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My Final Word(s) on Braid, Maybe
By Corvus | August 20, 2008
Iroquois and Michael have both shared their closing thoughts on Braid and I feel the need to clarify my position a bit before I’m done (for the moment) as well.
Let’s get some things out of the way before I begin my post proper:
- I am not saying Braid is a bad game.
- I am not saying Braid is too difficult.
- I am not saying, or implying, anything negative about Jonathan Blow.
- I am not saying, or implying, that people who enjoy Braid are wrong to do so.
Okay, now let’s set the stage for my reaction to Braid. My focus, as many of you are no doubt aware, is on the use of video games as storytelling devices. To this pursuit I bring a strong background in improvisational performance, but I also worked as an IT professional for a great many years. I tend to have a pretty balanced right brain/left brain approach to things. Whether that’s by nature or nurture is uncertain, and it’s probably a bit of both.
I have some strong opinions, based on my life experiences, on what makes video games a particularly strong storytelling medium. All of my critiques of video games are based upon my ever-evolving storytelling model that examines storytelling as a communication, separating the process into three major parts–the transmitter’s high-level intent (plot and theme), the narrative (text, audio, visual, game mechanics), and the fabula (the audience’s intellectual and emotional experience). Video games have the ability to place the emphasis on the fabula portion of this model in a way no other medium really can. This potentially allows the audience more control over the storytelling process and therefore makes video games a much deeper personal experience than literature or film. It is this potential that I’m chasing. In many ways, I’m encouraging the devaluation of the transmitter’s intent in favor of the receiver’s need. In other ways, I’m encouraging transmitters to get their ego, their own need to be heard, out of the way and provide high quality tools to the receivers so they can build their own experiences.
I recognize that video games are a widely diverse medium and that not every game is going to reach for the same goals. Nor should they–it’s a spectrum. We need diversity. On the one end we have Whirled, on the other end we have Braid.
Before its release, much was made of Braid as a storytelling game. Mr. Blow talked a lot about using game mechanics as a storytelling device and his statements resonated with my thoughts and writing on the topic. Naturally, I was excited by the prospect of playing Braid. Naturally, if unfairly, I had certain expectations. Naturally, because Jonathan Blow is a very different person than I am, those expectations weren’t exactly met.
From what I can gather, there is a very particular type of person who breezed through Braid and enjoyed the experience. That person is, most often, a programmer. I am not a programmer. I have programmed–in fact, I once built a proto-game [1] in Director in three weeks, including learning Lingo in order to do so (and generating the all the art assets). But I’m not a programmer first. First and foremost, I am a storyteller. I asserted in my last post on the topic that Braid expects you to think like the designer. The circumstantial evidence of the majority of people who really enjoyed Braid underscores my point. In order to fully appreciate Braid, you must put yourself into the mindset of Jonathan Blow–you must think like him.
This doesn’t mean you can’t like Braid without doing so. It doesn’t mean there aren’t an entire range of reactions based upon any number of factors. But I don’t enjoy playing video games in order to follow a strict path through the designer’s intent. I play games to explore–even to express myself on some level. And because I feel this is the strength of the video game medium, it means my reaction to Braid is not a glowingly positive one. I feel, on some level, like it’s a step backwards. Had Braid not made claims as to it’s narrative approach, I would likely have had a very different reaction as I quite enjoy it’s aesthetic. I even appreciate the challenge it represents and will likely continue to play, in short blocks of time, until I’ve finished it.
And therein lies my issue with Braid. It intends to tell a story. The ending, evidently, is well worth reaching. But due to my own personal approach to playing this sort of puzzle based game, I am “forced” to break this story up into small chunks of time over the course of weeks, or even months. I could cheat and read, or watch, a walk through. I could get one of my programming friends who has already finished it to come over and play with me. But if I’m going to play the game in the manner the designer dictates, shouldn’t I also follow his express wishes and figure it out on my own? It’s a sign of my respect for Jonathan Blow’s intent that I am willing to also play by his rules.
Now, I know that previous paragraph is going to register as me whinging that the game is too hard. But again, my complaint is not with the difficulty, but that the approach to play does not afford me much in the way of control over the fabula. It is Mr. Blow’s plot and themes I must follow, point by point by point, and my fabula is the shallowest of emotional and intellectual responses. Braid does not empower the sort of player not predisposed to being empowered by the style of the narrative. And that, in my opinion, reduces the true storytelling strength of video games.
[1] Fitchneal 2000 is the game, if you’re curious. [return]
Tagged:braid, storytelling, video games. | 17 Comments »
August 20th, 2008 at 8:22 am
“Braid does not empower the sort of player not predisposed to being empowered by the style of the narrative. And that, in my opinion, reduces the true storytelling strength of video games.”
