Exploring Metacontext in Games - Super MAGFest 2026

So my name is Rim Doster. >> I'm Emily. >> Emily Compton. >> And we last year at Magfest gave a talk on this emerging art movement that we think exists in the world. So what we want to start with, we're going to dive right in. We have a lot to talk about today. Yeah. >> But our thesis from last time remains true. So I want to step through this first because ultimately this is what we're talking about. >> Yeah. And I mean I I think a lot about this stuff. The reason we talk about that, we're like hiking in the woods and talking about this like kind of pretentious stuff while we're like up on a mountain somewhere. And um I've been in the indie game industry for like almost 20 years now. And so I think a lot about narrative. Uh I went to film school so like you know audiovisisual media is like front of mind for me. And you've been doing audio for a long time. I'm a professional music. I've been talking professionally for more than 20 years. So, we like to think a lot about games and art, but also about like where they came from, what they mean. And so, this is our thesis and based on stuff we've talked about personally in the past. >> So, the journey we're about to take you on over the next 59 minutes is thusly. Art is a reflection of society. Games are art. >> Fuck you, Roger Eert. [laughter] >> Therefore, games reflect society. Video games are one of the first new mediums of art. >> You know, just like how you had film in the beginning of the 20th century really uh affect the uh it was like the quintessential art medium of the 20th century. I would argue that video games kind of do that in the later 20th century and 21st. >> Video games were invented in the lifespan of people sitting in this room right now. That is on the blip of human civilization. That is a microsecond to go. The world currently outside of magfest is perhaps undergoing a destabilized era. [laughter] >> Uh >> things are bad. >> We are all anti-fascists. Making art is an anti-fascist act. The world is on fire. A new era of arts we believe is emerging as a reflection of this destabilized era. >> And I mean you saw this in the past. Other art movements did arise in a reaction to various crises in society. >> [sighs] >> This new era is reflected in all forms of art. But [laughter] this is uniquely reflected in video games, a new form of art that is doing something that previous forms of art could not do. And synthesizing video games with all those other forms of art, we have a new kind of reflection of society. And we're going to see things that humanity has never been able to see about itself before. That is our crazy hypothesis. [laughter] >> So, you know, you've probably heard and used the term meta before, right? >> So, like you're gamers and and people talk about the meta of a game. And often they mean like viewing the game from outside itself. It's like a prefix that basically means above or beyond. But, uh, sometimes when you say, "Oh, that's so meta." It's like something kind of reflecting on itself like a film about film making or a game that acknowledges that it's a game that's so meta, you know. So meta often means this like extra layer, this reflective layer on top of something. And contextualism is like a philosophical movement or like a word that means uh like the relativity and provided by context like a an action or a concept or a thing art will be viewed differently based on the context in which it exists. >> So a brief history of art and philosophy. >> So we're going to go through history real fast. You know we don't have time for like art history 101. When you hear terms like preodern, modern, postmodern, you often associate these with art movements, broad art movements, but they are also associated with philosophical movements and they are to a degree associated with a state that society exists in. The preodern world was broadly defined as a society saying and saying it is and seeking toward a platonic ideal that is in the past. We look to the past where things were perfect and we try to recreate that lost perfect world. It was kind of like a circle of tradition like everybody was like my grandfather did this and therefore we must give the grain to that god because my grandfather did. >> The modern era began sometime between the late 1600s and the late 1700s and we do not have time to talk about what that entails. But the modern philosophy is very different. We are steamrolling forward due to the power of humanity and technology to a platon a platonic ideal that is in the future. The past was worse. The future can be better. The future is guaranteed to be better through the progress of society. >> It's like a rocket ship like this arrow just like future, let's go. >> Postmodernity and postmodern art was a direct reaction to the Holocaust and the Great War. That is when society said, "If that is the straight line, I reject modernity." Postmodernity is this absolute deconstruction and destruction of everything we believed about the fruits of progress as a society. It's like we got to the future and the future's really freaking scary. >> And think about modern art and postmodern art. We'll talk about it in a minute how different they feel. Metacontextualism we argue is this sort of step beyond this postmodern onwei and disconnection of trying to put the pieces back together of seeing the world in context choosing a future you want. And we'll also talk about metaodernism because we got modernism, we got postmodernism, and we got metaodernism, which is similar to metacontextualism, but distinct I think. >> So, uh, if you don't get a well, we'll have this up at the end, so don't worry if you don't get a photo in the next 30 seconds, but we did do a talk on this topic last year at Magfest. We got a ton of feedback from Magfest that really, all of you out there really helped us start to crystallize these ideas >> and and we thought about it. and we're like, "Oh, what about this?" >> So, we are moving beyond the the prescriptive sort of art history explanation and now we're going to really focus on what we think this art movement is specifically. So, we want to hear from you again. We want to interrogate this art movement together. Uh, but the gist of it is all that feedback. A lot of you out there are seeing the same things we're seeing and people are pointing me at other video games that do the same thing. I think we're on to something as a group. So, in case any uh any New Yorkers are in the audience, this is this uh a similar image. It's it's the unisphere in Queens. And a similar image was on my uh essay textbook in freshman year of college at NYU. But the name of that freshman writing class was art and the world. And basically, this is where I was introduced to a lot of these concepts. the idea that art and how it interacts with society are very uh important things for a filmmaker to think about. And so I think the first part of this talk is really going to be this is the tagline for that as well is art in the world. But one thing we aren't going to do is just like in a lot of your your game design talks where people are like what is the definition of a game? This is a game. This is not a game. It's like we're not going to get pedantic about it. is like there are like thousands of academics out there who argue about what art is and what art isn't. And rather than getting into that, I really would like to say uh a definition of a facet of art that