Game: Life is Strange
Creator: Dontnod Entertainment and Deck Nine
Platform: PC
In Chapter 4 of Play Like a Feminist, Chess writes “agency is a tool; it a concept that reminds those who are marginalized how to act. To this end, I argue that video games can become agentic-training tools” (86-90). Considering Life is Strange as one such agentic-training tool, playing it as a feminist means taking advantage of the choice and time-reversal mechanics (and taking them seriously) in order to shape the story according to the player’s agenda as much as possible. Given the complexity of the dilemmas the game presents, the game is clearly targeting players who wish to do this—there is no way to avoid the story. When taking this approach, the feminist potential of the game then rests on the amount of control the agentic mechanics of the game give the player over the story and the games ethical stance on the exercise of this control.
The limited control the game gives players over the story is an example of a “training mechanism for a world where we often feel like we have more will, agency, and voice than we might really have” (90-94). For example, though the player is informed when their choices will have consequences, they don’t know what those consequences are—they are forced to decide based on the immediate outcome of a situation that is often ambiguous. Even so, Chess argues that the ability to rewind time and make a different choice “creates an infinite number of narrative possibilities that downplay the importance of climax” (86-90). This would be the case if infinite such narratives were actually possible, but they are not: the game offers you two choices at each critical point. Because of the limited number of choices, the critical points, such as Max choosing to either step in or not when hiding from Chloe’s stepfather in her closet, are still climactic moments. The game could choose to downplay this climax by a) giving more choices at each critical point, b) informing the player more concretely how their choices will affect future events, or c) lowering the stakes of climactic interactions (as might be done in a so called slice of life style game). Because it does not do these things, the climactic moments are still climactic. It remains to be seen whether there will be one big climax, but one is certainly suggested by the vortex-lighthouse scene that starts the game.
For a feminist player, the fact that the choices are limited makes the content of those choices important for the game’s narrative and it’s ethical stance. For example, after Max tampers the paint bucket to splash Veronica (which as far as I could tell there is no way to avoid doing), Max has the option to express sympathy and (presumably) improve her relationship with the character. But, for someone who caused the sympathy-provoking incident through manipulation of time, this is emotionally manipulative. In another example, after Max frees Dana from house arrest, she can pick up Dana’s pregnancy test, a severe invasion of privacy…which doesn’t carry any consequences, because Max can just rewind. Finally, the ability to rewind time absolves Max from having to develop empathy through the consequences of her actions—instead of acting based on empathy for the other person, she can just try a few different outcomes and see which one is best for her (one example is intervening when the security guy is talking to Kate—at that point in the game, it is most in character for Max to take a photo of the interaction, but that causes Kate to be mad, so Max can just rewind). It remains to be seen how these interactions relate to the games ethical stance. If the game allows emotional manipulation and freedom from consequences as a way of exploring Max’s character through the limited choices the player is given at each point, then the ethical stance is well-reasoned and even feminist to the extent that it features a complex, female protagonist. If the game does not address these issues later on, and thereby implicitly endorses emotional manipulation and freedom from consequences, then that is a missed opportunity to explore these issues through agentic mechanics, and I would change the game to instead engage with these issues. Using Chess’s constructions, I argue this makes for a bad “training mechanism” (90-94).
Luckily, the possibly supernatural chaos of the opening scene and the fact that using time reversal appears to drain Max almost to the point of fainting together suggest that the game will take a stance on the use of this ability as the narrative develops, possibly by making Max lose control of the ability. If so, this would be feminist because it comments on the exercise of agency and its consequences, especially when that agency is a supernatural power unavailable to anyone else.
