On the Subject of Retroactive Characterisation in Games

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Abstract

This paper will create, define & develop the concept of retroactive characterisation as a narrative device for games. In doing so, it will investigate a method of conveying character and narrative to a player after a given event has already taken place, hence, retroactively. The paper will present data collected through surveys and interviews held in conjunction with test sessions. The paper presents and discusses this data through compiled diagrams and interview transcripts, in order to fulfill its purpose of determining the validity of retroactive characterisation as a narrative device in games.

Keywords: Retroactive characterisation, narrative devices, game studies, interactive

storytelling

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1 Introduction

Games, whether digital or physical, have a tremendous capacity for storytelling and an ability to convey information through the presentation of the game, as well as its mechanics. This study seeks to delve further into our newly identified concept - the idea of retroactively characterising a game’s characters, in order to examine the following: To what extent is it possible to elicit an emotional response in a player, specifically a connection to the characters as well as a sense of sympathy as to what their characters have gone through, when the characters are characterised retroactively?

In order to continue, it is necessary that we define what we mean by our original term retroactive characterisation . For the purposes of this study and the research conducted to investigate the matter, retroactive characterisation refers to a narrative device where an anonymous entity, such as a character or location, is given the characterisation that distinguishes an otherwise anonymous person as an individual character, after the events of the story have occured. In the case of this study, this will be examined in the context of characterising characters after they have died. What that entails is the withholding of key defining traits such as background, name, individual appearance and so on. This will be discussed further in relation to the methodology by which we have chosen to investigate this concept.

Teun Dubbelman explains in his article Reward and Mastery: The Value of Game Design Patterns for the Analysis of Narrative Game Mechanics: “However, narrative game design is also relatively new and underdeveloped. In comparison to established narrative disciplines, it still needs to discover its own expressive language and shared practices.” (Dubbelman, 2017) Kristy Michelle McGill expands upon this in her own research, her article in Narrative Game Mechanics and Interactive Fiction : “Preliminary conclusions indicate that narrative game mechanics require further defining.” (McGill, 2018)

This paper aims to contribute to the development of narrative game design as a creative discipline by furthering our understanding of narrative game mechanics. The intent and purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling in this proverbial gap of the field, defining the term retroactive characterisation in order to further the development of understanding narrative game design, as well as examining whether or not it is a functional narrative strategy in games.

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2 Background

While narrative elements of games have been the subject of a large number of well thought-out studies over the years, and as a result we have found a fair amount of tangentially related research, we have been unable to find any investigating concepts similar to retroactive characterisation specifically. This is likely due to the fact that narrative research in the context of games seems to focus upon the player avatar or more traditional methods of characterisation (Turkay & Kinzer, 2014; Soutter & Hitchens, 2016; Van Looy, Courtois, De Vocht & De Marez, 2012). As games are interactive and often dynamic in nature, they stand out as an excellent test bed for this investigation, the goal of said investigation being to investigate and define retroactive characterisation.

While we have developed the term retroactive characterisation for this thesis, we have grounded it in tangentially related research on characterisation & player response, typically focused on the relation between a player and their avatar, their “self”. While this research has been useful to us, a fundamental difference is the fact that, as discussed, we aren’t investigating the concept in relation to a player and any one, single avatar they are embodied by within a game world. This will be discussed throughout the paper.

In other words, we are providing a new, novel branch to the tree of narrative game studies, as a means of further expanding upon our understanding of storytelling within the medium.

What this paper seeks to do is to establish whether or not this is indeed robust enough to be a branch, by investigating whether or not it’s a viable method of character development, and how the matter may be researched further.

2.1 Empathy & Compassion

In order to construct, conduct and decipher data produced by the investigation, it is necessary to establish a definition for empathy and compassion, the former being the potential of an individual to experience compassion, compassion being the emotion targeted by the experiment, as a means of testing the efficacy of retroactive characterisation.

Tania Singer and Olga M. Klimecki delve into empathy and compassion in their article helpfully titled Empathy and Compassion in the journal Current Biology (2014), and as depicted by the figure below, consider compassion to be a response resulting from first having experienced empathy. For the purposes of this paper, we are combining elements of compassion and empathic distress, while disregarding the health aspect of the matter.

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Figure 1. Compassion and empathic distress. (Klimecki, Singer, 2014)

Klimecki & Singer go on to say the following, which will be discussed in relation to the study methodology in a later section:

“While empathy refers to our general capacity to resonate with others’ emotional states irrespective of their valence — positive or negative — empathic distress refers to a strong aversive and self-oriented response to the suffering of others, accompanied by the desire to withdraw from a situation in order to protect oneself from excessive negative feelings.

Compassion, on the other hand, is conceived as a feeling of concern for another person’s suffering which is accompanied by the motivation to help. By consequence, it is associated with approach and prosocial motivation. “ (Klimecki & Singer, 2014)

To clarify, we are particularly interested in elements of compassion, described as an emotional response rooted in the individual’s capacity for empathy. In other words, empathy isn’t the emotional response itself, but one’s ability to empathise with others is what then leads to the emotional response of compassion. It’s this compassion that we’re seeking to provoke through the artefact and the retroactive characterisation elements.

2.2 Film, Literature - Viewer & Reader Emotion

As the idea of retroactive characterisation, at least in this form, is our novel concept, we’ve had to look to other media and their narrative devices to further ground the study. In addition to games, film and literature are two of the largest mediums that appear to elicit a wide range of emotional responses from the viewer (Bartsch, 2012). Oliver & Bartsch, (2010) discovered through a series of studies that people value films that evoke negatively valued emotions such as horror, thriller and drama. While genres with more positively valued emotions such as animation, comedy or adventure were entertaining, they did not become as emotionally moving and therefore did not receive the same appreciation as the genres that evoked more negative emotions, such as sadness.

