue the player in to what objects are interactive, the player can simply wave the cursor around until they see the cursor change into the necessary starburst. This alters Broken Age from an agôn game that requires skill to pass through the puzzles to an alea game that affords the player the opportunity to wildly wave their cursor around until a solution appears, all as a result of the game’s format.

Works Cited

Caillois, Roger. “The Classification of Games.” The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Ed. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2006. 129-47. Print.

Image Sources

https://portforward.com/games/walkthroughs/Broken-Age-Act1/Broken-Age-Act1-73.htm
http://www.gamezebo.com/2014/01/28/broken-age-act-1-walkthrough-cheats-strategy-guide/

Exploring and Unraveling: Things Aren’t As They Seem

On the blog posts I’ve read from some of my classmates so far, I have been quite impressed. Each person I’ve read has really tried to explore what ideas are really present and how these ideas–removed from any glitz, marketing, or common platitudes–guide the mechanics in their respective games. Five posts especially showcase how our … Continue reading “Exploring and Unraveling: Things Aren’t As They Seem”

On the blog posts I’ve read from some of my classmates so far, I have been quite impressed. Each person I’ve read has really tried to explore what ideas are really present and how these ideas–removed from any glitz, marketing, or common platitudes–guide the mechanics in their respective games. Five posts especially showcase how our class has really dived into a lot of game worlds to discover new meanings embedded, intentionally or unintentionally.

Luke in his blog post on Broken Age discusses at length about how the game makes the player question their perception of reality as the in-game characters find assumption after assumption about the in-game world to be false. I’d be interested to see how that concept of an unreliable perception of reality would be applied to countergames, which disintegrate our expectations of what game is and should be. A lot of the counter games we saw in Galloway’s essay collection were very perception-bending, so I wonder how a narrative misperception of reality would pair with a visual misperception of digital objects?

Screenshot from Brody Condon’s Adam Killer

Violet’s blog post on Kim Kardashian: Hollywood also explores and unravels the idea of simulating reality in a way. The player simulates a fantasy reality of going through Kim Kardashian’s career trajectory. I would ask Violet how this celebrity game about becoming famous stacks up to other celebrity games? Does Kim Kardashian just have an incredibly strong brand (which she does), or is there a larger social phenomenon these kinds of games tap into (young people wanting to be celebrities so badly now)?

The societal want to attain celebrity status is not a super hidden feature, even though Violet still explores it well. On the other end of the spectrum, some classmates extrapolated a lot of interesting things by analyzing the real ideas behind some games. Matt wrote about Dear Esther, a game that challenges notions of action in a first-person format, and with the help of some organic chemistry clues hidden in the game, discovered a game that lost any air of pretension and became a touching game about loss and depression. Alec wrote about Desert Golfing and Harvest Moon and how the latter has the disguise of zen to its time-based system but does not have the required neutrality that Desert Golfing has. Emi wrote about complicated gender representation in Bioshock and how the Little Sisters appear to have agency without any power structures (because there is no society) yet are still at the mercy or cruelty of violent men who kill Big Daddies well.

Each of these five scholars have picked apart in similar ways what makes these very different games. They’ve approached these games’ systems by also approaching characters (usually the player’s character or actions). They only got to the larger points of each of their post by exploring the world through some character’s personal view that became their own, whether that was Kim Kardashian’s journey or Alec’s personal journey of relaxation and frustration. These games were rooted in people’s stories, and I found them to be interesting analyses because of it. I suppose it’s always important to remember that games are always connected to people, never really in a fantasy that’s far from a human author, political issues, or personal stories.

Image Sources:

Condon, Brody. Screenshot from Adam Killer. “Interview: Brody Condon’s ‘Adam Killer’ (1999).” Gamescenes, 31 May 2010, http://www.gamescenes.org/2010/05/interview-brody-condons-adam-killer-1999.html. Accessed 10 Dec. 2016.

“Little Sister Dresses from Bioshock.” Pinterest, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/515802963548960476. Accessed 10 Dec. 2016.

Perception Is Not Reality in Broken Age

In Broken Age, an indie point-and-click videogame developed and published by Double Fine Productions, the player plays as two teenage characters, a girl named Vella and a boy named Shay. While both stories eventually intertwine, each has a different starting … Continue reading →

In Broken Age, an indie point-and-click videogame developed and published by Double Fine Productions, the player plays as two teenage characters, a girl named Vella and a boy named Shay. While both stories eventually intertwine, each has a different starting point and follows a different narrative path. Both stories, however, have a similar theme unifying them before the stories intersect: perception is not always reality.

This screenshot shows the opening of Broken Age, where the player can choose to play as either Vella (left) or Shay (right), though the player must play as both to complete the game

Vella’s story begins in her hometown of Sugar Bunting. Sugar Bunting is a town in a large area of land terrorized by creatures known as mogs. Every 14 years a mog visits these lands during an event known as the Maiden’s Feast. Each town selects various young girls for the privilege of being maidens in the feast—sacrificial lambs who satiate the mog’s hunger in exchange for the mogs not destroying their village.

Sugar Bunting’s Maiden’s Feast is shown here, with each of the 5 girls awaiting the mog’s arrival

While everyone believes the mogs’ visits are great blessings and being selected as a maiden is a great privilege, when Vella is selected, she sees it as the opposite. Vella sees the mogs as dangerous enemies who should be fought against rather than creatures to be appeased. Through the player (and Vella’s) actions, Vella eventually escapes the Maiden’s Feast and begins her quest to kill the mogs.

In this quest, Vella eventually learns that the mogs aren’t creatures but “spaceships” piloted by citizens of a planet known as Loruna, like Shay. Shay was under the assumption that he was the sole human inhabitant of his ship the Bossa Nostra. Shay believes his only companions are two computers programmed to believe they are his mother and father. Though, his parents keep him occupied with repetitive fake missions involving robotic friends, Shay eventually meets a stowaway named Merrick, who offers to let him take control of the ship and undertake “real,” threatening missions to rescue innocent creatures from dangerous forces.

Once his path crosses with Vella’s, Shay eventually learns that the helpless creatures he has been saving are the maidens from the various Maiden’s Feasts. He also realizes that his computerized parents are humans who have been so occupied keeping him and the ship safe that they could only appear to him through computer projections. Finally, Shay realizes that he has not been in space at all, but on the planet containing Vella’s town of Sugar Bunting.

As Shay and Vella continue to solve the mysteries and search for answers regarding their strange predicaments, they encounter even more situations containing falsehoods. Throughout the game it is apparent that not everything is as it seems, reinforcing the player’s take-away that perception is not always reality.

Image Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Age
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.doublefine.dfa