Culture Clash April10

Every month, Matthew Sakey discusses culture-oriented issues of gaming, ranging from the evolution of critical language for understanding the new medium to the culture of gaming and how the nongaming public perceives the industry.

Heavy Gain

One game makes big strides

By Matthew Sakey

Appetizer: a surprising number of people wanted me to write about Ubisoft and DRM in this month's column, but really, what can I say that hasn't been said? The mistake everyone's making is assuming that Ubi cares about violating its consumers. It does not. The company knows that people will buy games they're excited about regardless of intrusive DRM, knows that returning games is impossible, and therefore couldn't care less if consumers are angry. That only the pirates can currently play some of these games is ironic, but doesn't affect the publisher's business model. The videogames market is unusual in that product quality and customer satisfaction are completely irrelevant to profit margin. Thus Ubi need do nothing to appease customers - needn't make good games, needn't employ less draconian DRM. Which is nonetheless not a license to pirate. Unfortunately we, the wronged party, must be the better people.

I know I'm a little behind, writing about this whole Heavy Rain phenomenon. But I did grab the game right when it came out - I meant to wait, but I'm weak - and like most other people I was quite impressed by what I saw. If Heavy Rain isn't a revolution in gameplay (and it's not), it certainly does takes some very important steps with narrative that we haven't seen in videogames before.

I'll avoid giving spoilers, but let's be clear: this is a game about estrangement and loss, a game about guilt, shame, misery, loneliness, self-loathing, failure, and torment. It is a game about children who are taken from their parents and drowned in rainwater by a murderous psychopath whose cruel derangements have nothing at all to do with the children and everything to do with... something else. You don't see games that are about tortured souls and ruined marriages and crushing depression very often. In fact, you don't see them ever - until now.

To be fair, like Quantic Dream's previous offering Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy, the story falls apart at the end. Well, more like shatters explosively. The actual identity of the Origami Killer is so absurd and so detrimental to the strength of the narrative arc that if I ever meet David Cage in person, I hereby give my word that I will print out the entire 2,000-page Heavy Rain script and (provided he holds still) beat him with it until he apologizes for ruining a story that had until that point successfully been everything a game is not expected to be.

I'd beat David Cage with his stupid 2,000-page script, but then I'd take him to the hospital, because for all its many narratological flaws (they're not just limited to the end, believe me) Heavy Rain deserves serious cred. It is not gaming's Silence of the Lambs. But there will be a "gaming's Silence of the Lambs" because of Heavy Rain, and in some ways that's the bigger achievement. You must crawl, after all, before you can walk.

I tried to explain (something that never works and that I should stop doing) Heavy Rain to a nongamer I know. She freaked out the second I got to "...and drowns them in rainwater." Her voice became quite shrill. I employed logic: people watch serial killer movies and shows all the time. People read Dostoyevsky and Faulkner even though those guys are really depressing. And how is Heavy Rain, a game where maybe 15-20 people max can die somehow worse than playing Valkyria Chronicles, where you kill hundreds, or Prototype, where you kill thousands, or Defcon, where it's billions? I guarantee we've all done worse to videogame characters than drown them in rainwater. Her response: "It's horrible. Who drowns children in rainwater?"

Serial killers do, that's who, and we've made an entertainment monolith out of them in other media, just as stories of ruined marriages, parental neglect, self-torture and social ruination are as popular as romcoms.

Let me tell you about my Heavy Rain experience. I got what I can only hope is the worst of the game's bazillion possible endings. Three of the four protagonists died hideously - one after enduring so much torture that he couldn't even stand up to blow his brains out and had to do it sitting in a chair. The kid drowned in the rainwater. The Hooker With A Heart Of Gold drowned in a river. The killer not only got away clean, but also destroyed every possible shred of implicative evidence associated with the murders.

That doesn't sound like a lot of fun. And indeed, it wasn't. The eight or so hours I spent playing Heavy Rain were depressing and at times awful, but darkly exhilarating, in the same way as a rollercoaster or, well, a serial killer movie. It's an unpleasantry we seek out. I don't regret for an instant the money I spent on it, and I'm eager to play again.

I've talked about games having meaning before, and with Roger Ebert back on them about being whatever it is he says they are, you might think this column is just a reminder that games are art and can have meaning and stuff. Not so! I mean, yes, but not just that.

Heavy Rain is a really, really important game. Not for its gameplay, but because it shows us that a game can be about exploration of the human heart, the human soul, about human suffering and human drama and subtlety,  things almost never associated with games. Heavy Rain does this and is still be financially successful, worthwhile enough that people are talking about (and replaying) it a couple months after its release, and playable enough that you don't feel like you're "watching" a game. My biggest concern going in was the QTEs, which indeed the game is made up of. We haven't figured out a way to do natural, instinctive whole-body interface with game worlds yet and maybe we never will, at least not until holodecks or brain plugs. But the QTEs were just a means to an end, they didn't really bother me and didn't impact the serious experience of the game. Even when I messed one up (and actually one of my protagonists died because I hit X instead of Triangle, a crime for which I still curse myself) I didn't mind, because I got the sense that the world went on. It went on depressingly, it went on gloomily, it went on being a world where kids are sometimes kidnapped and drowned in rainwater. Heavy Rain's true victory is how it demonstrates that a game's world can be all those things and still be a very worthwhile investment of your time and money. Not entertaining in the classic sense, but still valid and valuable entertainment.

Matts Bio

Matthew Sakey is a professional writer, designer, and interactive media analyst. In addition to writing the monthly Culture Clash column for the IGDA website, Matt also maintains the popular gaming and entertainment site www.tap-repeatedly.com. His work has appeared in several other publications, Games for Windows: the Official Magazine, Develop, The Escapist, Game Developer, and Play Meter. Matt serves as an industry consultant and analyst, working with developers on story and gameplay, educators on curricula for game studies, and corporate clients seeking to leverage games-based technology for e-Learning. For more information, visit www.matthewsakey.net or email matthewsakey@comcast.net.

© 2010 Matthew Sakey. All rights reserved.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the IGDA.