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Today I Die
By Corvus | May 19, 2009
Today I Die is the newest game from Daniel Benmergui. Thematically and structurally, it bears a deep resemblance to his previous games Storyteller and I Wish I Were the Moon. Unlike the previous games, however, Today I Die prominently features a textual element–a poem in fact.
dead world
full of shades
today I die
Beneath the poem are two more words, dark and painful. Unlike the majority of games where textual elements are used to explain story elements not easily presented with game mechanics or animation, the text of Today I Die is deeply tied to the game dynamics and altering words in the poem changes the behaviors of characters within the storyworld. Likewise, interacting with the storyworld’s characters produces new (contextual) words that can be swapped into the poem, further altering the storyworld.
I find this integration of the text into the game dynamics to be particularly compelling. Rather than distract from the play, the language becomes an integral part of the play itself. In fact, it strikes me that Today I Die uses much the same mechanics as Storyteller and I Wish I Were the Moon, but expands the available gameplay metaphors to include words. This usage of textual elements is exactly the sort of thing I’m on about when I say that for textual elements to be meaningful in a game they must be reflective of the gameplay, not some abstraction of a narrative layer that the gameplay never alludes to.
Here are some criticisms of Today I Die from other game designers:
There are alot of confusing messages the game is relaying to the player by simply not contextualizing actions with feedback.
I think I mistakenly thought the next level was a “failure” screen.
So yes, it was bad game design. IMHO, all that was needed to make it good game design was for the failure conditions to create learning experiences so that with each failure you got a hint of what you should have done instead.
The issue here, I realized, is that these designers seem to be operating under the assumption that videogames must be strictly goal oriented and contain the possibility for failure. But Today I Die doesn’t have a fail state. None. The only failure this game allows for is to stop playing. All else is exploration.
In fact, I’d argue that stopping playing isn’t even a failure. If you read a poem and take it at face value, did you fail? If you only read the first stanza did you fail? Or did you simply experience it at a different level than someone who more fully explored the imagery and meaning?
Because that’s what Daniel’s games are–poems. This is a perspective Today I Die clearly supports. But they are also games, as they clearly are a set of rules (that we agree on when we interact with the software) that create a bounded space intended for play. But rather than asking us to “beat” the game, or threatening us with “failure,” Daniel’s games encourage us to explore their meaning–often delighting and surprising us with the results of our exploration. Much in the same manner poetry does when we contemplate their meaning.
And realization, which I had while playing Today I Die, led me to the following piece of advice–not just for Daniel’s games, but for all games.
Don’t read it like a game, play it like a poem.
If you follow this advice, I think you’ll find that videogames have much more depth, and much more meaning, than you previously might have imagined. And for that I would like to say, “Thank you, Daniel.”
Tagged:daniel benmergui, indie-games, storytelling, today i die. | 34 Comments »
May 19th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Thanks to you for this read, Corvus.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:41 am
And thank you, Corvus.
I agree with your sentiment. I wrote something positive but much more brief on my own site a few days ago. http://www.sethburnette.com/?p=377
Games like Today I Die actually make me feel kind of…I guess giddy is the word. They are wonderful reminders of realms beyond Bros of War that this medium can achieve.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
I wrote about it too (http://skynes.livejournal.com/7665.html)
I loved this little thing. To others I’ve been calling it an interactive poem.
Everything about it, just, works.
Only criticism I would have is that I didn’t know Shine + bubbles made giant bubble to shield you with. My first couple of times playing I dragged the girl around the screen and kited the shades before quickly grabbing the word and dragging it into place.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Well said, Corvus.
I think that the best part of Today I Die was the fact that it had no fail state. It reminded me, in that sense, of Prey. In Prey, when you died, you would be sent to a minigame that you had to play until you regained enough health to return to the main game. Since the game never stopped, you never really got the sense that you had lost. I really wish that more games would embrace the idea that you can continue past a perceived fail state with enough work. Its a very empowering feeling.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
@Ted: Being a jackass, I of course picked up on your comment as the thing I liked most on this page
You’re so right about Prey, and I hadn’t really thought about it before. There’s a lot of Prey that you can’t really understand by playing it for what it is marketed as – a space shooter. The spirit journey stuff really bordered on the almost-not-a-joke, which is pretty damn impressive for a AAA game and anything dealing with Native Americans.
