What, with your bare hands?

The following was originally for an assignment, and so could get a bit dry. Moist hand-towels will be available upon completion.

Interactive narration is a classic storytelling technique for games, used to lend context and meaning to space that the user could otherwise interpret in any number of ways. In a surprising amount of games of various genres, this narration is given a very specific, passive-aggressive voice; acting antagonistically towards the player even as it helps them through the game. This kind of narration has most recently gained fame from GladOS of Portal, but it’s also been present in everything from the Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy game to online flash titles like Loved.

The first evidence of this voice comes through in the occasional rebukes from the otherwise dry parser of Colossal Cave Adventure, the first Interactive Fiction game.[1] Attempting to attack a dragon or snake would provoke the response “What, with your bare hands?”[2] Despite the essentially characterless nature of most early parsers, these kind of sarcastic rebukes are a running theme through almost all of text adventures. Looking through the source code for  Zork, for instance, reveals that the stored name for the player character is “Cretin”.[3] Even ignoring the outright insults, the universal responses of “You can’t see any such thing” or “I see nothing special about (x)” give text-adventure parsers an antagonistic voice by default, despite their outwardly helpful nature.

It’s never made clear who exactly this disembodied passive-aggressive voice is. The default parser typically describes the results of your commands in second-person – as in the classic sentence “You are likely to be eaten by a Grue,” from Zork – but often changes to respond in first person, with sentences like “I don’t understand that.”[3] The narrator is thus set up as a distinct entity separate from the player character, without any origin or basic explanation for their presence. The only real explanation for the presence of their character is the meta-explanation; the narrator is the voice of the game. The voice allows the player to directly interact with a combination of the game developers and the environment they’ve created. It takes on the passive-aggressive tone because of the inherent conflict between the game designer- who must help you through to complete the game – and the game environment itself, which must attempt to block your progress at all times.

Most early text-adventures ignore this meta-game element as much as possible, possibly for purposes of immersion; it’s only more comedic titles like “The Hitch-hiker’s guide to the galaxy” text-adventure that are free to explore the idiosyncratic nature of their parsers. “The Hitch-hiker’s guide” was the first game that first made the passive-aggressive narrator the star, bringing the meta-game nature of the parser to the fore for laughs; examining a puzzle-lock in one room, for instance, prompts the response “I don’t even understand it, and I’m a computer!” [4] Despite having the same unexplained origins of the parser voices of Colossal Cave et al, the narrator in hitch-hikers guide has a clear, consistent personality and character in its own right. As a character, it’s a logical extension of the “What, with your bare hands?” sentences from Colossal cave, with a constant spirit of constant passive-aggressive antagonism. This goes far enough that several puzzles force the player to actually fight against the narrator to achieve their goals. One in particular has the parser actually refuse to allow the player to enter a room, saying:

“I can tell you don’t want to really. You stride away with a spring in your step, wisely leaving the Drive Chamber safely behind you. Telegrams arrive from well-wishers in all corners of the Galaxy congratulating you on your prudence and wisdom, cheering you up immensely.”[4]

It’s only after multiple attempts to enter the room that the narrator finally allows entry, giving the sparse room description: “Nothing happens; there is nothing to see.”[4] To actually see the contents of the room the player must ignore the narrator once again and look around repeatedly.

Later games have tried to contextualise this disembodied voice within the game by giving assigning it to a specific character. In the Portal and System shock series, the passive-aggressive narrator is embodied in the persona of an insane AI who entirely controls the environment around you. Both use the same tone of voice as the text-adventure parser, alternatively helping you and mocking you. The humour of GladOS in particular has a lot of throwbacks to the unreliable narrator of the Hitch-hikers Guide; one level has her inform you that the test is impossible, before congratulating you on completion. As the text-adventure parser acts as the competing voices of game designer and game, the insane omnipotent AI’s of GladOS and Shodan embody both the environment and the creator – caught between the need to help you and the desire to see you fail. As Portal writer Erik Wolpaw notes:

“It occurred to me that this is the voice of the environment, the environment is really your enemy, so why not, you know, let’s end this thing with you betraying the environment. “[5]

The fiction surrounding these characters makes the game designer vs. environment metaphor explicit. GladOS is motivated by a compulsive desire to test humans by constructing puzzle-chambers that they can complete. Shodan created the player, and the final sequence of System Shock 2 sees her overwrite reality to make it in her own image. As the final sequence takes place inside her, she literally becomes the game.