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2.2.1 The False Protagonist, the Twist and the Late Reveal

By introducing the audience to the main protagonist of a fictional work, only to reveal themselves to be a less significant character or even the main antagonist of the story serves as a great plot twist, leaving the audience with shock value. This kind of revelation of a character is called a false protagonist and is used to deceive the audience in order to evoke strong feelings, such as a sense of betrayal for example, as the story or character has actively fooled the viewer to provoke such a response (Tindale, 2007:28–33).

The late reveal appears in several forms of media such as literature. One example is in the novel Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Brontë (1999) where the reader gets to follow a woman of the same name. After having a difficult childhood being tormented and going to a school for orphans, Jane becomes employed as governor at Thornfield Hall, where she also comes in contact with Mr. Rochester. They fall in love, and Rochester eventually proposes to her.

However, the middle of the story presents a twist. Once the wedding is held it turns out that Mr. Rochester already has a wife whom he kept locked up because of her insanity. Mr.

Rochester claims he was tricked into marrying her but Jane escapes because she is devastated.

This sort of twist can be seen as very important to the reader as the story takes a different direction. What was believed to be a perfect ending for the protagonist instead went in the opposite direction and the reader's perception of Mr. Rochester thus becomes more divided because of this late revelation.

An example of this idea of characterising a character through events that have already taken place and only revealing their true identity after the fact can also be seen in the film The Usual Suspects ⁽¹⁹⁹⁵⁾ . In the film, the viewer is introduced to a seemingly harmless character by the name of Roger ‘Verbal’ Klint, and during the course of the film, they’re made aware of the actions of a character known as Keyser Söze. The viewer experiences this through the depictions and retelling of events that have already taken place, before the plot of the film and in the very end, it is made clear that Keyser Söze and Roger ‘Verbal’ Klint are one and the same. While different in terms of not only the medium but the details of the characterisation, the core principle of a viewer, or in the case of this study, a player, only getting to know the true nature of a given character at the very end is present in the film (Jonason et. al., 2012).

There are some crucial differences differentiating The Usual Suspects (1995) from retroactive characterisation. Most notably, Roger ‘Verbal’ Klint is not anonymous to the viewer, either in the sense of identity or appearance, and neither is Keyser Söze, as his name is prevalent throughout the film. What this study aims to investigate is whether or not it is possible to take this idea further into what we consider truly retroactive characterisation, where a character’s name and even appearance are both completely unknown to the player until after all is said and done and the events have all unfolded as the game comes to an end. Just as how a viewer’s compassion for and perception of Roger ‘Verbal’ Klint may change as they realise who he truly is through the late reveal of his identity, a reader’s perception of Rochester may change due to the late reveal of his wife’s existence. We will investigate how

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one can provoke an emotional response, specifically a connection and sense of responsibility and compassion for the player’s characters when this anonymity is taken further.

2.2.2 The Nameless Narrator

Related to the late reveal techniques discussed above, the Nameless Narrator literary device is also relevant to contextualise our concept of retroactive characterisation. An example of when the character is completely anonymous to the viewer is mentioned by writer Sam Sacks (2015) who discusses the term 'nameless narrator':

“..namelessness..is a social as well as a metaphysical disease, one that tends to afflict women, minorities, the poor, the outcast—those treated as background extras in the primary story lines of history. With this in mind, one can spot a contradictory trend that runs parallel to the recent spate of namelessness: novels whose mission is to belatedly grant identities to past figures who have been unjustly unknown.”

(Sam Sacks, 2015) Sacks (2015) also brings up modern examples such as Tom McCarthy's "Satin Island," Ben Metcalf's "Against the Country," Greg Baxter's "Munich Airport," and many more, but believes the phenomenon has been around for a long time. In a response to Sacks’ (2015) article by Morgan Jenkins (2015), she writes that by having an anonymous protagonist like the nameless narrator, the viewer can thus more easily take on the role of this character.

When we as readers or viewers cannot associate the character with any background or other people, it can be perceived as confusing, but it can also enhance the experience by ultimately, when the character's true profile is revealed, make us relate more to them in a way that we may not had done otherwise (Jenkins, 2015). It is this type of emotional potential that we intend to investigate in our study.

2.2.3 A Note on the Late Reveal & the Nameless Narrator

During the course of researching these literary devices, it has become evident that while they’re used and recognised, such as in the examples given above, these methods haven’t been subjected to formal, peer reviewed study, other than a brief mention in the occasional paper (Jonason et. al., 2012). The presence of analytical articles such as these, (Sacks, 2015;

Jenkins, 2015) on the internet that investigates these ideas, as well as their clear and proven existence in media, serves as an indication regarding the validity of these ideas. While beyond the scope of this paper, we recommend further research into these stylistic devices in order to establish a formal grounding for these phenomena.

2.3 Gaming & Player Emotion

The research that serves as the basis and motivation for this study investigates characterisation, as well as player empathy and connection to their characters. A key distinction between these studies and our own is that most of these focus on a player avatar, a singular protagonist controlled by the player, whereas we are investigating a scenario where

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the player is in charge of multiple characters, as is described in further detail under the Method & Ethics section later on in this paper.

One such paper is The Effects of Avatar-based Customization on Player Identification, ^{as it} asks a question that ties into the game used for conducting the data collection as described under the Method & Ethics section: “Does players’ identification with and empathy toward their characters change over time?” (Turkay & Kinzer 2014). In the article it was shown that avatar-based customization positively impacted players’ identification with their avatars. The players showed greater autonomy and empathy toward their character when they could identify themselves with them. (Turkay & Kinzer, 2014) A study like this is inherently subjective, and as pointed out by Turkay & Kinzer (2014), different participants will likely experience differing levels of engagement and emotional response to the retroactive characterisation of this study.

