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Round Table: Cycle of Abuse
By Corvus | April 6, 2009
Please be aware that although the content of this post is not graphic, I’ve opted to rate it M (Mature) for suggestive themes of sexual violence.
Taking Games Seriously, Making Game Seriously: This month’s Round Table challenges you to design a game that deals with a social issue that personally troubles you. The recent months have seen controversy sweep through the video game industry. Whether people are objecting to the use of imagery widely considered to evoke racial stereotypes, or to the gameplay based on violent sexual crimes, or to the fact that anyone would complain about either topic–the discussion has been fierce. This month, contributors to the Round Table are invited to design a game that focuses on racism, rape, domestic violence, cruelty to animals, genocide, or any other serious, and potentially hot-button, topic.
My game design for this month’s Round Table deals with the cycle of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children at the hands of adults. Not only is the design drawn from my personal history, but it is specifically based upon a recurring dream I had as a child. This dream still lurks in the dark corners of my mind, walling off bits of memory from which my younger self wished to protect himself.
My goal with this design is to reflect, not only the emotional states and relationships of the abuser and abused, but the tendency for the abused to become abusers in subsequent relationships. Additionally, as I’ve discovered through my own relationship with my abuse, there are no universal answers, solutions, or tools for dealing with your own history of child abuse. Memory plays tricks on you, the abuser may be unable to recognize their actions as inappropriate, other family members play various roles in obscuring the truth of your personal experience, by reporting different versions of past events, or even denying their role in the perpetuation of the abuse. Because as many different situations exist as their are victims, it’s difficult to apply a single formula to helping people recover.
Furthermore, there are no clear win states in abusive relationships. Even if you break the cycle, or manage to sustain a healthy and happy relationship, the abusive relationship will always be with you. To reflect this, there is only one route out of the game that could be consider a win state. It isn’t obvious, there are no rewards, trumpet flourishes, or congratulations. All other exits from the game are meant to be tinged with guilt and regret.
Cycle of Abuse presents the player with no instructions, no menu, and no introductory screens. When started, the game screen simply consists of a dark playing field with a small electric-blue line quavering in the lower third of the screen. In time with the line’s rapid, yet shallow, fluctuations the player can hear a faint child’s voice endlessly repeating, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
Within seconds, angry red circles begin to appear on the screen, starting small but growing rapidly, punctuated with by a clearly audible, “YES.” The louder and more angry the, “YES,” the larger the circle will grow. Within a minute, the screen is a roiling mass of red spheres and the line’s protests are all but inaudible and its quavering motion all but extinguished.
Should the player hit the escape key on the keyboard (ESC), they are presented with a small window that asks, “Abandon the Child to the Cycle?” The prompt will have two buttons marked “Yes” and “No.” Pressing either button allows them to see the red spheres extinguish the blue line utterly. The audioscape they are presented with reflects which button they pushed. They either hear only the red spheres establishing their authority with ever more forceful and triumphant exclamations of, “YES,” or they hear the blue line’s pleading, the ever more desperate cries of, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”
Should the player move the mouse, the line immediately responds. A large ripple flows through the line, like a hear monitor’s pulse, and the child’s voice very clearly, and more defiantly, protests, “NO.” No red spheres appear for a split second, but they quickly resume, centered around the ripple that flows through the line, attempting to squash it back down with the power of their repeated YESes.
Through experimentation, the player learns that they can control the line through increasingly larger rhythmic circular movements of the mouse. Move too far, too quickly, and the pulse of NOs become unwieldy and unpredictable–causing the blue line to loose clarity and collapse quickly in on itself. Only through slow and gradual reinforcement of the rhythm can the player increase the scale and strength of the blue line, defending it against the minimizing impact of the red spheres, which focus on the waves in the line, trying to dampen the rhythm through the disruption of their oppressive YESes.
Eventually, the player will be able to build the strength of the blue line to the point where the red spheres have no effect upon it. The child’s voice, now noticeably older, will intone more regularly and more forcibly, “No.” Soon the red spheres begin to fade, the YESes become softer, less angry and less frequent. After a minute, all that remains is a thick blue line against the background.
If the player presses ESC at this point the game ends. The player hears a relieved and confident YES in the child’s voice and the application quits without further prompts.
If the player continues to circle the mouse, the blue line begins to turn red and indistinct around the edges. This continues and the line shrinks again, becoming the original quavering blue line from the beginning of the game. The player will realize during this process that they are no longer in control of the blue line.
Should the player press ESC, they will be presented with a, “Allow the Cycle to Continue Unreported?” prompt. Clicking Yes initiates the same end-sequence first referenced above. Clicking No returns them to the game.
Once the player has lost control of the blue line, should the click a mouse button, they will find themselves generating red spheres under the mouse cursor. The longer they hold down the mouse button, the larger the sphere and more emphatic the YES. Should they choose to generate spheres in order to extinguish the blue line, and succeed at this task, they will lose control of the entire game and will be unable to stop the application for several minutes as the red spheres generate wildly for a time, finally slowing and stopping, leaving the screen completely dark for one minute. The application will then exit automatically.
Should the player refuse to generate red spheres, the blue line will cease to quaver and the NOs will stop. The blue line will then steadily grow in size and intensity until it fills the screen. After one minute of the screen being filled, the application will exit automatically.
Should the player continue to generate red spheres, but not succeed in destroying the blue line, gameplay will continue indefinitely. If the player presses ESC, they will be presented with the “Allow the Cycle to Continue Unreported?” prompt.
If the blue line thrives, despite the player’s attempts to extinguish it, the cycle repeats, putting the player back in control of the blue line for another round.
April 6th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
While I am sure I have never been abused, the blue line on a red background sounds disturbingly similar to a dream I used to have as a child (albeit without the YES/NO voices).
Jane McGonigal and Ze Frank are collecting stories of similar dreams over at Avant Game.
April 6th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
PS: That would be a very freaky game. You should definitely make it.
April 7th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
I share a similar background, Corvus, and find this game idea incredibly powerful. Your point that there are no win states in abusive situations is exactly right, and any game that inhabits this territory needs to be ever-mindful of that fact.
April 12th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I know I am posting a cliché, but it’s amazing how suggestive can have a bigger impact than graphic.
Congratulations on the design.