Portal and System Shock go further than the Passive-Aggressive parsers of old adventure games in more ways than simply giving the voice an explicit character, though. Both games add an extra dimension to the player-narrator infighting by theming it around an intimate, abusive relationship. As Erik Wolpaw commented on the player’s relationship with GladOS:

“She says some very hurtful things and, honestly, by the end, it’s pretty clear that this sick relationship is unhealthy for both of you.”[6]

Shodan treats the player with similar levels of abusive intimacy, as Keiron Gillen’s analysis of the character points out:

“… so pronounced is Shodan’s femininity and so strongly does she exhibits the most feared clichéd feminine traits, it’s easy to read her as some kind of Misogynist portrait of some of the worse ideas about womanhood. … It’s an unwholesome relationship you’re with her, which grates on a players perception.”[7]

G. Williams, Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, sees the kind of relationship the player has with the antagonists of these games- GladOS in particular – as a metaphor for outgrowing the restraints of parents.

“… the experience that he[Erik Wolpaw] describes—a changing and evolving relationship with someone in authority over you that eventually leads to betraying them by violating their rules—is one that is an altogether familiar one. And this one is not merely familiar to gamers.  It sounds an awful lot like the relationship between parent and child.”[8]

This strange love-hate oedipal relationship the player has with these characters acts as a metaphor, not just for a child’s relationship with their parents, but also the player’s relationship with the game. The general characteristics of GladOS and Shodan are the  natural result of trying to express the player’s relationship with the environment within the story. As the game constantly tries to kill them while wanting them to succeed, the characters have love/hate relationships with the player. As the player must be taught the games rules and finally come to use what they’ve learnt to defeat the game, the story takes on the arc of betraying the parental authority-figure.

The passive-aggressive narrator has since gone on to become the star of a large amount of independent games, possibly influenced by the pop-culture impact of Portal. 8-bit shooter Star Guard uses text messages from your nihilistic commanders to constantly remind you that your task is impossible[9]. The sign-Painter from World of Goo, described as “The New GladOS” by critic Blake snow[10], adds humour to the otherwise speechless World of Goo. Online titles Loved and Depict1 even give the player different endings based on whether they choose to obey or disobey their antagonistic narrators.[11][12] Of these, it’s only Loved that continues the game-as-relationship theme of Portal and System Shock, but it seems the device itself will remain popular, now and into the future.

[1] Granade, Stephen. “Brass Lantern Timeline of Interactive Fiction: List of Events.” Brass Lantern Adventure Games Information. 2002. Web. 21 May 2011. <http://brasslantern.org/community/history/timeline-c.html>.

[2] Jerz, Dennis G. “Somewhere Nearby Is Colossal Cave: Examining Will Crowther’s Original “Adventure” in Code and in Kentucky.” Digital Humanities Quarterly. Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, 2007. Web. 22 May 2011. <http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/001/2/000009/000009.html>.

[3] Anderson, Tim, Marc Blank, Bruce Daniels Daniels, and Dave Lebling. Zork-mdl. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Infocom, 1980. MUD.

[4]Adams, Douglas, and Steve Meretzky. “BBC – Radio 4 – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – The Adventure Game.” BBC – Homepage. BBC. Web. 21 May 2011. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_nolan.shtml>.

[5]Wolpaw, Erik. “Game Center Lecture Series- Erik Wolpaw.” Interview. Vimeo. NYU Game Center, 10 May 2011. Web. 22 May 2011. <http://vimeo.com/23534126>.

[6] Wolpaw, Erik. “RPS Interview: Valve’s Erik Wolpaw.” Interview by John Walker. Rock, Paper Shotgun. Positive Internet, 31 Oct. 2007. Web. 22 May 2011. <http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/10/31/rps-interview-valves-erik-wolpaw/>.

[7] Gillen, Kieron. “The Girl Who Wanted To Be God.” Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Positive Internet, 12 Aug. 2009. Web. 21 May 2011. <http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/08/12/the-girl-who-wanted-to-be-god/>.

[8] Williams, G. Christopher. “An Intimate Moment With the Computer ” PopMatters. PopMatters Media, Inc, 31 Mar. 2010. Web. 21 May 2011. <http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/123220-an-intimate-moment-with-the-computer/>.

[9] Schmidt, Loren. Star Guard. Computer software. Vacuum Flowers. Web. 22 May 2011. <http://vacuumflowers.com/star_guard/star_guard.html>.

[10] Benedetti, Winda. “Quit Your Job and Make Your Game – Technology & Science – Games – Citizen Gamer – Msnbc.com.” Msnbc.com – Breaking News, Science and Tech News, World News, US News, Local News- Msnbc.com. Msnbc Digital Network, 20 Nov. 2008. Web. 21 May 2011. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27811798/wid/23887017>.

[11] Ocias, Alexander. Play Loved, a Free Online Game on Kongregate. Computer software. Kongregate. GameStop, 14 June 2010. Web. 22 May 2011. <http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlexanderOcias/loved>.

[12] Pulver, Kyle. Play Depict1, a Free Online Game on Kongregate. Computer software. Kongregate. GameStop, 16 Aug. 2010. Web. 22 May 2011. <http://www.kongregate.com/games/mirosurabu/depict1?acomplete=depict1>.

The management regrets to inform you that the moist hand-towels were a lie.