Chinese New Year was exhausting… Well, anyone who’s played Chinese Family Dinner Moment will know what I think about it, haha…
I would say this is more of a recency bias on my part and also because it’s easier to write about. For example, I originally wanted to write about SPY INTRIGUE as an example of a game that uses both simulation and ellipsis, but the game was offline when I tried to write about it and it felt too big to talk about anyway. I also thought of older titles like Thomas M. Disch’s Amnesia and Steve Meretzky’s A Mind Forever Voyaging, but they don’t really fit how people tend to think of trauma-informed IF and they’re complicated anyway.
Rather than show my ignorance of older interactive fiction in a space that’s already knowledgeable about the stuff, I decided to focus on newer titles that I’ve played recently. Not only would it be more accessible for writing, but I also think it’s a good way to introduce people to newer games they may not be familiar with. That’s why I personally included DO NOT KILL THE SLEEPING BEAST because it’s a short title that’s worth playing.
I’m conscious of this as I wrote and revised the article. While the likelihood of a traumatized creator is quite high, I find it not only too armchair for my taste but more importantly, I don’t find it effective as an analytical tool (especially for the audience of Rosebush, the developers of interactive fiction).
It’s not very interesting to say “This game is representative of Author XYZ’s trauma”. It says nothing about how writers explore trauma or how players experience trauma. At best, this kind of biographical criticism judges the game by some vague metrics of accuracy and authenticity. Even if we’re the best judges, that doesn’t really help us make or discuss these games.
Because I don’t find this angle intellectually satisfying, it took me a long time to figure out how to say something original and interesting about interactive fiction about trauma. The identification angle was something I landed on after months of refining and wondering what I actually found insightful about these kinds of games. It helps us move beyond psychoanalyzing the creators and allows us to define a goal or two. I don’t think my analysis is perfect, but I hope it’s able to carve out a new language or paradigm to discuss these titles without guessing how traumatized someone is.
In fact, I think the best part is that you can explore titles with trauma without being exposed to it. On a more meta/abstract level, I feel like the post is the culmination of my thoughts on other subcultures that explore traumatic fiction tropes (RPG Maker horror games, anyone?). The general observations of the article can be applied to a lot of other things, and trauma narrative media just happens to be a good case study for what I’m interested in with subculture media.
An excellent example of why writing about trauma games shouldn’t be psychoanalytical. Thanks for making the game 