Agency: the satisfying power to take meaningful actions and to see the results of those actions.
Apart from being told that I was lost in the Canadian wilderness after a mysterious global disaster, I was given no instructions. I found myself in the middle of a forest, at the foot of a snow covered hill. I immediately made the decision to walk to the top of the steep hill to get a sense of where I was, and more importantly, where I could go.
I decided to walk along the top of this hill, hoping that it would allow me to see any noticeable landmarks. I came across a small wooden house on the bank of a frozen lake. I searched it, choosing to collect as much as I could. I started to leave, but it was getting dark – I decided to spend the night in the house. I lit a fire with the wood I had found earlier in my travels and ate some of the food I had looted.
When morning arrived I left the house. As I walked down a slope I sprained my ankle, I could no longer run – and I began to lose energy. To cure my ailment I needed painkillers – a resource I hadn’t come across yet. I had no idea where I was so I simply chose a direction and kept moving forwards – hoping to find another house soon. I started to become anxious as night-time was approaching, and I had still not seen any sign of man-made structure.
Suddenly I saw a building i the distance. As I entered the wooden cabin I felt relief. Even if I couldn’t heal my sprained ankle, I would at least have shelter for another night.
This was what I experienced during my first hour of playing ‘The Long Dark’ – a game that’s currently available through Steam Early Access. The game is an open-world survival game, described by it’s developers as an “exploration-survival experience” (without zombies).
After completing the reading on Agency, I felt that this would be a very suitable game to try out. I’ve now played about 6 hours of The Long Dark, and throughout this time it has remained a constantly engaging and ‘agency-filled’ experience.
Every decision you make in the game has a consequence, and I found myself frequently contemplating whether I should leave a structure or stay for the night, not knowing whether I’d be able to find another place to shelter fast enough.
This game certainly aided in my understanding of what the reading calls ‘The Pleasures of Navigation’. My ability to move & freely explore the vast wilderness was something that provided both a pleasurable and relaxing experience. I actually lost track of time whilst playing, becoming absorbed in my characters isolation.
There is no doubt that The Long Dark falls under ‘the Tangled Rhizone’ configuration. It allows a unique story to unfold as a direct result of our actions as the player. The narrative experience that I’ve had so far could have been COMPLETELY different if I had simply decided to walk in a different direction when first starting the game.
While the game is largely survival based, there is still evidence of what the reading calls ‘Story Clusters’ in its contents. Throughout the ‘map’ there are buildings and other man-made landmarks scattered everywhere – there is no strict path that the player must take to get to any of these landmarks, however each location seems to allow the player to build their own ‘story’. My journey from location to location became somewhat of a narrative in itself, the different landmarks linking my story together.
The reading asks whether the ‘Interactor’ can ever be considered as an author of an experience, and after playing The Long Dark, I think that the answer to this question is YES. The narrative experience that I had while playing The Long Dark was largely constructed in my mind, as my imagination constructed a story around the events I experienced within the game. I even set a ‘soundtrack’ to my story – choosing to listen to the ‘Into the Wild’ soundtrack. In this case, I feel that The Long Dark acted as an empty narrative shell – and that I filled this shell with the story I imagined throughout my play-through.
