Theory begging

 Please sir, can you theorise some more?

There is an undeniable allure about having your game be subverted into theory fodder by a growing community of speculatives. (That's 'speculative thinkers' mind you, not 'speculative investor', we've enough NFT garbage in our industry already thanks very much!) Once people start making theories, that's the tug of the line you're looking for to know your bait is good and hooked, now you just need to reel it in as the hoards of hungry pseudo-intellectuals grope at your feed like guppy fish. And isn't that what an aspiring developer wants most in life? Hoards of ravenous fans who feed off their every morsel with wordless devotion? I mean I think that's desirable given the compunction of many talented new indie developers to establish themselves as the next Fnaf, ("Capital Letters" "Big News Story") if not in 'gameplay' than in 'public perception' so that they may one day aspire to that holiest of holies; a MatPat GameTheory video.

MatPat made a video himself talking about this phenomena and the effect it has on budding indie game development, as well as asking the question of whether or not the pursuit of theories was ruining games themselves. I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the higher philosophies of MatPat, I think his occupationally relevant mathematics-tipped viewpoint gives him a tendency to whittle down complex webs of modern internet trends into a numbers game, which is a necessary measure for quantification no doubt, but when he feeds that sort of osteoporotic backbone into a solution using reductionist hypothesis honing rhetoric, it becomes easy to lose the big picture under the rigidity of his peculiar branch of 'The scientific process'. But here I must agree; I think the pull of theory crafting has influenced, if not ruined, a large swathe of the better indie developers out there and whatsmore we can see this evidence nakedly on the products themselves. I've seen it more and more with each passing fad horror game, and here are some examples.

Now that Poppy's Playtime has meandered into it's second episode, we can really start to see this model of game development take hold. Because afterall, Poppy is an official hit now! It shifts merchandise and everything! But the actual gameplay here is little more than a walking adventure with a smattering of insultingly simplistic logistics puzzles, some admittedly nice animations and maybe a chase section at some point. A 'one and done' sort of affair. If they want the game to have 'staying power', it needs to feel like there's depth beyond the slightly lack lustre gameplay spread. And so comes the NFT lore bits that drums up controversy and disgust all to apparently tease the nothing-burger tip that 'Mommy is coming'. (She's literally the monster if Chapter 2; that's hardly a smoking gun.) But I even see the obvious hints of this narrative lean in the episode itself.

As if in direct answer to the lack of compelling narrative present in the first episode, Poppy Playtime has a few videos that just spell out relevant lore in a documentarian fashion. (Because you know, all those toy companies out there just love self-producing autobiographies on their boring founders. It happens all the time.) One video in particular announced and then blurs the face of the sole creator. Why? What does that achieve? I mean it creates mystery around what this enigmatic and important figure in the poppy universe looks like; but when is there an actual video within the game's universe that has been specifically edited to blur out the face of the creator? Just lying on the floor in an abandoned toy shop? It's a mystery, no doubt; some might even considering it a fascinating conundrum; if it wasn't for the fact that we know there is no sensible reason. At the end of the day it's a mystery hook, fed on a line to the community. It feels blatant and uninspired, which in turn makes it less appealing and un-immersive. The same with the line-up of tunnels all leading to various workplaces and all labelled with the name of the managers they belong to. All except one who's words have been knocked off the wall and lay scattered on the floor. You can just hear the developer going "Look at this one! Go one, pick up the words and arrange them! I wonder if it spells out 'Cassidy'... names are exciting, aren't they?" The desire is there, but the passion feels borrowed.

Hello Neighbour is perhaps the most eyewatering example of this phenomena, in that we all know the sins of the developers as it was splayed to on social media for everyone to see. This is a game that began life with an interesting premise of an evolving AI pursuant but lost itself to vague symbolic imagery with the most cookie-cutter pay-off imaginable come release. All because MatPat made a theory video in its early Alpha days and that influx of critical observation totally overhauled the purpose behind development. We even saw some shameful moments where a certain member of the team was literally tweeting at MatPat trying to goad him into making another theory fodder video, all to justify their whisky washy 'mystery' building meta goals. All as the raw gameplay which original caught fan's attention seemed to slip to the wayside and end up feeling pretty unpolished. I'd argue theories did kill that game.

