I recently played a short game called Wither. It’s yet another art game that I’ll insist is so profound and yet people will just stare at me as I try to explain it.
Spoilers be below.
As near as I can tell, Wither places you in the shoes of a survivor of a car crash. You may or may not have been the responsible party. Either way, your brother (or other loved one) is dead and you promised to bring him twelve flowers. The game then allows you to explore a small town, accomplishing small deeds in exchange for flowers to bring to his grave.
I need to play through it again to chew through it again, but one thought really stuck out to me as I played: I was really sad. Again I see the uniqueness of playable media. I really lived in the death of my character’s brother. Not in a creepy way or a way that assumes more emotional investment than a 20 minute game requires, but for that full 20 minutes, I was thinking about death. Every action that I took reminded me of death. Every flower was another promise that I had fulfilled. Every character I talked to was someone else who could help assuage my survivor’s-guilt-ridden conscience.
Had this been a short film, I would definitely have been affected, but there is a greater degree of separation between me and the characters. At any given moment, I can choose to disengage my emotions and stop feeling what’s going on in the story. Not so in Wither. In order to progress, I necessarily must continue toward the goal of the game. A goal which, might I remind you, was really, really sad. Even if I wanted to disengage, every little interaction forced my emotional involvement in some small way.
Anyway, it was a cool experience. Yet another example of how games can be used to make us think differently.
Spoilers be below.
As near as I can tell, Wither places you in the shoes of a survivor of a car crash. You may or may not have been the responsible party. Either way, your brother (or other loved one) is dead and you promised to bring him twelve flowers. The game then allows you to explore a small town, accomplishing small deeds in exchange for flowers to bring to his grave.
I need to play through it again to chew through it again, but one thought really stuck out to me as I played: I was really sad. Again I see the uniqueness of playable media. I really lived in the death of my character’s brother. Not in a creepy way or a way that assumes more emotional investment than a 20 minute game requires, but for that full 20 minutes, I was thinking about death. Every action that I took reminded me of death. Every flower was another promise that I had fulfilled. Every character I talked to was someone else who could help assuage my survivor’s-guilt-ridden conscience.
Had this been a short film, I would definitely have been affected, but there is a greater degree of separation between me and the characters. At any given moment, I can choose to disengage my emotions and stop feeling what’s going on in the story. Not so in Wither. In order to progress, I necessarily must continue toward the goal of the game. A goal which, might I remind you, was really, really sad. Even if I wanted to disengage, every little interaction forced my emotional involvement in some small way.
Anyway, it was a cool experience. Yet another example of how games can be used to make us think differently.
2 comments:
The only problem with a post like this, is that I felt the need to go play the game before reading and responding. So I did.
And you're right, it's really sad, tragic even.
Though...not to say that the aforementioned problem with said post is a terrible problem.
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