Video games, by nature of being video games, don’t empower the kind of people who don’t play them, either. Does that reduce the storytelling strength of the entire medium? As Blow said over at Brainy Gamer, we don’t fault novels simply because they’re only accessible to people who have spent a fair amount of time building up their literacy skills.
I’m not sure that a coding background is necessary to enjoying Braid, either. Kieron Gillen is not a programmer. Chris Dahlen is not, as far as I’m aware, a programmer. Both raved about it in their reviews. I spend a fair amount of time coding now, but I’ve never been formally trained in the trade. Clearly I dug it.
Indeed, it doesn’t strike me as a very “programming” game at all. The kind of sideways thinking that it asks for is very far, actually, from the structured thought process I use when designing a program flow or creating a new class. The closest it might get is the world with the ring.
“Now, I know that previous paragraph is going to register as me whinging that the game is too hard. But again, my complaint is not with the difficulty, but that the approach to play does not afford me much in the way of control over the fabula.”
Maybe. I have a hard time imagining how a game controls (or does not offer control) over your own emotional response and intellectual engagement. But your point about fabula–the reception of the message, as far as I can tell–seems divorced from your gripes about difficulty. I get the feeling that you’re having trouble with the game, and you’re looking for a way to reconcile those complaints with the idealized image of Braid that you’d built up–one that fits your more free-form narrative style, apparently.
Perhaps, as you say early on in this post, you’re simply a victim of your own overly-high expectations.
August 20th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I’m not faulting the game here, Thomas. I’m explaining my reaction to it. So please get over the idea that I’m blaming the game for anything and stop arguing that point.
If a novel–say, The Celestine Prophecy–claims to contain deep spiritual truths and a great many who people read it find it do contain exactly that, but when I read it I find to contain a watered-down regurgitation of ancient philosophy tailored to appeal to a consumerist society… what then? Which perspective is correct? The perspective of the people who keep the book on the top 10 list for months on end, or mine? The answer–their perspective is correct for them. My perspective is correct for me.
Unlike The Celestine Prophecy, Braid is very well crafted. It simply doesn’t contain the content I feel I was led to expect.
I’m not sure a coding background is necessary to enjoying Braid either–hence all the qualifying words in that paragraph. I am simply pointing out that a lot of the people who seem to fully appreciate Braid have strong programming backgrounds. To put it another way–I suspect left brained people get Braid instinctively. You might not agree with this, but I have often felt your responses to things are very similar to the very left brained people I know.
I am not free to explore Braid in my own way and still derive full meaning from the narrative. In this way, it is much like a great many books–even a great many well-written books that I thoroughly enjoy. My complaint about the difficulty is that it the difficulty stems from the extreme difference between the mind set of the designer and my own. If I were to pick up a book that was utterly alien to my own life experiences, I wouldn’t find myself enjoying it either–no matter how well written or well received it was.
One of the strengths of a video game narrative is the potential to reach a broad spectrum of audience, each with a radically different life experience. Braid, I feel, has a very narrow focus and there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just not the audience it set its sights on.
Victim? Overly-high? I don’t agree with the use of either term in this context. Radically variant expectations, perhaps. Certainly I have a very different aesthetic need that Braid provides. But victim? That would assume I am someone lessened, or harmed, by Braid’s failure to connect with me and I honestly don’t feel that’s the case at all.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I’m not arguing that you’ve blamed the game at all–there’s nothing to get over. I’m just saying that the subtext of this post doesn’t really seem to match the text.
(You’re nitpicking a turn of phrase on the victim thing. That’s unnecessary, and I’m going to ignore it.)
I’m not contesting that my own impulses aren’t generally very left-brain, although I think we’ve both heard from a number of very emotional responses to Braid. I’m a wannabe intellectual, that comes with the territory. But can you honestly argue that the other two reviews I’ve cited are from such logically-oriented individuals?
(And hey, if we’re being left-brain, none of these anecdotes are the plural of data anyway.)
I guess where I’m confused is where you say that you’re not free to explore the game “in your own way.” What way would that be? Is it to remove the platforming or the puzzles? To put the narration into the levels themselves more overtly? I don’t really understand what you could mean by this, other than to break it down into “this game’s difficulty does not match my preferred playing style.” This does not seem like a narrative flaw to me, except tangentially–you find it too cumbersome, given your personal strengths as a gamer, to bother making your way through the story.
