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What does the foregrounded, authoritative narrator say to ideas of deviant behavior?

In class Tuesday we talked about applying theories to game, the first step of which was just slapping it on. And I think theories of deviant and normal behavior map pretty well on to these narrated games about player decisions. Of course, all the ways you can play the game and all the endings you can play through are already planned out in The Stanley Parable and Loved, so maybe since you're just following predetermined paths there's no way to play the game that's really deviant. That isn't a problem though since a central point is that what's deviant and what's normal are not inherent but constructed. What's more interesting is how they're constructed.


The real challenge is the second step: does playing The Stanley Parable or Loved say anything back to ideas of deviant behavior? A starting point is how painfully obvious they make it that you're told where to go, what to do, and how to feel. Plenty of video games have buttons to press to avert a countdown or pits of spikes to jump over, but these games have someone explicitly tell you what to do rather than rely solely on expectations from the genre or imported from wider culture. Still, simply bringing awareness to the fact that expectations of what you're supposed to do are constructed doesn't contribute much to a dialogue with a sociology book.


Perhaps one approach would be to consider how the overbearing narrators don't just highlight choices; they actually change how we think about and even make them. Playing Loved I immediately did what the narrator said not to do because I didn't like them and how they were telling me what to do. It wasn't the content of their directions so much as the form. It felt like it violated ideas of autonomy and freedom we really value. So maybe it amps up the desire for self determination.


And at the same time, it shows the impossibility of pure self determination. I don't intend this in a humans no free will boo hoo kind of way. The point is more that we construct the interesting parts of our actions in relation to someone else, and in that sense depend on them. In this case, that what makes a choice powerful and your reason for choosing it is the narrator says not to choose it. And this might be something sociology books miss with an overly granular and meticulous approach. In an effort to take something that appears scandalous and fraught with judgement to most people and study it, they break it down in as methodically and removed as possible, never moving from is to ought. They attempt to pick out experiences and causes, but I wonder if in doing so they miss the creative nature of deviating. To say screw you to the narrator and make the contrary choice is a conscious construction in the game, but we might not notice unconscious parallels in the larger world, especially if we try not to look at it. And while some ideas of deviant behavior might note defiance is itself appealing-police attention may encourage punk groups rather than deter them-they don't explain the experience of why that is, which I think the games shore up (or not, idk, this is just my limited familiarity).

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