Opinion #2
The genre must accept that we get by with a little help from our friends
This isn’t a call to end the reign of the triggerhappy badass.
WRITER BIO
Jess Kinghorn is not musically gifted in any sense but likes to live out that fantasy in videogames where she’s more than a one-hit wonder.
When it comes to the end times, Triple-A games are ready. From The Last Of Us and Days Gone to Fallout 4, big-budget games love to imagine life after a cataclysm defined by desperation and brutality.
KO_OP is taking a different approach. In July 2020 I chatted with co-directors Saleem Dabbous and Kyle McKernan about the studio’s upcoming dino drama Goodbye Volcano High. Dabbous explained, “It’s like, actually, that’s not true. That’s not the truth of humanity. It doesn’t happen that way. There’s this amazing book by Rebecca Solnit called Paradise Built In
Hell that talks about, in cases of natural disasters and things that feel like the apocalypse […], people don’t revert to killing each other or murdering or stealing. They actually band together as a community and raise each other up. And so we really wanted to kind of put something out there that countered those narratives.”
We all remember the great toilet paper drought of 2020. But here in 2021 we’re playing together in online games, partying up in Final Fantasy XIV, and, yes, even having a Zoom call or two.
McKernan added, “When everybody’s context changes all at once, the thing that I wanted to make was, how do our connections actually deepen and transform into something new, and how do we form new connections when something like that happens? [Because] that’s really more often what happens, right?”
Videogames have been central to a sense of community for many, even before these unprecedented times. So why do so many massive titles instead tell the same story of ‘[Blorp!] you, I got mine’?
HINDSIGHT IS 20/20
This isn’t a call to end the reign of the trigger-happy badass, nor am I asking if we can chat up the zombies in the next Resi (though the thought of a Warm Bodies-esque dating sim has tickled me). I enjoy blasting baddies as much as the next person. But ‘can you pet the dog?’ is a question that’s only grown in prominence over the years and speaks to a large audience’s desire for a different kind of interaction with their virtual worlds. In Fallout 3, pre-Broken Steel’s Puppies! perk, we’d fight tooth and nail to keep Dogmeat alive, even resetting vast chunks of progress when our precious pup went missing in action. We love to pet and protect the dog because, aside from the fact dogs are wonderful creatures to all those without pet dander allergies, it’s a snatch of comfort in what is often otherwise a violent world.
What could apocalyptic tales achieve if instead of scarcity-fuelled scraps they explored sustaining acts of compassion like this? What if their focus shifted their away from the lone badass making the tough calls to the community supporting them? What if playing guitar was actually about connecting through music and not a framing device for how revenge is usually a bad shout (and what if The Last Of Us Part II had actually been more mechanically invested in exploring that latter idea)? With 2020 behind us, maybe the genre will go on to surprise us. Now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before…