(Originally Published Mar 1, 2016)
There is no getting around it: video games are repetitive. It does not matter which game you choose. If we look closely at a game, we find that the actions a character takes and the results of those actions occur again and again, often with the use of the exact same camera angles, dialogue, sound effects, and animations. This is a necessity. Games, like any other software, are a system of cue, input, and response: something happens on screen which provides you with the information needed to take an action, you take an action using a limited number of buttons/touch pads/directional devices, then the game produces a result that you can see on screen. It is currently impossible for games to generate a limitless number of interactions and controllers are restricted in the number of buttons they can have, so it shouldn't be surprising that the player regularly confronts this repetition. Not all repetition is created equal, however. Some actions occur so frequently that we may overlook their significance, but the monotony of these details can be a crucial element of storytelling, or a pitfall from which there is no return.
One of the most common tasks in this category of monotony is collection. Collecting items is a distinctly video game ritual and has no corollary in other media. When I watched Deadpool I did not count the references to pop culture or the curse words, and when I read through Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchmen I did not keep an inventory of instances where the character of Atticus broke with his To Kill a Watchmen incarnation. Not only would these things be tedious, but they would serve no purpose to the experience of the text. Certainly there might be analytical benefit to this kind of close scrutiny, but the experience of the film or novel is not benefitted by collection.
Video games, however, are often an exercise in collection. The genesis of this activity is probably text-based adventure games, in which collecting and managing resources was a necessary step for success. These showed up in the 60's, but arguably this type of collection is a verbatim copy of paper-based adventure gaming. Distinctly digital is the use of pellets in Pac-Man, small white dots whose sole purpose is to be collected and have no ramification on the gameplay of the moment. The expectation is that the player collect them all, and in so doing proceed to the next level.
Collectibles have become more diverse as gaming has matured, and as the tools of the genre have allowed for complex storytelling and interaction, collecting as a primary gameplay mechanic has become less common. However, collecting as an ancillary mechanic that supports the primary mechanisms of gameplay is increasingly common. Where the purpose of the game is to overcome increasingly challenging enemies, collecting items may allow the player to become more capable in the battlefield, permitting the crafting of new weapons or the improvement of existing weapons or skills. This mechanical imperative provides a reward cycle for players, but when implemented poorly, it can create a world-breaking experience.
Philosophically, the idea of agency is the ability to take action in a given situation, and video games are the only entertainment medium where the audience can experience this. The reader, viewer, or listener of other entertainment formats can choose not to participate, but they cannot choose to act within the space of the medium. This is not the case with games. A player can act. A player has agency. As a result, the player has a modicum of say over the kind of protagonist she plays. If she plays Playstation's Uncharted series and navigates Nathan Drake - the protagonist - using stealth and surprise, her Drake is a silent, effective thief. If another player chooses explosives and a wild spray of bullets, his Drake may be a brutish everyman. If in the middle of these antics Drake carefully hunts for and collects all of the optional collectible artifacts, it could be argued that he truly is the archaeologically savvy historian he claims to be, rather than a man on the look-out for a payday alone. These actions may not change the outcome of the narrative, but the character as he exists in that world is changed fundamentally.
This fundamental change was one that I experience when playing 2013's Bioshock Infinite, the second sequel to the masterful 2007 hit Bioshock. In Infinite, the character plays as Booker Dewitt, a disgraced, former Pinkerton detective in the alternate history of 1912 America. He is a man of violence, of expedient solutions to complicated problems, and a man of who does not hesitate when his objective is in sight. Above all things, he is someone who gets things done.
So when Booker finds himself in the floating city of Columbia as it is on the brink of civil war, he pushes forward toward his goal against all odds, and in his wake leaves piles of bodies. As a character with agency, the player may choose to explore and find artifacts that explain the complicated happenings and relationships of Columbia. These recordings can be found hidden in a number of corners, and while Booker is foremost a man of action, he is also a detective through and through.
When I played through Bioshock Infinite, this careful exploration felt like a natural extension of my Booker. He was a man who could mete violence out to enemies en masse, but also felt the need to understand the world he was in so that he could be effective within it. My Booker, however, was also a dumpster diving scavenger that, in a world of excess, lived and was empowered by half-eaten fruit and discarded pocket change.
