I’ve often wondered about the potential reach of games. If marketing was a little different. If (some) games were. So when Her Story came along, with its straightforward interface, search-based mechanic, and nonlinear mystery narrative, I saw the potential immediately for the game to spread, though the problem with something like this is always: how? Before I had to think too hard about that, however, the problem took care of itself; word was spreading about the title’s premise, and in the wake of Serial’s far-reaching grasp, turns out a lot of people were interested in a fictional experience that allowed them to do a little detective work. I spoke with three of them, women with past gaming experiences as varied as they are.
The Players
Katie O. is a writer, editor, stylist, fashionista, and sometimes model in Pittsburgh (and, it must be said, one of my dearest friends). Jane H., whom I’ve known for a while in the way all writers seem to know one another, recently graduated from Texas State University’s MFA Program for writing fiction. She writes about “violence, memory, trauma, celebrity culture, and womanhood.” Riley C. I’d never met before. She’s a graphic designer in Houston, specializing, as she put it, “in all things that have to do with pretty paper.”
The Background
The first thing I asked everyone was when they’d last played a game, and what it was. Riley frequently plays games, citing The Sims, Far Cry, L.A. Noire, Pharaoh, and occasional forays back into World of Warcraft, where she got her start playing as a teenager. She plays with her husband as well, whom she calls “the definition of a gamer.” Katie also mentioned The Sims, but said it had been at least a year since she’d played, and while she felt games offer something for everyone — and despite playing mobile games weekly, like Slingo, Bread Kittens, and Farm Heroes Saga — she felt the moniker of “gamer” was best associated with games that required devotion (World of Warcraft came up here again). Jane had the most distance from games by far; she said she’d played a little Portal five or six years ago for about twenty minutes before choosing instead to watch her then-boyfriend play. She said that she’d last been an active player when she was a child, and since then, she’d been more “a watcher of video games–usually of male friends, family members, or boyfriends.” Jane wondered if she’d avoided playing because gamers seemed obsessive, and she identified herself as having obsessive potential.
Their Stories
Obsession came up often as these women talked about Her Story, though not in so many words. While the game isn’t terribly long, all three spoke of their engagement with the title. Jane wanted a little more engagement, but still found the experience realistic, and was taken with the idea of writing notes and piecing things together, just as she would when researching anything, and Katie, too, spoke of notes, but as she played with her boyfriend, her experience was a little different:
I read about the game and that night, my boyfriend said ‘oh, hey, I downloaded this mystery game I thought you might like…’ without knowing I had read the review/was interested in it. Playing it with someone was really fun – we were able to tag-team a system of note-taking and term-searching that got us through the game probably faster than we would have gotten it solo. Knowing it was a ‘whodunit’ scenario, I, an admitted crime drama fanatic, was really compelled to figure out the entirety of the story – even after we figured out ‘who did it,’ we kept searching the archive for probably half an hour just to watch more videos before we ‘finished’ the game.
Riley spoke too of pushing through, because she had to know the ins and outs of the story and even said she wished for an auto-correct feature, because she “typed so many misspellings into my search bar out of just being too excited!” I found this matched my own experience: my notes were messy and chaotic, because I was more interested in finding out the next detail than keeping anything neat or organized.
One of the things I found most fascinating about these women was not just their interest in the title, but the potential they saw in it. One of the reasons I wanted to talk to Jane further, for instance, was because she immediately jumped from playing and liking the game to thinking about coding and the potential for other, even deeper stories, something she spoke about when we talked:
I was really excited when the chat button popped up and I feel like more could have been done to include multi-media aspects of the game. I would have been super interested to have the world fleshed out more. Why not allow players to see a scanned copy of the Rapunzel drawing? Why not create faux police reports about the deaths? What about showing a few pages of the diary that gets mentioned in the game? When I finished Her Story, I thought about how much more textual artifacts that could have been added to complicate the story, make the game more visually interesting, and lengthen the amount of play time.
And Jane might not identify as a gamer, but she cut right to the heart of something that’s been debated, and is still debated, in regard to the game: the ending. The question’s been raised as to whether or not Her Story really is a game, considering there’s no failure. Jane saw it a little differently, framing in terms of the lack of a “win.” “Her Story was the first game I’ve played that didn’t really let you know if you had won or not–or if there was even one correct way of understanding the story.” Of course, that too is being discussed by many players — what’s really true in the story? What isn’t? How should it all be read?
As a unique experience, if nothing else, according to these women. Katie loved the retro interface, the limited search results, and the work that must have gone into tracking and considering those potential searches. Riley was enamored with the fact that the game focused only on the woman in the interview. “I found it really cool that you only hear from her. You don’t hear the interviewers ask the questions – the only time you hear from them at all is when they clap for her song (which I loved). It’s just truly all about her story.”
Even so, they all wanted to be “right,” or at least make sure they hadn’t missed anything. None of the women reported looking anything up or reading anything of note about the game, at least not until they were finished or close to finished. Once there, completionists all, they wanted to verify their versions, or find videos they’d missed. They wanted the whole story.
Some Final Notes
As I read over this, and as I think about how these women described themselves in terms of games, I keep thinking back to that idea of potential. Katie was interested in the game, and as her friend, I probably would have convinced her to play it, boyfriend or no. Jane picked up the game thanks to Katie’s enthusiasm. Riley saw others responding and decided, against her usual policy, to pay for a mobile game just this one time. In other words, it was luck that brought each of them to a screen, typing in words like “dollhouse” and “mirror,” just to see what might be revealed.
How many other people are out there, fans of police procedurals, crime dramas, or just intense narratives, who would be into this, or the next innovative, interesting title, or the next after that? I wonder how many people might enjoy something like Lifeline, if they heard about it. It’s not like finding something that isn’t trending on the app store is particularly easy, after all. Who’s finding Her Story there? I wonder how many people might play This War of Mine if it was put in front of them, or Valiant Hearts, or a dozen other games.
Or, from another angle: how many Walking Dead fans downloaded the games but got stuck on a shooting sequence and gave up? The interface is mostly intuitive… for someone who’s played other, similar games. Sure, taking those moments out turns the game into a piece of interactive fiction, but would that have made a successful franchise move fewer units, or more?
There are ways we can broaden the reach of the industry right now, by finding ways to connect potential players with games that might interest them. Bringing games to those new players may in turn inspire innovation we haven’t seen before. The common thread I found in these stories is that all these women wanted more, and giving them more may help us progress. I like the latest installments of my favorite franchise as much as the next gamer, but innovation will help keep the industry thriving and growing… if we can only get it to the people who might want it most.
