Over this long break from the project, I’ve been able to spend more time thinking on different aspects of the game. Recently, I wrote a short note about our narrative and theming to share with Jib, focused on the ending of the game. It’s copied here.
We’ve had an idea in mind for the ending of our game, where this typhoon that has been approaching the whole time lands and absolutely decimates the island, leaving it empty and razed. It makes this sort of dramatic statement, like “all that intrigue and gossip, and none of it even mattered. One day every single one of us will be dead and forgotten.” In many ways that’s an objectively true statement to make, but I also think that it’s not very honest. All of this intrigue and gossip DOES matter, a whole lot, to two people: Blueberry and his dad. Because of all of this, the last week or so of their lives is miserable. It’s like the inspirational “you can’t change the world, but you might be able to change the world for one person” flipped on its head. And that particular idea, the idea that there are billions of worlds, billions of realities coexisting on our earth, has been at the core of our game from the beginning. And on that world, our own individual experience of existence, what we do, what we know, and how we feel DOES matter, because that is all that there is. So you can see how it may feel disingenuous to make a big to do about how nothing matters and this is all quite silly, when in the very same game we are making some sort of statement about how what you see and do and feel and know is all that exists, and you live in a little world of your own happenstantial creation, and isn’t that beautiful and isn’t that terrifying.
The harrowing part of all of this is that these things are not mutually exclusive. Nothing that you do matters because nothing that you do will ever outlive time, AND everything that you do matters because what you do is all that you have. In fact, your existence and what you do with it matters so much BECAUSE it’s completely inconsequential. So it becomes important that these truths are told together.
I think that we have been, somewhat unconsciously, doing this already. In most ways, this game is a condemnation of sensationalization, but it also contains the offer of an alternative. So far, we have been placing a huge importance on designing playful systems that engage players, like the rock collecting, and ensuring that more integrated systems are fun to use and expressive at their core, like our sticker chat/status system. We’ve seen this as a balancing act on our part as designers, to de-emphasize mystery and to increase the allure of play, and I think that is an accurate view, but the act of giving the player the choice to disengage from the sensationalization in order to play, and rewarding that behavior (with joy), itself promotes this truth that is otherwise ignored by our narrative. What you do matters, because (in the structure of this game), what you do changes the experience that you have. What we are missing, narratively, is the reinforcement that that experience itself is important, in spite and because of the fact that our existence is inconsequential.
So what to do? The thought of a player leaving this game with the thought “ah, so nothing that I do or say matters, I see. All that mean stuff that everyone was saying, completely neutral in the end.” Is quite disturbing. There’s a risk in emphasizing Blueberry’s personal experience near the end, that it would sort of reinforce that idea, like “see how sad this kid was? Doesn’t matter anymore!” But it also would miss the point to show some sort of “living on” of the suffering of sensationalization AFTER the disaster. This isn’t some sort of message about cycles repeating, or the enduring power of everything being terrible. I wonder if it means that we need to reveal the truth of our narrative after all? That feels quite dire. Surely there’s another option. Or perhaps just a far more drastic change in perspective for the second “loop” than we had planned.
It is simple. Sensationalization is bad because it hurts people, and sensationalization is stupid because it does that even though nothing matters so why would we do things that hurt people for no reason? So I think that there is probably a narrative solution that is simple as well.
It probably lies in Strawberry and the Older Kid. Maybe the older kid is related to Strawberry, so we get to see, though somewhat removed from the current events, someone deeply affected by sensationalization. Maybe instead the game ends with a 20 year time skip where everyone is adults and has forgotten about all these silly rumors, except for blueberry who is deeply depressed. Quite on the nose. Perhaps it needs to be more personal. Maybe we open the game by saying “what you do matters because nothing that you do matters. You will never solve the mystery, and you will never find a use for your rocks.” Or maybe we show the older kid living a good happy life in similar ways to the playful mechanics we have for the player, despite the rumors about them. I’m getting slightly deranged because it’s far too late. I was just going to keep throwing things at the wall but I think “title card where we just say it” is a sign.
After sharing this note, we talked a little bit more about it. Jib was in agreement about our ending not meeting our needs, and we discussed a couple more possible changes to the game to think about, though nothing concrete.
Some of what came up:
- Showing the destruction of the town at the end of the first loop, so that the player gets the “nothing matters” message, but then has to play through it all again, primed to consider the place of one’s actions in the face of nothing mattering. Though it won’t be helped by a probable urgency to solve the mystery from this new perspective.
- Showing the older kids perspective first. (my personal note: What the freakkkkk)