The world of Columbia is brimming with enemies that Booker must overcome, and as they become both more numerous and more capable, he must improve himself. He does this by collecting coins, saving up his pennies, and buying improvements in himself or his weapons. These improvements allow him to control elements like fire and wind, or deal more damage through munitions. The player's need - and therefore Booker's need - to maintain this upgrade cycle requires him to hunt for coins throughout the world, which turn up in the oddest places. Trash can? Coins. Cigar box? Coins. Random bag? Full of coins!
What's more, just to survive in Columbia requires a constant source of health. For each shot that an enemy lands on Booker, he is (logically) injured. To restore this health, he can (logically) find a medical kit to tend to his wounds. Unfortunately, these are somewhat uncommon. The more common method of tending to his wounds is by (illogically) consuming random bits of food. Booker finds pieces of apple or pineapple in trash cans and consumes it without hesitation. When he discovers a hot dog in a cigar box he devours it. Cereal in a gift box is always welcome. Cheese from a discarded purse is a delight.
When I played through Bioshock Infinite, it did not take long for me to realize that Booker Dewitt was less a destructive force to be reckoned with and more a consummate freeganist, and a gluttonous one at that. Of course I could have chosen not to investigate every trash can in the hopes of finding a cast-off piece of rotten watermelon or a quarter, but to do so would have made my very survival less likely. The game was designed to make Booker a violent, magical homeless man.
Could health have been transferred to the character by the use of medical kits alone or by physically dressing the wounds (as the Far Cry series has for years)? Absolutely. Could weapons and skills be acquired by finding item pieces or through frequent use by the player? Without question. Instead, Booker is the odd combination of vagrant hoarder, and this utterly ruined the experience of the game for me. I finished it, but the character as he was supposed to exist in the narrative and the character as he existed in the gameplay were absolutely discordant.
The problem with the Bioshock Infinite use of collection is that it didn't make sense as a metaphor for the character, but collection can play an indispensable role in understanding character and environment. The Fallout series, especially the 2014 sequel Fallout 4, is part open-world role-playing shooter and part kleptomaniac simulator. Toys, burnt books, and old appliances can be collected. Furniture, old cars, and downed fences can be collected and scrapped. The entire world is filled with junk to collect - there is even a weapon which fires this junk with deadly force.
image source: shacknews.com
While the compulsion to collect in Fallout 4 may serve as a distraction from the narrative, it is an instrumental part of world building. The Fallout games exist in a post-nuclear America and the need to survive necessarily requires scavenging. These scavenged items can be used to cook food, craft and modify weapons, improve armor, and while the logic of using a toy globe, some tape, and a telephone to improve the scope on a rifle may be flimsy, as a metaphor it engages the player in a constant hunt for usable materials, the same hunt we might expect of such a scavenger. The player may choose not to as well, allowing the player character - the Sole Survivor - to develop as a result of player agency. My Sole Survivor is a compulsive collector of technological relics, scouring the remains of Boston for crafting items to improve his armor and weapons to their fullest capacity. He is patient as he sifts through the detritus of collapsed buildings because the rewards of that diligence pay off in technological supremacy and - ultimately - survival. The repetition of scavenging is essential character development.
The variety and density of collectable items in Fallout attempts to be as close to the literal experience of scavenging as possible, but this mechanic can be streamlined to serve the same narrative purpose. Developer Naughty Dog created a similar scavenging system in The Last of Us, but their use is paired down, stripped to only a handful of items you can use to craft: binding, alcohol, blades, sugar, explosives, and rags. These items, when combined, can be used to create shivs used for stabbing enemies for a one-hit kill, or smoke bombs to confuse and disorient enemies.
It is important to note that this crafting component is hardly grounded in the reality of weapon creation: you do not need multiple items to make a stabbing tool from a pair of scissors - just use the scissors. But by limiting the number of items that can be collected and crafted, there is a cycle of repetition that the player can choose to go through. This repetition is not just the action of collecting, but the items collected themselves. A player could fairly criticize this system by asking "why do I keep doing the same thing?" or "why couldn't the developer have created more variety?", but the very act of a player questioning their own behavior provides a level of meta-engagement. The player, through monotony, is experiencing the doubt and exhaustion of survival, asking questions that the in-world character likely would have asked.
When used well, repetitious behavior is an opportunity for a character and world to become more complex, more real. The player is given enough agency to choose to engage in collection and impart some measure of their own behavior on the protagonist, creating not just engagement but ownership. No matter how visually, thematically, or mechanically engaging a game is, the failure to implement collection well (if at all) can break immersion and narrative.
Used well, it is an opportunity to engage an audience that only exists in the medium of video games.