I think is really important that art isn't just a work or an object, but it is that distinctive relationship between viewer and viewed. It's something that is almost like a conversation and like this image is somebody and they were um using electrodes to like scan the brain of somebody looking at a great masters looking at girl with a pearl earring. So it's like how do people react to art and what is that you know that conversation like so in just like individuals are looking at at art society as like a whole as like an elomeration of like a bunch of individuals they all view these artworks. We we play these games we talk about them and you know new mediums can change the way society interacts. Do they listen? Do they watch? Do they touch? you know talk about it lets you decontextualize and ret recontextualize things that happened in the past. This image is very uh important because this is a form of remediation. We have taken an event that previously would only be experienced by the people who were there or described with very low fidelity after the fact and now it is presented semiobjectively with a big asterisk next to that in a different context to a different audience. >> I mean they're watching it in an opera house. That's, you know, it's a little bit different than being at Madison Square Garden and watch them punch each other in the face. >> But in in modernity theory and bureaucracy theory, you can broadly say that large systems, the art that they consume as a whole is their sensory organ. A big machine can't see the people in it. It can only see these broad things. Society can't see you. It can see the art that the collective you have made. and different forms of art, different mediums, different technologies record different kinds of things with different levels of fidelity and they play them back with different kinds of fidelity. So again, video games are able to record something that other mediums couldn't. And I want to on this slide really quick introduce the concept of of gaze or perspective which it really changes like who is controlling the character in a video game like who is the player character who is watching like I often describe it as a camera and that's definitely a metaphor that's been used before. It's like who's holding the camera like whose perspective are you seeing art through? So, we all have these different lenses or cameras that we see art and we see the world through. >> Yep. >> And so do societies. >> I remember something from university. Uh you may not know if the cameraman is holding a gun. [laughter] >> So, and just like society looks at art, art looks back at society. Almost all art reflects society in somewhat in some way. Like it can be critical like the jungle. It can be idealized like in this Soviet uh realist painting, >> Soviet realism trying to portray an ideal society, not the actual photograph of that society. >> And then aspirational, you [laughter] know, this is reacting to fascist aggression. And you know, you got Captain America coming in. It's like the very creation of this patriotic uh character is put up as a reaction to uh European war. And then society looks at this art and then society starts behaving differently because of that art. And then the art changes and this causes this reflexive loop. That's a big part of what we're going to be talking about is that reflexive loop and that's very meta. You know, the idea of like looking at something from outside and kind of reflecting on it. You know, meta is X looks at X and is about X. So, you know, I guess since we're not going to go too deep into the modern era and the postmodern era, it is worth it to talk a little bit about these different art movements. And a lot of times when people talk about modern art or think about modern art, they think of non-representational art like shapes and colors and stuff, but really I think what makes a work modern is there was this idea of trying something new and trying progress. It's like I made a new technique that hasn't been tried before. And this whole idea of of truth, like true art and art for art's sake, as opposed to like, you know, I'm an animator, so I'm kind of like freelancer, if you think about it, is an old term that means a mercenary. Like I make art for other people, generally speaking. I also make it for myself. But most of the art I make is like I'm paid to do so. And there was this idea that no, art must be this pure uh thing that is expressing some sort of either like internal or external truth. And then you have you see a little bit in post-modern works like Andy Warhol or this is a Barbara Krueger piece and I've always thought this one I'm big fan of Barbara Krueger. We we say intricate rituals a lot when we're [laughter] talking about sports being homoerotic, but um it's like it's like >> men, what is it? Men create intricate ritual intricate rituals to touch the skin of other men. Um but [laughter] uh anyway, this is a piece of hers that says you are not yourself and it shows this shattered mirror of in front of a photograph. And that's I think what really uh typifies for me what postmodern is. It's often a lot of you know irony and collage. It's basically like parody is the supreme form of postmodern uh art is is like you're looking at something but you're also kind of acknowledging the brokenness of it. Like people will talk about it. It's a deconstruction. So these we're not seeing how these societies are that created these two pieces of art. We're seeing how those societies saw themselves or wanted themselves >> how they reacted how they reacted to these times in which they were created. And then you have metaodernism. And this is something you know last year that's a big thing. What differs between last year is that um metaodernism is a a term that I've seen a lot to describe uh certain certain works of fiction. Uh everything everywhere all at once. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But like that was described by the director as a metaodernist work. And so metaodernism is kind of like backing up from postmodernism and saying whoa whoa whoa. Let's not get like all nihilistic and being like nothing matters if you can't have truth. You know if truth is like thrown out the window and everything is relative then you can't really have like a sincere viewpoint. You can't really structure anything. And so metaodernism is pulling that back and kind of having like a a sadder but wiser >> creation of like ironic sincerity where it's like you see all the relativity in the world but at the same time you're able to make a a more sincere and heartfelt you're able to construct your morals and say this is a good ending or this you know and so this image of someone being reflected again and again and again. Instead of the mirror versus the shattered mirror, here you have almost the infinite mirror where you just keep looking and reflecting and that kind of back and forth that pendulum keeps going. >> Now, I think we think metacontextualism, which is what we made up, >> Yeah. >> is a probable subset or adjacent art movement in philosophy. It's interrelated, but I think it's distinct. >> Well, yeah. I think cuz I said contextualism tends to be more about instead of just selfarching, it tends to also look outside a little more and build this context. And we'll talk a lot about that in relation to video games. So, but here before we get into video games, I want to really quick talk about one thing that I noticed