Fraidy Cat

Myst: I remember playing it as an adolescent with my friend, Jodi. We spent some time on the first level; I don’t recall ever progressing further, but we were mostly content to stay where we were. In our little playgroup, each of us did her part to optimize the overall game-playing experience. Jodi’s job was to control the mouse, to explore and discover – she was the brawn of the operation. For my part (I was the brains), I would bravely issue strategy from behind the nearest piece of furniture because, frankly, the game weirded me out something awful.

This week, for the first time, I was to be both the brains and the brawn in control of Myst, both clicker and strategist. This was an interesting position for me. Just thinking about it, hopeful anticipation and near crippling anxiety mingled within my palpitating heart, and I silently prayed for a couch or a heavy end table to appear in case of emergency.

After successfully installing the disk, I loaded the game and began to explore. As I moved about the island I appreciated the arcane graphics, the imagination behind the landscape, and the innumerable clickables populating the island. (Very impressive for a game this old, I noted.) I discovered the two books, added a page to each, and winced only slightly as each of two rather strange and frightening men tried to talk to me from inside them. I was doing well for awhile, and I am proud to say that game play lasted almost 10 minutes, at which point I accidentally locked myself in a fireplace, momentarily freaked out (screaming may or may not have been involved), and quit as fast as my right hand could carry me.

My experience, however brief, was enlightening.

Because I am relatively new to video games, especially ones with story lines, I was not nearly prepared for a multimedia, first-person mystery. In fact, I’ve never been fully comfortable when the “fourth wall” is broken in any literary medium; I recall, for example, the 2005 season of Tip/Tuck, which occasionally punctuated its commercial breaks with a seemingly home-made video announcement from “the Carver,” a serial killer character, addressing the audience directly. Without the welcomed buffer of third-person narrative, my hyper-developed ability to suspend my disbelief took over, and I didn’t sleep for a week.

But literature (my genre of choice) typically allows little opportunity for an author to do as Nip/Tuck did, or as video games continue to do. Literature, to whatever extent this can be said, is typically assumed to have been authored by someone other than one’s self. With the occasional exceptions of choose-your-own-ending story books and rare pieces of second person fiction, the physicality of a book and the relative immutability of its parts renders it almost impossible for one to get literally (or virtually) tangled in its story. But video games readily embrace their native ability to move freely between the game writer and the game player, continually blurring the line of authorship almost to the point of invisibility.

I will admit that there’s absolutely no reason for me to be this afraid of video games. I don’t believe in ghosts or boogiemen, zombies or demons. I understand that nothing in video games can “get” me, and that all I have to do is turn it off if things get too intense. But at the same time, I think my fear of some video games results from many of the same elements of gaming that entice most of the gaming public. There’s something alluring about being able to immerse one’s self into another world. Sure, literature, drama, and film do that, too, but in video games (and in Myst especially) we are afforded the opportunity to linger at the points that interest us most, to play and replay with different outcomes, and to mold the overall experience to our individual tastes. With all these things comes a sense of power, and with that, a sense of responsibility (as a wise man once said). Some gamers will embrace that responsibility and play the game to its conclusion, making all the right decisions and, in return, gaining a true sense of accomplishment – one that cannot be achieved merely by reading through the end of a novel or attending a scripted performance. The less certain of us, on the other hand, might become overwhelmed by the part we are asked to play, and may have a good deal of psychological difficulty re-constructing (even partially) the fourth wall to suit our gaming fancy.

I'm not sure where I will ultimately fall into this dichotomy. I know where I am currently, but I aspire to grow. In the meantime, however, I’ll do my best to stay out from behind the couch.