BriceMorrison.com Life is a Game

Games have at their disposal the tools of every other media: artwork, music, movement, narrative, and character development.  Thus, games should be more than capable of the same feats as their competing media.  If a film can make you cry, so too should games be able to make you cry.  If a story can cause you to examine your life, so too should a game be able to have you consider the virtues of your own life.  If a novel or a painting can be seen as a historical masterpiece, reaching into the depths of humanity, so too should a game be able to evoke such admiration.

Braid, released in August, is such a game.  It has enjoyed universal critical acclaim among game developers and has seen sales of over 30,000 in a short period of time.  The night after I completed it I lay awake in bed, pondering the game’s soul shattering message that, in my opinion, ranks among the works of Marquez, Austen, and Hemingway.  The game is, quite simply, an extraordinary work of art.

But the story of the game itself, its development, release, sales, and critical reception, is a tragedy.  Braid is a game that deserves to go down in history, but instead it will do nothing more than sit atop the video game charts for several months.  Braid is a work that could have drawn immense attention to games as an art from the public and mainstream media, a feat that few games have done.  However, because of choices in the design of the game, it will be remembered as nothing more than a “good game”, far short of an immortal slice of humanity.

Spoiler Note

Writing this article requires that I reveal what I believe to be the most core aspects of Braid.  Thus, if you are someone who is planning on putting in the hours to experience it for yourself, please stop here.  However, if you were never planning on playing the game, or you have already played it to your satisfaction, then by all means read on.

The Exposition

Braid is brilliant on many layers, but I’m only going to focus on one.  I could talk about the innovative art style, the unique music, the original gameplay mechanics, or the main narrative.  All of these levels are also fantastic and make the game a dream to play.  But the part of Braid that I believe makes it a timeless work is its final and deepest layer, its allegory.

The game begins with the player controlling a character named Tim, a fellow who is in search of a princess.  It is a archetypal story of the knight striving to save the damsel in distress, overcoming obstacles and danger to come to her aid.  But a more intellectual purpose began to unfold at the very end of my first run through of Braid.  After the final stage was completed, then something odd appeared in the epilogue.  It is was a quotation, noted with subscript, that reads:

On that moment hung eternity. Time stood still. Space contracted to a pinpoint. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies split. One felt as though he had been privileged to witness the Birth of the World…

I thought it strange that the quote was annotated with subscript, as though asking me to look it up.  After a quick Google search, I found that the sentence was a direct quotation from the book The Broken Connection, and the quote described an eyewitness account of the detonation of the first nuclear bomb.

“Huh?” I said to myself, puzzled.  So far the game had been one of fantasy worlds, monsters and dragons, castles and princesses.  Why an atom bomb reference?  I moved on…

After the epilogue, I was returned to the title screen, a place that I had become well accustomed to after many play sessions.   But with the atom bomb reference lingering in my mind, I had a startling realization.  The background was not simply a beautiful yet meaningless palette of red and yellow, as I had previously thought.  It was an image of a devastated city in flames (scroll up and take another look).

Following the Trail

Eager to explore how deep the metaphor went, I began to play through the game again.  With each piece of exposition, I grasped the metaphor.  The princess was not simply a princess, and Tim was not simply a valiant hero.  The princess symbolized the atom bomb, and Tim symbolized one of the scientists who created it.  The setting was not a fanciful kingdom.  The setting was 1945.

Some quotes in the game, previously poetic tales of Tim and his princess, were revealed to be references to the Manhattan Project:

…He held her hand, or put his arm around her shoulders in a walking embrace, to help her feel supported and close to him amid the impersonal throngs of Manhattan. They turned and made their way toward the Canal St. subway station…

Other bits of narrative, ones that I before thought were from the perspective of the princess, took the perspective of the mushroom cloud:

She stood tall and majestic. She radiated fury. She shouted: “Who has disturbed me?” But then, anger expelled, she felt the sadness beneath; she let her breath fall softly, like a sigh, like ashes floating gently on the wind.
She couldn’t understand why he chose to flirt so closely with the death of the world.

The motif was all encompassing, seeping into every corner of the game.  Even the release date of the game itself, August 6th, 2008, was the anniversary of the dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima: August 6, 1945.

The nail in the literary coffin is contained in the game’s alternate final stage, when Tim (below) finally reaches the princess (above).  I recommend watching it for yourself (fast-forward and watch from 7:50-8:10):

Tim, the scientists, after years of research and puzzle solving, finally reach what they are searching for.  The princess.  The atom bomb.

A lost poem

Braid’s allegory is brilliant.  But sadly only a small fraction of players will ever find it (I would estimate less than 1%).  The aspect of Braid’s design that causes it to fall short of media-transcendent greatness is its difficulty.  While the game was hailed by game developers for not being afraid to ask the player to “man up”, that same choice shut out many potential players whose jaws would have dropped as they attempted to grasp a tale worthy of research and discussion.

A good portion of players complete the first run through of the game.  But unlocking the alternative ending, the ending that I believe makes the game, is a mammoth undertaking.  One of the alternate puzzles, for example, requires that the player sit and wait for over two hours before they can continue.  Even among the ranks of hardcore gamers, the difficulty is staggering and causes almost everyone to turn away.  Never mind those who play games casually; the game in its entirety is lost on them.

If a tree falls in a forest…

Braid was designed by independent game developer Jonathan Blow over a period of three years, so it’s safe to assume that the game is precisely as he likes it.  He has argued for the freedom to be able to make his game as difficult as he sees fit, claiming that the high level of challenge allows him to “provide a longer-term challenge”.  In reality, however, the result of crossing the threshold of a player’s patience is not a longer term challenge, it is that they never reach the deep richness of the game.  They quit, and what could have been a rewarding artistic experience ceases to exist.  This is an important difference between games and all other media: action is required by the player for the story to continue.  If the player refuses that action, then the story dies.

Would A Tale of Two Cities be a great work if no one read it?  Would the Sistine Chapel be great art if it was burned to the ground upon completion?  This is an argument of personal opinion.  Braid is Jonathan’s game, and he can do with it what he wants.  “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”

But if the intention is to show people, all people, that games can be great art, they need to be able to experience it.  Braid most certainly is great art, but few, oh so few, will recognize it.

See you again on Wednesday,

Brice