I remember the “ghost fish shooting gallery” being knocked by many critics, because it made the game kind of ridiculously easy and repetitive. I agree with that critique, but not because it’s a bad idea. As you point out, it’s this actually fairly beautiful and reflective moment that had the potential to be something truly great if it had been developed further.
I don’t really understand what the defect in my brain is that I look at indie games and just want to pop their innovations into first-person shooters. Maybe a fundamental aspect of my Jewry?
May 19th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
@Skynes:
I didn’t think it was possible to do it that way (I’d tried around 10 times or so before giving up). There is a another option instead of building a shield around your protagonist. You can also make a cage around the dark things.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:28 am
I flagged this today too, but not in any depth. Like you, I think this is poetry in game form.
And anyone who believes a game must be goal-oriented is blinded by their own play style!
May 20th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Frustration was a fail state for me. I tried it a few weeks ago and didn’t find the shine word. I gave up. That was not fun. If frustration was the point, I can point to thousands of games throughout history that make the same point.
It made me feel stupid. I tried it today. Completed it but I never entered the world of the story. I didn’t care about the characters, because I was trying to figure out the mechanical parts that controlled the system, in other words, the interface. Must be my fault, yeah, right.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:04 am
Well Keith in a way–yes, frankly. Although I don’t actually believe “fault” is a useful word.
If the experience isn’t to your taste, and if the game wasn’t designed with your play style in mind–is that anyone’s fault? There may be some shared responsibility for the failure of communication, but as you pointed out in the TF2Fort thread–we also have to consider the intended audience.
I have noticed that many people who try and approach it as an adventure game become rapidly frustrated and I can completely understand that. But I also believe that Today I Die clearly communicates that it should not be approached as a traditional adventure game and that the poetic difference of the mechanics is made as obvious as they can be without having a textual “README” file.
So, while it is unfortunate that you found the experience frustrating, I do not believe it’s useful to assign fault to either Daniel or to yourself.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Corvus, I’m afraid you’ve assumed too much about my approach. Bad moderator, no lube for you.
I approached it as a blank. I didn’t know what it was nor what to expect. (I’ve experienced his work before and was expecting something different.) I liked the music, read the poem, understood the thematic relationship to the imagery, and then tried to interact with the world. That’s where I lost my attachment to the intended experience. I found myself entirely focused on figuring out the interface, and when I did manage to effect some change the reward for my attempts only briefly satisfied because I had to fumble around to do whatever the next thing was.
The use in faulting the designer for my experience of his work is to provide feedback that his work failed to express itself in the manner he probably intended. Also to warn others that they should not blame themselves if they have a similar experience. I’ve seen that happen too many times during the user testing of my own games. It’s a terrible thing, when the designer’s product causes players to blame themselves for faults in the product’s design.
May 20th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Actually, you’ll notice I wrote nothing about your specific play experience, but spoke in generalities about observations collected from multiple sources in an effort to extend the conversation. Thank you for obliging me in that and providing a more comprehensive description of your experience.
What I did address specific to your comment was the implication that “fault” can be assigned when a game doesn’t reach a particular audience member. And the goals of DHSGiT and TID are very different. DHSGiT was designed to be a commercial success and TID was designed to express something personal. After all–we don’t tell Pynchon that he failed because his books don’t reach a mass market audience. Why should there be fault in this?
Also-my role on this blog is substantially different than a message board moderator. However, I will say that I consider your oblique reference to non-lubricated anal sex as some form of retribution for my response was not amusing to me as it is reminiscent of the same message boards stagged by moderators that allow them to become hotbeds of homophobia.