And theories may been behind the success of Bendy and the Ink Machine, if a lot of it's jank and inconsistencies. (It did pretty well despite it's significant content lacking hang-ups in the content of the game beyond being an interactive walk-around.) The development team here actually listened heavily to the feedback of their audience to not only work on elements that people thought the game was missing, but to literally tell the team what to put into the episodes inbetween. These developers went in with an idea of how their adventure would start and how it would end, and the people filled in the blanks inbetween by falling in love with Alice Angel one episode, or writing fan theories about Boris in another episode. There's nothing inherently wrong this approach to storytelling, in fact I practise it myself and so I'm inclined to defend it. But the whole 'crowd sourcing for direction' thing might be a better idea on paper. The whole meta narrative of Joey Drew's life story falls entirely to the wayside in the middle episodes so that we fall into 'fan fiction feeling' side adventures with these bizarre and not entirely developed characters which doesn't really feel like it contributes to the themes or narrative by the end of the story. The entire breadth of the game feels like a diversion because theories and fan demands pulled it around a bit with seemingly no central director. (Even though I know the game did have a director! What was he doing?) Taking ideas for you game is fine, in fact I'd say it's great; but crowd sourcing filler for your narrative is how you get... well 'Bendy'; a game that feels like a fan-rewriting of Undertale. (A prospect I shiver to even imagine.)

Lastly we have FNAF Security Breach, and this is an example I more leave to MatPat's observations to justify. It's fairly obvious to see that Security Breach was something of a rush job, from the copious numbers of bugs skittering across it's metal frame to the abrupt cartoon panel epilogue adorning all but the truest of true endings. Matt has a hypothesis for why that could be which he shared in his video on the topic, and it really does make some sense. In the lead up to Security Breach there was a great influx of theorists across the Internet speculating on what the story may hold, and they came up with several realistic theorems as to who certain characters would be, where their roles would lead them and even how the game itself would wrap up. A lot of these theories were based on logical and satisfying narrative progression, and thus the conclusions they drew were not only logical; a lot of them felt like best case scenario depictions of where Security Breach could take FNAF. Matt seems to think that this spooked Steel Wool Studios, who want so desperate to own their story and surprise their audience, which led to the narrative being kept liquid until the last possible moment of development, resulting in a final game that feels disjointed and ill-fitting towards it's own narrative. FNAF VR spent a whole game telling the story of Vanessa becoming the Bunny-killer Vanny, only for Security Breach to half-heartedly throw a twist ending where they aren't the same person but instead... two completely identical blonde women? Pretty much every ending has this logical progression that feels ripped out to fit in a surprise reveal that doesn't really make sense, to the extent that even the canonical ending kind of falls flat. Oh, this whole complex it built on-top of Fazbear Frights? And Afton is burnt to death again? The "I always come back!" guy? The one who has been burnt to death twice beforehand? Something tells me he ain't gone. Just a hunch.

There is nothing wrong with inspiring an audience to such a degree that they want to theories on your work and interact with it in a meaningful way, but I think when you start to let that influence what it is you're creating it threatens to infect and sometimes sully the creative process unless you're very disciplined with yourself. Loyalty should always lie first and foremost to the piece of art itself, above even the fans that have attached themselves to it, and if you respect what you're working on and the audience you've developed you own it to stay that course. Theory begging is not only kind of cringe-worthy, it's sometimes a detriment to the entire creative process that poisons once great ideas for the wrong reasons of being more talked about instead being a talk-worthy product to begin with. 

Environment of Scaling

I Wumbo. You Wumbo. He, she, me Wumbo.

Telling a story through a digital medium really opens up the range of possibility for what you can achieve in comparison to traditional media. There is only so much you can create with camera tricks and sets in terms of transporting the viewer, and that is part of the reason that I love animation and video games. One manner in which this is apparent is the way in which you can skewer the perspective of a viewer to have them be as small or a big as you want, making for some great storytelling potential.

Who remembers the Lego Movie? That film was shot with clever CG tricks in order to emulate stop-frame animation so perfectly that many are still convinced that was how the entire movie was made. (If you are still one of those people just think, how does the camera get so close without distorting the image?) When your viewer can be as small as a a flower or as tall as a mountain, perspective becomes another storytelling tool. To demonstrate this, I want to go over a few games that pull this off to great effect.