The reason why this example in particular has been brought up, is that Turkay’s and Kinzer’s (2014) framing of a question and idea is largely representative of the other studies in this field - they specifically tackle a player’s avatar, the character that they’re embodied by and that they are represented by as an individual within a game world. Since gaming is an interactive experience, it can have the effect of the actions being created directly by the players themselves. Games also tend to have a stronger form of escapism where the player takes on the role of one or several characters compared to other media such as films (Van Looy, Courtois, De Vocht, & De Marez, 2012; Klimmt, Hefner & Vorderer, 2009).

This is, to our findings, archetypical of characterisation studies within the field, likely encouraged by the nature of games. Many games that seek to offer a narrative experience typically do so through the eyes of a specific, named and developed character that acts as the player’s avatar, such as BioShock: Infinite ^’s (Irrational Games, 2013) character Booker DeWitt, Gordon Freeman out of 2004’s Half-Life 2 (Valve, 2004), so on and so forth.

This prior research posed a few interesting points and questions to consider. Generally speaking, games that attempt to offer a narrative experience revolving around characters will give the player an avatar to inhabit, such as Gordon Freeman of Half-life 2 (Valve, 2004).

Gordon Freeman, while a silent protagonist with little in the way of intrinsic personality, has a name, face, and some characterising elements, such as his profession and relation to his colleagues. He is a defined avatar that the player assumes direct control over, and is the player’s only vehicle for exploring the game world.

The game that was created for this study has no traditional avatar, but rather puts the player in control over several entirely anonymous characters simultaneously, as will be discussed later. This meant that this particular avenue of connecting a player to a game’s characters wasn’t viable, and a concern arose that this lack would cause players to simply disregard the retroactive characterisation moments. In the end, the decision was made that even if this fear was realised, that in and of itself would yield interesting results, and thus the study proceeded as planned.

A study by Julia Ayumi Bopp, Elisa D. Mekler & Klaus Opwis (2016) explored a similar topic as Oliver & Bartsch (2010) but through using digital games as their medium. The study allowed the participants to experience such things as in-game loss which was measured

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through player’s emotionally moving gaming experiences. Despite the negative feeling of sadness being the most prominent, the players felt that those experiences were rewarding and thus found a greater appreciation for them. Bopp, Mekler & Opwis (2016) mention how it would be beneficial to explore whether people react to in-game loss differently if that character death takes place in a prescripted cutscene instead of being connected to the player’s own actions. Prescripted cutscenes can be compared to film, which was similarly researched by Oliver & Bartsch (2010). The study result indicated that the phenomenon of negative feelings gaining more appreciation is not only visible in interactive experiences such as games, but also in film.

Although our study is not strictly focused on loss, it is still a relevant feeling as it indicates that the game has achieved some form of connection to the player. However, if this study leads to further research, then it could be a worthwhile prospect to investigate loss in relation to retroactive characterisation or otherwise. Especially since the individual fates of the characters are all in the hands of the players, the outcome comes down to their decisions rather than traditionally random elements in games (Lebowitz & Klug 2015:125), such as dice-rolling or drawing cards from a shuffled deck. Thus, there are no random elements that can be blamed for what happens.

A way of waking strong emotions in the player is through the deaths of in-game characters.

This is especially present if the player has had time and build-up an ‘emotional engagement’

to relate and care about the character (Harrer, 2013). If a character for instance dies in a video game without the player learning to know the character or their past, the death is less significant as a connection is not formed between the player and in-game character (Harrer, 2013; Burnell, 2012). According to Harrer (2013), time to connect with the characters furthers a game’s capacity in terms of affecting players emotionally through in-game loss.

An example of the player themselves having an essential role in the game’s story is explored by Marco van Rijn (2018) who mentions that the RPG Undertale (2015), despite having fictional characters with a cartoony art style, has a great influence on the player's emotional response. In the game the player gets to control an anonymous child with the option to kill the monsters in the unknown world they just stumbled into as in most games in the genre.

But the player also has the option to spare them, which is often not a choice typically seen in these games. The monsters that the player encounters along the way also have dialogues, in many cases appearing to express compassion or humanity after they are being killed by the player. Undertale (2015) puts the player's classic choices at risk and causes them to question themselves from a moral perspective. The game is a prime example of how characterising enemies who normally lack identity as well as humanity can affect the player's emotional response to a point that changes how the game is played. This is similar to what the artefact developed to test the concept of retroactive characterisation seeks to do in order to provoke a player response.

2.4 Links to the study

As this field hasn’t been explored thoroughly, as indicated by the lack of peer reviewed material on elements such as the nameless narrator in conjunction with our proposal for the

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concept of retroactive characterisation, this all necessitates combining elements of tangentially related research.

In terms of the response from our participants, we rely on Klimecki & Singer’s (2014) research into empathy and, primarily, compassion. They explain how empathy, despite being a long-recognised concept, hasn’t been studied in great detail, going on to discuss how empathy isn’t an emotion, but rather the capacity to feel an emotional response, positive or negative, in relation to the situations that others may find themselves in. The concepts brought forward in their article serve as the foundation from which we formulate the survey and interview questions, as well as evaluate the responses to them in order to gauge the ability of retroactive characterisation when it comes to eliciting these responses and reactions.

Regarding the ideas of the nameless narrator and the late reveal, while their formal academic grounding is sparse at best, the examples given in the form of The Usual Suspects (1995) and Jane Eyre (1999), coupled with the brief mention given by Jonason et. al. (2012) and the articles of Sacks (2015) and Jenkins (2015), these all contribute to creating a framework that serves the purpose of contextualising retroactive characterisation and why it should be considered, as well as a point of comparison.

The purpose of both the nameless narrator and the late reveal is to provoke a reaction in the viewer. This response could take the form of considering a point or theme the media is attempting to convey, or an emotional reaction, which can hold negative or positive connotations. Based on the film study by Oliver & Bartsch (2012) as well as the game studies formed by Turkay & Kinzer (2014) and Bopp, Mekler & Opwis (2016), we have observed that there is a recurring emotional response in the test subjects. This is the feeling of appreciation for when the fictional work is perceived as sad, such as depressive subject matters or themes.