May 20th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
I apologize for the ‘lube’ word. It was meant to be a playful remark, not a mean one. It was the first word that struck me as funny as I didn’t want to reuse ‘twinky’. If that suggests too much about my personal cognitive map of fun, well… ahem. If you’d like further information about heterosexual fun with anuses, I recommend SFSI.org (awesome education resource)
I will continue to fault this program, because it is broken. It’s content, (which I agree is very worthy) could reach a far greater number of people, if it was easier to use.
Sure, that could be said about EVERY game, but the degree of this game’s brokenness can be measured by the comments I’ve read on
multiple threads. It’s as if Da Vinci had unveiled the Mona Lisa somewhere in a swamp and expected his audience to find it.
May 20th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Well, if you were playfully and respectfully acknowledging our decidedly non-macho friendship, then I temper my objection. But those types of comments can be so easily misconstrued and are reminiscent of adolescent posturing… at least in my experience.
So, I can see that if the expectation is that TID performs as a game–it’s broken. But I guess I don’t think a poem can be broken. A poem simply is. Admittedly, many poems are rife with angst, obvious symbolism, and forced meter, and because of this they aren’t considered good poems.
But as a poem, TID is not reliant upon the trite truisms of the genre in which it is being expressed. It not only contains meaning, it contains more meaning for those who set aside their own expectations of the form and explore it in depth–as a poem, not as a mechanic in a commercial game.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is–it might not be to your taste but it clearly reached a lot of people. I consider to be art and, like most great art, it’s not about the size of the audience, but the impact it has on those it does reach.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Truthfully, TID’s content IS to my taste! I wanted to savor it, but the chef didn’t provide the right utensil for me to put it in my mouth!
This is an issue that needs better appreciation. Interface is part of the experience. Poems written in Sanskrit are broken if they are intended for an English reading audience.
Many people did not have as much frustration with the work, as I did. But many people did. Who knows how many of the frustrated might have loved the experience if it had been easier to experience?
What I hear in your responses is, ‘if you didn’t get it, then it’s not for you.’ I’m pretty sure you really don’t mean that.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Well, this comments thread certainly, uh, entered areas I didn’t expect from the initial post!
I love the idea of calling TID a poem, because it’s perfect for it. I’ve seen several people criticise it elsewhere with comments boiling down to “well THAT wasn’t gaming’s Citizen Kane/Shakespeare/whatever tired analogy we’re flogging this week”. No, it isn’t, and thank god it’s not, because not everything needs, wants or tries to be.
It’s a conceit, a thought, a spark. It’s a lovely little thing that won’t appeal to everyone, and is unlikely to change anyone’s life, but for a certain subsection of people, it will give them little jolts of happy giddiness every time they remember it.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
That’s absolutely what I’m saying!
Now, I am not saying that Daniel Benmergui is at this level (although an argument could certainly be made) but should Picasso have not moved into cubism because some people didn’t consider it art? Should Burroughs not have used his Cut-Up process to write Naked Lunch because some people expected novels to contain linear plots? Should David Lynch stop making movies because some people don’t understand his use of color and cinematographic symbolism?
We’re not talking about a commercial product–we’re talking about art. The mechanics in TID do, from what I can tell, exactly what they are intended to to. And because of this–they are not broken. They may serve to make the game more inaccessible to large portions of the audience–but this does not make them broken.
And while the content may be to your taste–clearly the mechanics are not and as I say over and over this notion that we can (or should) separate narrative content and gameplay is precisely what is holding this industry back.
In TID (and the previous two games from Daniel), it is not so easy to make that division and I am entirely uncertain why anyone would want to.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Okay, you ARE saying that.
Rule #something:
Interface is not gameplay.
The interface to a painting is the light bouncing off and your eyes receiving it. How your mind perceives the image is the duty of the art. Diffierent people will perceive it differently, and your point becomes valid.
If you put paintings in a dimly lit room, where only some can see it and other’s can’t then the interface is broken, and the art is wasted on some who otherwise might appreciate it. In our discussion your point is NOT valid.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I don’t see what was frustrating about the mechanics. Since it was a blank slate, I just started clicking around. I clicked on a jellyfish and it flashed “shine” above it. When the word disappeared I tried holding down the mouse button and it stayed and began to get brighter. When the fish came and killed my shining jellyfish I tried again and kept it away from them.
