The Prompt
Putting the Game Before the Book What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first? In a time when bits of Dante’s Divine Comedy are being carved out and turned into a hack-n-slash game, I find myself longing for intelligently designed games–games with a strong literary component–not merely literary backdrops. So rather than challenge you to imagine the conversion of your favorite literature into games, I challenge you to supersede the source literature and imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience.
The Thought
As anyone who's had more than a 10 minute conversation with me probably knows I'm in total agreement with Gordon Marino when he described The Brothers Karamazov as "nothing short of the Platonic form of the novel." It simply doesn't get any better, in my humble opinion, and despite its somewhat daunting size I try to find time at least once a year to read it. Of course this is the literary work that pops into my head the instant I read this month's Round Table question. Can it be a game? What are its key themes? There are so many it's difficult to distill them into some one or two, much less something playable, but let's see what I can do.
The Novel
Some background for the uninitiated. The Brothers Karamazov (not to be confused/abbreviated with The Brothers K, an entirely separate novel) is Dostoyevsky's last work, published serially and finished in 1880, less than a year before he died. Its plot centers on the titular brothers and their relationship, coming together after many years apart to settle affairs with their father. Fyodor Karamazov, the patriarch, is a profligate old man (I first learned the word profligate from the description of Fyodor, and I cannot think of the word without envisioning him), a drunkard and buffoon who is squandering his money away, money which at least one of the brothers, Dmitri, believes is rightfully his.
The three brothers are thinly (by which I mean not at all) veiled representations of three parts of the human soul: the sensual, the spiritual, and the intellectual. Dmitri, the eldest, spends his days drinking and carousing with women, and is locked in competition with his father not only over money, but also for the affections of a certain woman. Ivan is an academic who has returned home to help smooth out the differences between his father and brother. Alyosha, the youngest, is currently residing at the local monastery in preparation to become a monk.
It doesn't take long before Fyodor is found murdered and Dmitri is accused and put on trial. The bulk of the novel revolves around the interactions of the brothers as they attempt to find the truth, ruminating at length on philosophy, religion, and the meaning of life in the process. Ivan begins losing his grip on reality, Alyosha questions whether his faith in Dmitri is justified, and Dmitri begins to see that his way of life leads to degradation and murder regardless of whether he actually did what he is accused of or not.
The Game
How to distill this book into its basic elements in a way that would provide the foundation for a game? If I have to categorize the novel into a basic literary genre I can't help but (begrudgingly) label it a murder mystery. Who Killed Fyodor Karamazov? or Murder in a Russian Province. The thing about mystery as a genre is that it has a definite answer which is revealed at the end of the work, and which hopefully you are able to piece together based on clues given throughout. With a game, however, we're not so constrained. There may be several different "endings" dependent upon player choices and interactions.
Of course when thinking about a murder mystery represented in multiple mediums, one of which is interactive, one thing naturally springs to mind - Clue. Here we have a board-game with a randomized ending and game play that revolves around sharp questioning and deductive reasoning. The film gives a nod to the ambiguous nature of the game by providing multiple endings, giving no one canonical answer to the mystery, but several. Similarly the novelization of Who Killed Fyodor Karamazov? has more than one possible ending, depending on how you wish to read the text (no spoilers here, but there are two "canonical" interpretations).
With Clue, though, the "ending" is determined before game play begins. Players try to discover the truth but they do not in any way influence the truth (even if they do try to influence other players' perceptions of the truth). With a video game the opportunity exists for the player to influence the actual truth even if they they as player (narrator) are not directly involved in the acts leading up to the murder (though they could be, but I'd rather they aren't).
Yes, this involves reverse causation. Yes, I'm comfortable with that.
I'm imagining this as a game of exploration and interaction that relies heavily on the player moving along value-laden axes similar to the morality scale of games like Fallout 3. However, instead of focusing on morality these axes chart one's focus in life. Players progress along axes corresponding to Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, possibly even Smerdyakov (the fourth, illegitimate brother). In fact, if we take the novelization as necessarily distilling down the elements of the game into more simplistic parts, then the full fledged game could have further axes representing "minor" characters such as Katerina Ivanovna or Lise (the chaotic "Joker" of the bunch).
The important point is that each of these axes would correspond with a trait (sensualism, intellectualism,
As mentioned above there need not and in fact should not be an exact, canonical answer to who killed Fyodor. Instead the intent is for the experience and the answer/ending to be tailored to each player based on how they play the game. Playing the game as a sensualist culminates in a conclusion in which it only makes sense (ha!) for Dmitri to have killed his father for money or jealous rivalry. Playing as a spiritualist could result in Fydor's "murder" actually being a suicide - a warning about the inevitable fate of those who lack faith. This malleability of endings mirrors the existential theme (more characteristic of French rather than Russian existentialism, clove cigarettes not included) that one's perception determines reality, that the truth we see is a choice.
Naturally questions may arise as to what constitutes the "best" ending, but those conversations themselves express the major theme of the game - the human determination of meaning and value. The feeling that I get from reading the book is that the most successful life is one that reaches an equilibrium among the brothers (with perhaps a pronounced slant away from the sensualist). This would also be characteristic of a more "objective" view that defines modern thinking and probably most players. Rather than progress too far along any one axis we should try to keep them all in balance, thereby achieving the "true" ending.
A brief aside. Dostoevsky, himself a deeply spiritual man, intended for The Brothers Karamazov to be the start of a series with Alyosha as the main character. For him the spiritual life was the best one and would therefore lead to the most rewarding ending. But given what plays out in the novel the take home message seems to be more about the importance of balance, of not devoting oneself purely to any one part of the (steadfastly Russian!) soul. Hey, this is a game, so we have to leave room for a sequel...
Hurrah for Karamazov!
Post-Script: Corvus' inaugural Blogs of the Round Table podcast (or Bortcast) includes a discussion of this very post! Take a listen here.
Post-Post-Script: Krystian over at Game Design Scrapbook has written a follow up post that focuses more on the design choices one would have to tackle with this project