One of the more surreal and stylistic experience that utilize this technique is a little trip through weird called Little Nightmares. Now, usually I would go through the plot of the game in order to catch everyone up to speed, but part of this game's appeal is learning that story for yourself (Or, at least, trying to.) So I'll go over the premise instead. This game follows the player taking control of a child-sized raincoat wearing mute dubbed Six as she travels through a titanic-era ship called the Maw on a quest to survive. Or liberate. One of the two.

What makes Little Nightmares so memorable is it's beautiful grotesque enemy design and the way in which the game takes advantage of the protagonist's reduced stature (Which is just under that of a normal child's) and uses it heighten the scares. Area props will tower over you in an intimidating fashion as you are pursued by the ravenous flesh eaters aboard the Maw. The 3D platforming perspective allows for the player to clearly see how much bigger everyone is compared to Six and maybe even begin to sympathise with their tiny underdog even whilst she starts to do very morally questionable things. (Which I shall not detail here, they're much more effective when you aren't expecting them.)

Among the Sleep takes a frightfully simple, yet underutilized, premise that everyone can relate to in order to frame it's scares. Developer Krillbite decided to put the player in the walking mittens of a 2 year old and have you walk around your home whilst encountering all the scariness that an underdeveloped mind can concoct. This means a whole lot of forced perspective moments from the eyes of a baby as well as surreal moments of dream like childish wonder. Oh, and scares. A few of those too. environment

The thing that 'Among the Sleep' does so well is capture that feeling of being a little person in a big world. Rather than be a platformer, this game puts you right in the child's head, so you get to experience the warped perspective of everyday household objects up close. Later in the game this also extends to the way that you see familiar objects, like your Mother. If Krillbite's interpretation of childhood is accurate, then that is one house of horrors that I'm glad to be clear from.

Just last month there was a new release that played around with perspective a bit. From the makers of the inexplicably popular: Bendy and the Ink Machine, comes Showdown Bandit; a delightful tale about sentient puppets. Or, not so sentient puppets, as their stings do appear to go somewhere. Okay, once again Kindly Beast have put out a game that appears to be more style than substance, but I must say that this time around the visual direction does tickle me a little.

The game puts you in the shoes of the eponymous puppet as it attempts to defend it's stings from the scissors wielded by the 'stringless'. (Losing those strings means death.) Showdown Bandit is laid out as though it is an active puppet show, with the player moving through sets that are being actively constructed whilst a stage light shines down on them. Additionally, the camera is set at an almost isometric angle, mimicking the view of a puppeteer looking down at their work. (Now if only Kindly Beast would do something with that cool idea, we'd have an actual game on our hands.)

Going back to my own personal history with gaming, there is one classic that is a brilliant example of this type of design choice. I am, of course, talking about the Army Men franchise. The basic premise of Army Men is world in which those little plastic soldiers that you played with as a child were alive and carrying out their wars by themselves. This means that the plastic green army would fight against the plastic Tan army in a variety of different genres spanning everything from top down shooters, helicopter games, RTS' and first person shooters.

3DO went to the nth degree with this concept is every possible way. That means that there are levels in which you fight across a plastic world and ones in which you battle in the real world. Some of my favourite levels include battling over the dinner table, a perilous charge up a fridge's contents and a climatic final siege which tasks you with hiding from a weaponized poodle. Army Men has done it all and it is such a shame that the franchise hasn't been heard of for nearly 10 years now. Many other companies could learn how to take a novel concept and go beyond it to create great games.

Once before I have bought up this one obscure PS1 title I had, but I think it bears repeating. Micro Manics was a game in which you took control of hideous lab experiments and raced them across office spaces and workstations. The catch is two fold, firstly the characters are tiny (hence 'micro') and secondly, none of them have vehicles, so they all have to pump their tiny legs.

Micro Maniacs went for the Army Men route of setting levels across real world locales and having race obstacles be comically large pieces of stationary. Expect some pencils and erasers to get in your way. I remember being charmed out of my socks when I used to play this game as a kid, I just couldn't get enough of it. (Which is surprising when looking back and realizing that the characters are genuinely Quake-levels of horrific.)

It is funny how the simple act of shrinking things down can open up a world of opportunity from an adventure standpoint. Marvel even pulled it off with that final fight in Antman, and video games have been doing it for a while now. As long as developers continue to get new tools at their disposal we'll continue to see similarly fresh and innovative ideas that take something that we think we know well and turn it on it's head. I just can't wait to see how that goes.