That seems pretty intuitive to me, could you explain why it was unintuitive to you?
May 20th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
How could the interface be simplified any more? It is simply point and click.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the interface of the game and to insist, over and over, that there is completely ignores the point–both of my argument and the game itself.
The behavior of the elements in the game are consistent. This is not a case wherein sometimes a mouse click works and some times it doesn’t. This isn’t a case of spreadsheet formulas not working in certain cells. This is not a case of clicking File->Print, only to have the software offer to save the file.
The interface is an accurate reflection of the central mechanic of the game. The decision to provide feedback within a gamespace is a decision about the mechanics and dynamics of your game, not a decision about the interface. You cannot fail in this game. There is no fail state within the context of the game mechanics. To indicate, via the interface, that the player was somehow failing would have been an interface issue.
As it is, we’re discussing the game mechanics of a poetic game that some people, perhaps even many people, were unable to appreciate.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
I liked TID the first time I played it. It was simple, and after the initial hunt for interface, began to make sense. I have two half-gripes:
The first is a minor irritation: the poem itself doesn’t fit graphically with the rest of the interface. The flowing typeface seems disconnected from the rest of the art style. I like the pixel art of Daniel’s work, and I had to ignore the visual disconnect before I figured out to interact with the words themselves. They didn’t seem to be part of the game, initially.
The second gripe is that there is only one outcome (aside from quitting part way through) that I’ve been able to discover. Although I like that there are two solutions to escaping the shades (protect yourself or trap them). Daniel’s games have often been about how the choices we make affect the outcome of our lives. This seems oddly absent from TID.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I have experienced two different outcomes. There is a final decision you can make on the last screen.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
You may have been talking about game mechanics, but the only thing I’ve complained about is user interface. If you’re going to debate, please debate along the issues proposed. Finally, you’ve addressed the interface issue. You think it’s fine. Here’s what’s wrong.
Just how was I suppose to know it was a point and click interface? The mouse-over hilite causes the objects to jump away from the cursor, indicating to me they don’t want to be clicked on. That’s like an anti-interface. I am not making this up. It was my actual reaction.
When I clicked and released on any of the objects, they did nothing. A click-drag mechanism should indicate that the object has been grabbed when clicked.
Visually, I was compelled to click on the girl first, which did nothing. Then I clicked on the clear menace, the black fish, which did nothing. In my first trial of the game I never thought to click on the jellyfish, because my first attempts at clicking produced no results. And visually, the jellyfish are in the background which is commonly used for atmospheric effect.
In my first attempt, I did eventually start dragging the text around and figured out that I could replace the first word. The world changed, okay, I did something! But I was still carrying frustration as part of my experience. In the other worlds without the word ’shine’, you cannot do anything but change worlds and move shit around.
Also note that in the background of the painful world, cloudy stuff moves up at the same speed as the jellyfish, reinforcing the notion that they are just atmosphere.
After dragging around everything I could think of and nothing else happened, I gave up. Sounds like failure to me.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I think Daniel did address your issues, Keith, though it’s easier to understand the problems you had now that you’ve explained them.
Everything that can be clicked shifts when you move the mouse over the objects, which indicates their usefulness.
The squid, to me at least, are clearly not part of the background, because they’re animating using the same pixel style as the other movable objects.
And they do indeed change to reflect being clicked and held, further emphasizing what the player should do. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t have a click-drag indication is the girl. The fish jerk around instead of floating slowly.
Some sort of outline around a clicked object would take away from the effect for me, so I found the cues given more than adequate.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Sorry, in regards to the mouse-over highlight, I thought the objects were lifting up, indicating they wanted to be clicked, not jerking away. They didn’t attempt to avoid a mouse-click.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
You can stop telling me that I’m arguing off your point. Firstly, I am specifically addressing your points and secondly–if you do not like the fact that I disagree with your stance, both on the game and on your contention that the issues you cite are ones of interface, then you are free to take your conversation elsewhere. I enjoy a good debate as much as the next person, maybe more, but I do not enjoy being told how to conduct the conversation on my blog.
