Narrative and Perspective in LiveALive
LiveaLive is a fascinating game. I’m most impressed with its ability to weave 7 narratives into a comprehensive whole but in an unexpected way. It is a game of great storytelling, unique characters, and small worlds which are built to highlight the unique characteristics of a particular era. For people who do not have much experience with RPG’s, LiveALive is a great introductory game because the mechanics are mostly simple and while there are some challenges, they are not insurmountable for newcomers (which is rare for such an old game.)
I’m choosing this game for my first post on the new website because it is a good introduction into my background and how I will approach new game content which I post on here. Part of my graduate studies were looking at the development of narrative and perspective and how that formation led to certain behaviors. I studied a lot of rituals and conference settings to try to understand how people were being coerced to behave in ways ultimately harmful to themselves and others. In examining games and applying those lessons to real life, narrative and perspective are themes which will come up regularly. I believe the stories we tell as a society have a great influence on the behaviors we exhibit and I think gaming as an art is a great way to examine the narratives we believe and the stories we tell others.
I do not believe in hard objectivity, and it took a long journey for me to be at a place where I am fine with a relativistic world where what we see is a probability of circumstances more than an objective fact, particularly at a subatomic level. There is great fear, trepidation, and a sense of responsibility which comes with moving away from worldviews which are handed by faith and belief and building one’s own narrative. I understand this journey and this channel will provide opportunities for reflection and engagement with a variety of ethical quandaries and narratives using the video games we all love as the basis for our reflection.
So back to LiveALive, the key thing in this game to consider is to read the name of the bosses carefully, this took me for a loop too. (It is a major spoiler to reveal much more and I want this post to encourage people to play this game. I will give spoiler warnings when posting about major game narratives for games which have had a sufficient cycle.) Challenges and evil arise in every time and place and manifest in different forms. In each time period, it is up to sentient beings to fight back against situations which harm the common good while being imperfect themselves. LiveALive is written in a way where the characters feel real because no one is cartoonishly evil and no one is unrealistically good. Characters have growth, development, and reflection and the evil motives feel mostly like a troubling discovery where someone takes a wrong interpretation but trying to look at a real problem. This high level of writing makes the characters more relatable but also gives more avenues to reflect on our own behavior.
The two questions I will leave this entry with are 1) what are your own values? If we are going to talk about narrative and perspective as a base line, it is vital to have a good grounding so our own identity doesn’t get caught swimming in things which are bad for the common good? This does not mean becoming inflexible, but it does mean having a good ground point and a couple of non-negotiables for acceptable behavior. For example, I value dialogue as a way of bridging understanding. However, I also know that appeals for dialogue are harmful to marginalized communities and don’t often result in having a greater respect for others’ humanity. That means if dialogue is harmful to others, I have to respond. Racism, Sexism, homophobia, etc are all not tolerated in this space. But valuing dialogue means I have a greater capacity to listen because my values make me practice behaviors and deal with nuances so I can prevent abuse from happening in my spaces. Over time, I’m looking forward to meeting many of you and dialoguing about our own values and how we can be inspired to create deeper connections and explore different social norms.
2) how do you have to behave in manners inconsistent with your values in order to function in society? My biggest challenge is feeling disconnected because we’re encouraged in society to live in our own little pods, support our own little pods of people, and everyone and everything else comes down the line. I’ve never had one group of friends in one little pod where we all huddled together. I’ve always had people from a variety of perspectives who match with my level of weirdness, even when I was more toxic and fundamentalist. I lose my sense of solidarity with a variety of other people because I have to manage the expectations of social living and to not be screwed over by a landlord so I have to make a lot of time to buy all of my own stuff and manage my own household when I would rather have more time to write and be with other people wrestling with these or similar questions.
Once you engage these two questions, you will be able to work to come up with unique perspectives for how the world could be because the dissonance will feel real in your own heart, as painful as it is and you will be engaged in building the solution for yourself or building systemic solutions to try to change the influences in our lives. I’m excited to teach critical thinking. Today was an easy post because I don’t want to spoil LiveALive too much for you all by delving too deeply into its plot and I want you to get to know how I process information and how I go about helping people develop their own value structures. I’m looking forward to this journey with you all.
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