a Long time video games, especially a great empowerment fantasy. However, games such as “Death Stranding” do the opposite.
The Baby as a burden and a life-saver – scene from “Death Stranding” Screenshot: Kojima Productions
If the player*go to in “Death Stranding” the showers or the toilet visit, which has a purpose. It is not only the cleansing or emptying of the virtual body. From their dirt and their excrement be produced in the game is grenades. Yes, the players throw their own feces on supernatural opponents*inside. This has nothing to Empowering, there is no feeling of omnipotence – it’s humiliating. A feeling that played video games for a long time no matter.
video games still serve a large Share of self-empowerment. The Protagonist*the inner power fantasies are. They are bursting with power, are single-minded. With the weapon in Hand, all doubt is extinguished, the target is always in front of eyes, the rigour of the game world to be running together on the for the players, sitting in front of the screen and the Controller in Hand.
of Course, the obvious, are interpreted in many games but the fact that you can be won or solved. So you have an endpoint that is often already before the start of the game clear. But it make a lot of games the Gamer*on the inside, even while playing very easily. Their role is never questioned, they are the navel of this virtual world that is just waiting for the touch of a button.
Slowly but the facade of the unflinching protagonist crumbles. Sure, approaches to a paradigm shift for a long time. Moments of such, in which players are brought to the Doubt. But the humiliation, in the sense of humility-making, an approach that happen to play in the Blockbuster barely got a room. In “Death Stranding” already.
Mainly, the Gamer must run in this game. This is, of course, nothing Special, the Run – the achievement of a goal, but important component of many video games. They are part of the traditional accessories of the game worlds. Mileage running to overcome, rivers, mountains, canyons – all with no challenges. The way the services to be provided, to the goal of a video game achieve. “Death Stranding”, however, this ratio reverses. The Run here is of the actual game content. Because down the players*are has broken in here, especially with errands. They deliver the Goods.
charged with a metaphysical story about the re-networking of the United States, and the together-no matter which parts of the disbanded individual. But on the way there, the player*don’t need to pay attention especially to stumble. In fact, a large part of the game mechanics is to keep the balance not to damage the goods on the back. The Protagonist of the game, Sam is wearing a Porter Bridges, played by Norman Reedus, in addition to a Baby in a kind of incubator on the chest, he must always calm down again. Because this Baby is the real protection in the dark. In the world of “Death Stranding” is bonus veren siteler in the Hereafter, with its dark figures everywhere. And the cry of Casinometropol a baby is an important Wake-up call.
in Short, the players have no basis to feel empowered. Neither their basic task is that of a hero, still makes you a Baby on the chest for a daring Killer. However, Death Stranding must compete, “” now at the end of the year with Games that have exactly this approach. In “Ghost Recon: Breakpoint” about the player*to play a soldier or a female soldier on a fictional island with all sorts of realistic guns on the “evil” soldiers shoot and actually never in their role uncomfortable must. Similarly, a “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare”, this might be understood as an anti-war game, but the player*can never doubt what you have to do – and to what purpose. Their role is not always clear.
The term “Gamer” has strong connotations. It is often used by people who see their Hobby as just that: your Hobby – your Hobby alone. It is an identification, which is often accompanied by defensive battles. The defence of what is perceived as disturbing. About diverse characters and stories in video games. Or the rejection of political discourse, which would find in the “your Playing” anything. Many Gamer communities have problems with toxic behavior, to the Exclusion of so-called minorities. Certainly, it is a subculture, but a particularly loud. It is an interesting thought game, whether or not the Medium itself, so the video games would be the right room, this Gamer-deconstruct identity.
As is so often the Indie developers that bring these ideas into the game. So those Studios that don’t have a million budget in the back, no big companies trying to sell the games. So recently appeared about “Disco Elysium”. The biggest challenge of the role-playing game is expected to be the plethora of to-read Text. Likewise, the player controlling a COP who is an alcoholic and his brain lying in a long mono – or dialogues? – with it has. You will encounter a myriad of quirky characters with whom you can talk about communism or crude racial theory. And if you level up your character, as is typical in a role-playing game, you should make sure that he does not develop self-destructive properties. This can be quite humiliating. However, the game is celebrated just as the sleeper hit of the year.
Already in 2017, What Remains of Edith Finch “appeared”, in which the player*in short episodes, the last hours or days of life of family members of the protagonist through life. It is a beautiful, but also disturbing. A, the negotiated openly, how little Power the players have. No matter what an Episode to begin like, it is always clear that it ends in death. It should be with the child on a swing, crashing into an abyss or the depressed boy who works in a fish factory and eventually even the machine crushes is. “What Remains of Edith Finch” humiliates the gamers, by them makes it clear that you can’t win. It does this in an almost poetic way, it can make the video game be an art form, an experience that can only be offered by this Medium. But there are the players no Superiority.On the contrary, it makes you very small.
“Death Stranding”, PS4, 63 Euro
It is a Narrative that is only at the beginning of their differentiation: video games, the seeding of doubt, the gamers will fall in the back to strengthen it. First and foremost, it is a negotiation of potency and impotence. It is to be introduced, which can prepare the players*internal discomfort. It can then go to new game mechanics that are outside of the self-empowerment and not only power fantasies reproduce. The humiliation of gamers is not but could be good for a subculture, their perceived superiority on the Narration of the based to question our ability and self-confidence. Because in the construction of the Gamers, these discourses of superiority and self-confidence right now.
If the player*run in “Death Stranding” through the game world, with heavy loads on the back, you can listen to the protagonists, Sam Porter Bridges when you talk to Yourself. Sometimes, he asks himself, and thus also for the players, how he is actually: “How are you, Sam?” The Beautiful: Neither he nor the players know.
