A False Sense of Involvement: my look into Diablo 3 and Mrs. Dalloway
From the novel to the videogame, time and development of technologies are certainly changing the way readers interact with texts. The user experience, from the ‘simple’ method of novels like Mrs. Dalloway, to the more ‘involved’ method of Diablo 3, has changed the way people experience texts, and the way people believe they are influencing the text.
Almost 87 years apart, the texts of Mrs. Dalloway and Diablo 3 give us some insight into how the ‘reader experience’ has changed coming into the 21st century, specifically in terms of the investment or control of the main character and the story.
There are shared elements to both texts: description of characters and setting, a plot, character motivations, and tasks they perform. Diablo 3 presents most of these elements in a visual and condensed textual fashion, and Mrs. Dalloway presents them all in a textual fashion. The differences between the two texts are mostly superfluous and differ only in the visual representation. The two main differences between Mrs. Dalloway and Diablo 3 are the ability to skip certain aspects of the text and the illusion of control over the narrative.
How the user receives the ‘background’ for the story differs in availability and perceived importance. In Mrs. Dalloway, the background of all characters comes through as a stream-of consciousness thought pattern that brings the reader with the character through a flash-back of emotions, another character, or a certain event. This is accomplished in-line with the text of the story, and is not presented in an external manner (such as an audio add-on or a pop-out page). However, the backstory in Diablo 3 is presented through a combination of cinematic (at the beginning) and lore audio and texts.
The importance of backstory is relevant as well: Mrs. Dalloway requires the use of backstory or flashbacks in order to understand the reasons behind many of the actions of the characters in the text. In Diablo 3, the backstory is primarily given in the form of audio that the player has to activate before it can be listened to. The user must first find, and then continue to listen to what the journals and texts are saying. Even when certain ‘important’ texts are being read out loud, there is an option to mute the audio from that text. There is also the option to open a certain screen and read the lore. The difference here is that one is basically required to be read (in the case of Mrs. Dalloway), and the other is primarily audio – which can be ignored – and is completely optional (in Diablo 3).
In Mrs. Dalloway action of the plot often centers on the importance of the meetings between two or more people. In Diablo 3, the meetings of characters takes form in a different style: where a small dialogue box pops up and the characters speak the words written there. The dialogue is pre-determined in both situations, as are the larger actions the character take after the dialogue takes place. However, in Diablo 3, conversations between the characters can be skipped over, and the main objective the summed up the point of the dialogue is displayed in the corner of the screen as the ‘objective’ at all times.
In Diablo 3, the dialogue between characters is easily avoided and is presented as unimportant to the larger plot simply because the dialogue can easily be skipped over. In Mrs. Dalloway the dialogue does not present itself separately from the rest of the text, and as such is not presented as ignorable.
Whereas in Mrs. Dalloway, the intricacies of the characters’ relationships comes through in their meetings. To skip over the dialogue would be taking away one of the biggest parts of the text, and as such there is no available option to ‘go to page __ to skip dialogue.’
In Diablo 3, the nature of much of the background, history, and conversational content is entirely skippable. Most of the interactions between characters are not significant enough that the game doesn't allow the user to skip it. However, simply stating that character interactions are more important in one text than in another can be said for many texts from the same time period. So what is the point of this content being skippable in Diablo 3 but not in Mrs. Dalloway?
This is the idea behind what is required to understand the text, and the idea of user controlled content. In Mrs. Dalloway, the dialogue and other parts of the narrative are not presented in such a way as to enable easily skipping it. This is because the author saw all of the content of the text as necessary to the text. In Diablo 3, the mere ability to ignore and skip over some of the content means, to the user, that the skippable content is not important to the text as a whole.
The user has the same level of influence over the narrative in both Mrs. Dalloway and Diablo 3, but there is a different level of perceived involvement.
In Mrs. Dalloway there is a set plot.
This series of events will happen in the text no matter what the reader wants to happen.
In Diablo 3 we also have a set plot.
This series of events will happen in the game no matter what the user wants to happen.
There is no difference between the texts in the pre-determined nature of the plot. The real difference is in the way the user is able to interact with these texts.
However, the key difference is:
Being able to control the character’s physical actions leads into the illusion of control over the narrative, and over the main character’s actions.
The illusion of control is the main difference between these two texts. In the ‘traditional’ sense, the experience of reading the novel Mrs. Dalloway will not make the reader feel like they are going to have any influence over the plot of the story. The reader can clearly see that the pages are already printed out and will not change by the time they get to the end of the book. However, just looking at the user-facing content of Diablo 3, the user has no clear idea that the end of the story is already written out. They can’t see it nor can they ‘skip ahead’ in the same manner that one can flip through a book. With this lack of ability, through the game, to look ahead, combined with having direct physical control over the main character, the user is then lured into the belief that what they are doing will influence the plot of the game.
One could make the argument that the player in Diablo 3 can spend more time doing things like killing undead without advancing the plot. Players of Diablo 3 kill the same monsters in the same area for a long amount of time just as a reader of Mrs. Dalloway can re-read passages of the book. Neither activity advances the storyline, but both do prepare the user more for what is ahead: in Diablo by leveling up, in Mrs. Dalloway by enabling a deeper understanding of the passages and characters.
The two main differences between the two texts is the illusion of control over the texts and the inclusion of skippable content within the text.