over the past decade or so. How many works are meta about the multiverse? Like I think it it probably showed up mostly in like the 70s in comic books and science fiction because they already had these existing IP characters that they're like, "Oh man, we've had so many artists and so many writers take a crack at these characters and they all like are are subtly different." So, I think multiverse as a as a trope has been kind of the way that a lot of these uh creators or IP owners as the case may be with with stuff like Marvel to kind of uh bring that back together and be like, okay, so like there's not just one, you know, instead of being like this is the one canonical Spider-Man, it's like >> there's infinite, there's so many Spider-Mans. If you draw pictures of Spider-Man, that also joins Spider-Man. But this story is about this one Spider-Man and what he cares about and his whole deal. And the same thing with Loki, Deadpool, you know, and here in the middle, everything everywhere all at once, you know, it's the idea that we're going to talk about the infinite worlds. I mean, even in physics, there's this idea of the infinite worlds hypothesis where everything could happen simultaneously. Um, but they have we acknowledge that, but we move past that to kind of focus in on what is important to our characters. >> And I think it's noteworthy that every one of the works we have on this slide, they fundamentally are saying the same thing about multiveres and they all kind of have the same moral and that is a wide range of different types of stories telling the same fundamental story. And another thing that we kind of wanted to get into, we'll talk a little bit about three motifs that we've noticed, but beyond that, uh, has anybody taken a a gander at the artist alley this year so far? >> Lot of >> lot of good stuff. And, uh, we love >> mushrooms, uh, transforming things, skulls, >> bones, flowers and bones, >> death, artistic gore. There's a lot of that in this artist alley. So, one of the things that I really noticed a couple of years ago is I I noticed that a lot of artists were taking the idea of like a multi-eyed or almost like approaching body horror but like figures like very beautiful figures of animals and humans were like kind of bisected or broken apart. And so you see this almost like artistic gore um whereas like bones will be visible and like an arm will be like here and I think almost like that's that's the shattering right you know you're taking these forms and kind of breaking them apart and then you have all these multi-eyed uh deities almost >> like this transcendent idea of I want to see more or I do see more or there are multiple mi >> yes and then a lot of The other thing is like death and rebirth. It's it's almost like, you know, in in Victorian times or times when there was a lot of struggle, there would often be these visual motifs that reference death, but at the same time kind of romanticized it, kind of made it into an aesthetic. Um, you see that with Po and stuff like that, the Gothic side of things. So, uh, >> this is what kicked off this whole conversation is we kept we kept seeing these themes and we started googling around and we found more of it and then we started talking about this on the mountain. >> Yeah. We we went to artist alleys. We watched a bunch of Spider-Man movies and then we really were like, maybe there's something there. I wonder why these these things keep showing up again and again. >> I'll call out paper larva there in the top left. They're in the artist alley here. >> Yeah. The the one with the the insect girl on the upper. So these are and Emily chose these after a lot of discussion. There's a lot of metacontextual motifs we could talk about. To be specific for today, we're going to talk about three of them in depth. >> The giant. So we're going to talk about juggernauts and I'll let you explain the whole concept of juggernauts. We're going to talk about the mirror, which already came, you know, when I was explaining metaodernism and death and rebirth. And I think actually maybe the third one is the most important because really that's kind of >> putting the world back together after it shatters. >> So as an aside then we have to talk a little bit about why video games are different and what they're doing differently in this context [gasps] and don't try to read all that but broadly the story of video games is that they bring you into a different world that has its own rules. You as a player inhabit for a brief span of time a different world and you have the context from outside that world but it puts you in a game that has its own context. Whether or not the game explores that or not is how metacontextual a game is. But fundamentally we believe that interactive video games are to a degree fundamentally metacontextual. The meta cannot disappear. We do not have the technology to erase your brain and put you into Mario World where you then have to interact with it from first principles >> and then you go >> but think about that a lot. Think about as we talk as we go through all this think about among the on the crowd what could these games be reacting to in the real world and what is this game saying about you the player versus the world of the game. So if games are art, game mechanics can be art. We gave a talk earlier today or earlier in this convention about how game mechanics are the same as games. They're fundamentally the same thing. So game mechanics, board game mechanics can be art in the same way that the jungle is art. If you don't know how Monopoly was written and what that game's about, Monopoly was not designed to be a game you played for fun. Monopoly was a work of protest art about landlords ruining the world. So uh I want to talk very briefly about the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company. I would characterize these the a lot of uh modernity research they use the term giant or juggernauts. And this is the idea that this is an entity that is not controlled by a human. It's controlled by something else a collective of humans and it has its own reflexive loop. It acts kind of on its own. And I would argue that these two East India companies, one are the first modern corporations, literally the first two modern corporations and that they were basically two giant robots that marched around the world causing death and misery for a couple hundred years before we had to put them down. >> This now we are surrounded by juggernaut. >> A lot of crazy evas out there that eat in the world. So, I want to talk about a modern tabletop game versus a post-modern, possibly metacontextual game. Puerto Rico and John Company are both about juggernauts like those. This is dark subject matter. These games are about colonial exploitation. >> So, ortho games. >> An orthogame. Yeah. Yeah. That [laughter] leads into So, orthogame is a technical term to be specific. That means we're talking about games that are competitive. Games that rank players at the end of the game based on how well they did. American football is an ortho game. Dungeons and Dragons is only an ortho game if you're a masochist. [laughter] >> It's a term invented by Richard Garfield, who's the creator of Magic the >> He wanted to get away from people saying that's not a game because he thought that was a stupid thing to say. >> Okay, I'm going to make a specific word for this kind of competitive like versus type of game. So, Puerto Rico, you play the