I wasn’t sure whether the messages Problem Attic showed were words it wanted to convey to me or a prediction of my own feelings toward the current stages themselves, and the entire game as a whole. The massive “GO FUCK YOURSELF” actually made me want to laugh. Those were definitely the unsaid words going around in my head while I was navigating through this, quite honestly, awful platformer. I decided I had had enough once the infinite falling portion began and the entire screen was just a whirl of colors and the text suggesting that I might wake up tomorrow with all my guts in a pile on the ground appeared. Given the visceral amount of sensory input that was being chucked at me, I honestly felt that I really would hurl from dizziness. So maybe it was a prediction.
That being said, Ryerson acknowledges, if not pushes, that her game is supposed to be like that - sort of awful. It hurts to see and hear and coming in contact with the floating interactive sprites often results in punishingly grating noises and a screen that’s so shaky it’s extremely hard to pick apart what’s going on. I did see connections between the recounting of her personal experience having to rely on abusive parents to barely scrape by and the fact that these little cross-shaped sprites were occasionally the only thing I could use to advance in a stage despite having to suffer the noise and visuals that were enough to make me recoil.
However, I feel to some degree that Ryerson’s frustration towards not Braid, but her own audience begins to leak out in her writing further on. Even while she says she had expected a poor response, there was resentment and bitter feelings left over from how Problem Attic faded into obscurity relatively quickly, and she even admitted that “part of her [felt] like the world still doesn’t deserve something like Problem Attic.”
Frustration and sadness that stems from coming from places of very little privilege, especially that of a trans woman, is something worth expressing to the world. Ryerson has every right to express that frustration, and even more so when something else (Braid) becomes much more successful and gets more attention by virtue of having more privilege, yet being devoid or ignorant of such implications of privilege. But also, Problem Attic is a game that truly makes people uncomfortable, even if it makes a decent point. There's no justification to cast shade when it doesn't become popular because people are less willing to sacrifice their own eyes and ears by subjecting themselves to the sensory assault that is the game. Problem Attic makes certain points that players catch on early, but any that appear later on might be lost to the portion of the audience that couldn’t handle placing their eyes and ears into this virtual smoothie blender for any longer.
If Ryerson has already acknowledged that her game wasn’t meant to be enjoyed in the standard sense for typical gamers (as I personally would not have grit my teeth, swallowed my nausea, and continued even a little further had this not been an assignment in an academic class), then at that point saying that she felt betrayed and that nobody understood her sounded… trivial. There are ways to relay hardship and inequity that won’t immediately turn the audience off. Ryerson had expressed her discontent and how upset she got over the entire ephemeral culture over video games as a whole, and how people refused to praise or recognize her game for the feelings it expressed, but then one realizes. What’s the problem with having an unpleasant video game? It only seems natural that if it’s not enjoyable people won’t flock to it, but why hasn’t it at least shot off in the way other popular games with more pleasant interfaces and sensory input have?
The inherent struggle is that Ryerson had introduced a game like Problem Attic to an audience that was never really interested in hearing her out in the first place. In order to criticize the lack of acceptance and praise for Problem Attic, one must address the inherent issue in gaming culture of the cishet men who only play video games as a convenient way to enjoy themselves or build their towers of fragile masculinity any higher and play gatekeeper by locking out or refusing to experience the words and creations of any other demographic.
Nakamura’s article completes (but not necessarily fully answers) the issue of Ryerson’s discontent over how and why the main audience of Problem Attic, gamers, don’t love her game. Gaming culture has evolved mostly around white cishet men who “shun, mock and generally treat” women of color gamers, and honestly women gamers in general, “in ways that are far worse than one could find in almost any other social context.” It’s no wonder that people decidedly didn’t care about Problem Attic if the people that it was introduced to harbored this sort of mindset and living style in the culture of gaming. The majority of gamers, if following this sort of notion, wouldn’t go out of their way to experience something as unpleasant as Problem Attic if their main goal is to play for themselves and not for others. To expect them to praise Problem Attic, for that matter, would already be holding them in much higher regard.
Criticizing the audience for not enjoying or fully understanding Problem Attic and then dropping it and not giving it the renown and praise it so “deserves” will not go anywhere without fully addressing the problem of white cisgender heterosexual men in gaming culture who have manipulated the entire purpose of video games as a means to enjoy just themselves and strictly build themselves an exclusive comfort zone as a whole.
also if you're wondering about the cover photo it's bacon and the expression that it appears to be making makes me uncomfortable and i hope it makes you uncomfortable too
Interesting post. I definitely agree with you on the account that the game is very abrasive and makes you want to turn away from the game. In the context of this game socially, I would also agree that video games have started to turn into a medium of comfort, which cannot entirely be taken out of the narrative of the young male audience. One thing I want to explore, and was wondering from this post, however, is to what extent are people willing to put themselves through intense, uncomfortable, and painful video gaming experience? If we look to film as an example, often times the most painful and gory films have another element that draws the audience in to endure…