Exploration of Worlds as a Study of Character
Carl Jung, a psychologist and contemporary of Sigmund Freud, was a student of human fantasy and dreams. He theorized that the human quest for meaning manifested itself as a map of personal symbols within the subconscious of the individual. These symbols described and, by their relationships to each other, organized fears, biases, and desires. Jung called these secret motivators “complexes”, and considered them the “architects of dreams” (Stein, 49). The dream world, in effect, provided a glimpse of the original map. Henri Lefebvre, on the other hand, was a philosopher of the later twentieth century. Among other things, he examined the nature and question of space, and sought to define the boundaries, relationships and contradictions between physical, mental, and social space. In his comprehensive tome The Production of Space, he offered a personal elaboration on the subject:
Is [the ‘space of the dream’] the space of ‘drives”? It would be better described as a space for the poetic reconstruction of situations in which wishes are present – but wishes which are not so much fulfilled as simply proclaimed. (209)
Inspired by Jung, and by Joseph Campbell who applied Jungian principles to the dream-like patterns of world myths, writer Christopher Vogler proposed that fictional characters inhabit both an outer (material) and an inner (psychological) story universe, the inner universe reflecting upon the outer, the outer functioning as a metaphor for the inner. The poetic reconstruction of wishes in dreams becomes the substance of character reality. Vogler was chiefly concerned with the characters of novels and screenplays, but the principle, when transferred to games, could become even more powerful.
A character in a game is never just the character, but the character in that particular world, designed to compliment him or her, and giving sensual shape to his or her existence. Beyond defining the scope of immersion, the environment can symbolically elaborate on a particular character’s constitution or inner archetypical preferences. David Freeman, in his article “Four Ways to Use Symbols to Add Emotional Depth to Games,” considers symbolism a crucial deepening technique:
I use the phrase “deepening techniques” to describe all those writing techniques that impart a sense of depth to a piece of dialogue, a character, a relationship between two or more characters, a scene, or a plot. Other words that mean something similar to deepening include poignancy, soulfulness, layers, and emotional or psychological complexity… Symbols are always a deepening tool.
In other words, a game environment in which space, landmarks, and puzzles possess symbolic significance, can function as a kind of psychic map for any given character of the game world. When a game designer activates this property of game terrain and architecture, he/she further controls the player’s reception of the character, and the player’s desire to immerse themselves in the game experience, by requiring exploration of the world as a study of the character he or she is playing. Moreover, as Tracy Raye Hickman indicates in her article “Ethics in Fantasy: Morality and D&D”: “An adventure game becomes an even more powerful teaching tool when allegory or parables are used because the participant is actually part of the parable.” (Hickman)
American McGee’s Alice, an unusual release for Electronic Arts (2000), is nonetheless an excellent example of this prospect. The game continues the story of Alice, heroine of Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland and Looking Glass novels. The books themselves function on many levels: as tales of whimsy enjoyed by children, and as critiques of Victorian society enjoyed by adults. (Tazman) But the game goes one step further, suggesting that Wonderland flowers directly from Alice’s imagination. Wonderland is not only an extension of Alice, it is Alice. It is the territory of her mind. And Alice is a very troubled girl, indeed. Some time after her childhood ventures into Wonderland, and her safe return to reality, her family and house are obliterated in a fire; she falls into a catatonic state, and is placed in an asylum. When Wonderland pleas for salvation through the frightful delusion of a talking toy rabbit, and Alice finds herself falling through a cosmic portal, suggestive of the rabbit hole she encountered long ago, it is immediately clear that Wonderland is not so much an alternate universe, as a world inside her head. As Lefebvre disparages: “Even… illness and madness are supposed by some specialist to have their own peculiar space.”(8) This conclusion is further validated by the names of the game levels, which include “Dementia”, “Pandemonium”, and “The Vale of Tears,” the latter of which includes a fountain in the likeness of Alice weeping.
Wonderland, at once colorful and dark, ordered yet bizarre, is nonetheless marked by a distinct style: a curling, organic one. Wonderland is a living entity; it pulses, squirms, wriggles, embraces, and lashes out. The air hisses with howls and shrieks with insane laughter, one eerie ambience bleeding into another. The score of Alice swells and flows with lilting voices, violin-like choruses, and bells, ranging from resonant church bells, to meandering music-box melodies that harken to the child-like state Alice would prefer. Just as the music meanders, the level maps maze (Fig. 1). The crooked curl is the essential motif of all viewable assets, from the design of plants and structures (Fig. 2), to general decoration (Fig. 3), to animated textures such as the swirling portals between one level and the next (Fig. 4), and the intestinal walls of the Red Queen’s realm (Fig. 5). As a metaphor, they indicate the fertile yet twisted state of Alice’s subconscious, which virtually and symbolically needs to be unknotted.
The inhabitants of Wonderland, particularly those that menace Alice, are often extensions of the realm itself, from flesh-eating mushrooms (Fig. 6), dart-spitting flowers, to the diabolical Red Queen herself (Fig. 7), who seems to be at once the living heart of Wonderland and a cancerous growth. In the climatic battle, the Queen wears Alice’s face, cementing our understanding that Alice’s battle is not with any outside evil, but with herself. Thus we may presume that every battle until that moment has carried the same metaphoric power. As the player has navigated Wonderland, they have experienced Alice’s ongoing struggles with guilt, despair, and fear through visceral encounters with symbolic structures. Every step forward has been an acceptance of uncomfortable intimacy with a truly schizophrenic personality. Not only are her delusions self-endangering, they plunge into pure phantasmagoria. Yet the allure of the strange and unknown often incites curiosity. Moreover, by exploring the world, the player comes to better know the character he or she is playing, which will be crucial to eventual player success. For the final battle with the ultimate villain is revealed to be an identity crisis of epic proportions.