juggernaut. You play a company that is exploiting the colony of Puerto Rico. This game is about fucked up things like slavery. The game rewards you for being the best at it because the game, the mechanics are in the context, not of the people, not of the harm, not of the externalities. You are playing the system itself. >> So, the system is going yum yum yum money. you eat eat things and win that that you are in that context. >> So why it's a modern game in your estimation is because it looks at this uncritically. It's like number goes up is good. >> So >> you won because you got the most victory points. The externalities of what what rune you brought on the world that's not included in the victory points at the end of the game. John Company is a game you should all play. Jean Company is about the British East India Company. You play individual families and people who work for the John company. So you are not playing the company eating the world. You are playing the people who are operating the machine but barely have any control over it. And your motivations, the victory points you get are marrying your daughter off or buying a nice hat. Like it puts you in the context of how this happened, how this juggernaut came to be. It is deeply critical uh of the situation. It is reflexive and reflective of the nature of these institutions. >> Would you say almost in some ways it's kind of like a a parody or a deconstruction of these uh you know so many games we love Euro games, right? We're big tabletop gamers and but it is kind of uncomfortable how many games both deal with colonialism and the exploitation of resources. So, I think it's kind of interesting that a little bit uh more recent games tend to kind of reflect on that fact and be like, "Hey, that's kind of fucked up." >> Yeah. So, idioame is a different kind of game. And if you've played the Stanley Parable, you know exactly what an idio game is. >> So, in a way, that's kind of like uh we wanted a word that kind of uh stands opposite to orthogame. It's an game about ideas. I made that word up about 14 years ago in a lecture at a different convention and not many people use it but I use it. Uh but a series of interest racing decisions that lead to a personal outcome. The an example of that Stanley Parable. You're playing this game and there's a narrator and you you encounter two doors at the beginning of the game and the narrator says Stanley chose the door on the left and you can go through either door and the game reacts to that. Every playthrough of the game is different. You decide whether or not you stop the baby from going into the fire. >> Idiot games are very popular and common. If you play Balders's Gate, that is like an archypical idio game. Look at the stats of how many people played Gail. And also, I love how this game is about how Gail ruined the polycule between Elminster and Mistra. [laughter] >> What? >> Dispatch. If you have played Dispatch, this is an idio game. the whole game you're making these little micro decisions and it's broadly the same story but the decisions you make change the little beats along the way. So when I play Dispatch I have a slightly different experience from how you play Dispatch. >> I mean it's it's a lot like watching like I feel like Critical Role has made a couple of TV series like The Mighty N just came out. We watched a few episodes of that and I feel like uh this has kind of a similar vibe to it. You know it's a superhero story. It's like episodic, you know, but at the same time, you do experience like TV shows through your own personal viewpoint, but you don't have that direct like back and forth with the with the narrative itself. >> So, it lets you explore all these little possibilities. If you wanted to explore those possibilities in traditional nonvideo game media, you'd have to make 50 versions of the Spider-Verse. This TV show has a thousand or 10,000 or 100 thousand different iterations. It's probably uncountable or nearly uncountable, but that is a metacontextual mechanic because now you're exploring these themes. You're exploring all this, but it is a very modern story. The game is a metacontextual game mechanically, but the story is fairly straightforward. >> Yeah. The narrative is linear and and it's it's if you've seen a superhero story, it it won't necessarily be critical or pariting or anything of that. It's kind of straightforward. >> There is a little bit of that there and it is deeply meta. Every episode and it tells you what you did compared to everybody else in the game. >> These are not new either. Idiot games were some of the first video games that were made. They This game is basically Balders's Gate before Balders's Gate existed as you know it. There are so many very deeply contextual metacontextual video games out there. But so it's not new. >> So one thing I kind of want to talk about with idio games and why it's particularly distinct and it's uh is very personal. Like even if the game such as Dispatch follows most of the same narrative beats no matter who's playing it, it really formalizes that idea that everybody's going to have a unique experience with that piece of art, >> but in the same context of that art. So, we can talk about did you kill Shroud at the end of the game? And you can have that conversation with someone because you experience two different worlds, but they're in the same context of the work. Night in the Woods, I I would say it is a deeply metacontextual game. Now, it's using the same simple mechanic as Dispatch. You're making these little micro decisions every night when you can hang out with your friends in this Pennsylvania coal town being ravaged by capitalism. You decide who to hang out with. The game forces you to make these decisions and your playthrough is a little bit different depending on how that goes. Like you see different facets of the world, but the rest of the game, the story, the motif, the other mechanics we'll talk about later in this talk, they are also exploring these metacontextual motifs. So I would say that Night in the Woods is a metacontextual story using a metacontextual medium, whereas Dispatch is a more modern or postmodern story still using a metacontextual medium. Yeah, it's games are very branchy. Like at at its core, you've got like something like a choose your own adventure book where it's like, okay, you're going to kind of find your semi unique path through a a narrative, but on the other hand, you have these um these adventure games that kind of, you know, you're missing out on certain things. You can't see everything. And so I think that's very important to games as a concept. Like you can't play the whole thing. And some people are completionists and like they're like, "Okay, I'm going to go on YouTube and then play uh Balders's Gate like five different times so I can see all the different routes." But >> but think about real life. In our real world, we can never experience everything. Night in the Woods puts you in the context of you go back home and you have to choose who you hang out with. And that has consequences because every choice of something is in the real world a denial of the alternative choices. You don't get to do both. We don't have save points. So the game's narrative is broadly the same. The story is not different fundamentally. >> You have to pick your way through the multiverse. >> You have to decide who is more important to hang out with tonight. You have to decide where your