The authors often refer to it as a form of empathy, which may in turn provoke the sense of compassion, as described by Klimecki & Singer (2014).

Harrer (2013) looks into the kind of emotional impacts in games that we are interested in, although this isn’t presented retroactively. Harrer (2013) explores how an in-game death is less significant for the player if a connection isn’t formed between the player and the character. Since our study is about presenting the characters after their death, we want to investigate whether the player, despite their underdeveloped knowledge of the characters, can experience a sense of compassion in retrospect (Klimecki, Singer, 2014). Alternatively, there is the possibility of other feelings emerging, such as responsibility or apathy for example. Even though the participants have not been able to connect with the characters during the playing session, unlike many other studies where test subjects had the time to create their own game character (Turkay & Kinzer 2014) or build a relationship with them beforehand (Van Looy, Courtois, De Vocht, & De Marez, 2012; Klimmt, Hefner & Vorderer, 2009), these studies have given this study a frame of reference as to how to investigate retroactive characterisation.

By looking at the methodologies formed by these previous studies and adapting aspects of them in a way that adds information afterwards like the ’late reveal’ in works such as The

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Usual Suspects (1995) and Jane Eyre (1999), we will be able to measure how retroactivity can elicit an emotional effect.

3 Problem

In order to address the question posed by this study, we have created two artefacts. The first being a physical board game, the second being an adaptation of that board game created in the online digital storytelling tool Twine (Klimas, 2009). While this study is focused on retroactive characterisation as it pertains to games, utilising the same narrative device in a more traditional form of media that deals with the same topic, setting and characters allows us to make comparisons between the two, and the fully digital nature of the Twine adaptation allows for easier collection of a greater amount of data.

3.1 Method & Ethics

In order to examine the question of retroactive characterisation and whether or not it can provoke empathic responses, such as a feeling of compassion, as well as an emotional connection between a player and their characters, we will conduct a qualitative study involving participants playing through a board game in pairs while under observation. In order to do this, participants will volunteer via booking themselves in for a play session, and in doing so they will be informed of the following concerning their privacy:

1. Their names are used for scheduling purposes, as well as pairing a participant’s survey with the opinions they expressed during the interview, and will never be shared with a third party. The names are deleted once the survey and interviews are paired, in order to anonymise the participants.

2. The interview will also be anonymised. Any mention of participant names will be censored, and the voices distorted in such a manner as to prevent anyone from identifying the participants. Additionally, the recordings will not be publicly available, the published data taking the form of written transcripts. The recordings will be retained for the purposes of verifying the transcripts on request.

Our method is similar to that used by Bopp, Mekler & Opwis (2016), though with a full interview conducted after the survey rather than an introductory interview before the survey.

The play session is followed by a discussion-style interview where the players are asked questions by the observer, and encouraged to exchange ideas with one another.

The intent of this testing method is to use the play session to have the players experience retroactive characterisation, where the following survey and interview will be the tools used to collect the data that will answer our research question. Through this method, we will be able to determine whether or not retroactive characterisation did indeed elicit the emotional response from the participants that we’re seeking, the results being indicative of the validity of retroactive characterisation as a narrative device regarding its capacity to provoke these emotions and connections.

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Regarding the implementation of empathy and compassion as a means of investigating retroactive characterisation in this study, we are looking for the following three aspects in our data collection and analysis, as derived from section 2.1 Empathy and Compassion:

- The participants experiencing other-related emotion. This means that the participants’ feelings are focused on the characters of the game, rather than themselves.

- In the case of the artefact that serves as a basis for the study, the feelings may be more complicated than simply positive or negative ( Bopp, Mekler & Opwis, 2016) . A hypothetical Participant A may find that they experience a sense of responsibility towards these characters as a positive feeling, whereas their equally hypothetical counterpart Participant B may feel a similar feeling but find it negative.

- Approach & pro-social motivation, for the purposes of this study, refers to the participants expressing an interest in changing the decisions they made to alter the outcome of the game they played, to protect their characters.

The idea behind this is that the presence of these aspects within the participants will indicate the ability of the artefact, designed to utilise retroactive characterisation, to evoke empathy and compassion coupled with questions concerning the presence of a sense of responsibility.

This will indicate whether or not the participants felt an emotional connection to characters that have been created through retroactive characterisation as well as any desire to affect the outcome. If either one or both are present, then that suggests a successful implementation of retroactive characterisation.

The interview and survey asks the players for their thoughts and emotions on various aspects. Coupled with the observations made during the play session, this will result in a comprehensive overview of whether or not this implementation of retroactive characterisation did create the sense of connection, empathy and responsibility that the study intended to provoke and measure.

As to why we’ve chosen to use both an interview and a survey rather than one or the other, this is in order to help mitigate the shortcomings of either one of these methods. As we’re investigating a player’s emotional engagement and response, a survey with simple “yes or no”

or “on a scale of one to ten” answers present an inherent limitation, as a player cannot express their more complicated or nuanced opinions. Additionally, any failings in the wording of the questions may lead to the data collected pertaining to something else other than that which we seek, as those undertaking the survey may well misinterpret the wording.

That being said, the survey will still provide valuable data that can be quantified in a way a nuanced opinion cannot, with the added benefit that the participants give their answers under full anonymity without the perceived risk of having their thoughts judged, as that could potentially discourage them.

While on the subject of nuanced opinion, that is where the interviews come in. The interview is held between both the participants and those conducting the test. The purpose behind this is to further expound on the player’s thoughts and emotions, that the survey they took just before will likely have helped them rationalise. The justification for this style of interview is twofold: Ideally, the participants will not experience a sense that their thoughts and opinions are under formal scrutiny, as such a sense may dissuade them from expressing views and

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ideas that they may believe to be contrary to the answers that we want. By conducting the interview under more informal circumstances mimicking that of a group conversation, we aim to minimise the risk of the participants giving us the answers that they believe that we want to hear. Through this method, we gain the benefits of conducting a survey, the limitations of which are lessened by the subsequent interview and vice versa. This allows us to compare the data of the survey to the thoughts given in the interviews, from which we can then evaluate player response to this implementation of retroactive characterisation.

