The world of game development is heavily male dominated and sexism is notoriously endemic in online gaming and videogames. In this context, as a feminist woman and sole writer, developer and designer of an interactive digital narrative, I am something of a rarity. Doing it all myself may seem perverse, especially in a field where collaboration is common, but the ability to author code myself is empowering and, crucially, gives me independence - a development environment of one's own - a classic feminist goal. In this presentation, I will discuss how these factors are reflected in the interplay of genre, narrative, discourse, gameplay, game logic, character development and thematic content in my interactive digital narrative, Stitched Up (currently a work-in-progress).
In an extremely rare inversion of the 'Damsel in Distress' trope, a common plot device in video games, the central male character in Stitched Up is a 'dude in distress' (Sarkeesian 2013). A powerful female antagonist has trapped Joel in a perilous situation and he must be rescued by his wife, Sarah (both Joel and Sarah are player characters). However, rather than action adventure, I describe Stitched Up as a psychological thriller. Moreover, its feminist narrative themes, problematizing the idea of home, significant others, working women, parenthood and masculinity, suggest similarities with the emerging literary sub-genre of Domestic Noir.
To create an interactive narrative that is capable of exploring these issues, I am drawing together concepts from second-order cybernetics with Possible Worlds theory from narratology. Combining these abstractions provides me with a framework for not only thinking about character-driven playable narratives, but also a methodology for authoring and designing them. I am drawn to Possible Worlds theory because, unlike structuralism, it does not regard fictional characters as purely semiotic constructs but regards them as make-believe life-like persons, able to arouse emotions in the reader. Influenced by cybernetics, along with the concept of feedback and 'the art of steering' (cybernetics' etymological root), I am exploring the idea of the fictional character as a Black Box in order to simulate psychological depth.
An observer can only infer what is going on inside a Black Box from its inputs and outputs. Stitched Up is text-driven but highly visual and I am coupling my dialogue-based game engine with a responsive abstract visualisation system for the characters' internal emotional data to deliver subtextual layers of meaning. These combined outputs will affect the choices that reader-players make, the inputs. This stimulus-response model, which is my core gameplay loop, functions as a kind of rudder for the reader-player to steer a course through Stitched Up's narrative universe of Possible Worlds. How the reader-player chooses to interpret the characters' behaviour will determine the kind of story they experience and its outcome. The 'Damsel in Distress' trope invariably decrees a revenge-driven story, Stitched Up's 'dude in distress' device challenges that edict.