camera is going to be at any given time. And then you just have to trust the mediated experience of all the other people in that world to find out what happened in the places you weren't. Just like in the real world, you don't know what's happening outside of Magfest except via the mediated experience of news >> and then you feel FOMO cuz your friend posted something about like the Magfest arcade on Instagram [laughter] or something. >> But slay the princess. Yes, moderate spoilers if you have not played this game, but I don't think spoilers really apply to this game for complicated reasons. Slay the Princess is I think one of the most deeply metacontextual games we've encountered so far. So, we're going to talk about it a lot. >> This is we both played through it. Uh this we like to sometimes like you'll play a game, you're like we should play through it together on the couch and this was one of the games we did that with. And >> watching you play this was fascinating. see how the other person makes different decisions than you or how it evolves when somebody else is kind of driving the the story. And uh so in this case it starts very simply and you know we talk about what context does it give you? Very little. It just starts the game says >> you are on a path in the woods. There is a cabin at the end of this path and in the cabin there is a princess. You need to slay the princess >> or the world >> or the world will end. >> That's the starting point. This game, it's not just that you're having a context in a video game. Mario Brothers has a context. This game puts you in this very minimal context and the whole game is about exploring that context. In this game, you're making these decisions uh and there's the princess. The princess is not an agential actor. This is a video game. This is a deterministic video game. There aren't stat blocks. It's >> But it's also kind of like an iteration. Like every choice you make in this game has an impact has a very deep impact on what this character will be like the next time you meet her. >> And thus, the princess becomes this mirror of you. Meaning every single decision you make causes the princess to be the way she is. And then you have to start over. And now the princess as she is now is the new context. And you have to react to that. >> And this is this is a really interesting. This isn't much of a spoiler, but one of the first things you do when you go into the cabin, cuz that's one of the only things you can do. There's a cabin and there's a knife sitting there. Do you take the knife downstairs with you? cuz you're like scary darn. >> Did anyone play this game? Who p who brought the knife with them the first time in? >> Who didn't bring the knife with them? >> I did bring the knife and she was not super jazzed about that. [laughter] >> But she changes radically because the context of the environment changes radically. So she becomes this deep reflection of the choices you have made. and to force you into this corner. When you play through the game again, you can never make the same exact decisions twice. The game forces you to put yourself in a different context every time you play it. The cabin, the only the set of the entire game effectively is a reflection of the world you make together because you are interacting with the princess. the princess in the game is then interacting with you and the cabin reflects the world you have made. >> So in a way, you know, we talked about multiveres, right? So there's there's this whole idea of like, oh, what if a butterfly got crushed and you you did something minor and then like you know it spiraled off into a whole another dimension where things are crazy different. And this is kind of like that. that's exploring the impact of your choices and it's kind of like which but it's also like iterating on these these themes. >> But where it starts to get really interesting, the game has these voices as you play the the princesses you encounter based on your decisions and the world you make cause these voices to appear. They are explicit context from inside of the game. They are the voice of the character you inhabit. If that character does not have the context you have as a human being knowing it's a video game playing a game, when your character dies, you can think that was cool and play again. They remember what it's like to die and it is terrifying to them. They don't want to die. They only know what has happened in the game and they talk to you and they talk to each other. But they see you, the player. They know that you're the one making the decisions and they are powerless to stop you. So they are almost reminding you of this is the this is what the world you made looks like from inside the character you are playing. >> But they know nothing they know nothing of the other uh variations. They have only lived one time. >> Arguably they are you the player if you erased your brain before you started playing the game. The game is saying this is what you would be like if you experienced the world that you, the player, had made. If you had made this context for someone else, to be born into. Then we have the narrator. The narrator is the game designer's voice. The narrator is a character in the game, distinct from these voices and distinct from you, telling you context. But what's fascinating to me like the those voices, they know certain things. They don't know what the narrator knows. The narrator knows things that you as a player don't know. And these voices don't know. You as a player, you know things the voices don't know. But you have no idea whether or not to trust the narrator. >> The narrator is all context no meta. But like imagine, so you make a game, you send that game out into the world, but you don't know how people unless you're watching live streams after the fact, but you don't know how other people are interacting with the game. You're not inside the game recording everybody's playthrough. So, you're like, "Here's the context. Now, you bring the meta." >> And even better, as you explore the game, the narrator starts to you start to realize the narrator doesn't remember the loops. So, the voices remember the loops. You remember the loops, but the narrator doesn't. So, the narrator is almost like an echo. The narrator is dead. The narrator may not even be sentient. The narrator is, "I made a game, just like you said, play it. I'll never see what happens in that game because the creator is God is dead commonly said in our and as you play the game you build your own context in this reflexive loop. All these possibilities start forming this like environment that if you've played this game you know how much this game sticks with you. You think about it a lot after you play through it. But the context of the game is explicitly and always that you are playing a game. The game still reminds you with things like achievements that you are intended to explore this space. >> You're not afraid of dying. That's the other thing. Like, okay, so I'm playing Mario, right? It's like if I fall in a hole or a Goomba gets me, it's kind of like whatever. [laughter] >> If I died in real life and Mario falls in the hole. >> Yeah. So it's like you you don't fear death because you have the player is a complete different existence outside the game. And this this game I found really interesting because I I think it was all about the relationship between player like what is a player character and how does it