There is a point to consider regarding this method. As the survey and interview are both held in English in a country where English isn’t the native language, it could potentially complicate the interview process in particular. That in turn naturally poses the question as to why we chose English for the study, which is a question that needs answering. The primary reasoning for this, is that it allows us to retain the participants’ opinions in a more accessible language without needing to translate their views. While they may potentially be more restricted in their vocabulary, it’s the closest representation of their thoughts as it’s expressed through their own words such as they are rather than in a translated form, as that poses the problem of unintentional misrepresentation. While neither solution is perfect, the decision was made that English would be the more beneficial choice in terms of rendering the study itself more accessible and eliminating the translation problem.

3.1.1 On Health Risks Imposed by COVID-19

Due to the current situation, such as the Swedish government prohibiting gatherings of more than 50 people (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, 2020), source currently unavailable in English, it is necessary to mitigate the risk of contagion in order to safeguard the health of our participants. While we are only bringing together a grand total of three people at a time, two participants and the study supervisor, there will be multiple groups using the same physical assets over a period of days. We have therefore devised a few key steps in order to reduce the risk of infection, as well as to make our participants feel safe.

a) The game assets will be made to be disposable. This means that no copy of the game will ever be reused, preventing possible exposure through the game assets themselves.

b) The participants will be made to wash their hands before entering, followed by using hand sanitiser, and then given a pair of nitrile surgical gloves.

c) After each use, the surgical gloves will be disposed of in a sealed box. Each participant will naturally be given a pair of unused gloves, and the study supervisors will change gloves between each session as well.

d) While advertising the opportunity to participate in the study, the advertising will express that individuals with a cold, fever, persistent cough, sneeze or other symptoms should not apply, as they will be turned away at the door.

Despite these safety precautions, the single greatest measure is to reduce the number of physical, on-location tests. In order to achieve this, we chose to construct a digital adaptation of the story and the core concept of retroactive characterisation into a more traditional format using the storytelling tool Twine (Klimas, 2009). Originally, we had intended to use this to supplement the limited on-location testing we’d need to carry out in the final phase of

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data collection, but the data gathered in this first phase of user testing led us to take a different course, as will be explained in the sections discussing the testing artefacts.

3.2 Artefact

The basis for all of this is, naturally, the game. We have developed the board game The Line specifically for the purpose of this study, and a brief description is required. Set in the Great War, it plays much like a typical board game, pitting two players against each other with mutually exclusive victory conditions - to break through the opposing player’s line or deplete their manpower.

During the game, the participants will recruit units of Infantry and Armour, both visually presented in such a way as to anonymise any human characters. Once recruited these units join the fray, and during the course of the game, they will “die” and be removed from play, their tokens placed beside the game board, face-up, as casualties. Once a player has met one of the two victory conditions, or either has given up before one of these goals can be achieved, each player turns over each of their casualties to reveal the other side of the token, which depicts a fallen soldier stating their name, age, and profession. The “Archive Files” card will then be scanned by the player, developing the character further through Augmented Reality on the player’s device. This is the moment of retroactive characterisation, as anonymous characters are contextualised and given their personality only after the events of the game have ended.

Figure 2. An overview of the boardgame’s setup.

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Figure 3. When a participant’s card is taken out, they remove it from play and put it to one side of the board. When the game is over, the participants turn over all of their removed cards. The back of the cards will each display a tombstone with or without

a name.

Figure 4. Using Augmented Reality , the scanning of the archive files card will present the player with an overview of a number of icons. They can tap any one of these icons to proceed to that individual’s profile. Tapping that profile will return them to the

overview where they can access other profiles.

To elaborate upon this retroactive characterisation, the participants will scan the cards using augmented reality software. Once a card is scanned, the software identifies which card that’s being scanned, and presents the player with a profile of the relevant character. This profile will give them their name, their country of origin, background in terms of education, professional and family life. In other words, this feature is what defines the characters as characters rather than anonymous entities, giving the participants more to connect to. This is the moment where the retroactive characterisation takes place. It’s at this time that we investigate the extent of the emotional response, as the characters are characterised by the

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information given by the augmented reality aspect, contextualised by the decisions that the participant made during the course of the game.

As for the inspiration for the gameplay mechanics, they are largely inspired by the grid system seen in chess, and the expression “hold the line”, as it applies to the First World War.

Unlike chess however, it doesn’t feature a vast array of different pieces all with different movement mechanics, rules and special maneuvers such as castling. As depicted and discussed, there are two different pieces that are, in terms of gameplay mechanics, largely identical. They follow the same rules for movement, the gameplay differentiation between the two being that Armour units possess twice the power of Infantry units.

3.2.1 The Twine Version

The Twine version was designed to be as similar as possible, given the more traditional storytelling format, to The Line . It uses the same characters, setting, and describes the events as they may have occurred. It takes the form of a lightly interactive narrative, where the participant can read through the eight varying stories in any order they choose, to whatever extent they deem fit. They can choose to finish after just one story, read them all, or anything in between. Below follows a diagram depicting the structure of the Twine version.

Figure 5. The Twine version’s construction.

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Figure 6. An example of how the Twine version is presented to the participant. As some sections such as this one contain graphic descriptions, a content warning is given before the

participants can encounter these descriptions.

