It’s Not All About You: Decentralising Gaming’s Domineering Protagonists

In the great film 24 Hour Party People, Factory Records founder Tony Wilson (played by Steve Coogan) says, “I’m a minor character in my own story.” The film, he says, isn’t really about him. It’s about the music and the people who made the music. I always loved this, because for me, life is all about the connections we have with other people, the ways in which we can come together and be more in the intertwining of our stories than we could hope to be alone.

So I grow wearisome and wary of games that tell you that you’re the only one that really matters, games that create worlds that clearly exist solely as playgrounds for your whims, with non-player characters whose lives transparently revolve around you. Everything from the way pedestrians in L.A. Noire spend more time loudly commenting about my character than talking about their own lives, to the way the world of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is filled with guilds and factions that are all just waiting for me and me alone to come to their salvation. Yes, there are other characters in these worlds, but the games want you to know that these are your worlds, and that those other characters exist for your sake, not their own.

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If not for me, do it for Hall & Oates.