exist versus like what does a designer bring to the table? and it makes you form all this context and you explore all these princesses and you encounter all these worlds and then the game presents you with a single final choice. Even the bad things that happen are important because you need to un the more you understand the more prepared you are to make that crazy choice. And that is the ultimate conclusion of the game. You need context to make a choice. Without context you will make worse choices and the game explores that very deeply. So to get to what you were talking about >> exactly. So you have your player which is you a human being. You have the vessel which is just like a character on a screen that has no agency. >> And the game tells you that vessel feels pain. That vessel is not >> it doesn't actually. It's like you know AI AI is not conscious. People keep saying oh these I mean maybe it will be in the future. I don't know. >> LLM will never become conscious but some other technology as it is now. It's a lot more like this. It's it's something created and it can kind of show the parameters in which it was created as has a lot of memories that is put into it but it is not experiencing the thing as you >> but this turns instead of a two-way conversation to have I look in the mirror to better understand myself now I am looking in the mirror and I'm also looking at what's behind the mirror and I'm merging all of that together into my entity and if you want to play another game that has done that. You've ever played Undertale or Delta Room? >> Yeah, >> this this was another one that I'm like, "Oh, we should have should have put that because [laughter] uh you know that that actually explores some of the same sort of stuff." >> Do you know how many people came up to us after the last year's talk and said, "You didn't talk about Undertale." And I was like, "Yes, we had 59 minutes. [laughter] What do you want?" >> Let's talk about Disco Allesium. We're going to come back to this concept though. >> We're going to talk a little bit more about him. >> Disco Allesium effed me up. [laughter] Talk about context. You play an amnesiac hero. Now, Plansgape Torment also does the same thing if you haven't played that old game. >> Actually, it's not uncommon for games to start with like the character in a fantasy setting has lost their memory. I mean, wasn't that kind of like that in in Balders's Gate? Also had a amnesiac character. So, the idea that >> the character is discovering the world, the context of the world like the player is you don't know where your shoe is and neither does he and together you've got to find your shoe or not. But Discolesium really uses that idio game mechanic and goes hard. It has that concept of the red checks. The game is telling you you can make decisions, you can have conversations, you explore the world, but when there's a red check that is irrevocable and you've got one shot at it. Whatever the consequences of that choice are, you're going to live with them or you're going to save scum and reload. >> [laughter] >> But the game is really forcing you to follow that idio game and build that context for this character to see where it goes. Some of these choices are really funny. Some of them are really dire. Some of them are really going to mess you up, but one we should talk about. I don't know if anyone interacted with the bull. There's two old guys >> and they're playing they're basically [laughter] playing a game with a ball. It's >> it's kind of like botchi ball. It's like the old man in the park who would do botchi. >> But here's the thing. I as a player, a human being, I know botchi exists and I look at the I see they're playing botchi or a game like it. Your character is sure they understand this game and you can try to join these old guys and play the game with them and you have a check where you'll have success or failure. You can either succeed at playing this game or fail at playing this game. If you succeed, you pick up one of these balls and shot put it into the fucking ocean. and they are very angry at you [laughter] because success is failure. This game is messing with you. This game takes the context you as a human have as a player. If I succeed at a test, it's a good idea and says, "No, succeeding at your task is not always success in the way that you want it to be." Later in the game, you have the choice of whether or not to attempt to kiss your ex-wife. I suggest not succeeding at that test. So, the character, the player, this game is exploring decisions you make without context are often wrong. You are better off knowing more. But the game is also exploring. Knowing more is painful. This character has amnesia on purpose because he learned things that were so painful he would rather not know them. >> People talk about brain bleach. We would be like, I wish that hadn't entered my [laughter] neurons. In modernity, you cannot unknow something. You know, if your world shatters, you have to live in that new context. >> Also, you can't I mean, you can't go back to the past. That's the other thing. It's like time marches forward whether you want to or not. And you have to kind of in games are kind of nice because you can be like, "Oh, I have a safe spot." [laughter] Life doesn't have those safe slots. And sometimes you have to live in video games and in real life with the consequences of your action. So the game explores that painful context is necessary to be birthed into a wider world. So let's take the case of one character in this game, Measurehead the Racist. You encounter this character. Now this character is trying to turn back the clock and go back to a past that never existed as all racists are. >> Yeah. But also also the interesting thing about it is like it's not like the game points to him and says this character is a Nazi. He is your enemy. Basically, you listen, he he spouts this like absolute babble and you >> like 20 pages of racismah, but it's like not racism in the context of real world, but you just by his what he's saying, you're like, "This guy is no good. >> He's one of them." [laughter] >> Yeah. >> So, you have to decide how to deal with this guy because you got to get past him to do a thing. So, you can avoid him. Like, you can just try to like not engage with him and go off and do something else. You can kick his ass, which I highly recommend, [laughter] >> or now, this is where Balders's Gate, I would argue, was a more postmodern game, whereas this is a metacontextual game. Balders's Gate bad endings and good end endings are equally fun and equally well supported. Yeah, they wrote the dark urge. They even some of the developers said they wrote the dark urge as the the player character they kind of wanted people to pick and that's kind of like the more dark and it has the possibility to go full evil. >> But one of the ways to get past him instead of fighting him is internalize his racist nonsense. Now I want to point that out. That is text I copy pasted from a guide on how to play disco Allesium. That is modern advice. Think about what those words mean with the context of what you know to further increase our chances of passing the check. We can say and do fascist actions like agreeing with the racist Lori driver or opting into fascism. >> But as here's where the meta comes in as the player. I think most people at least if they're >> I don't want to role play a racist share my morals are generally like no I don't want to