Still, it is necessary to acknowledge the discrepancies in the presentation of the narrative. In the case of the Twine version, the characters are already dead at the beginning, without the player having been given the opportunity to become acquainted with them beforehand. Then, through the perspective of a commanding officer walking through a military cemetery, they are given descriptions of some of the person’s traits, where they came from and how they died. The narrative is constructed in this way to retain the core of the board game version’s representation of retroactive characterisation, in that the participant will only be made aware of their names, ages and their ultimate fates after the event has already taken place.

While it is of course important to note the distinction between a board game such as The Line and this Twine version, on account of the latter lacking gameplay elements, the key

similarities are present: The same visual assets are used to represent the characters, the setting and the events described in the stories. It, like the board game, presents a testable point for retroactive characterisation: Do the participants feel the previously described sympathy for a character they never knew beforehand?

3.3 Discussion

As to why we have chosen a board game to conduct the test, the reason is twofold: The primary reason is that it isn’t as resource intensive as constructing a complete digital game, and the second reason is its inherent versatility. It’s simple to prototype new mechanics and implementations, and potentially experiment with new elements should interesting new ideas or a need for improvement arise during the process. In short, it is easily adaptable to the needs of the research question and methodology, should either change during the course of this study.

As for the game itself, it bears some discussion as to why The Line was developed & chosen, out of all possible board games. We developed The Line specifically for this study, with a few key factors in mind:

- The nature of the setting allows for the initial anonymity required, that is to say the introduction of characters that aren’t yet individuals in the eyes of the players. Before the resolution of the game, the reveal of identity and the information given through the

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augmented reality (AR), the players cannot deduce any information regarding the characters’ origin, interests, or anything that sets them apart as individuals.

- Most strategy games, whether it is chess or more modern ones, maintain this anonymity in perpetuity. This, in addition to the context of the setting warranting this anonymous introduction of characters, allows for the anonymity to be present without being distracting. Note that chess and similar board games such as checkers are types of strategy games based on war that have existed for millennia as an indication of the central place of war in human culture. (Weiner, 1959:4) The Line aims to present a clear conflict along with simple rules and objectives, akin to chess in that sense, which is arguably one of the most well-known strategy board games to date. This structure will create a recognition factor with the players.

- Due to the fact that the First World War, which is the setting for The Line , was a global conflict on such a massive scale, it is likely that participants will have some prior knowledge of the subject matter. Additionally, this allows the game to include characters from all over the world, from various countries and cultures. War is a world-spanning phenomenon intrinsically linked in culture, either through living memory or the heritage of storytelling. Even if the players aren’t familiar with the historical context, it is safe to assume that most participants unfamiliar with the Great War will understand war well enough to know that it is not a pleasant experience.

- The main reason however, is that the setting allows for a game where the players are personally responsible for the fates of their characters. It is our belief that the goal of achieving a sense of connection, responsibility and compassion within a player through this retroactive characterisation will be more attainable if the players realise that they are indeed responsible for what happened to these characters, that it was their decisions that meant that these characters met their fates the way they did.

Special mention must be made regarding Brenda Romero’s board game Train (Romero, 2009). While some might read this paper and argue that her game and the one we developed are identical in this regard, they are not due to three key differentiating factors, that being how abstract Train is in nature, as well as identifying the event itself rather than the individuals involved in it. Additionally, due to how Train informs the player as to the true context of their actions, the game assumes a certain level of knowledge from the player, as they must be capable of identifying the names of places presented to them and make the connection.

While Train (Romero, 2009) is a game that tells the story of the horrid logistics behind the Holocaust, it does so in a thoroughly abstract manner. The setting, theme and purpose of the game is never established to the player beforehand, all that they know is that they are transporting something by train. The player only finds out what they have done afterwards, not whom they have done it to.

This is fundamentally unlike the game developed for this study, where the player knows the setting, that they are controlling the fates of humans and the likely consequences, all from the very beginning. What they learn is to whom they have done what they did, as they are already aware of precisely what they have done, all without the game assuming any prior knowledge other than that the player is aware of World War I. Even if a given player is unfamiliar with World War I, war as a concept is such a fundamental part of human history

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and our present times with conflicts all over the globe that it is unlikely that a player would be unaware of what war is.

4 Implementation

4.1 Progression and design choices

4.1.1 Research

During the research process we streamlined the board game through several iterations in order to simplify the learning process & gameplay. This was partly done to speed up the execution of the testing, but mainly to not interrupt the players' immersion and flow by introducing overly complex rules that may cause confusion and thus taking them out of the experience.

The art style was chosen to be kept realistic as having a more cartoony style could carry the risk of the players not taking the game as seriously, as the context and messaging might get lost in more hyperbolic visuals. Photorealism in media tend to help reflect our own reality onto people (Masuch & Röber 2005) while cartoon mediums tend to be associated with more light-hearted, sweet or comical tones like in Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo, 2017) or Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo, 2020) which are both games depicted as more child-friendly, often focusing on themes such as imagination and playfulness. This is in contrast to games with a more realistic art style that explore more serious, heavy topics that aim to create a more lifelike world, like The Last of Us (Naughty Dog, 2013) or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red, 2015). These games do have fantasy elements in them, but as the characters have realistic proportions, the environments and textures resemble real world elements, the art style creates a more lifelike setting that a player might relate to. A similar conclusion was discovered by Turkay & Kinzer (2014) during their study of player identification and their custom avatars. During the study it was found that the realistically depicted game world increased participants' identification with their characters, and was one of the points why players could relate more easily to their fictional character.

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Figure 7. The Great War board game (2015) (left) & The Great War ^album (2019) (right).

During the research we found inspiration from other styles that tend to go for a more mature war tone such as the board game The Great War by Richard Borg (2015) and the art direction of Sabaton's album The Great War (2019) (see Figure 7). Both the board game and the album cover display a realistic, if somewhat stylised visual aesthetic. The colour tones of the palette are desaturated variations of yellow, green and brown which resemble that of the Universal Camouflage Pattern used by US defence forces since 2005 and have become iconic colour combinations often associated with soldiers and military uniforms.