And I totally sympathize with that. I love the narrative to Killer 7, for example. I find the concept utterly fascinating. But when it all comes down to it, I really just can’t stand playing the game for more than five hours in or so, because of gameplay design decisions.
But these decisions… There’s no real way around them. It’s like saying that you can make a movie that appeals to “a broad spectrum of audience, each with a radically different life experience.” I mean, I guess you can–Pixar usually comes closest. But I’m having trouble thinking of any other examples from another medium that didn’t end up being watered-down, lowest-common-denominator entertainment.
So what I’m really curious to understand–what I’ve been hoping you’d write, because it honestly does sound interesting–is what exactly the game looked like in your expectations. What was it that you hoped for? How was it different, other than the difficulty and the puzzles? Because in this, and your previous post, that’s mainly what I hear. And I don’t think, given the comments you’ve gotten, that I’m alone in that.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:39 am
The correlation to “faulting novels” threw me off your intent. To my mind, finding fault is often the equivalent of blame. Hence my confusion.
I also found the turn of phrase to be a bit charged and interpreted the words ‘victim’ and ‘overly’ to be pejorative. If I was reading too much into it, I’m glad.
I’m honestly not familiar enough with the other two reviewers to accurately assess their personality. So… no comment there.
I’m not saying that I want to explore Braid in my own way. It clearly isn’t that sort of game. What I’m saying is that given that my own exploration of video games as a storytelling medium is based on the fact that video games have the power to afford the player a lot of control over their fabula, I found Braid to be unsatisfying.
Playing video games is not a collection of individual experiences for me, but part of my efforts to build a critical theory about storytelling. It’s difficult for me to play a game that boasts “game mechanic as narrative” and not measure it against the overall picture I’m developing of the medium. That being said, I do try to assess a game based upon what it was trying to achieve. In the case of Braid, I feel Blow gave us lots of indications as to what he was trying to achieve and, as far as I’m concerned, the result looks very different.
Your Killer 7 comparison is pretty apt, only I have no idea if I love the underlying narrative of Braid, because the true point of it appears to be withheld until I get to the end. At the moment–I’m actually a bit bothered by the lead’s attitude about the princess and relationships and I’m not certain where it’s leading. I can say that the narrative is not what will keep me playing in the long run–it’s a stubborn insistence on not letting the game win. Oh, and there’s no way I can play Braid for 5 hours–30 minutes seems to be my maximum sitting.
And that factors heavily into my issue with the design. A left brained desire to see Psychonauts‘ story to the end got me through the right brained (and hand/eye) struggles to finish the game. But only my left brain is engaged in my desire to finish Braid and my right brain would rather go sketch something or take a walk.
To say that there is no way around the design decisions… hm. Well, there’s certainly no way around them for the player, but the designer/developer choose exactly how to express their design. My contention is that Braid would be a better storytelling device if it weren’t so damn opaque. The “game mechanic as narrative” seems to be implemented with a “if you want to know what’s going on, then you have to solve the puzzles” approach rather than the mechanics evolving directly from the core themes of the narrative.
There are books that appeal to a wide spectrum of reader and films that appeal to a broad spectrum of viewer. My contention is that video games can (and often do) appeal to an even broader spectrum of player.
Braid itself didn’t look like anything in my expectations. But a game making claims of integration of narrative and mechanics, on the other hand, doesn’t look much like Braid to me either. Hopefully that makes sense. I’m not saying Braid needs to be anything other than what it is, but I am saying that what it claims to be… it really isn’t by my measure.
And to get a better idea of what that goal, story expressed through game mechanics, looks like for me… well, you’ve been reading my blog. I don’t know that any one game has quite reached it yet. Many have come close, many have contained strong elements, along with weak.
August 20th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Until we see narrative agency, I won’t be convinced. Braid had none. Yet another game using a clever gimmick to trick its audience into thinking it’s a new way of storytelling.
Very cool game, though I’m a programmer and I got very frustrated by its immensely left-brained nature.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
First of all, I love Braid.
With that out of the way, you’re absolutely right Corvus. Braid has a narrative, and it integrates that narrative into the gameplay well. The problem is that the game is so damn vague about what the story is about, you never actually experience that for yourself while you’re playing the game. You have to beat it, and then analyze the Hell out of it, doing your own research or whatever, or have someone else explain it to you.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily. It creates a disjoint in the narrative and the gameplay experience however, except maybe on subsequent play throughs when you know what’s going on and how everything relates, so for me it was really a game before it was a story telling device.