do that. That's bad. So in Balders's Gate, if you embrace evil, you get a bunch of fun evil stuff to do. >> Yeah. You're like, "Yes, evil." But it's like sometimes in the context of a game, you bring your own morality and your own context into the context of the game. If you're starting from zero, you're like, "Okay, stats go up just like Puerto Rico. Oh, I made my number go up. Good. This is this helps me in this game." But because we exist in a more complex world where we have feelings outside the game, we will make the decisions according >> knowledge outside the game. We've seen through the mirror. We know that there's a world outside of the video game. So with Measure Head, if you do that, if you internalize that racism to be able to engage with him, it marks your character permanently. There's the thing in discolesium where you start collecting thoughts. And if you do this, you are forced to have this thought. You cannot take it out of your brain for the rest of the game. It makes your partner trust you less. It changes several outcomes in the game. It indelibly marks your character in a bad negative way that makes the game less fun and kind of screws you over because that is what racism does to real people in the real world. And your character is this deeply intimately reflexive entity. your portrait changes based on things you do in the game. >> Well, it's kind of like your own self-image, right? It's like, okay, it's not just, oh, how what your character looks like. It's kind of how your character feels and what your character thinks. Like the one in like the lower left, that's like if you choose to be the the fascist person and be like, oh, Revashall for Revish people. >> I [laughter] mean, the game is so explicit because the context of the game is the context of the real world. The game say if you the game just like Undertale says you played the game wrong because you're a bad person. But the character portrait changes. The game keeps track of fascist things you did and communist things you did. And it's not even saying communism good. It's just saying fascism bad. >> One thing I think that is really funny about the game, you know, the game is from Estonia. So I think, you know, being one of the Baltic states gives you a certain perspective on the complexity of of the most common the thing that socialists and communists do the most is fight with other socialists and communists. >> So, >> but the game is not just in the context of the real world. The game is also telling you about the real world that you know we're living through another apocalypse right now. We're in the edge of World War II if it didn't already start. And the game is putting you, this game is set in the counterrevolution. The mass socialist uprising failed. the fascists in the capitalist broadly won and you are living in the ruins of that failed revolution and the game is telling you that the world could perhaps be better and the game explores being a reflexive entity in a world that is an apocalypse. How do you put it back together? That is what this game is explicitly about and it brings your real world context into the game to make you feel that intimately and viscerally. And that scene is one of the most breathtaking scenes in the game. >> I like that scene a lot. Night in the Woods. >> It's the same context. These p everyone who grew up in one of those Pennsylvania coal towns said, "I think that game was set in my specific town and here's why." Because this is a common story. So many of our small towns were destroyed by well, current day modern capitalism. Honestly, when I was playing it, it it was right after I had been up to visit the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is a big mining area, and it it felt like it hit pretty hard >> after. [sighs] >> So, now we're going to move on from the video game mechanics. Yeah. >> Into the recognition of giants, those giants, those juggernauts we talked about before. >> It's basically like at its core, it's about seeing systems and the idea that in in games, games contain mechanics, right? It's using your real world knowledge to identify the systems in the games, but also kind of the systems in society. But these games also kind of talk about that like in the in the games world, the characters also talk about seeing the bigger picture within their their setting. this very specific scene, you get this parable of the giant snake and there's a small town and it's being surrounded by a giant snake. And bit by bit, other towns realize that they're all being surrounded by the same giant snake. Think about what happens to small town America. The snake is capitalism. I can just be I can be [laughter] very blunt about it. There is a system. There is something bigger than us, not controlled by us, but in but we're looking beyond the mirror. And these games metexuality explores we need to see the forces that are ruining the world or making the world better. >> But sometimes in games, this is also shown as the characters kind of recognizing the systems within the game and being aware of the the mechanics themselves. In the parable, the small towns once they realize it's all one big snake, they band together to kill the snake. Discolesium says capitalism is [laughter] one of these things. Moral in turn, the UN, the world order. The game explores specific systems that exist in the real world via analogies in the game. And you interact with these systems, but you're just a human. You can't control them. They're bigger than you. They're like gods walking around. we can barely direct them. Metacontextual games also really seem to explore not just seeing they exist, but trying to talk to them, trying to engage with them, trying to interact with them, steer them, anything. So in in this it's often like uh with May she has a bunch of dream sequences where she kind of is uh interrogating like the world and how it's uh affecting her. >> You see this allegory for a human interacting with and trying to interrogate humanity. A culture is a collection of a bunch of people but a culture kind of moves on its own through the collective interaction of all those people. One person doesn't control that culture. So, how do we interact with the things that are bigger than us? >> It's the bee versus the hive. >> Disco Allesium hits this really hard. There there are moments in the game where the city of Revashall speaks to you directly. it it is portrayed >> kind of anthropomorphized like the idea of the sense of a place and a word that's used a lot um to describe the it I believe it's like literally translated like the ghost of the era is a zeitgeist you know you'll hear people talk about the zeitgeist of this it's basically like the vibes of a given time and place >> I am not saying that New York City as an institution is itself sensient do not get me wrong but It is a reflexive self-moving entity. It is not controlled by an individual human. There are people broadly trying to steer it, but it is its own thing. And seeing that and trying to inter interact with that is a big theme I think in these metacontextual art works because we are starting to if postmodernity says we are powerless against these cosmic forces that will destroy us. These games and these art this art is saying we can see them. we can name them >> and sometimes I think this is uh I see a lot of people doing like you know like gijinka and stuff where [laughter] like you'll you'll have a anthropomorphized