The Cleveland Clinic’s article is quite a good explanation. But it’s essentially a systematic, abusive pattern of behaviour used to ‘deteriorate someone’s morality, sanity and sense of self.’ It’s meant to get the target to question their ‘sanity, foundational beliefs and decision-making capabilities.’
An example might be if an abusive partner struck their partner, and then went on to vehemently deny that they had ever done so, that they would ever do so, and devolved into them painting out their partner as being ‘crazy’ and ‘attention seeking’ and ‘making things up to paint themselves out to be the victim,’ to the victim and those mutually involved in their lives, such that the person who was hit begins questioning whether or not they had ever really been hit in the first place.
After all, they keep insisting they had never struck them- maybe they had merely been raising their hand but restrained themselves, despite the fact that they are ‘so clearly asking for it’ and ‘so insufferable that they’d deserve it’ but 'they’re so loving, that of course they wouldn’t hurt them- how could they accuse them of such a hurtful thing? How could they hurt them like this? Don’t they love them? Don’t they trust them? What’s wrong with them, that they don’t love and trust their devoted, caring, compassionate partner, who just wants what’s best for them? Who does what’s best for them, even when they make it next to impossible? Who else loves them like that? Who else ever would?
Don’t they see how much they love them, how much they suffer and put up with, specifically because they love them- what a saint. Forgiving someone so irredeemable- someone who was so abusive as to accuse them of being abusive! What a good person. How could they disbelieve such a good, kindhearted person, who only ever has their best interests at heart? Maybe they really need to relax- the stress in their life is really getting to them, it’s making them see things that aren’t there, read too much into situations- they’re defensive for no reason, cagey for no reason- they’re just paranoid. They need a wake up call from someone who loves them- someone who can be objective. They’ll get their friends and family to be gentler with them, because they love them, and they’re worried about their mental health, they’re delusional.’
Surely it wasn’t intentional even if they had, and would it even really count if it wasn’t maliciously meant? So really, maybe their partner is right- everyone else seems to believe so, seems to think they’re cracking under stress and going through a bit of a rough patch, but nothing seriously wrong is afoot- their partner is looking out for their best interests, and they weren’t actually really hit, it’s not that big of a deal, they shouldn’t make such a big fuss about it- because it didn’t really happen, and even if it did, it’s not a big deal. They’re just overthinking things. They’re just seeing things that aren’t there.
michael provided a good definition but here’s some ways it might manifest in IF games
the pc might be undermined and abused by another character over the course of the game but the player knows that what’s the manipulative character is claiming is false and destructive (an in-universe depiction)
the game itself undermines the player’s understanding of, and ability to interact with, the reality of the game. (a 4th wall breaking depiction). I’ve seen this version more than the former, tho I can’t quite think of specific examples. this often happens with psychological horror and surreal games.
game choices or abilities may appear or disappear with the game insisting that they never/always were available to you
descriptions of in-game items, characters, and events warp and change over time without explicit acknowledgement by the narrator that they’ve changed
the game belittles or mocks you for trying to investigate any changes or reference things that are no longer there
the game explicitly removes abilities, choices, and other agency to punish you for disobeying its directions or ignoring the new descriptions/state of the game’s reality
note that surreal games with changing imagery are not enough, imo, to count as gaslighting games. the narrator of the game is usually a strong character in and of themself, even (or especially) when they insist they’re just an impartial narrator.
That’s a great breakdown. Do you think “unreliable narrator” gambits would constitute gaslighting?
[EDIT: The answer is no, not really - gaslighting is most often a negative harmful psychological gambit and not in league with “unreliable narrator” as an authorial technique. I meant the question as food for thought but some of the replies took it more personally and I apologize. Also: My read and understanding of Orwell’s 1984 is not as extensive as many other community members’ studied comprehension of it.]
Unreliable Narrator is a technique where the player is led to believe or infer certain things about a character, story, or situation, usually in service to setting up a shocking reveal or revelation later that everything you thought up until that point was wrong. Examples are Adam Cadre’s 9:05 - Details or Victor Gijsberg’s De Baron - Details or Jason McIntosh’s The Warbler's Nest - Details (note De Baron and Warbler’s are both very triggery).
It’s possible that in this technique the author may be considered to be benignly gaslighting the player in service to the story and plot structure, even if the characters in the story are not. In The Haunting of Hill House series, Mike Flanagan purposely tells the story out of order - because he’s limiting understanding to only what the featured character in each episode personally knows and is aware of - to put the audience in that character’s world view and to reserve many plot mechanics and revelations for the very end specifically for that enjoyable avalanche of “It was all right there in front of me the entire time!” realization that we all appreciate in narratives like this.
I suppose the answer is “not necessarily” as often Unreliable Narrator employs clever lying by omission most of the time instead of blatantly giving false information. James in Silent Hill 2never directly lies to the player, he just doesn’t ever mention the most important information about the situation. In this case he is in denial and it might be said he is “gaslighting” himself, although it’s probably a different psychosis when a person is practicing self-deception and it is the manifestation of Silent Hill itself trying to symbolically and obliquely make him come to terms with what he doesn’t reveal to the player nor consider himself.
