Game Design as Narrative Architecture

I read Game Design as Narrative Architecture for CS247G. My mindmap is below (high quality PDF here).

 

Emily Is Away

Summary

This week, I played Emily Is Away, a single player visual novel created by Kyle Seeley. I played it twice for a little more than an hour on MacOS through Steam and it is also available on Windows. In Emily Is Away, you play as Emily’s friend from high school, messaging her through an old-fashioned (AOL Instant Messenger-like) chat platform over the course of five years. Developed with a heavily nostalgic interface, its target audience is likely those who experienced their teenager years on AIM. However, its story is universal enough to be appreciated by anyone in high school or beyond.

Narrative Strategies

Emily Is Away features enacted narrative, evocative spaces, and embedded narrative to contribute to the aesthetics of narrative and discovery.

Emily Is Away is a clear example of an enacted narrative. Players are dropped into a character’s life and their choices dictate the flow of the game. Through choosing different dialogue options, the player is able to progress the story and explore different possible endings or choices, adding to the aesthetic of narrative and discovery.

Furthermore, the game’s design is centered around an evocative space: AOL Instant Messenger. The entire game takes place in what looks like a chat message window, complete with customization options, different profile pictures, sounds, typing indicators, and more. Players don’t just select a dialogue button: they must physically hit different keys on their keyboard to complete the message, then press send to send it.

The use of evocative spaces both increases immersion and evokes a sense of nostalgia.

While the main plot line is told through enacted narrative, the game also features a small embedded narrative through the buddy list and character profiles. Exploring the interface, players can discover a list of their friends and whether or not they are online, as well as user profiles for each friend, which reveal a little bit about their personality. This bit of extra flavor aids the fun through discovery, while also allowing players to develop some of the narrative outside of what was given to them.

Invoking Empathy

Through its enacted narrative and evocative space (using its affordances as a visual novel), Emily Is Away effectively develops empathy for the inevitable loss and deterioration of a relationship.

The choice to be a visual novel and choose the space of AOL messenger is extremely effective. Because the player must “type out” each message on an actual messaging platform, the story feels immersive. It invokes the feelings of actually talking to a friend, rather than roleplaying a character in a story in a way that simply choosing dialogue options (especially for spoken dialogue), doesn’t create.

It also creates some interesting affordances that the game uses to communicate subtle emotions. For example, the game shows both typing and deleting indicators, invoking the feeling of real time communication and the unknown stress of not knowing how the person on the other side might be responding.

Not only does the game show uncertainty in how Emily is responding, it also shows and enforces uncertainty in your own responses. Sometimes, the player will type something out and delete it to reword it slightly, such a change from “you’re my best friend” to “you’re one of my best friends.”

By playing off these known messaging conventions, the game effectively channels subtle emotions that players are already familiar with from their everyday lives.

Aside from individual mechanics, the broader story choices also build empathy. One of the key choices was to only allow the player a single conversation each year with Emily. The player does not control every moment or every interaction, instead, they just get snapshots of their relationship as it progresses. In doing so, the progression in the player’s and Emily’s relationship becomes much more apparent, such as in the final conversation, where Emily’s texting pattern suddenly deviates. While the decline in each conversation may be gradual, the switch year after year is jarring.

It also emphasizes the futility of the situation. Even if you would like to talk more, you’re unable to and that growing distance is something that simply has to be accepted.

Overall, I was faced with a sense of loss and disappointment, having to interact with a friendship that is irreparably drifting away.

Takeaways

I think the most controversial aspect of Emily Is Away is its very linear storyline and surprising lack of agency. During my first play through, I felt my magic circle break suddenly when I learned my character had done something that felt out of character and that I also had no control over: hooking up with Emily.

At first, I wondered if I had done something wrong and accidentally selected the dialogue options to lead to this outcome. Rather than increasing my empathy towards any character, it made me feel suddenly disconnected from the story as one of the key conflicts was entirely out of hand.

After completing the story, I played through it a second time, selecting completely different outcomes to see if I could change the course of the story. However, upon doing so, I realized, while the game makes it seem like your choices are significant, they truly don’t matter. Attempting to stop Brad and Emily from getting together just causes Travis and Emily to get together and avoiding going to the party where you and Emily get very close to each other still leads to her implying closeness another way.

While this did somewhat contribute to the theme of the futility of saving a friendship, it was mostly frustrating because the core conflict rose out of a character that you had previously been established to have been playing. The sudden lack of agency causing what feels to be failure detracts from feelings of self-efficacy that are so important in a game.

The game does effectively use removal of agency in other places, such as being unable to type a certain dialogue option because of your character’s emotional state. However, those still feel understandable because of previous actions, rather than feeling unavoidable.

For my narrative, I want to be careful to toe the line: futility and lack of agency are both feelings I want to invoke, but I want to avoid imposing those in such a way that it feels incongruous with the character a player wants to play. I think the greatest emotional impact comes from doing everything right and the situation still being unsolvable, rather than the character contradicting your actions. I also want to think carefully about my medium of expression. I think emotional buy in is easier if the game feels closer to real life.

Overall, Emily Is Away is extremely effective in creating a realistic setting to draw from nostalgic memories and create empathy, even if its story is questionable in places.