“Life is Tumblr”: A Refutation
As established in my previous essay for Epilogue, most of the critical discussion surrounding Life is Strange (2015) severely misses the point. I articulated a ludonarrative defense of the game, arguing that Life is Strange is the best iteration of its genre. In this essay, I’d like to specifically address one of the most popular and mordant of critics who have argued at length that this game is a waste of time, and point out – at length – why these arguments are wrong.
The YouTube channel E;R shredded Life is Strange with withering criticism in his video, “Mad Maxine: Life is Tumblr” (2015), and so I’d like to spend some time refuting his arguments. E;R’s video is a quintessential embodiment of the internet-comments kind of view that this game is, essentially, garbage. His contrarian viewpoint, of course, swims against the tide of GameSpot (8/10), Game Informer (8.5/10), and of course Steam (10/10) reviews. But, at the same time, E;R’s views are downstream of IGN (6.5/10) as well as many anonymous comment sections throughout the internet.
The problem with the arguments in E;R’s video have nothing to do with its humor or editing. Rather, the arguments are reductionistic, they radically oversimplify the game. Worse, they are lazy arguments. The armchair misogyny in E;R’s first point, for instance, “Chloe is a c*nt,” hints at the rigor of rest of his video. It also betrays a sense of narrow-minded impatience with the game.
To be charitable to E;R and critics like him, let’s briefly run through some of what I consider to be E;R’s better arguments. Primarily, he argues, Life is Strange imitates the Telltale genre badly; it markets itself as a videogame and yet removes all of the actual gameplay elements. His ultimate frustration seems to be that this game’s ending reveals a binary choice: a choice that, in his view, doesn’t matter. Where his arguments fundamentally fall apart, however, is when he argues that narrative-centric games as an economic trend is a bad thing. That is, he wants more “game” in his games. And, for the sake of cheap humor, critics like E;R obfuscate the redeeming character of these recent heavily narrative-based videogames. Games like Life is Strange are only going to improve.
Players like E;R sacrifice narrative for mechanics, which might be a fundamental difference between those who approach games for their ludonarrative and those who do not. This evaluation (or, as I might call, a misevaluation) of the relationship between gameplay and storytelling betrays an unreachable attitude to which the term “ludonarrative” fails to appeal. Players who pick up Life is Strange wanting instant gratification are putting the cart before the horse. Life is Strange is valuable as a videogame precisely because you have to work to be rewarded.
E;R’s second point is that Life is Strange abandons everything that makes a game a game, a critique which is shared among other YouTube personalities. This critique, of course, takes for granted and thereby assumes a false premise for everything this game offers. The rewind mechanic, as I argued in my previous article, is deeply embedded into this game’s ludonarrative infrastructure. The ability to rewind – or “do over” again – is itself a vital kind of game mechanic that allows the player access to multimodal storytelling that Life is Strange offers. This forced dismissal of the game’s mechanics arises only because of the degree to which Life is Strange succeeds in compelling the player in its cutscenes, dialogue choices, and narratives.
E;R’s next point is that choices don’t matter in Life is Strange because the binary decision at the end of the game – to sacrifice Chloe or Arcadia Bay – is, well, binary. The choice, as E;R and others have elucidated, is between erasing 14-18 hours of emotionally invested gameplay, and doubling-down on some rather adolescently considered (impulsive) decisions that ultimately result in the death and destruction of Max’s and Chloe’s entire childhood town: Arcadia Bay. If you assume that the final choice is binary, then critiques like E;R’s are valid. But these conclusions about the final choice are post-hoc, or conclusions made about the videogame’s narrative after the fact.
The final choice is not in any way less meaningful because of its binary nature. Rather, the entire history of earlier choices comprises the complex relationship between player and character. This history is what creates meaning in the otherwise binary ending. The player’s moral contemplation and moral deliberation is almost entirely contingent upon how they’ve (perhaps) unwittingly spent the previous episodes choosing what then, at the end, becomes an impossible sacrificial choice.
