‘I don’t know why they don’t just…’ We’ve all heard it. Perhaps from strangers at the bus stop, perhaps from our friends. Explaining the course of action that someone who’s homeless, or having mental health difficulties or living in poverty should take. Or someone who is experiencing racism or sexism or another form of difficulty or discrimination that the speaker has never experienced. It’s sometimes hard not to think like that, however much you try to avoid it. After all, there are organisations that offer support, people who can help, medications that can help. And why shouldn’t you shout back at a stranger who’s swearing at you in the street if you're a woman surrounded by people. What’s the worse that can happen?
Lately I’ve been struggling with the idea of whether roleplaying games and larps can be tools for social change, whether they can open up others to the experience of being oppressed or frightened or lost in a world that isn’t always designed for them.
And when I try to design a game I always run into the same problem in my head ‘well, this is what I would do.’ I know from my own experience of mental illness that it isn’t that simple. Even for someone who is informed about their options (and I am privileged in many ways) the gulf between knowing about them and seeking them out can be so wide that it can be impossible to cross.
How can I play a homeless person struggling when my instinct is to think of solutions? Because of course, I know how to use the internet and how to access it for free, if the worst came to the worst I have a support network who would help me and I am fundamentally not alone. And if I experienced poverty, real poverty, not student poverty, I would know I could go to the job centre, fill out a form in English and advocate for myself eloquently.
If I was playing a game where I was facing these issues, sure I could pretend, but I wouldn’t come away with any new understanding or experience. So how can I make that happen? I’ve spoken before about Zoe Quinn’s twine game Depression Quest which tries to deal with the issue. You play a depressed man and you have a number of options of things you can do to begin to recover. But options are crossed off and the more depressed you get, the less options are available to you. This is a good illustration of living with depression and not being able to talk about it or get help despite knowing, somewhere in your mind that that’s what you should be doing. I don’t think it goes far enough though. If you choose the best option you can each time the main character can begin to recover. And you know what the best option is. You know because the main character isn’t you and you’re not the one who has to face it.
How can we overcome this in games? Counters? Mechanics? Creating as an immersive experience as possible? Giving out character sheets explaining what the character knows and what they are capable of doing that day? But then they are stuck perpetually, not a human being but someone who has stopped learning and stopped growing. And the player always knows that after the game or the larp they can get up and walk away.
And I want players to experience for a moment, that fear, that helplessness. I want to understand and I want other people to understand why people make decisions which might seem inadvisable but are the best and only option that person has.
I have heard the suggestion from a couple of people for a larp that would be played like Wraith. Each character would be played by two players - the character themselves and the side of them that has a list of their limitations. They’re frightened so they don’t answer men who catcall them in the street, they are depressed so they really can’t force themselves out the door for work even though they should have left half an hour ago, they can’t speak English so they don’t understand why they are getting benefit sanctions.
This was a lot of words to say I don’t have the answers. I would really appreciate any ideas though. Is role-play just a bad tool for social change or is there a solution? Or am I thinking in black and white? Is role-play an imperfect tool to create social acceptance and understanding and if so how can we improve it? I am really interested in your thoughts.
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It seems to me that the more mechanics, counters, dice etc you have, the further you get from the actual problem. Real life doesn't have these comforts. There is no way to win life. We don't level up. There is no GM. If we want to have a transformative play experience then we have to take the risk to move away from the game-like. "Games and their organization are a way to avoid the frightening aspect of play" as Winnicott puts it in Playing and Reality.
ReplyDeleteLife is scary, and so is (non game like) play.