What you are referring to as an interface issue, I am stating is an intentional narrative decision made at the level of the game mechanics.
They jump, yes, but not away from the cursor. They consistently jump in the same direction, regardless of the direction your cursor is moving when it rolls over them. This behavior is consistent among all clickable objects in the game and a small amount of exploration reveals that the jellyfish all jump “up” according to their local orientation–a clear indicator that they are more than decorative background objects.
And who is to say that the objects want to be clicked? Perhaps it was an intentional decision to have them appear reluctant to suffer your touch,to alter the status quo, to affect change. When Bioshock’s designers completely removed control from the player in order to make a point about agency they are lauded as great storytellers, but when objects consistently jump in a single direction when moused-over, it is a broken interface?
The meaningful objects on the first screen, the jellyfish, do indicate this through an immediate state change. And the rest of the movable objects are revealed, by the designer’s choice, through player experimentation. This is not a broken interface. It is perhaps an obscure one, but one consistent with the themes and approach of the game’s design.
As with any good poem, Daniel has chosen to allow the user to take the experience at face value, to not explore the deeper meanings, to leave well enough alone should they chose to. You do not fail if you never leave the first screen and therefore an interface informing you of success or failure is irrelevant to the experience.
So what you are continuing to claim is an interface flaw, I am continuing to claim is an intentional design decision. And I suspect neither of us will be swaying the other’s opinion on that matter anytime soon.
And the final thing I have to say is that it sounds to me like you were reading it as a game, when it might have been less frustrating for you to play it like a poem.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
The one thing that I hate about artistic games like TID and the Path is that I always feel that I’m out of the loop when it comes time to talk about the deeper meaning behind them. I find it interesting for me that I didn’t even assume that there could have been a second ending until I read further on the comments here.
I think it’s the goal oriented gamer that I am, but everything clicked for me pretty fast. I did enjoy manipulating the poem as a game mechanic.
May 20th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
The jellyfish are behind everything else, except for the backdrop. Yes, they are in a pixelated style, but that was a weak clue compared to twice failing to elicit more than dragging the other pixelated objects. I never clicked on the jellyfish for that reason, and therefore did not learn that they change when held.
The jellyfish only animate as a group, drifting upward, again suggesting background. The two fish have more independent animation.
Not once did the jellyfish’s mouse-over reaction draw my attention. It must have happened repeatedly because there are so many of them and I was moving that mouse quite a bit. So I will claim that the jump-up reaction is a poor one. I am quite familiar with the jump-up reaction as a GRAB feedback. Probably not wise to use them cross-purpose in this way.
An interface must be judged upon it’s ability to facilitate involvement. It certainly hampered my involvement, and therefore I feel justified in saying that it is broken. Although technically that is an exaggeration, as an expression of my frustration, broken is a fine word.
Corvus, you have not persuaded me that these choices are intentional narrative design choice. At first you say, “What you are referring to as an interface issue, I am stating is an intentional narrative decision made at the level of the game mechanics.” Then you write, “Perhaps it was an intentional decision to have them appear reluctant to suffer your touch…” Are they or aren’t they? Where is your support for the thesis? Did you feel this way when you played it?
Finally, what am I suppose to think about this? “…it might have been less frustrating for you to play it like a poem.” ??? as is clearly stated on the packaging… including complete instructions for the preferred method. I mock you not. Please enlighten me.
Corvus, we may have to agree to disagree, and I regret getting testy about the conversation, but I did not feel that you had specifically addressed my complaints until your 2:14pm note.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Well, to be fair, my arguments become more clear as you provided more details about your complaints. To be equally fair, I was cranky today and more than happy to go toe to toe.