A surprisingly narrow-minded point of contention for E;R, specifically, is his negation that the recent trend towards narratively-driven games is a good thing. Astonishingly, he argues that this shift into narrative, as opposed to gameplay, is an unwelcome shift. In reality, this is not only an economic shift but a shift in maturity. Videogames are finally developing a vernacular of their own, a canon to which lovers of the medium can refer skeptics. It might not make much sense for a “gamer” to buy into a bunch of stories, at least at the expense of gameplay. Sadly, this attitude overlooks the very crux of what the term “ludonarrative” is intended to signify and celebrate. But, to players who aren’t here for the story, E;R’s point still stands.
According to E;R, each character in Life is Strange mimics a bad high school stereotype. To a humorous extent, he is correct in his assessment. Looking at Max, Chloe, Nathan, Victoria, etc., it becomes clear how parodical each character is in their archetype. But to critique this game by virtue of its stereotypes is to throw the baby out with the bathwater. High school might be more nuanced than the portrayal that Life is Strange offers, but negating narrative archetypes simply because they are archetypes is absurd. The characters, flat as they may tend to be for the casual gamer, appear to be narratively translucent. They don’t get in the way of plot progression. Rather, the game deceptively offers characters like Nathan as distractions by virtue of how “transparent” the characters are in their archetypes. The game invites players to believe in the naive representation of its characters, thereby falling prey to Mr. Jefferson’s trap. The telling of Life is Strange’s story is more sophisticated than one might think – notably if these critiques sustained themselves merely beyond the introductory episode.
The most substantial critique that E;R seems to offer is that Nathan, the framed antagonist of the game’s first three episodes, is a literal red herring. (No, he’s not a fish.) Nathan’s status as a narrative distraction is both frustrating and alienating to players who think to themselves, “Why not just get to the point?” But Nathan is proffered by the game’s first few episodes as a viable suspect for the serial killer that is responsible for Rachel’s mysterious disappearance. And this trope, once revealed, all of a sudden relayers the player’s past decisions with meaning.
Nathan is set up as the rich kid whose family has bought off not only the Blackwell high school staff, but the Arcadia Bay police force as well. Early on in Life is Strange, one of Max’s early plot-affecting choices is whether to report Nathan to principal Wells. The player can judge from her experience both confessing and omitting the details to the principal. To most players, it seems that Max must stick with the truth of her story: tell principal Wells that Nathan was brandishing a gun in the girl’s restroom. But immediately upon this truthful confession to the principal, Max faces repercussions for her honesty. This scene presents itself as crucial at the time, especially to the naive first-time player. Yet, as critics insist, there is nothing substantial offered in terms of plot by the end of Life is Strange: Nathan becomes a chess piece on the storyboard. Again, this game isn’t important because of the means involved by the ends, but rather how the ends are affected by the means.
To E;R’s point, if Nathan were cut out of the game and the true killer were revealed from the game’s beginning, then the story would make more sense. I disagree. Nathan serves to believably underscore the sketchier details of people like Rachel’s disappearance. His presence textures a realism into the mystery of Life is Strange’s narrative; playing the game is an ambiguous experience. If Mr. Jefferson had been revealed as the serial killer from the game’s beginning, then the ending of Episode 4 and the entirety of Episode 5 would be cheapened by obviousness. Furthermore, the developers would have had no reason to explore other character arcs that, according to these sort of plot-driven ires, arise in large part due to the developers integrating lore.
E;R returns to his implicitly anti-SJW agenda in his critique when he mentions that Max is famous (within Arcadia Bay) for her selfies: the worst part of Tumblr culture. I’d tip my fedora to E;R and agree here, because selfies are a bit vain and unsophisticated as a photographic “art” form, but E;R takes his critique to an ad hominem degree. His arguments here are predicated on a superficial critique, which is an attempt to undermine the game’s deeper narrative. How could this ridiculing approach ever be effective in winning others over to your (social, political, videogame) positions? To get rid of Life is Strange because the selfies are cheesy is to get rid of Shakespeare because the language is rosy.
E;R also clips together a “hella” highlight reel of Life is Strange’s moments of cringeworthy dialogue. Admittedly, this game bends over backwards to sound authentically Oregonian and adolescent: the French male developers wanted this. They even consulted with northwesterners while writing the script to make sure the dialogue felt accurate. But Chloe’s dampening use of “shaka brah” doesn’t serve the game in any positive sense. So E;R gets points here, if I’m being intellectually honest. This game would benefit from some dialogic maturity.
