My partner and I have been watching The Traitors on BBC, and this series especially has got me thinking about some things to do with game design and larp; I’ve been reading/listening to a lot of stuff about larps and larp design recently, which inspired these more detailed thoughts.
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First off, the Traitors, which I believe has several international versions too, is basically a game of Werewolf/Mafia wherein participants live in a Scottish castle for the duration, and compete in challenges between phases of voting and murdering, for the ultimate aim of winning a large sum of money. My primary concern is with the design of the experience for the participants, not even the challenges or mechanics of the game itself necessarily, but the management of their (psychological) safety. From what I’ve read of larping (especially Nordic larping, often focused on the creation of ‘immersion’), workshopping and debriefing are not just optional extras which are tacked on to the experience of larping, but core elements. They can establish boundaries, cement safety procedures, and align expectations, and allow for the unwinding and unravelling of the self/character in the aftermath, as well as the post-experience analysis. In this way, players are not thrown headfirst into emotionally and physically intense experiences that can create close interpersonal bonds far quicker than usually possible, with no assistance in processing these events after the fact.
Do the participants in the traitors get these stages of meaningful preparation and debrief, built in as part of the experience? I could not find any discussion online so far from people involved in the show (designers/similar) as to how the game is designed, let alone what the experience as a whole consists of. This is cause for concern for me.
It seems like, at least in the UK version of the show, that participants get incredibly emotionally invested without procedures to aid their psychological safety. A cursory look at the Traitors subreddit sees several people commenting on the relative investment and intensity of at least the first series of the UK version compared to, for example, the US or AUS versions. This investment was demonstrated to me again and again, both in watching the current series 4, and when I was watching this video concerning a challenge in series 3. Lots of participants genuinely seem to put a lot of their own emotions into the game and the relationships they form during it, even sometimes beyond the rules or strategic considerations, which is perfectly understandable considering their circumstances. The show is, for all intents and purposes, a large-scale role-playing experience that involves living away from home for an extended period surrounded by strangers, props/costumes/actors to intensify the experience, all while competing for a meaningful amount of money. I think that treating participation in the show the same way as participating in a larp of similar scale is not an undue comparison. In that way, I think these elements, commonly included in larps, would make the experience more considerate for the participants. But then, would anyone tune in? That’s beside my point, but I imagine the TV producers are more concerned with that than any elements of larp design!
Another factor that I believe may influence the way in which people are exposed to more potential psychological harm through the experience is the lack of ability to properly formulate alibi, or rather, the asymmetrical formation/strength of alibi across participants. For reference:
Alibi includes individual legitimizing strategies which enable players to interact and (re)construct a socially acceptable spectrum of play. A negotiation of what is acceptable to do in a certain larp.
It is my argument that the participants selected to be traitors have access to more legitimising strategies as part of the game, namely the participation in the process of murder and deception inherent in the role. Therefore, their alibis are more robust than the other participants’ (ie the faithfuls). This allows them to shield themselves better from the actions they take in the game, allowing them to view them more through the lens of the mechanics rather than through a more personal lens. As a corollary, the faithfuls have to rely on more interpersonal techniques of legitimation, which, in this context, I believe hold up less to the pressure of the game. This means that they are more vulnerable to perceiving the processes of the game as personal: happening to them as people rather than them as the role they are playing. The (perceived) spectrum of acceptable play is narrower for a faithful than a traitor. They are also, in this way, able to more easily categorise themselves as a group as being honest, normal people against the traitors who pose a real threat to their potential future prosperity (ie, the cash prize). This is not helped by the fact that they are, for all intents and purposes, playing themselves without a clear-cut separation. The reality TV aspect is not there if they are all actors portraying a character in a role. Contrast this with similar social deduction games like Werewolf or Blood on the Clocktower, which often have an element of setting/world building to provide a (perhaps thin) layer of separation between the game and the real world.
All that is to say that I am interested in how, if at all, the producers of the traitors have been influenced by the design of role-playing and immersive experiences (which are becoming increasingly popular, my thoughts on this are a whole other thing), particularly larp. I think that players of all kinds of games could learn a thing or two from larping traditions, of which I myself am trying to include more in my thinking, my engagement with role-playing, and my academic interest!
I think one of the big issues on the talk about "cozy game criticism being a sign of misogyny" is that if you're a woman, it doesn't matter what game you play, there will always be some guy to diminish your efforts or claim you're not doing it the right way.
When I got perceived as a woman, I got told Binding of Isaac, Devil May Cry 5, Team Fortress 2, Star Wars The Old Republic, Wolfenstein and hundreds more were casual games simply to diminish the feats I was talking about. When I got perceived as a man, on the other hand, people actively wanted to hear what I had to say about my experiences in these games and took them seriously.
I am a PS1 Crash Team Racing speedrunner. This got called "casual" as a woman, and "interesting" as a man.
So, no, it's not just "cozy games" that are getting the brunt of the blame here. It's any game that got more attention from people clocked as feminine at all. I don't think I have to mention the way Bloodborne went from a Reddit favorite to a "not that hard of a game in the Fromsoft pantheon" after women started posting memes about it, do I?
i love NAncy Drew games but in every one there's THAT puzzle that you just fucking HATE. like "oh georgette wants to sit at a corner chair but not next to phil or mary and between two women while go fuck yourself" - NO. I DON'Y LIKE IT
so, had the (not so bright) idea of starting Assassin’s Creed II on my PC.
Things I’ve learned so far:
1. Ezio is a cheeky bastard and I love him
2. LEONARDOOOOOOOOOOO! ♥
3. The controls will be the death of me. Or of Ezio. We’ll never know.
4. HOW THE FUCK DO I END EAGLE VISION WHEN I DON’T NEED IT ANYMORE OR ACCIDENTALLY STARTED IT???
the way capitalism affects video games is by exploiting their workers and subjecting them to abuse FIRST, microtransactions and pay-to-win are waaaaaaay after. it’s shit like crunch and shit like gamergate. jesus
