Information provided in a game should be prioritized considering both the game mechanics and the target audience. Firewatch was created by Campo Santo for PC gamers and am I discovered I am not in the target audience for Firewatch even though I am over 17 years old.
This week’s task was to play a walking simulator but what you do while walking and why you are walking make a big difference. I would have had a much more enjoyable time playing Paperbark as a sleepy wombat who wanders the Australian bush and not playing Firewatch as a man who has fled to the wilderness. While the mechanic of walking creates particular game play dynamics, the resulting aesthetic is largely dependent on other design choices.
The role of information in Firewatch stood out to me for multiple reasons. Information is necessary for game mechanics. Most obviously the game controls and the contents of the world must be learned. In Firewatch, some of these mechanics were explicitly explained with on screen prompts.
However, there were basic mechanics that I needed that were not taught to me. From the first moments in this game I did not know how to move (W-A-S-D). The game assumed that anyone playing it would already have experience and know which buttons to click. Beyond knowing what button to click, I did not (and probably still don’t) know how to efficiently move. The addition of an optional tutorial would have been extremely helpful for me. Having an opportunity to try out mechanics instead of failing to answer important radio calls would have been helpful. This failure to provide the freedom to fail took away from my experience.
In Firewatch, world information is so important that designers provide an updating map. Again the game designers assumed a level of experience that would allow player to interpret this map and know that the target was at the left end where the red trails come together. Sadly this novice video gamer aimlessly wandered looking up for fireworks that never appeared for over 30 minutes and gave up and watched a youtube guide. The experience of walking through the woods was designed to be sensory fun and the challenges are meant to provide narrative fun. The combination of the two probably functions quite well for target players but my limited experience with video games left me feeling stressed and confused.
While not directly related to game play mechanics, designers can include specific information to set the mood and influence the aesthetic. This mood setting information is sufficiently important to devote time and energy both in the development of the game and in game play to that information. I have been known to skip the information that sets the mood in order to get to the game play faster. For example, in The Crew each round comes with a journal entry that not only moves the story along but provides a reason for particular limitations in game play. However, not knowing this information does not stop you from playing the next round. Video game designers make the explicit choice to allow players to skip or not skip this content. Firewatch does not allow you to skip this information and this choice dramatically affected my experience and pushed me to consider an ethical question.
While the ethics of violence in video games are important, I am an extreme outlier who dislikes violence quite strongly so I will address the ethics of forced identities and actions in games that may or may not match with the player’s identities or values instead. Caroline Criado Perez’s book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” referenced backlash, where some men said playing as a woman would alienate them, and she quotes journalist Sarah Ditum mocking that argument pointing out that they “played games as a blue hedgehog”. While I initially thought the men’s argument was flimsy at best, I felt entirely alienated by the expectation that I play as Henry, a drunk man who picks up women at bars. These details felt somewhere between unnecessary and offensive to me but the designers were probably aiming to provide for people’s sensual needs. I considered quitting when the game required me to consider overriding my partner’s dog preferences and pressure my partner to not pursue career progress.
I considered writing a letter to complain to the designers about their flippant treatment of complex considerations like having children and caregiving. These moments were problematic for me as it negatively impacted my sense of affiliation.
If not for the class assignment, I would have quit Firewatch before I even made it to the first challenge. I am not in the target audience of Firewatch so maybe there is an argument that it is okay that they alienated me. However, I believe there is a strong ethical argument against systemic alienation of particular groups. The ethical problem occurs not when a movie has a male protagonist but when more than 40% of movies don’t pass the Bechtdel test. It feels like it would have been relatively easy to allow me to play as Julia and have the roles reversed. It feels unnecessary to include that I was drunk. While not all games need to work for all people, small changes should be made to improve the experience of more people when possible. If I only had more time, I would love to work to create toolkits designed to assist designers to minimize alienation of minority groups with minimal impact to their creative vision.