However, I fundamentally disagree with E;R’s assertion that Life is Strange’s time travel mechanics make no sense: “the time travel is broken, and stupid.” He argues that there are far better examples of time travel well-handled, such as Steins;Gate, etc. As far as summaries of this story go, E;R entertains that (1) presumably Max moves – teleports – by virtue of her time travel, and so she appears at a different spot in an instant; (2) powers imply a reverse rotation of earth, therefore time & space travel – and no character is shocked by or acknowledges this; (3) Max doesn’t use her power for anything significant (e.g. billionaire, politician, boost her photography career, stop 9/11, etc.); (4) why would she affect her own timeline – especially when you can undo everything, thereby eliminating all time travel at the end? And so on. The hyper-logical and skeptical attitude that E;R takes here once again misses the point. (And to say one misses the point does not mean to suggest that one has nothing interesting or important to say. One is just saying the right thing at, dare I say, the wrong time.) Life is Strange enshrouds its time travel rules in mystery, which is what gives it intrigue. If the game were more explicit, as critics like E;R seem to want, then the fun would disappear. We can’t know all the rules, which is why the story retains its suspense.
Another (astonishing) point of agreement that I share with E;R is his critique of the bottle scene of “gameplay” in Life is Strange. Early on in the game, Chloe demands that Max more fully demonstrate her time travel capacities as proof that she isn’t faking it. So Chloe leads Max into an old junkyard, a seemingly abandoned place that Chloe used to spend time with Rachel before her disappearance. Chloe tasks Max with locating five glass bottles from around the junkyard, so she can shoot them. And this task – finding bottles – takes forever. It’s not fun, it’s not clear how to proceed or where to go, and its insipid as a plot point. I consider myself one of Life is Strange’s staunchest defenders, but this is an embarrassing scene that E;R rightly adds scare quotes around as “gameplay.” Get rid of this scene, DontNod. (Now, back to the fun part: disagreeing!)
I’d consider it beneath critics like E;R to ridicule the game’s soundtrack, but he spends some time disparaging the “hipster” vibe that the soundtrack provides. Personally, I think Life is Strange’s soundtrack stands out as uniquely atmospheric and vulnerable. Angus and Julia Stone’s “Santa Monica Dream” evokes the damp pines of Oregon, while Amanda Palmer’s “In My Mind” calls to mind the naive quest of “detectives” Chloe and Max, while Bright Eyes’ “Lua” ambiently drones in the background of the melancholy morning scene in Chloe’s bed. Critics like E;R are distracted because the music is lyrically-driven, even if it sounds like Coldplay. And that’s not fair or accurate. The game’s music deliberately stylizes itself into a kind of playlist that wouldn’t be altogether out of place on a introverted high school girl’s Spotify. Hence the first episode’s opening credits scene when Max puts in headphones as the soundtrack begins.
E;R’s final mistake is his condemnation of Dontnod studios for economic success. He argues that these games – Life is Strange and beyond – will become soulless replicants into the indefinite “Disneyified” Star Wars future. In other words, because Life is Strange was successful in the gaming market, there will be more of them. And there’s already Life is Strange: Before the Storm, which I haven’t yet played. But E;R prematurely laments these games’ existence, arguing yet again against the merits of narratively-driven gaming: ludonarrative.
When people talk about Life is Strange, they forget the dark themes lining the story. It’s a game about bullying. It’s a game about social ostracization. It’s a game about mental health. It’s a game about suicide.
I don’t know if I’ve emphasized that this E;R guy is great at what he does with critique and editing. The hilarious and tasteful mock-rewinds at the end of the video succeed as parody. And he has a bunch of clever Groundhog Day references to time travel. I wouldn’t critique his video based on the quality of his content – although his voice, like he describes Max’s, grates on my heart. And yet, E;R entirely ignores some crucial aspects that redeem the game for the sake of humor. I can’t ignore Christopher Hitchens’ maxim to “never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity,” both of which apply to the arguments that E;R offers in his video. If we incorporate those themes that E;R ignores, then his critique falls apart. Hence this refutation. It’s valuable to inculcate patience when evaluating the ludonarrative significance of games, even when they appeal to differing demographics (in this case, perhaps, young women) than traditional videogames. To critics like E;R, I invite them to rewind.
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