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Story Issues With The Marriage
By Corvus | March 25, 2007
I replied briefly on an entry at the Tale of Tales blog (link), but I feel that the topic of Rod Humble’s The Marriage deserves more discussion and if I’m going to ramble on about it (and I will, oh yes, I will) , I feel it’s better to do so here, rather than in the comments there.
Before I begin, I’d like to say that I believe The Marriage does exactly what Rod set out to do. It is not my impression that Rod was trying to produce a great work of art, or a complete and playable game, or to tell a powerful story. The Marriage is a proof of concept and the concept is a simple one — namely, “Can a metaphor be expressed in a game space?” Additionally, neither I, nor anyone else, is in a position to judge Rod’s actual marriage based upon a playthrough of The Marriage. Just because Rod was attempting to convey something about his perspective on marriage through the game, doesn’t not mean that his marriage is fully and completely defined by the metaphor presented. When I first discussed The Marriage, I ignored what it was lacking and enthused about it’s metaphoric bent.
So let’s look at the metaphor presented within The Marriage for a moment. As I’ve discussed before, metaphor is a tool which narrators use to provide story-hooks within their narratives. Some metaphors are unique to a narrative — The Marriage’s egos being represented by squares for example, is not a universal or mythic metaphor that instantly resonates with us. Other metaphors are more universal, the utilization of the color blue to represent the male ego and pink to represent the female. Everything within The Marriage is a metaphor, from the changing background color to the various colors of circles which enter into play. The issue with the metaphors presented here is that they are not presented in a way which is instantly familiar to us. They do not resonate on a deep level, they are not drawn from a widely accessible pool of previous art. Rod expressed that he wanted to produce a game wherein there were no metaphors which would be improved by a physical representation, either in motion or in graphics. But when attempting to communicate a metaphor, translating it into something tangible and recognizable usually proves very helpful to your audience.
But there are no guide posts within the narrative of The Marriage to instruct us in the metaphor. By “within the narrative” I do not mean explained in a readme file, or on a website, or at a panel at GDC, I mean within the game space itself. There are no extra bits of feedback which help you interpret the events on screen. Which brings us to the next point…
The narrative of the The Marriage is sparse, extremely sparse. In fact, the narrative is devoid of familiar grammar, it contains only metaphor. If we were expecting The Marriage to be a full narrative, or to contain a story, this is rather like expecting a mushroom and spinach garlic pizza for dinner and receiving a bowl of sautéed mushrooms. People who like mushrooms and were only mildly hungry might not mind this, but if you were drop dead starving, or really didn’t care to eat fungi, it would only be a disappointment. A good narrative contains more than mere metaphor and it actively tries to help the audience connect to the metaphor it does contain. The inclusion of more game grammar would certainly help the marriage,
And speaking of story — A lot of people, including Rod’s wife, feel that the woman in The Marriage is presented poorly, even unfairly. Perhaps, when the pink and blue squares touch, they equate the transfer of size and opacity as some leeching process, some theft of vitality form the male by the female. If the squares, as Rod suggests, are taken to be the egos of the people involved in the relationship (and ego is not a bad thing, remember) then I am more upset by his portrayal of stereotypical male emotional dis-connectivity in a marriage. After all, whenever the blue square “kisses” the pink square, it retreats. It’s opacity lessons, which indicates a lesser presence in The Marriage and it shrinks, an indication of a faltering ego. Contrariwise, when the blue square comes into contact with an event not involving its spouse, it becomes more present and it’s ego grows.
Now, I can’t speak for any other marriage, but I am most often recharged by connecting with my wife. If enough time goes by where I am not able to connect with her, I loose my charge to some degree. This is not because I am emotionally dependent upon her, but because I married her for her ability to intellectually and emotionally stimulate me better than anyone else I’ve ever met. But when a pattern of missed communication and overly-much introspection settles over us, it becomes more difficult to focus on myself, not less.
You’ll remember that I recognize two stories in any given narrative. The story the narrator intends and the story the audience receives. The balance between the two determines the success of the narrative with a given audience. Some audiences merely want a story fed to them while others want room within the narrative to create their own story. Most audiences want different things from different media at different times and can appreciate a wide variety of narrative styles, from the tightly controlled to the abstract. The Marriage presents the narrator’s story. Because the metaphor is so simple and the narrative so sparse, we’re not provided a lot of room for our own story. In fact, my story of a marriage appears to be dramatically different than Rod’s and I therefore feel very controlled while “playing” The Marriage and this creates no small amount of dissonance. In fact, I played it once (it runs under WINE, incidentally) and can’t bring myself to fire it up again.
You’ll note that there’s a storytelling element missing from The Marriage — plot. It has no plot to speak of. I suppose, you could construct some semblance of plot from the passing of time, but even the passing of time is presented metaphorically. And the interactions between the entities is so abstract as to make the creation of a plot somewhat meaningless. To follow up with my body-mind-spirit metaphor of storytelling components, The Marriage has a overbearingly strong spirit (story), a weak body (narrative), and no mind (plot) worth mentioning.
So what does this say about The Marriage as a storytelling device? Well, it’s pretty terrible. Clearly, the elements needed to make this a story are absent from the mix. How about a game? Nope, The Marriage isn’t a good game either. There are no rewards, no challenges, poorly defined feedback, no sense of progression or accomplishment, and little-to-no fun to be had. So, if it isn’t a good story and it isn’t a good game, what is it? Well, I’d argue that it’s art.
Rod had something to say and rather than simply say it, he decided to craft a representational work to convey his message. It is oblique, perhaps confusing, and an equal number of people seem impressed with it as are turned off by it. It challenges the audience to make sense of it. It has sparked discussion, both about its medium and its message (not that those are two distinct things). So while I may not appreciate its aesthetic, I certainly appreciate its existence and its goals.
Tagged:Games, storytelling. |
March 26th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Without getting too sidelined in terminological minutae, the Marriage has a definite plot when I play it. Here it is:
Two lovers meet.
They are thrown into the chaos of the world.
Will they be able to stay together until they pass from this life, or will their relationship wither under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?
This is also the framing plot of the movie Love Story, amongst other things.
March 26th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Fair enough, but that is so sparse as to be an abstract, more than a plot. It probably would have been helpful if I’d made a stronger distinction between “framing plot” and “working plot.”
I’m working on a diagram of my Plot-Narrative-Story definitions. I’ll be sure to include a differentiation there. *kniw*
Thanks for poking my argument’s Achilles Heel!
March 26th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I did warn you about the terminological sidelines.
Plot is a delightfully nested word… I’m perfectly happy calling what I wrote above ‘the plot’, even though its light on details, in the same way I’m happy saying that Seven Samurai, the Magnificent Seven and Battle Beyond the Stars have “fundamentally the same plot.”
Hey, isn’t this where we came in?
March 26th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I’m actually really glad you brought up the point. I’ve been relying on a really narrow, yet tenuously stated, definition of plot on the blog. I’m currently trying to get everything shuffled together to “publish” a comprehensive overview of my storytelling structure theory and little nudges like that are exactly what I need.