I Fought the Law and the Law was Scripted

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I’m playing Chrono Trigger. This is, at least, my sixth time playing through the game. If that doesn’t suffice as a neon-glowing statement of fanboyism, I don’t know what does. This is more or less my first attempt at a relatively academic blog post, so please, bear with me.

For whatever reason, when I play Chrono Trigger, I always play the beginning of the game the same way, even though I know how the events will pan out. I’m not using spoiler tags or anything here because the game is 13 years old at this point, and if you play games and don’t know a damn thing about this game, there is something very wrong with you. In all honesty, this is the first two hours of the game, so if people have any experience with this game, this is the part they encounter.

So as Crono, you enter the Millennial Fair, and you hear Lucca is setting up her new machine at the back of the fairgrounds, and proceed to make your way there. However, in front of Leene’s Bell, you run into a girl and her pendant goes flying. Here is where your actions begin to come under scrutiny. At this point, I always talk to the girl first to make sure the pendant. I wait when she wants candy. I leave the lunch alone. I take the cat to the little girl. Say it’s all my fault in court. However, when it comes time for Crono to fall victim to the judge’s gavel, I always get thrown in jail.

I understand that the event is scripted, and that no matter what, I will be hitting the pen as a result of the plot. However, as I sit there in the trial and watch the jurors account for me as “not guilty”, and see the judge still sentence me to three days of solitary confinement. I can’t help being struck by pangs of dissonance. Despite the fact that I know that I have to spend time in the slammer, I can’t help but feel defeated when I do, regardless of my verdict.

It may have something to do with the first time I played it, where I was destroyed by a totally “Guilty” verdict. That time, I grabbed the pendant first, got impatient waiting, ate the lunch multiple times, etc. Yet, I came away thinking “In this game, I can change the past. Next time, I’ll change how I play it.” So I did, again and again, and now I find myself here.

In my paper on games and narratives (ha! I’ve finally mentioned it!), I began to explore the idea of applying Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm to gaming. Stealing Wikipedia’s line, the theory states that “all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling… and so human beings experience and comprehend life as a series of ongoing narratives”. The way we judge narratives is based on fidelity/rationality, or coherence/probability. This begins to tie in to the oft-discussed topic of ludonarrative dissonance, which Michael Abbott describes very well by saying “The world is alive with possibilities, except when it isn't. The world responds to my actions, except when it doesn't,” (in regards to Fallout 3).

Chrono Trigger is a game trying to tell the story of a ragtag band of spunky heroes trying to save the world (or, everything Squaresoft put out up until about… well, still). I want to experience everything the game has to tell me, or has for me to play. I want to enjoy the story and the gameplay. The reason I begin to feel this dissonance is when Chrono Trigger stops being a game and starts telling the story. You can almost imagine the narrator saying, “Regardless of his actions, Crono was thrown in jail…”. As the gavel swings down, and the judge sentences Crono, Fisher would feel the narrative fidelity/rationality snap under pressure. Suddenly, the story we’re being told is no longer coherent with our world view. We know that if a jury finds you not guilty, you walk free. If O.J. Simpson can walk free, Crono should too. I'm feeling all sorts of narrative static, because this “interactive experience” decided it wants to be a scripted chain of events again, and because these events are not the norm of what I hold true. Granted, we have to suspend our disbelief to some extent, such as when fighting monsters or using magic, but this apparently universal concept of justice seems to be shattered.

I know Yakra did it, but in the end, I’m still always pissed.

This Stack of Books is My Own Personal Mountain

So, apparently, not posting is not the way to get a blog rolling. As much as I had hoped it would be one of those "if you build it, they will come" sorts of things, it is not.

What you see in this lovely shot are the things that I have to deal with right now that have taken my time away from thinking about intelligent thoughts to post here. I could fill it with mindless drivel, but that does nothing to further my cause, and is more than likely to push people in the wrong direction (assuming one or two folks find their way over here).

However, in regards to the stack of texts you see here... There's a lot of good things in that stack, and I've only gone through about an eighth of what I need to. First off, the textbook on IPC at the top of the stack, is a great overview of IPC theories. The chapters are very easy to read, they convey the general points well enough, and they make things concise. It's a great starting point when writing on theories in IPC. The videogame book that has intrigued me the most is Steven E. Jones' The Meaning of Video Games. It's also the newest book of the stack, I think. However, he starts off discussing LOST and its relevance to video games, and ends on discussing Spore and the future of games, so that should give you an insight as to what it holds. I was looking forward to Ian Bogost's Persuasive Games, but I fear I may not need as much of that text as I thought, so I may have to save reading that one for another time. All of these videogame texts are library books, though I'm hoping to add some of them to my personal collection soon enough.

At the top of the stack is my DS Lite, which was actually put there to hold down the cover of the IPC book since it furls up when untouched. The DS Lite is my only current escapism to gaming, since I rarely leave the desk these days (it seems). I've been playing Final Fantasy IV and I also started a new playthrough of New Super Mario Bros. just because that game is so damn enjoyable. When the DS needs to charge, I find myself heading back to Sanctuary and killing some time in Diablo 2 as I await Diablo 3. However, right now it's time to pick up that DS and crawl in to bed.

On Researching

I'm enjoying my new career as a graduate student. It's to be expected, of course, that when you're paying that much for schooling (a figure I won't disclose but is readily available on the Wayne State University website if you poke around enough) you should try and get some enjoyment out of it. I think the thing that strikes me as the most different from my undergrad work is something they like to tout when you're entering the graduate program: This is time for you to do work that you find interesting.
In my undergrad, majoring in Speech Communication with a focus on rhetoric, I had to wade through a lot of stuff I did not care for. The first thing that springs to mind is my Argument & Debate class, where we picked one topic for the semester and used that for all debates in the class. Our topic was global warming, and I'm just so numb to the whole entirety of the concept, it could not have been any less interesting to me. Each piece of research was like Mt. Everest, and I had to summon all of my strength just to find the information I wanted in each article.
In the graduate program, however, it is different. Introduction to MA Comm Studies, COM 7000, is our entry-level class, which we must pass in order to proceed with the program, and in this class, our entire purpose is to write one good research paper. Do that, and congrats. Fail, and welcome back next semester. The topic is open, providing you can find relevant scholarly research on the subject. So here I sit, with a pile of articles on my topic, which is a brief look at narratives in videogames, and I cannot wait to read them. To be researching something that you're interested makes the whole process a lot less like work, and a lot more involving.
However, in writing this, I have diverged from my research (albeit for a much-needed break and glass of apple cider), and I must get back to work.