Problem Attic: Empathy and Implicating the Player

I'd like to take this post as a chance to continue our discussion on empathy.

With Problem Attic, we seemed to come to a bit of a struggle about whether we empathized with the protagonist/experience. With all the game's abstractions, it seemed that the lack of a specificity made it difficult to do so or made it so that the experience could be applied broadly. Here, I want to offer two possible threads: 1) that in our many emotional responses to the game, we were effectively experiencing exactly what the avatar is, in that vicarious sense and 2) that since the game seems to implicate us in our playing, empathy is complicated and/or not the point.

I'd like to pick up that second idea since it's of interest to me in regards to games like Problem Attic, Braid, and Undertale. Each of these games, in a way, implicates its player, marking us as antagonists. In Braid, this comes through with those signals and nautical flags, asking us to stop playing in hidden messages. In Undertale, our replays are more directly challenged by omniscient characters that remember our choices, calling us out on putting them through torture or changing our minds. Finally, in Problem Attic, this appears in the text - "You have hurt me tremendously, and that's okay." Now, I have some conflicting feelings about that statement, but to me it could be addressing us, the player. In a way, we have been putting our character/avatar through a lot of pain, right? I think this implication of the player is central to the games' point - that the games in some way are interrogating systems of violence and our part in them, in a way. In addition, games like these also ask us to question why we play, and why it's sometimes too easy to put our character through horrors. (I'm reminded here of Nash's comment about the anonymity of screens and bigotry online.) For an industry that depends on players playing and purchasing games, it's interesting to see some works that actively challenge this and make us consider the role we take on when we assume control over someone (or something, for games with non-human characters).

In addition, thinking of the connections between Problem Attic and Braid, the theme of empathy/forgiveness becomes important. Braid seems to be about the desire to control time in a way that allows us to reverse our mistakes, hoping that we can be forgiven. This wisdom would allow us to see the consequences of our actions, reverse them, and then perhaps learn from the experience. In the ending of the game, we find that its ultimate point is that Tim has made choices without considering consequence, and there are mistakes that cannot be rewound and forgiven. In the princess' ultimate escape from us, the ending also points out that we are not owed or promised forgiveness for our actions, no matter our efforts, as people can make decisions about whether or not to forgive us.

However, as Ryerson points out in "the other side", there are some potential issues with Braid's narrative and ending. She points to "the way that it's centering Tim's story, and attempting to rationalize or justify his guilt without really delving much into its source. How it dwells on pretty, idealized landscapes and music, suspiciously absent of despair or fear or conflicting forces until later on. Like he can only really see danger looming when it's far too late, and by that point the damage is beyond done." In this way, the colorful and bright style and imagery seem at odds with the darkness of its story. As Ryerson notes, it is interesting to consider a story about forgiveness that seems to hold the anguish and consequences of mistakes off until the very end. Even then, as players we don't feel the weight of mistakes, really, since we just rewind - they lack the kind of permanence that some mistakes can have. Of course, the structure could be pointing to how Tim does not see these consequences, has the privilege of ignoring them, until they affect him.

In contrast to the "sanitized" world of Braid, Problem Attic takes those themes of implicating the player and empathy pushes them to their most visceral ends (Ryerson). Where there was bright, painterly images, she adds glitch imagery and dark red and black backgrounds. To me, the level with the dark red textures really emphasizes this: as the screen flashes and alternately hides/reveals the platforms, as our jump button seems to start malfunctioning, as the sounds of the pulsing room fill our ears, we are placed in a disturbing, confusing space. On one hand, we are experiencing the same disorientation and chaos that the character is. On the other, that level felt like being inside another organism, almost like we're a virus or invader. Either way, she brings the consequences and effects of the violence - the rumbling, shaking, the feelings of enclosure and anxiety - to the forefront, and we feel the impacts of our mechanical actions immediately in those sensations. The conflicting forces are here from the beginning, rather than at the end.

As many of us pointed out in class, the game also forces us into a sense of negotiation - using things that hurt us because we need them, because we don't have a choice. Where the protagonist of Braid has a lot of control over his environment, we are now playing a character that is powerless. To me, this powerlessness and forced negotiation is really where the vicariousness (and perhaps empathy?) appears. These kind of details are what make it difficult for me to say that the trauma in this game could be broadly mapped onto a general sense of anxiety or applied to someone who's faced another kind of issue in life - there is something to the importance of the body and a loss of control here. This is where the themes of gender and considerations of sexual violence really come through for me.

To end this hopefully coherent post, I think games like Braid, Problem Attic, and Undertale do a lot to interrogate the systems of power and control that underpin much of gaming and perhaps beyond. That may mean we have a more antagonistic experience than empathetic or that the games help turn us back to ourselves to consider our actions as players more than placing ourselves in someone's shoes. However, we can also think about whether our idea of empathy includes simulating situations, in any role, so that we might better understand ourselves and the effects of our actions. (If so, the experience of being made an antagonist may just circle back to empathy. I'd point again to Undertale here. Or, the emotional experience and the antagonistic experience might come together, especially since we can often find ourselves as both affected by and a part of larger, harmful systems.)

We could take parts of the experience of Problem Attic as a reminder of our own forced participation in systems that harm us, or we can think about the way places us as an antagonist forcing our character through violence. I think the games abstract nature lends itself well to having different experiences, but also possibly ties them together through the use of sensations and violence. I'm interested in other folks' further opinions on this game as well as empathy games in general!

Works Cited

Braid. Jonathon Blow.

"The other side of Braid." Liz Ryerson. Offworld, 30 Jul 2015. https://boingboing.net/2015/07/30/the-other-side-of-braid.html

Problem Attic. Liz Ryerson.

Undertale. Toby Fox.