No worries, any moralizing I may do won’t really be particularly Christian.

Transgression is important because it takes us out of society for a moment, and allows us to be outsiders.  Video games are important because they let us act, and transgress, in an environment where it has been made safe to do so.  The worst thing that will happen by our in-game transgressions is that we’ll lose our progress.

Yes, it’s possible to do things which are really wrong, or even illegal, in multi-player games, that’s not what I’m talking about here. In particular I want to talk about the ways that games are programmed to allow, or even require, transgression. Games where being bad is actually the point and purpose of the experience.  We can transgress in minor ways — there’s a DS game where you play as a bus driver. I am not one, so i’m transgressing, as it were, on my role as an internet blogger computer programmer writer person. That’s a fine definition and thought for a more rarefied discussion, so this week (and in general) I’m going to stick with more blatant and resonating transgressions.

But just as important as those blatant transgressions are, the fact that games make it safe to transgress sets us up for the duality that creates a liminal space. It is wrong to steal, but in the context of this game, it’s right to steal — it’s what I must do, to play the game.  Thus, I’m now in a new space, with new rules, breaking society’s boundary, but existing within the new boundaries of the game. It is wrong in society to steal, but wrong in my game to get caught doing it.

This week we’ll be looking at three things we’re told we’re not supposed to do, and the games that center around doing them.  Tomorrow, since we’ve mentioned already: stealing.

The truth (and I think I’ve written about this before, on the long gone site) is that I like games that make me feel competent.  Player frustration is the exact opposite of this feeling for me.  I only played Demons’ Souls for a few hours, but in those same few hours with Dragon Age (which I’ve subsequently spent more time with) I was frustrated with it.  With Demons’ Souls, I felt like I learned something every time I died, or knew what my mistake was.  I was running a gauntlet, getting better at it each try.  I would succeed each time, and always knew why I failed.

While I’m talking about being competent, I’m not really talking about a power fantasy.  I don’t have to be super strong or in charge. I just want to be good at something, and have that something be what I’m doing in the game.  Mirror’s Edge was good at this, and would have been much better if it were built like a racing game instead of some absurd conspiracy plot.  Sure, you have a little tutorial at the beginning, but Faith is already competent, she doesn’t gain any abilities throughout the game, just more elaborate and difficult maze-races to work through.  I’m not becoming more powerful, but I am getting better, and I mostly feel competent while I do it.

There are some problems with Mirror’s Edge, times where i’m not really sure where Faith’s feet are, and if I’m really at the edge or not.  It could learn a bit from AC’s parkour style jumping, and it’d be nice if she’d reach a bit to the left to hold on sometimes.  It’s one of the games I got in the Steam sale, as well, as I’ve heard the PC controls are somewhat improved over the ones on the Xbox.

I’m not sure why I can’t get across that bridge in Dragon Age.  There’s a guy who fireballs my party, and when I try to attack him, he runs away, leading my group through traps and into a killing field of archers that kills me off. If I don’t attack him he just pounds on me until we die.  I’d probably do better with a ranged party  member, but I don’t have one — my character isn’t ranged, and none of the others seem built that way, either.  At any rate, these are just guesses.  At this point, I don’t know enough about how the game works to navigate my choices, whatever they may be.

I was kick-butt back in the homestead, clearing out all those invaders, even if Mom and Dad died, and Big Brother is probably going to die too.  But now I’m just Darkspawn bait.  I played the Dwarven Noble origin after I finished yesterday’s post, and it did me the nice favor (meant totally un-ironically) of stripping me of my gear so that I could fight on my own, without strong aid or gear.  It was definitely harder than what had come before, and reset my expectations of what my character is capable of.

Garrett, in Thief is another example.  He’s great until the guards see him, and then he’s toast. Fight in a sword battle? Maybe once and win, but not more than that.  Stay undetected and he’s in his area of competence, much better than the guards, and much more capable. There’s some definite trial and error there — particularly in the early game — but it’s a great feeling to know what you are doing, and to be able to do it.

As a player, we can envision what to do, but we don’t have the training or the appropriately created universe to do it.  I’m not jumping off any buildings here, I don’t care what color the pipes are.  But I have the ability to plan and guide, and my avatar has the ability to take my commands, my button presses, and turn them into competent actions.  It invests me in the fantasy, limiting the space between me and my on-screen avatar, pulling me into that magic circle that much more surely.

Perhaps confusion and uncertainty (and the frustration they cause) are enemies of liminal space?