I suppose true “gaslighting” is lying to another person with intentional purpose to change their opinion and worldview despite evidence to the contrary. Such as how Big Brother gaslights the entire populace in Orwell’s 1984 to keep them under control. The very classic quote “We have always been at war with EastAsia” is absolute gaslighting on a massive scale, and the opponent frequently changes despite insistence it has “always” been that way.
The term “Gaslighting” is named for the movie that employed it and defines the trope.
She is plagued by noises coming from the boarded-up attic, and notices the gaslights dimming for no apparent reason when Gregory is not home, which he assures her is only her imagination.
Imho, in 1984, Orwell shows how controlling the signifier component of language allows the meaning to be channeled and, consequently, thought to be controlled. It seems to me that this type of conditioning precedes gaslighting and even makes it possible to reduce its cost.
Also, doublethink involves voluntary self-manipulation (under constraint, that’s true). The individual must consciously adopt and maintain contradictory beliefs, requiring mental effort to align with the official narrative. The truth is entirely flexible and malleable, shaped according to the needs of those in power. The individual is made to believe that something and its opposite can simultaneously be true, depending on the directives given.
Big Brother shapes, re-educates, and reconstructs the psyche: this seems different to me from gaslighting, where the victim experiences mental deterioration and a loss of self-esteem, both as an objective and as a method of domination.
That said, I’m not an expert on gaslighting, and I’m just nitpicking about my favorite book. This is not an objection !
I would not say unreliable narrator is necessarily gaslighting, but gaslighting in games usually necessitates being an unreliable narrator. me and my husb were talking about the distinction. Another example of unreliable perception is the beginning of Soma which doesn’t reveal the POV character is in the body of someone/something else for quite a bit until something jars his, and thus the player’s understanding into the true nature of the situation, but I would not say that example is gaslighting.
I think the key is that gaslighting is a pattern of abuse toward someone else. (I also don’t think “self-gaslighting” is real, but rather a manifestation of having been gaslighted…since definitionally gaslighting causes you to doubt yourself).
gaslighting doesn’t just affect your perceptions of the past, it affects your future behavior and judgment in a negative way, and causes you to blame yourself for the “mistakes” you’ve made.
if you go forward from a reveal that the narrator is unreliable and think “oh wow the narrator is a dick” or “oh! that’s what was really happening!” that’s probably not gaslighting.
if you go forward from an event and think a mix of feelings like “oh I must’ve misunderstood”, “did I remember that right?”, “I don’t know what to do to not fuck up again”, and “these events must have been my fault”, that’s more like gaslighting.
sidenote, stuff like 1984 definitely facilitates gaslighting and cognitive dissonance for their populace. apparently philosophytube has a video about this, and calls it epistemic injustice-- epistemic meaning “truth”. in other words, the imbalance and injustice in who gets to assert the truth of a situation.
I think a key feature of gaslighting is telling the victim that they are wrong in order to make them doubt themselves. Your examples of unreliable narrators in IF don’t really do this - they just don’t bother to highlight information which would generally be considered relevant.
I think actually gaslighting the player in a work of IF (seeing aside the question of whether that’s something you might/should want to do) would be fairly difficult given the availability of transcripts and the option of replaying the game - the whole point is that the victim is driven to doubt because it becomes a question of one person’s word against another’s, with no way to actually check the facts.
I think you’re right - Unreliable Narrator is a narrative technique, where gaslighting is in most respects a psychological gambit. The author is usually not seeking to permanently lie to the reader or make them believe something that is not true - at least not by the end of the story.
Usually harmful, but I suppose there could be benign gaslighting akin to a white lie - such as when you receive a hideous sweater as a present and you’re like “No, I love this, and I totally look forward to wearing it!” and keep that ruse up to make the person feel good about what they tried to do.
Characters within IF could totally employ gaslighting as a character trait, or plot point.
I’m going to make a distinction. I think there is another similar device that is unreliable framing, which is when the story is presented in a way that makes the reader (viewer / player) make unwarranted assumptions about the relation of the narrator to the story. This is different from unreliable narrators, who play an active part in telling the story in a misleading way (either by action or omission), and from gaslighting, where the reader is directly lied to.
Two examples from literature, both spoilery. I have omitted enough context to avoid the actual payload of the spoilers, but be warned.
In Julian Barnes’ A Sense of an Ending, the narrator is honestly telling us his story from his point of view, but he is mistaken. Things in the past did actually happen as he tells us, but they have a very different interpretation from the one he offers. The narrator is unreliable, not because he wants to deceive, but because he does not realize the meaning of the things he is saying. It is up to the reader to make inferences, but naturally, this does not happen, therefore enabling the payload.
In one of my own published stories, which will go unnamed, a child dies in a hit-and-run accident, witnessed by his mother. The narration cuts to a much later time, after years have passed, and the woman narrator is seen grieving for the loss of the child, her life torn apart by the trauma, the narrative being framed in the present about other things in her life, but obsessed about what could have prevented the accident that day. The twist is that this narrator is not the child’s mother, but the driver that killed the child. This is unreliable framing, as the narrator is in fact reliable and the reader is not lied to: it is the framing of the story which is misleading, not the characters in it. This is, after a fashion, the opposite of the device in Example 1, because here there is nothing within the story compelling the reader to make inferences, but they do.
