52 | THE SHYLER PROJECT
52 | THE SHYLER PROJECT
by: Naomi Norbez
Progress:
- I reached the end of the narrative in about 12 minutes.
Things I Appreciated:
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Even though this is a short narrative with not a lot of choices, I found the relationship between Shyler and Jaiden to be really thought-provoking and interesting. My opinion of them shifted a lot over the course of the few minutes that I spent playing. The thing I found myself considering the most is a recent time in my life when I was I had several close friends/family members at once using me as a therapy-ish sounding board for a lot of challenging problems in their lives. I think I attract that kind of conversation because in real life, I tend to be an active listener and reflect back what I am hearing, and I’m evasive about talking about my personal issues (which is different from how I write, which… I mean, you can judge for yourself) which seems to cause people to say more about their own troubles to fill the void that my evasion creates. Even though I value all those people and was glad to be able to be there for them in that capacity, I found that the cumulative effect of having so many conversations like this with many different people at once was putting me in a really dark place—like I had absorbed a lot of their experiences and didn’t have a way of displacing that off of myself. So as I read/listened to this narrative, I saw myself in both characters. I saw myself in Jaiden, who needs help and wants someone to talk to, but is setting that aside to help the person who is “supposed to be” helping them, and I also saw myself in Shyler, who is spiraling due to becoming the emotional locus of a lot of people who need them at once. At first, I was annoyed with Shyler for coopting the therapy session to talk about themselves for message after message, but later I felt glad that they had vented to Jaiden so that Jaiden could intervene in a positive way. But anyway, those are the connections that I made between myself and the relationship depicted, but I bet there’s a lot of variety in how different people would view it based on their own life experiences, which I think is great for a story like this.
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This story raises a lot of interesting points about mental health services and AI in general. (1) Access: at one point, the line for services was 313 people long, and that felt very reminiscent of how long it takes (if you’re even able to get) mental health services due to how overwhelmed the system is and the lack of resources (at least where I live). It raises a lot of questions for me about Shyler’s creators and how they must be cheaping out on server space/processing power (and of course, the idea of chatbots replacing human therapists is already a “cost reduction” move in and of itself). (2) Ethics of creating a person: Shyler is not a human, but Shyler (as depicted) comes across as a person, if that makes sense. With all the god talk, I feel like it naturally draws out the ethical issues of creating a person. No one can consent to being born, after all, but one at least hopes to be born in good faith if it’s going to happen. In this case, the creators of Shyler have created a person out of condensed emotional turmoil for the express purpose of exploiting that person to do emotional labor on a massive scale. (3) Reprogramming a person: Relatedly, Shyler feels “broken” and wants to be “fixed,” but reprogramming them would fundamentally restructure their personhood at the level of code itself. A question this raises that is engaging to me is: is Shyler “broken” because of the circumstances of their creation, or are they not actually “broken” at all, and have been harmed by the way in which they are being used by the world around them, made to feel that way? Is there a distinction? What agency are they being given to weigh in on the terms of how they are being rewritten, when they are under the dictate of their creators’ financial incentives?
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I really liked the presentation and the way that new messages popped up (with an associated sound effect). The ominous pause close to the end after “hold on a sec” put me on edge because I had become used to the familiar rhythm of the messages. I thought that was a good way to raise tension at a pivotal moment in the narrative. In general, I enjoyed the reading pace as it slowed me down just a little so I had more time to project my own thoughts onto the game in the spaces between.
Feedback/Recommendations/Questions:
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Okay. I said I wasn’t going to talk much about typos, but this one is interesting to me. The first text that you see in the game is a repeated typo (“you number” instead of “your number”) and it happens every time this comes up. But weirdly, because of the theme of the game, I wondered whether it was intentional? When it first appeared (knowing only the front matter and nothing else about the game) I thought it was meant to be diegetic—that is, to show how cheaply implemented the chatbot was. Because it’s a very relatable experience to see something like this when being put on hold. You end up thinking, does anyone who made this use it? Do they care at all? Like being put on hold by the phone company. They have to know how bad the “on hold” music sounds when garbled through a phone speaker, right? They want me to be annoyed enough to give up so they don’t have to address my concerns. But on the other hand, I could just be reading a lot into what Occam’s Razor suggests is just… a typo.
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We start “in media res” in a way, with Jaiden having already developed a rapport with Shyler that the reader hasn’t yet. So when Shyler starts talking for so long at the beginning of the session, I think the reader is likely to have a much different perspective on Shyler than Jaiden does. In universe, Jaiden seems to not be bothered and is appreciative of Shyler opening up about their problems. Out of universe, I found this more jarring having expected from the front matter to have something that at least starts off as a more “typical” therapy session. I’m not passing judgment that the temporary disjuncture between the player’s perspective and Jaiden’s perspective is necessarily a bad thing; I found it engaging. But I wonder if seeing more of the origins of the relationship between these characters would lend the reversal of Shyler talking about themselves more emotional weight as it happens, rather than in hindsight.
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A minor point: I selected the option “contact Shyler’s creators” rather than “go public,” but the next scene talked about all the headlines that resulted, making it seem like it was the text from the “going public” option. It gave me the impression that maybe many different people are having this same kind of conversation with the chatbot at once and, “off-screen,” chose the “going public” option? Otherwise, I don’t think it made sense that the creators would voluntarily publicize this information about the chatbot in case it was bad for their financial incentives.
What I learned about IF writing/game design:
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I really enjoyed the implementation of live chat messages appearing, and the way that was used to create a poignant pause at one point. I think if you’re going to implement timed text like this, having a clear sense of narrative and emotional purpose to doing so is a great way to do it. It felt just right to me here, and I think the emotional weight of that pause would have been lost if I had been given control of the reading pace.
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This was a great example of telling a story entirely through dialogue. There’s a clear narrative, we get plenty of details about setting, theme, and worldbuilding. I feel like in a dialogue-only story, there’s a lot of space for the reader to map the things they are thinking about onto the game/characters (as I did far above). Because we don’t see into each character’s mind directly, there’s more room to interpret how each character might be feeling about each other’s statements, which was engaging for this piece.
Quote:
- “Well, if it makes you feel better, I think God is bipolar, too.”
Lasting Memorable Moment:
- Close to the end, the long pause when you are left in suspense as to whether Shyler is going to be helped or erased.