Similar colour palettes can be seen in other popular war games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, 2019) and Counter Strike (Valve, 2000) (see Figure 8). Another popular shooter game, Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017) (see Figure 9), which belongs in the same genre, introduces a more wacky and fun universe, which is partly seen through its more vibrant colour scheme. Finding the right colour scheme is therefore an essential way of conveying the game’s tone (Masuch & Röber 2005).

Figure 8. Screenshots from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (Infinity Ward, 2019) (left) and Counter Strike (Valve, 2000) (right) including the images’ colour palettes.

Figure 9. A screenshot from Fortnite (Epic Games, 2017) including the image’s colour palettes.

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In order for the graphical motifs to be true to reality, we researched real weapons, uniforms and environments during the First World War from the years 1914-1918. We did this in order for everything to be historically authentic. If something is historically inaccurate it is possible that one of the test subjects' immersion might be broken if they have familiarity with the subject matter.

4.1.2 Production

In order to get a faithful depiction of the war through the art style and to speed up the process in terms of graphics, a photobashing technique was chosen as the production method, which meant blending elements of different real-life photographs into one finished piece. When the work is composed it’s painted over and adjusted in order to obtain the desired result. The method is usually used by concept artists in, among other things, games and films. This method opened up for a faster process as there were many different assets that needed to be produced for the board game design, which additionally would look more realistic. By using this technique, it was mainly the shapes that were utilised, and the rendering of the textures came in later. Therefore, like The Great War board game (Borg, 2015) and The Great War album (Sabaton, 2019), the decision was to make the textures in a more painterly style, since the most important thing for something to be perceived as realistic is not the rendering technique itself, but rather the character's proportions (Zell et al., 2015). According to Zell et al. (2015) realistic textures can also tend to be perceived as more uncanny or scary if not used along with very accurate depictions of humans, thus breaking the immersion of a player.

The player cards, armour & infantry, were chosen to be kept anonymous and lack identity as we don’t want the players to bond with their player characters based on appearance and personality, etc.. At the same time, it needed to be clear that the cards depicted soldiers and military weapons. This was solved by depicting only the soldiers' silhouettes, which should prevent personal aspects such as faces and expressions from affecting the player's emotions toward the characters before the game ends.

Since the players are to be divided into two separate sides and battle against each other, it also needed to be distinguished on the player cards. This was done by colouring them in different colours. In order to avoid the "good versus evil" concept by using the classic "blue versus red" we instead wanted to create a neutrality on both sides, so that neither side would in any way be perceived as evil as compared to the other one. Instead, the teams were differentiated in background colours representing the sky’s dawn and dusk, which also contributed to the realism of the art style as an explanation to why the soldiers are represented in silhouette form (see Figure 10).

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Figure 10. The appearance of all the cards. Different variations of the tombstone will appear on the back side of each Infantry & Armour card. The Crater & Archive

Files cards do not have any specific backside.

The more realistic proportions combined with a rendering technique that is painterly and gritty gives the artifact a more atmospheric tone that according to the studies by Zell et al.

(2015) and Turkay & Kinzer (2014) may strengthen the player’s identification and relatability with the characters. Although the art style has been set in realism, symbolism is still maintained to make it easy for players to understand what each card should resemble. This can clearly be seen in the silhouettes, as they form a comprehensive picture of what to represent without going into too many details. Since the cards are small, it was necessary to avoid creating too many details which could be perceived as cluttered and confusing by the players, which would harm the general experience. By using silhouettes, we can achieve anonymous representation of the characters, avoid excessive detail clutter, and still retain realistic proportions through the painterly style.

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Figure 11. The game board features a grid for players to easily see where to place their cards.

For the same reason, the playing field has been divided into a square grid to clarify where the cards should be placed, like a game of chess. However, graphically it is more of an imitation of a real battlefield with less abstraction. The Great War (Borg, 2015) had a grid system in the form of hexagons, but since The Line is more linear and straightforward, square shapes were chosen. However, The Great War 's (Borg, 2015) art was still an inspiration for

illustrating the battlefield. Unlike the battlefield as well as the cards, the machine guns are more symbolically designed in the form of scaled-up silhouettes since they, in a smaller, more realistic form, were not as readable when tested internally.

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Figure 12. The very first prototype on the left, refined version on the right.

Figure 13. An example of one of the profile cards displayed on the players' device after they’ve scanned the Archive Files card and selected a profile. The example shows a fictional character who has been photobashed to represent a convincing real person.

The profile cards emulate classic memorial cards in their layout, and were chosen to be displayed as black and white to invoke photographs taken during the 1910s. Like all previous graphics, some portraits were also designed through photobashing. This was done because the characters were a mix of real people and fictional characters. To match the theme, the real profiles with their original portraits were given a painterly rendering. In order to maintain a consistent, realistic style, the fictional profiles were then produced through photobashing as well, and were then painted over.

4.2 User Testing Phase One

User testing phase one was a small-scale initial test. The purpose of this user test was to gauge whether or not our testing methodology is viable, and to find and amend any shortcomings that we encountered, through data and collected responses or other means of

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realisation. In other words, this isn’t the final testing upon which we will base the actual conclusion to this paper, as that will follow further user testing with larger sample sizes in order to provide data that is statistically significant. We went on to test both the board game and Twine versions of The Line as described previously in the paper, where any future iterations would be made in the wake of this test.

4.2.1 Boardgame method

For the board game’s part, phase one of the user testing was performed with two participants who were tasked to play a round of The Line against each other. Since the number of participants was so small, partly because of COVID-19, we put our focus instead on key data given by those few participants in order to see what we can change in our second and possibly final round of user testing sessions.

It’s important to note that while we used participants who were familiar with one another, this isn’t how we’d recommend carrying out this test, or what we would do if given the option.