I suppose true “gaslighting” is lying to another person with intentional purpose to change their opinion and worldview despite evidence to the contrary. Such as how Big Brother gaslights the entire populace in Orwell’s 1984 to keep them under control.
That would be disingenuous, since 1984 popularized several other words that have become roughly as popular as “gaslighting.”
Saying that Big Brother gaslights citizens would be like saying that the antagonist in Gaslight thought policed his wife and was Orwellian in his surveillance of her.
Technically true, but it would be weird to say it. At least IMO.
I think the reason that you can stretch “gaslighting” to apply to harmful self-deception (like in Silent Hill 2) is that there’s not really any popular term for it.
I also think the unreliable narrator thing is separate in that case … you could write Silent Hill 2 in such a way that it features that same self-deception but everything is known to the player. You could still say that James is gaslighting himself and it would make sense.
Another applicable trope is “bait and switch” - less of a long term deception, often used in humor as “mood whiplash” or a cinematic match cut which is ironic instead of supporting the previous scene.
And agreed “gaslighting” as applied to Big Brother is an understatement since it’s more systematic groupthink brainwashing. One of my favorite extended passages in 1984 is how the government tries to shorten, combine, and eliminate words (like “groupthink”!) to simplify and meme-ify information so there’s less to actually consider.
I think gaslighting is fundamentally an abuse tactic, and things that are not grounded in abuse remind one of gaslighting without being that thing itself. Which sometimes is powerful enough! Storytellers remind us of things all the time.
The term is historically grounded within the context of relationships that are close, be they familial, romantic, or some other similar thing. If a cashier lied to me in way that hoped to deteriorate my sense of the real, it probably wouldn’t work. They don’t have the necessary connection to me. Likewise, whatever disturbance I feel in being lied to by the state would not be the same as the one I would feel if, say, a parent lied to me.
So while Oceania could get up to all kinds of horrible stuff with me, dishonest stuff, Oceania couldn’t exploit our closeness or intimacy because we have none. Gaslighting weaponizes trust and intimacy, doesn’t it? That’s the fuel it burns. I think the victim has to want to believe, perhaps even need to, in a way that is deeply personal.
The question of whether a game could gaslight a player is an interesting one. If there’s a character we like enough, that we want to believe, the narrative could exploit that. I see Doki Doki Literature Club mentioned. What a great game! I do think what happens there is more than mere lying. That was a case where I liked the characters AND had some pretty fixed genre expectations. The smart thing happening there is that we as players are lured into expecting a likable genre experience, and then that gets turned on its head. If it isn’t gaslighting, it definitely could be about gaslighting, since it clearly takes advantage of player affections and interests.
I think parser games (that’s my primary field of interest, craft-wise) trying to gaslight might just be assumed to be implemented poorly, since phenomena like absent-yet-mentioned things are a common pitfall.
I think one could make an attempt at this, but it would be fairly fragile. My example involves spoilers for 9:05:
Imagine a version of the game with a post-credits comment that said something like “I was inspired to write this game because I noticed that players always overlook the second paragraph of the initial room description.” After seeing this, you type RESTART from the post-game prompt and the game apparently starts again … and sure enough, there’s a second paragraph on the initial room description that says “The carpet under the bed is soaked with blood.” My inclination is that most people would suspect trickery at this point, but it’s possible that one or two might genuinely come away thinking “wow, I sure am a less attentive reader than I thought I was …”
The technique of unreliable narrator, done well, gives little clues along the way so that the careful reader figures out on their own that the narrator is telling a story to make themselves look better than they really are. The reader feels clever for having picked up these clues, which is just the opposite of gas lighting
If there is a writing technique designed to make the reader feel helpless and at the mercy of the narrator, I would categorize that as cult-writing, and wouldn’t expect the author to be generous enough to include a content advisory.
Another good one. The best thing about bait-and-switch in IF is that you can make it explicit, blatantly telling the player “hey look, bait for you”, and if done well, they will take it because of the expectation that some interesting things may happen with the narrative. This was something Rod Pike used to do in his C64 originals in the mid-80s, though I don’t remember specific examples right now.
The example with 9:05 qualifies as gaslighting, in my view. At least I totally fell for it, believing I had missed the text in past playthroughs. I would have felt incensed when I realised the trick, but it was done so neatly that I couldn’t but admire it.
I don’t know, I think there might be ways to do it. If there’s a chair listed in the room description and you try to examine it and get a default “you don’t see any such thing” message, then yeah, that just looks like bad implementation, but if then the next time the room description is printed, the chair isn’t listed, then you’re getting somewhere. An error message that’s slightly different from the game’s default error message would also help communicate that this was intentional, although at the expense of truly deceiving the reader. But then, I’m not sure perfectly replicating the experience of gaslighting via game/player interactions is necessary or even desirable.
