flickering colours

Mass Effect, Contingency and Canon

In another in a series of pieces discussing largely unanswerable questions, this piece will examine the relevance of the ‘canon’ to an interactive form such as Mass Effect. The background to this discussion is the overall controversy regarding sex in videogames, and why it is such a difficult subject to handle well, that began in particular regarding Mass Effect a few years ago. More recently, speculation surfaced and inspired a heated debate regarding the possibility of expanding same-sex relationships with previously-established characters in Mass Effect 3. The debate, while very likely motivated by personal aversions to non-heterosexuality in general, revolved around canonical and continuity objections. My question here is, can an interactive medium have a non-interactive canon? Who is to say what the truth is, in a medium where nothing is true, and everything is permitted?

I'm getting a lot of mental mileage out of this topic, and I'm spreading the thoughts out in various outlets. This blog post is one version of the thinking. I will be developing it further in a paper I'm presenting in July at an academic conference, and I had a chat to Mark Serrels over at Kotaku AU for a slightly more approachable take (albeit with slightly different concentration). There is a lot more to be said about Mass Effect, romance, fiction and simulation and I hope to be involved in saying. For now, let's begin with this discussion of canon. 

Videogames can be described as ‘state machines’ meaning they are constructed out of many sets of options which can be set to a range of different positions. A light switch is a very simple state machine, with both an on and off position while a windmill is a poor example, as there is no switch from on to off, and the speed the mill turns at is highly variable. Games usually contain many, many sets of possibilities, or individual option-cases, that can be set to one of range of possibilities. The class of your RPG character, whether a Little Sister is still in the level or not, and further whether she was rescued or harvested. Some states will either imply or preclude other options in a different set. Think of Morrowind or any other faction-heavy game, where being a high-ranking member of one faction forbids you becoming a high-ranking member of some opposing faction.

Taken all together, these state cases are ‘what is possible’ in a game. Generally the state of any of these cases is entirely dependent on the choices and actions of the player. The possibility space is the player’s domain, as we work through the long set of options, we flick switches to the position that pleases us. The size of the possibility space is usually biggest in strategy games and RPGs where the ‘how’ you play is a major feature of the genre. These games typically present the world as open to the player’s input, malleable to the player’s will. If I want to become exalted with the Cenarion Circle, I know exactly what I need in order to do so, and really, nothing and no one can stop me. If I want to have the maximum proficiency with daggers, I know how to achieve that too. There is really never any question about the potential of the player’s character. Whatever he/she sets out to do will be achievable, provided that it exists within the possibility space in the first place. The ability to manipulate and eventually dominate the possibility space is the prerogative of the player in videogames. This is generally viewed as unproblematic. Yet, as in life, the case of romance and sexuality becomes problematic, and requires greater nuance.

In traditional media the possibility space is defined, or rather described by, the canon. The canon of a particular work is ‘the way things are’ in that universe. Canon, for our purposes here, is something of a history book, and in the case of sci-fi or fantasy, a physics lesson. The canon defines who people are, what they have done, and more generally what is and isn’t possible in the world, based on narrated events in ‘canonical’ texts. That is, the canon is extrapolated from the published novels or films etc. from the original or authorized sources. So, no, your Harry Potter slasher fan-fic is not considered canonically true.

What does this mean in a medium where, for different players, the things that happen and who people are can be wildly different? In the Mass Effect canon, are the Rachni extinct and the Geth reprogrammed, or not? Is Shepard male or female? Is Ashley Williams alive or dead? Mass Effect’s canon is as contingent as the narrative. The way my Mass Effect universe ‘is’ as defined by what actually happened will be (or can be) quite different to yours. What is possible doesn’t change; we both have the same opportunities to begin with. Therein lies the rub: is the canon formed of narrative events, or by the possibility space?

Continuing to use Mass Effect as an example, the array of options regarding the so-called ‘love interest’ characters present us with an interesting case. For the moment, let us ignore the relative believability of any particular character’s sexual orientation, I will return to that later. The question for now is this: on any one playthrough, Shepard can only fully pursue one character, with the clash between two potential romance partners resulting in a decision being made between them. So, two of the available characters are demonstrably attracted to Shepard. Does the fact that an experienced player knows that if the game were played differently, another character would also be available, or would change their sexual orientation, matter? Is the possibility part of the canon when it doesn’t actually happen?

For example: Liara can romance either a male or female Shepard. Does this make her a ‘bisexual’ (in human terms, she’s attracted to both sexes and this has nothing to do with her own lack of definite gender)? Or is she simply (human) straight and attracted to a male Shepard in that case, or a (human) lesbian being attracted to a femShep? Given that it requires two fundamentally different playthroughs of the game to demonstrate her bisexual availability, is it fair to assume the same from one playthrough? Take another example: upgrading the Normandy. In different playthroughs, the ship can be anywhere between stock-standard and fully upgraded. Given that both are possible, does this indicate that in the ‘canon’ the Normandy is somehow both? A “bi-engineered” ship both with and without upgrades? And does the possibility for the player to choose a male or female Shepard mean that canonically, Shepard is actually a simultaneous hermaphrodite?

My suspicion is that we want to attribute something more like personality to Liara, Jack, Miranda or any other character, and less like state machine coding that actually defines them. Especially when it comes to sex, but generally because these characters are more fun when thought of as people, we want to construct for them an interpretation of their possible states as behaviours rather than programming. We want them to be more real, with their own agency, rather than simply accepting input from a player, and activating the appropriate animation and dialog according to the selection criteria. Further, it is unprecedented for each ‘reading’ of a text to present a materially different story, so despite this possibility in videogames, we tend to treat/imagine Liara as the same person when romanced by either male or female Shepards—even though this is a different story.

When we combine the player-centric possibility space with a more traditional understanding of character and canon, these problems arise. The term ‘Shepsexual’ is used in the BioWare forums to describe the peculiar, unlikely experience of everyone on the ship being attracted to Shepard. We can avoid this sensation if we compartmentalize our plathroughs into separate versions of the story, though. This places some expectations on the shoulders of players, to change their perception of character, and less on those of developers. The reason I suggest this first is that from a story-writer’s perspective, having a love-interest in a story such as Mass Effect in a linear medium may indeed be inevitable, possibly vital to the experience. In an interactive narrative, the decision must be made between allowing/providing for a romance with one particular NPC (let’s say Ashley) meaning that the only playthroughs to feature a romance arc are those by a male Shepard, by a player interested in Ashley (and not Liara or Kaiden). The alternative must then be alternatives. It is not part of the story/narrative that all characters desire Shepard, but part of the deeper structure that a romance arc (of some sort) should be possible for any given Shepard. Therefore, the designers must plan for romance for each different Shepard by creating different versions of each NPC: romanced and non-romanced. Within that, we should probably find romanced-by-male and romanced-by-female, and possibly even the non-romanced version of each as well.

The question becomes whether any particular character being bisexual is actually part of his/her story or if it is simply a mechanical reaction to the player/character’s gender. This is a deep problem between traditional game design and realistic world building. If we are to create worlds, and especially characters, features such as their sexuality must seem to belong to them, as a person, rather than being part of the possibility space that the player controls, or it feels disingenuous, even pandering (especially to certain hetero-male fantasies). Design fundamentals tell us that games should be fair; life tells us that the world is not fair. This demands a very awkward balance between enabling a wide array of player experiences, particularly those personal ones such as romance, and creating an unrealistic world where everyone wants to sleep with you.