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James Zhou

Unfair Expectations and Unspecific Criticism in Save the Date

"Why haven't you started writing your own ending yet?" Felicia asks if you dawdle, searching for the ending that's not there. Save the Date questions the expectation players have for a "good" ending they can achieve through its absence as such, with the only three endings averting Felicia's death being not going on the date, quitting the game prematurely, or modifying a HACKER file for a parodistic happy ending.

Low res cover photo cause full-screen broke on my computer. :(
1337 h4x0r

However, this expectation by the game for the player seems more unfair to me. People choose games for certain purposes, sometimes to partake in an escapist story, other times to socialize or compete. It would be reasonable to expect a good ending from what is ostensibly a visual novel, or at least a meta-save scumming narrative. (Even Doki Doki has a relatively OK (nonstandard) ending despite being more brutally subversive). It is perfectly reasonable to try to save a video game character or simply win despite the game saying otherwise. It's not like it has the player wait two hours or five years for an achievement, or has the player become a genocidal maniac; you can traverse all the dialogue trees with minimal difficulty.


Moreover, we have extensively cataloged examples of how a large subset of gamers do in fact mod games for plot or other improvements as Felicia beseeches. In either case, the direct interpretation of Felicia's comments seems to tend towards a normative stance that is both arbitrary and thoroughly realized.


We may take the game as a more lenient piece designed to simply raise the issue of player interaction with game narratives. There is an element of satire in the absurd nature of the deaths or the HACKER ending, and the game certainly does not take itself particularly seriously. However, I contend that in this case, the nonspecific nature of the game weakens its presentation.


To begin with, dissatisfaction with negative results is a relatively pervasive attitude that extends to other forms of media. In recent memory, many audience members were upset when their favorite movie superheroes were sacrificed, which never happened in the comics due to possible outrage for the same reason. Coupling an effectively forced bad ending with player agency can exaggerate this lack of closure, and Save the Date does question the effectiveness of this in the face of an already constructed world. However, Save the Date does not move much further, with a large part of the argument is presented almost directly through Felicia's dialogue. And she says many things many players would already know.


It is a bit unfair for the game given that we're in a class that deals with multiple metagames versus the brevity of Save the Date. To me, however, it just serves as a means of highlighting its limitations despite it being good for what it is. Other metagames accompany their commentary with more substantial treatments on specific genre tropes to create more comprehensive arguments.

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James Zhou
Nov 18, 2019

(I am a bit harsher in my post than I otherwise would be about the game upon rereading it. This response is super late but oh well.)


I think the main problem I didn't explicate on is that the tension between the satirical, non-serious deaths of Felicia with its discussion of limited, deleterious choices is not well handled. They mostly seem to me to be undermining each other, in that how seriously can you really take the morality of "good" endings saving Felicia as a counterpart to the instinctual desires to have a "normal good" ending. Without a better contrast, the criticism can be pointless, and it feels unfair in a "this-game-is-silly-in-blocking-me" way rather than a "I-have-to-make-tough-choices" way. I'm not…


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Alvin Shi
Alvin Shi
Nov 11, 2019

The entire concept of wanting in Save the Date didn't exactly seem to be an accusation or an unfair expectation to me. It is perfectly reasonable to want to win something; to be happy with something in some specific way. The way I ended it was as some other people have already said: just don't go on the date. The way it calls out to the player kind of prompts the person to think about their own lives and their own endeavors. It also allows us to find happiness in actions/decisions not explicitly coded to be successes. Sure, Felicia berates you a little for not going out and making your own endings, but berating is just berating, not some condemnation…

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zene
Nov 11, 2019

I think the brevity of Save the Date is important to how it wants players to interact with the game. The quick turnaround between rounds allows the player to experience many options and replay others multiple times with new knowledge. I think that if the game were longer, this mechanic would not be as palatable to the player. Putting a lot of time into a game and the choices one makes only to eventually be told it doesn't matter is a much more infuriating process. It would also likely discourage some types of players from playing again at all after spending so much time on the first round. The quickness of the game encourages the player to explore the game.…

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kaedmiston
Nov 11, 2019

I wonder whether you actually found the "true" ending of Save the Date though. Your criticism of the game is that it is too short and the meta element of the game is too satirical to be effective, but the meta element of the game is within the game itself. The game argues that the player needs to accept that they always are the cause of Felicia's death when they choose to go on the date, so the only way to "win" is by accepting that the player cannot go on the date at all. Is this unfair? I don't know. It certainly is a deeper commentary on the culpability of the player in causing pain by ascribing to an…

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