I understand Braid has 2 layers; One for the casual crowd (You’re a guy trying to save a princess) and the underlaying subtext for people like us who like to scrutinize (I won’t spoil it here), but there’s nothing really connecting the two together. I’m a big fan of Silent Hill 2 like a lot of other people, and the whole time you play that game, you know there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Even though there’s a lot of subtext which, like Braid, you have to really read into it before you “get it”, subconsciously you know it’s there because they try and reinforce it every step of the way. Braid does not do that.
Corvus, if you ever want to know what Braids ‘actually’ about, I’ll gladly tell you. I don’t consider it that important of a thing to spoil, since Braid is a game before it’s a narrative. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I love games for the sake of playing them, so I love Braid for offering new gameplay experiences, but my final word as a narrative is, if you’re going to tell a story, don’t be so damn vague about it.
August 20th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Thank you Fran and Adrian for your comments.
@Fran You hit the nail on the head and I think I’ve been using too much soft soap as I struggle to say the same thing.
I’d only add that game mechanics are at their most effective as narrative devices when they express the themes of the story, not when the story is used to justify the existence of the game mechanic.
@Adrian I appreciate the spoiler offering, but I’ll stubbornly wait until I finish the game or stumble across the ending in the comments of someone’s blog.
August 20th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
That’s fine, but I’ll say now unless you get the 2 or 3 obscure quotes they give during the epilogue, you’re still not going to have any idea what’s going on. And that’s also part of the frustration from the game as a narrative tool: None of the stuff you read at the beginning of each level really have anything to do with the game’s greater narrative. Actually, there really isn’t any narrative at all until the final stage and the ending, and even then you have to read into it, do research and etc. before you even get how the gameplay relates to the narrative at all. (And it does, it does a lot, but if you don’t get it until the very end and tons of studying, then what’s the point?)
WARNING: LONG RANT APPPROACHING
But let me play devil’s advocate in saying that I think Fran is totally backwards on why people like Braid. Braid has a narrative and uses gameplay to reinforce that narrative… Poorly, but that’s not the point. I like Braid as a game first and foremost, and most people who love it as much as I do don’t really think about the game’s story too much. That’s why the top layer, the story about a man saving a princess, exists. It gives them a reason to keep playing. This is how games used to be played back in the days of the NES, when they were about just being fun and not about pushing cinematics and storyline.
Back then, the story in the manual or the very little text that scrolled at the beginning served to be the sole reason you wanted to play the game. After that, it was just enjoyment playing it. Braid obviously is inspired by this (As if the fact it’s a 2D platformer isn’t enough to reinforce this, there’s tons of Mario references throughout) and really, that’s what makes Braid an awesome game: It’s a good 2D platformer with puzzle elements.
Now, I ranted and raved about the disjoint between the narrative and the gameplay earlier, but if there’s a reason it exists, it’s this: Because Braid is a game first. Knowing this, the reason why Braid is so obtuse in telling it’s story is because it doesn’t want it to get in the way of it’s true nature, a simple 2D sidescroll platform puzzle game. As much as it irritates me, I have to commend it for that. After all, a game’s function first and foremost is to be a fun game, narrative and story have to take a backseat sometimes.
Braid doesn’t connect narrative and gameplay well, I admit that. It’s one of the reasons it’s not a good a game as Portal is, which can tell it’s story very well without getting in the way of the great gameplay and yet still keep the 2 connected as one entity. But my point to Fran is that no one’s been tricked into thinking Braid is something that it’s not. We don’t see it as a new way of story telling. We see it as a fun game, nothing more, nothing less. The fact that it has a compelling narrative at all (which it does, regardless of the fact that it’s integrated poorly) is just icing on the cake.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
I haven’t played Braid yet, but your post recalled to my mind a problem I’ve been thinking about for a long time: that of gameplay in a story-driven game hindering the player’s perceived flow and pacing of the story rather than enhancing it. Adventure games are where I tend to find this conflict the most often; I feel driven to explore the story further, but am “stuck” until I think of the correct solution to the current puzzle. It has nothing to do with my ability to solve puzzles — in fact, I quite enjoy puzzle-solving on its own, outside the context of a story — but rather with the way it clashes with the narrative as I feel driven to experience it. In this sense, I can sympathize with your personal criticisms.
It’s also worth mentioning that I myself am a programmer, albeit a somewhat mediocre one.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
On the subject of having to think like the designer and following a strict path, what is your opinion of the adventure genre in this regard? I’ve always hated the old school adventure genre for this manner, which is why I never finished Grim Fandango or even Myst . I don’t know if you need to think like a programmer to figure out Braid, maybe as someone who thinks like a designer (or wants to be a designer
) the mechanics just clicked for me to figure out how to use them.