Regardless, my underlying point is that this is an experience that cries out to be interpreted as a piece of art, or a poem, and not as a commercially produced piece of software. My example in regards to the design decision re: the jellyfish is to show that various interpretations of the meaning provided by the object behaviors is possible, as well as their justification. As Travis states, he took the jump to be an eagerness on the part of the object to be manipulated.
That this simple interaction can be radically interpreted in multiple and conflicting ways supports my contention that approaching it as a poem, rather than a quantifiable videogame experience adhering to a fixed set of design rules, is a more useful approach to finding enjoyment and meaning.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
It’s a sure sign that we’re good friends if we can bicker like spouses.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I think what Corvus meant about playing the game as a poem is that a poem doesn’t come with instructions for interpreting it. If we commented on poetry like we did games, you’d likely suggest that they have varying difficulty levels: a stripped down, simplified version of the poem for those that didn’t want to work as hard, and maybe a medium version that did some of the work for you.
When I opened the game and saw a poem sitting at the top of the screen and some pixelated creatures floating around a woman tied to a rock, I was prepared to have to do a little work to figure out what the game intended.
Of course it’s fair to criticize the game if something just doesn’t make sense, or contrasts with the intended aesthetic, but it would be disappointing if everything if arrows were drawn to point out exactly what I was supposed to do. You have to consider how added interface handicaps to facilitate understanding would impact the experience of the game.
May 21st, 2009 at 4:51 am
Handholding can be appropriate for some games, but in this instance, I feel it would have taken the art out of the whole thing. I shudder at the idea of forcing a poem to be overt.
Version One: Poem as is (William Blake’s The Lily):
“The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,
The humble sheep a threat’ning horn:
While the Lily white shall in love delight,
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.”
Version Two: Poem altered to be easily understood:
“Today I am going to talk about the meaning of pure love.
Roses, which are flowers and a traditional symbol of romantic love and beauty, may appear lovely, but still have sharp pokey thorns that can hurt us. That’s not good! They are impure! Romantic love is bad!
Sheep don’t seem threatening either, but really they are! They have sharp pointy horns, despite the biblical connotation of sheep being gentle and humble. They are also impure! I may or may not mean to say that God’s love is impure. Possibly. This kind of love is bad!
Lilies are pretty, white and non-threatening. They represent nature, sans connotations of god or romance. They ARE pure! They are the best symbol of pure love. Love without patriarchal threats and/or sexual passion is the best! Yay!”
Typing that last bit hurt me. Explaining each piece detracts from the artistic purpose of poem (some artists would refer to this as dumbing down their work). Altering TID’s interface would have a similar effect on the game. Not everyone will like or understand TID, which is fine. We’re allowed to have differing tastes.
I must take issue with the complaint that the interface is too complex. There *really* isn’t all that much to click on. With enough patience and exploration, the game is very, very simple. I first played it while on a break at my day job. I tried to, in Corvus’ words, “play it like a game.” I paid little attention to symbolism and quickly tried to juggle things around on the screen to get ahead. I wanted to get from point A to point B. My first impression was, “this looks cool … but I don’t get it.” Intrigued, but defeated, I left the game and returned to work. Later, in the wee hours of the morning, I tried it again with nothing but TID to focus on. When I approached it calmly and with few expectations, I navigated my way through the meaning of the poem and got two different endings. It was delightful. Instead of assuming there was a linear story, I just poked around for awhile, enjoying how things interacted with one another.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:54 am
I talked this over with my wife Tam last night, as while she was gone, I made her play this game. Realizing she’s not really familiar with these sorts of games, I gave her the simple instruction “click on everything”.
As we talked last night, she said that helped her immensely with exploring the game. I have to wonder sometimes if those of us with more game literacy suffer from a reverse problem where we too quickly form a mental model of how a game should work, and thus miss some elements of the gameplay? I’ve certainly had it happen in some games where I never considered doing something because “in these kinds of games you can’t do that.” Only the one I was playing did allow it.
(I wish I could remember the concrete example where this happened to me.)
December 17th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
[...] the player to manipulate. The unusual gameplay can take a little while to get the hang of, but take Corvus’s advice: “don’t read it like a game, play it like a [...]