It’s an unfortunate result of the current situation both nationwide and abroad, that it’s exceedingly difficult to attract participants to sit down and partake in a board game with a complete stranger. In our experience, the participants feel far safer partaking with a known entity rather than a stranger, as they place a greater deal of confidence and trust in the fact that they aren’t carriers of COVID-19. This means that we will encourage those interested in participating to do so with a friend, as that increases the likelihood of the individuals participating in the first place. As such, barring any drastic changes in the outlook of the pandemic, this will likely be the approach used for the second phase of user testing as well.

Figure 14. The board game’s appearance at the start of the game.

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As for phase one, the two subjects were male and female, both of Swedish ethnicity and were familiar with each other beforehand. The board game was printed and cut out of paper for disposability, and was prepared as depicted in Figure 14 before the players entered the room. Before beginning, the Blippar (2011) app was installed on their mobile devices in order to facilitate the AR portion of the game and testing. The test subjects were introduced to the rules which they learned easily as they quickly understood the game. The participants were focused on getting to the other side with their player cards, and were told to put the card to one side of the board when it was taken out by the other player. The players were in a cheerful mood during the course of the game, which could possibly be due to them already being familiar with each other on a personal level. After a playing time of about 30 minutes, all player cards were upside down with all tombstones visible (see Figure 15). The players were then asked to scan the Archive Files card with their phones through the Blippar (2011) app. Once scanned, the app presented them with digital representations of the tombstone cards belonging to the named characters. The players would then tap any of these icons, the app then showed the player the corresponding profile card (see Figure 16 ). They could then return to the other representations and choose another profile.

Figure 15. An example of a possible appearance of the board game after the gaming session has ended.

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Figure 16. The process of scanning the image through AR after the game session. The tombstones of the soldiers appear on the player's phone after scanning the 'Archive Files' card, and tapping one of those stones reveals the soldier’s profile, containing a brief story and

a visual depiction of the soldier.

After the playing session, the subjects were asked to complete a quantitative questionnaire dominated by linear scale questions that took them about 15 minutes, which was followed up by a qualitative interview that focused more on open-ended questions similarly to the study by Bopp, Mekler & Opwis (2016) discussed earlier in the document.

4.2.2 Twine method

The Twine method was far simpler due to its more flexible nature, as this method doesn’t require sitting two participants down and teaching them a game. Once completed as detailed in section 3.2.1, the Twine adaptation was distributed in the form of a .html-file that was self-sufficient. It contained all the necessary instructions and content warnings, while the final node that the participants would reach at the conclusion of their reading session would present them with the link to participate in the survey.

The invited participants could spend as much or as little time as they wished, other than being given a deadline as to when they could fill in the survey, as we needed a cutoff point for

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the data collection. Other than that, they were free to take part at any time before the deadline.

As previously mentioned, the Twine version of The Line board game is an adaptation of the latter. It carries over the theme, art assets, and was designed to characterise the characters after the events they partook and died in, through the eyes of a different character. While this isn’t a one to one comparison to the game it allowed us to test the same narrative device, the retroactive characterisation, though in a different form of media, as a point of comparison.

4.2.4 Survey and Interview questions Legend:

Red = Multiple choices Green = Linear Scale (1-5) Blue = Open answer

Question Number

Twine Survey Board game Survey Board game Interview

1 What is your gender? What is your Participant Number?

This is solely for the purpose of pairing your Survey with your Interview, your name will be excluded from the data to preserve your anonymity.

How did you feel when playing the game?

2 What is your country of origin?

What is your gender? Did you feel any different after you saw the tombstones (when you flipped the card)?

3 How many of the stories did

you play through? What is your country of origin?* Did you feel any different after you saw the identities of the characters (when you saw them on the AR-app)?

4 To what degree are you familiar with the setting, The Great War (WWI)?

Do you usually find it easy or difficult to sympathise for characters in media?

-

5 Do you usually find it easy or difficult to sympathise for characters in media?

Do you typically find it easy or difficult to feel sorry for a character who is experiencing or has experienced pain, physical or otherwise?

-

6 Are you familiar with the conditions of trench warfare?

Do you often experience a sense of wanting to or wishing that you could help characters in difficult situations?

-

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7 Do you often experience a sense of wanting to or wishing that you could help characters in difficult situations?*

Do you often experience a strong emotional response when characters are injured or suffering emotionally?

-

8 Did you find the visual presentation engaging?*

To what degree are you familiar with the setting, The Great War(WWI)?

-

9 Did you find the written story engaging?

Are you familiar with the conditions of trench warfare?

-

10 Do you often experience a strong emotional response when characters are injured or suffering emotionally?

Did you find the visual presentation of the game engaging?

-

11 Do you typically find it easy or difficult to feel sorry for a character who is

experiencing or has

experienced pain, physical or otherwise?

Did you feel a sense of investment as you played? Did you care about your units, decisions, the outcome of the game?

-

12 Did you get a sense of what the characters had gone through?

Did you feel driven to accomplish your objectives?

-

13 Did you experience any degree of connection to the characters? (Were you able to relate to them?)

Did you find the core gameplay loop engaging? (Artillery, recruitment, movement &

combat)

-

14 Did you experience a sense of sympathy towards the characters?

Were you able to imagine what your soldiers and those of the opposing player were going through during the game?

-

15 Did you experience a sense of compassion towards the characters?

Did you experience any degree of connection to your soldiers and/or those of the opposing player? (Were you able to relate to them?)

-

16 Did the outcome of the story and the deaths of these characters make you wish you could have affected the outcome?

Did you experience a sensation of sympathy towards your soldiers and/or those of the opposing player?

-

17 Briefly explain your answer to the previous question - Why/Why not?

Did you experience a sensation of compassion towards your soldiers and/or those of the opposing player?

-

18 - When you scanned the cards and

reviewed the character profiles, did that enhance any of the previously mentioned experiences?

-

19 - When you scanned the cards and

reviewed the character profiles, -