While I think Dys4ia is a lovely game that tells a strong story about a personal experience, some class discussion prompted me to question one part of the gameplay mechanic. We spoke in class in a way that, to an extent, subtly alluded to the idea that the minigames were a primary mechanic that drove the player forward. Great discussion was had about the frustrating mechanics of the games, the fact that they changed rapidly, and the nature of a rapid-fire series of minigames. The pastiche of a Warioware-style, fast paced disembodiment of the player into a series of objects or people that fit into Anna Anthropy's personal story is undoubtedly successful and multifaceted in telling a story in a way that uniquely conveys frustration and a large range of different events and struggles. But personally, the only thing compelling me through these minigames was not in fact any sort of compulsion or desire to play the 'game', rather, I saw the minigames as objectives to complete in order to be told more of the story, to learn more about her experience as a trans woman. Instead of the primary driver to play being gameplay, or even an enjoyable or particularly frustrating/difficult experience, the primary motivation to play at all for me was to hear what would happen next.
This distinction may not be meaningful for many players. But firstly, it lends credence to the interpretation of Dys4ia as a narrative told through gameplay rather than a game driven primarily by mechanics. Secondly, and more importantly than simply being able to more effectively categorize Dys4ia, the fact that the minigames never elevated past the emotional importance of hoops to jump through lent a substantially different interpretation to the messaging of Dys4ia. Unlike other players who commented on the frustration that they bought into, or the pointlessness of the minigames, for me it wasn't simply that I didn't enjoy the games or that I grew frustrated with them at all. There are plenty of games (The Last of Us comes to mind) in which I've suffered through frustrating portions or mechanics just to get the next part of a particularly compelling story, Dys4ia was decidedly not one of them - it was rather that I wasn't frustrated or failing.
In this way, it was moreso that the actual experience of playing the game never felt quite as important as what I was being told. This complete lack of frustration or feeling of failure deeply affected the message of Dys4ia and the way that her experience was portrayed. I still interpreted Anna Anthropy's personal suffering as serious and multifaceted, absolutely. The variety of minigames was also impressive, and conveyed up how many distinct aspects of her life were affected by this. But the general tone of the storytelling didn't quite come off as emphasizing feelings of frustration, impossible-ness, or brokenness due to the minigames that used failure as a mechanic for me like many mentioned in class. Yes, some of them were meant to fail. But when something didn't fit through a set of blocks, or when the game pushed me along to the next minigame, I didn't feel any connection to a particular outcome. After all, I was just going to be pushed along to the next minigame, the story would progress, and more importantly than that -- the game still had more to tell me, another scene to show. Rather than feeling invested in the failure or success of a minigame, Dys4ia is more like an interactive play in which the player ushers characters and set pieces around. With my fingers pulling the strings of puppets populating the story - performing the roles of a razor, a shirt to pull over a body, and most frequently the starring role of Anna herself, Dys4ia is decidedly more a shadow performance put on by the player moving through the game than a game in which the player is a participant.
This is not to say that the game didn't have meaningful messaging, or that the game didn't communicate its themes effectively. In fact, because of this disconnection of meaning or significance to gameplay, the general impression of all of the negative experiences that Anna Anthropy had to go through seemed to convey the message that the frustrations were tiring because they caused "death by a million papercuts", not for any particularly singular reason. Perhaps it was the brevity of the minigames, the lack of meaningful consequences for failure, or the simple fact that I played the game already very interested in her personal story, (or all three) but I plowed along through her narrative getting the general impression that going on hormone therapy was simply long, arduous, and filled with hoops to jump through rather than that it was inherently or dauntingly tied to failure. Hearing Anna Anthropy's story in this way was tiring, but perhaps it was meant to be. And, while this difference in perception changed the meaning of the game for me, the gameplay feeling rather unimportant still communicated something quite illuminating and (I think) valuable about a particular experience of a trans woman. It also made me feel distinctly as if I was listening rather than participating - and considering the game tells the story of a transgender woman, perhaps it's for the best that the player is asked to listen instead of participate in this particular instance.
Screenshots taken from Dys4ia, by Anna Anthropy