thing but sometimes it gets really abstract like it will be a a concept or or a nation or something like that. That's I think a very there's one called Scandinavia in the world that I used to read. [laughter] It's like all the European states are like little little characters. So in our last five minutes, the mirror from the beginning, display the princess. Mirrors are so common in these works that we would consider medicontextual. They explicitly include the mirror. They make you look in mirrors in disco. You decide if you even want to know what you look like. >> Well, I think part of the reason that mirrors come up so much is because it's very, you know, back to that initial slide, the art looking at society, society looking at art. It's a very reflexive symbol, right? So like reflexive reflective, you know, it's basically like the character and you are both kind of like looking back. >> So Night in the Woods and I this is an interesting mirror. I just noticed the other >> if you zoom in a little bit everything on the mirror, the stickers are reversed because you are look you as the player are actually looking at May from the other side of the mirror. You are not playing May looking at herself. You are playing a player looking at May from the other side of the mirror. And I learned that a week ago. [gasps] >> Anyone played Delta Rune? >> Delta Rune interacts with mirrors. Undertale interacts with mirrors in an extremely reflexive way that we're not going to get into, but Delta Rune has something very specific I want to show you. This is a crazy moment in this game. You are playing characters and those characters are playing themselves in another video game. You've got a screen and another screen and then the player and then you switch the controllers and then one of the characters freaks out about this and turns to look at you, the player. >> And this is explicitly part of the core of what this game is about. >> Yeah. The the acknowledgement of the game to the player outside the game. And I mean, we're talking about uh things that are considered metamodernist. Wes Anderson is another director who has actually said, "Yeah, it's like my work is metaodernist." And Asteroid City, it's probably it's what did Scott say? It's the most Wes Anderson Wes Anderson movie, but it has like like a book or a play within a movie within a and it goes on all these different levels and at the very end it zooms all the way out to the actors performing this the show talking to each other about what the show is about. This is the exact same mechanic in a movie as this in Delta Rune. But the mirror and slay the princess leads us to the final motif. We only have about two minutes left. A big theme in a lot of work about modernity is the idea of shattering the mirror. That you have to look beyond the reflexive mirror and see the context of the world around you. The analogy of divorce is in every essay I have ever read about modernity. >> But it's it's like anybody ever seen uh revolutionary girl Utenna >> the chickm shell. >> It's but that is a show. It's an anime where it's about adolescence, but it's also about like apocalypse. I feel like a lot of the songs that uh that play are like the apocalypse. So, it's like the idea that something must end. You know, we've used the word apocalypse, but we haven't really defined it. Something must end. You must break up with the past in order to move to the future. >> Modernity has been broadly an apocalypse for society. The old world is gone. And we have to recognize that the world of the '9s, the world of yesterday, it is dead. We're in the world of today. And that is what these games are exploring. We have one minute left. >> Weirdly hit the next slide. And well, I guess we can >> these games literally >> you have to accept that. [laughter] >> Explore that directly. >> You have to deal with the consequences of your accidents and the fact that the past is the past. >> Very briefly, hyper reality. That is when you mistake the symbol in the signifier for the real thing. You see something on the news, that is the real world you live in. Night in the Woods is about a group of people who see one of those giants, dark forces in the world, and they think it's a literal black goat, and they start sacrificing children to it. Meanwhile, the kids >> because they can't let go of the past. >> Meanwhile, the kids see the real world and they see capitalism and they don't sacrifice other kids to the goat at the bottom of the pit. >> So, death, you know, we keep using this word apocalypse. If you're talking about Utenna and the idea that adolescence is an apocalypse, but the word apocalypse doesn't actually mean the end of the world. It's the end of the world in the way that Slay the Princess is the end of the world. >> That is not Harry fearing death. That is Harry realizing that the old hymn is dead and the new him has to live in a scarier, worse world. And we're not saying we're not saying death is good or apocalypse is good, but the idea that apocalypse as representing a huge change, death and transformation, there is something beyond that shattering of the mirror. There's something beyond that decoherence that postmodernism kind of represents. Um >> the philos philosophical idea that change is a form of death fundamentally. [snorts] Like I'm not the same person I was when I was seven years old. But that's not a bad thing. I transformed into an adult. And so >> very slowly. >> Yeah. Very slowly, one day at a time. So >> and all these games ultimately come back to this idea that if there has been an apocalypse, it's not the end of the world. The world is different. And they mostly explore the characters trying to themselves build that context and build the new world from the context that they have and the lessons they learn from the shattering of that mirror. Discolesium is not about the revolution coming back. Discolesium is about the belief that the new world could be better if we try. [sighs and gasps] Slay the princess is this drive for transcendence. We want to transcend this terrifying world. A lot of people would probably like to be something bigger and grander than a human. That the game explores that. But ultimately, Night in the Woods is the one that's most interesting because at the end of the day, the union, this game ends with your dad reforming the union that previously had protected this town. >> Those bad cultists, right, they couldn't let go of the past because they're like, "We used to have good union jobs and now there aren't any and so we're going to kill people." And in this case, this is like a more downto-earth example. This is metaodernism in that, okay, the world changed. The the old world is dead. The past is in the past, but you can go back and sincerely forge a new way toward the future. This is the dad uh deciding that he's going to do a little bit of good in the world. >> I hope that was enjoyable. We had a break. [laughter] WE'RE >> OUT OF TIME. Thank you very much. [applause] >> You really went on your anti- capitalism thing. >> I would encourage you if you enjoyed this at all, which sounds like you did, watch the previous one because we talk a lot about what modernity actually fucking is and a little more of that. Also, grab one of these flyers. We want to hear from you. I want you to come and yell at us in the hall if you want. >> Good things, bad things, reactions. I [laughter] want to understand how you are interacting with these themes.