Mechanic as Metaphor

If games are an art form, it is through the use of game mechanics that a viewer (player) can engage with the work. These can vary and often have a shared language. Movement is usually found on the left side of the controller while camera operation and contextual interactions are found on the right side. Within the game itself, we can find ways to bridge the immersion gap and use simple mechanics as more than inputs. Let’s look at two similar examples with a shared basic mechanic (movement) and how they relate to their narratives.

Gibbon : Beyond the Trees has the player focus primarily on momentum. The goal is to move your player character, a colorful gibbon, through the trees with its long limbs. With a bit of practice you can reach high speeds and even a flow state if you can time grabs and releases perfectly. We are treated to a beautifully stylized South East Asian forest landscape with surprising depth and range of tones and hues. This (like our other example) is played primarily on a 2D plane but gives the impression of depth and density to the environment. Your controls are limited to grab, release, slide and an aerial roll for higher speed. The gibbon you control is constantly moving forward, there is no stopping.

Contrary to this, Far: Lone Sails encourages momentum but has plenty of stops and slow downs. The game involves running a large vehicle, keeping it fueled, using sails when it’s advantageous but also coming up against roadblocks and some very light puzzle solving. All this is in service to the same goal, moving to the right. The player is also given the ability to zoom in closer to the insides of the machine and zoom far out to see the beautifully painted landscapes.

Both of these titles ask the player to essentially do the same thing. Manage your speed as you move along to the right.

The cost of achieving that flow state in Gibbon is that it doesn’t offer you the chance to appreciate the artistry in which your character is in. The was a similar issue (https://tinyurl.com/4j3wunzb) with “detective vision” in the Batman: Arkham series which the artists reckoned with. Tragically the mechanics are leading your eye to the next branch, not the landscapes, subtle color or masterful transitions. In Far, the player stops quite often. When you gain speed, you also gain perspective. The scale of things is mostly proportional to the speed at which you move, if not by the game itself, by the player. The environment matters.

There is no penalty in Far for stopping. It is the reward. Often the player is stopped to solve a puzzle that usually leads to an upgrade or reward, expanding the capabilities of their machine. If momentum is lost, it comes quite abruptly with Gibbon (although the Player character will continue to move forward without input). At certain points failing to achieve the required amount of momentum can lead to a fail state, resetting progress.

Gibbon makes a mess of their message by setting the expectation up front, explaining that they have the required “collaboration with locals and experts to ensure the subject matter was handled respectfully and accurately with appropriate representation.” The mechanics are not up to the task. There are moments in the game that are meant to evoke emotion but having to constantly move and have the player's attention fixed on that movement does not allow adequate time for reflection or connection to the Player Character. The relationship between the Player Character and the NPCs feels surface level. When it is disrupted, you continue as you had before, moving to the right as quickly as possible.

There is no added urgency besides the possibility of a fail state. At the end of their narrative, they point to the audience asking for help to solve a problem they did a poor job of explaining. The mechanics got in the way. The developers claim that “Gibbon: Beyond the Trees deals with challenging but acute environmental topics, including deforestation, poaching and climate change” but from an interactive point of view, this is not the case. When the changes came to the environment, the player is not required to adapt. The player will continue to move in the same way, achieve the same goal of speed and momentum. There are a few moments where the difficulty spikes, but the solution was to achieve the higher speeds more efficiently, or essentially continue to reach the same goals. Gibbon tells us, in a matter of fact way, what the narrative is before hand. It attempts to validate itself before allowing the viewer to engage.

From the beginning, Far is about moving on. We start with a grave (a death, really) and we walk away. The observant player can match the drawings in the Player Character’s room to those in the machine you walk into next. This is now your home and you are moving forward and away from the grave. That message is never explicit and is never contested. It’s a game about exploration of the unknown, new beginnings.

These are large ideas that demand subtlety. The enormity of the task is mirrored by the scale of the world and the tight spaces in which there is safety from it. When there is wind, we can use it, but we are never “told.” We can see it in the grass, the flags and wind turbines turning. The game depends on strong visual communication to get its expectations across and the consistency of the mechanic is the cornerstone of the narrative. You keep moving forward, moving on, stopping and refueling, but moving on.

Mechanics should not be taken for granted.

Left stick movement, right stick camera, A to interact. This is fine as a common language, but if we are to elevate the art form, these actions should be working towards telling a story (if there is one), engaging the audience and giving them an avenue to meaningfully interact with the environment you have placed them in. It is imperative if your game is packaged as a compelling narrative with a moral message that the mechanics reach the audience and invoke an empathetic response. I think Gibbon’s play gets in the way of its message. Far’s play is the message. In this sense, the mechanic is metaphor.

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