I suspect different games will do this with varying efficacy. While we may take on a liminiality when playing any game, some games are much more successful at it.  Appointment-gaming games don’t feel strong in this area, although the person who obsesses about their FarmVille crops even when not in the game may feel differently than I do.   I think these days the games that make me feel most in a space are the RockBand style games.  I don’t just play the game, but become a rock star for a moment, being the idolized musician I never managed on the trombone.

The fans cheer, the music continues on, and I have the physical feeling of an instrument or microphone in my hands.  The game gives me positive feedback, asserting it’s new boundaries on me, and encouraging my desire to enter its special world.  There’s a bit of flow involved, too, that gets me into a now/here-type space that makes it easier to enter the liminal one.  {In fact, I think that sort of now/here feeling is a strong part of what I like about liminal spaces.}

Assassin’s Creed 2 actually got me to thinking about this, and the act of transgression.  I’m not the sort of person who can climb walls, and I’m certainly no brawler, thief or assassin.  So being Ezio was definitely a step into the other, but one which I’d done many times.  But then I realized that climbing was a bit more fun in more crowded areas, and then I realized it was because the crowd of people were responding to me.  Calling me out for breaking their social norms — the ones in line with the real world of the player.

Thus the game encouraged my transgression, and made the transition into the meditative climbing all the better.  Which is good, because, really, the climbing/parkour sections of the game are the parts that are the most fun.  When Ezio is being the bad boy that he is (a not the bad boy that every game character like him is — in other words, not when he’s fighting, but definitely when he’s stealthily killing or climbing or seducing), that’s when he’s the most fun.

Frankly, it’s the best use of the “See how many people we can put on the screen” the next-gen consoles were supposed to offer.

In terms of other games, I find that I get drawn more completely in games where I have more direct agency and feedback.  Dragon Age doesn’t do it, as to successfully mange my party, I have to pull back and micromanage. Oblivion still manages it, somehow, even after all these years it’s one of my favorite console RPGs.  I picked up it’s predecessor, Morrowind, during the Christmas Steam sale, and am thinking of revisiting that (but that’s another post).

I get the feeling, though, that I’m still just scratching the surface of this idea, and hope to think about it more as I work on games and other media throughout the year.

(Tomorrow I’m going to start talking about some other games issue that have arisen, but the idea of liminality and transgression are always in the back of my mind, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to it)

It creates a bubble of space where we exist differently.  Many times this space transgresses on normal reality, existing outside of society’s rules, yet we join a new society with it’s own rules.  We can argue about whether these spaces and societies are objectively real, or only exist in our minds (and I’ve had many of these conversations with Priests and Priestesses of my church), but I don’t think it  really matters. The important thing to me is how we feel in these spaces, who we are and who we become.

Transgression sets us apart from the world, and joining brings us into another place.  The easiest way to do this is to enter the magic circle of a game.  Games are particularly nice as the rules inside are usually quite defined, and often clear.  Certainly the ones inside video games are at least rigid.  This is comfortable in it’s own way, and when you can also step outside your role as a accountant or computer programmer, receptionist or clerk and be some sort of kickass somebody, that’s nice too.

To belabor my terminology, we’re transgressing our role in our society-sanctioned life and taking on an unsanctioned one inside a game.  In modern games (ones developed during the current generation of consoles) I think that there is a direct relationship between how unsanctioned that in-game role is and  how “hardcore” the game is considered.   I don’t think it’s causal, but rather a good bit of marketing.   A lot of the causal PC games that I’ve played — the ones with interspersed stories, anyway — the story is about success in a small business and/or romance.  There’s no world saving or conquering, and no real violence either.

But in the more hardcore styled games there is violence, world saving and conquering.  But what’s more is that the players’ role is much less heroic for all of that.  We have these disaffected anti-heroes set on a revenge plot against some large faceless enemy.  Our heroes are outcasts, opportunists, thieves and assassins.  I think this maps to the emotions the hardcore market is feeling about games.  They are starting to feel like outcasts — or want to feel that way, as it’s part of their identity.

In fact, I think games have a great opportunity here to let us feel what it’s like to be in an Other space, being something Other than what we have, by bringing us in and letting us join the liminal space.  Or, perhaps,  even by making it difficult to join that space where the game is trying to get across a feeling of difficulty or prejudice.  Obviously not all these ideas are going to fly in the AAA space, but I think we’re at a point where there are other options to the artist-game designer.