The comparison between Killer 7 and Braid is interesting, I’m another fan of Killer 7 for it’s story and style. I would say that it is more restrictive in it’s design then Braid, in Killer 7 you can “fail” and have to restart a level and can be stuck at a section unable to proceed until you finish it.
I wonder how the critics and fans of Braid would have reacted if you could not skip the puzzles and had to complete them one after another to get to the end.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Hi Corvus,
I neglected to do this before but I wanted to thank you for coming in and contributing to the exchange over on Brainy Gamer, I think a great discussion came out of it. So thanks!
On the subject of braid, I want to disagree with the idea that narrative and gameplay clash in the game. I think you’re right that there is no sense of a linear chain of events that transpires as you move through the levels, nor a sense of any narrative progression that matches your progress through the gameplay challenges. However, from the perspective of the epilogue I thought the narrative bits invested the gameplay itself with a definite narrative texture– in a way the epilogue is a commentary on the gameplay itself, and it is a very interesting and complex commentary indeed. (I won’t tire you with my thoughts on it here but I plan to write on it soon.)
Secondly, I think your reaction to the game points to a very substantive philosophical disagreement about how narrative is to be achieved in games. Blow did not intend, in this game, to place control over the narrative (or the control over the correct gameplay choices, for that matter) in the hand of the player. His game is clearly governed by his intentions, not the players. Rather, he crafted a definite style of gameplay and tried to convey a narrative through it.
I think I understand that you (along with Steve Gaynor and some other designers) just don’t find this solution to narrative satisfying, and want the player to have a greater hand in shaping the narrative outlines of her experience. While I really loved what Braid did I think that there are exciting works yet to be done by pursuing the latter path.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
@Deirdra & Josh Thanks for adding your voices to the mix. Old school adventure games are a mixed topic for me. I did find it frustrating to come face to face with puzzles that weren’t properly supported by the environment. In fact, I touched on that in a recent post (if you’re interested–do a search for Grim Fandango and you should find it). However, many of the games–such as Full Throttle, did such a good job of building an emotional attachment to the characters and situation that I didn’t mind spending some time pixel hunting the screens in a desperate search for the next solution. Others, like the abysmal City of Lost Children game made me want to throw my computer through the window.
@Iroquois Thanks for being so welcoming. I hesitated to butt in and I appreciate your and Michael’s openness to my including myself.
My primary narrative objection to Braid lies in your statement, “from the perspective of the epilogue.” It could be argued that if I must wait until the epilogue to make sense of the narrative, it’s not crafted very well. But then I think of the movie Sideways, in which I hated all the characters and was angry until the final scene of the movie when it completely redeemed itself. With that in mind, I felt I should wait until such time as I (might) complete the game to comment on course of the narrative itself.
But you’re right. Blow and I have a strongly different approaches and, seemingly, expectations of utilizing game mechanics as narrative. Neither of us it wrong, we just might find that we don’t enjoy each others games very much (at such time as I actually start producing games based on my theories). Blow maintains what I refer to as authoritative control, while I wish to minimize, if not outright abolish, it.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Inflammable tangent; please excuse me… I just got back from Germany.
Braid is a great game for players who like solving puzzles… but it’s a questionable instance of “games as art”, in my opinion, because structuring around difficult puzzles excludes the vast majority of people from experiencing what it has to offer.
Great art should work for everyone, shouldn’t it? Or maybe I am too anti-elitist.
Best wishes!
August 26th, 2008 at 6:38 am
And one more time…
August 26th, 2008 at 6:40 am
Woo! Got the avatar fixed!
December 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
[...] of people, who would otherwise appreciate the remaining values of the game (like fellow blogger Corvus for [...]
February 12th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
It’s likely that I’m commenting on a dead topic, but seeing as I finished braid yesterday, I think it’s entirely valid to revive discussion about it.
I agree wholeheartedly that the mechanics of the game and the content of the puzzles in braid add little to the game’s “narrative”, especially since the story that exists is somewhat ethereal. I was thoroughly irked to learn that the puzzles we spend so long acquiring pieces for are meaningless, referencing the theme of the world they accompany, rather than the story on the whole.
What I do accredit to the game is how I felt while playing it and after finishing it. I believe that each of us, through frustration, weariness, anger, or obsession; eventually become our own versions of Tim.
While the puzzles and gameplay were interesting, they do not constitute a narrative. What does constitute a narrative is how we play the game and what we think about it.
Braid was only part of the game. The rest of it we play in our heads, in our conversations with each other, and through a tapping of keyboards throughout the gaming community.