Misere

Misere is a french word for poverty. But in games it typically is used in trick taking card games (like hearts) to mean the taking of no tricks. This is typically a reverse of what the players are ‘supposed’ to do as most games are scored by taking the most tricks. However the dynamic of ‘playing to lose’ is an interesting notion and an important perspective to consider in games. By examining a couple of points about misere, I think some important insights can be gained.

A boundary for balance

The simplest use of misere as a mechanic is to prevent a runaway winner. Simply put if a misere gambit is a possibility, the end of a match can become much more tense if someone has dominated the round. Often this becomes a situation where players need to force the losing player to take a trick, creating a point of power for a losing player. In some ways it kinda feels like a ‘gotcha’ mechanic, a rule used to trick players before they realized it was too late. Either way it becomes a player enforced ‘rubber-banding’  or balancing technique. Often these types of balancing mechanics that are despised for the lack of agency. But when its made an obvious rule, players control it and enforce it themselves and don't feel disempowered. Mario Kart is a great game, but much maligned for its rubber-banding. I suspect that if it had much more clear and much less arbitrary rules as to how power ups were distributed players would feel better about the mechanic. It would create the option to strategize around the mechanic instead of them being randomly thwarted by it.

Playing a game to lose

Misere is an important perspective to understand because of how arbitrary game rules can be. Is there really any difference to winning and losing a game if you had to play optimally to do so? Often in certain kinds of puzzle games, the answer is no. Playing bejeweled to get the lowest score can be just as difficult as trying to get the highest and can expose different types of play. Triple Town is just as fun if you try to play to invoke its loss condition as fast as you can (instead of trying to win). Also there is no need to involve yourself in microtransactions if you play this way.

This really exposes just how arbitrary points are in some games. If it creates the same sort of challenge to score high or low, why not include both as a way to score in the game? Using misere, games can create this ‘difference in kind’ while it helps players to better understand the mechanics of the games. This is a rather simple way of expanding the possibility space of what the game is and get more out of game mechanics.

Mark Brown of "Game Maker's Toolkit" explains RE4's adaptive difficulty

Changing how you play

The way in which misere changes how players play has some interesting results. One of the more famous examples is the Resident Evil 4 speedrun. RE4 (not shown) has adaptive difficulty, where the game gets easier if the player goes into encounters with less health. In this way speedrunners intentionally take damage to have easier encounters for faster play.

There are many other examples of players exploiting mechanics to change how games are played as well (save scumming, arbitrary restrictions, even just speedrunning itself). Using misere as another lens can help designers get the most and even add more to their games.


[the formatting seems to be a little off for some reason, I'm looking into it]

Coolest Daughter Ever Syndrome

I was playing Dishonored 2 during the holidays to catch up on what I missed and to honestly enjoy some of the great achievements in the first person perspective. However, what I find interesting is how Dishonored 2 (2016) treats it’s daughter protagonist. Since games like The Last of Us (2013) and Bioshock Infinite (2013), the daughter protagonist has become an uncommon but also welcome addition to games (especially if you are looking at review scores). But I think this points to a pattern developing in the genre because of their maturing and predominantly white male target audience.

A new  female protagonists following in her father's footsteps.

Father’s Gaze*

Critics like to talk about male gaze in big budget games, enough that I’m not going to go into it here. However, I will talk about the more subtle nuances that can come from it. Games with the perfect daughter don’t eliminate male gaze they just show a different male’s gaze. In the case for Dishonored 2 (and Bioshock Infinite and the Last of Us) the male gaze is from the view of the father.

The relationship between the father and daughter is idealized from the male perspective. For the most part, the relationship is one where the daughter idolizes the values of the father character, wanting to (and encouraged to be) a similar sort of bad-ass that the father character is. The daughter is the one who relates to the father character. What would be considered feminine characteristics (even basic biological characteristics) are not related to or even mentioned in the games. Even something as stereotypically feminine as wondering about ‘boys’ or thinking about ‘fashion’ or anything being considered ‘cute’ does not occur. It's almost as if the daughter character is a hyper tom-boy to the extent they are only female in superficial appearance.

Honestly, Zizek is probably a little too deep for this analysis.

FEAR

Older men and young girls really don't relate that well to each other, creating what could be considered an uncanny valley of understanding between the personas. The horror genre plays on this with the ‘creepy girl’ trope. One of the reasons why the F.E.A.R. (2005) antagonist, Alma Wade (scary girl in a red dress), works as a trope is because the male audience doesn’t relate to her. But moving deeper, players see her exhibiting lots of feminine traits. She wears a dress, she is a mother, even the theme of blood in the game could be considered a feminine connection (I'm reaching). Even in FEAR, Alma’s hug is lethal; the male player must shoot to repel her. The nurturing feminine touch is toxic to the masculine ideology and must be repelled by violence, the most masculine reaction ( I can hear Slavoj Zizek’s breathy slurps already).

It's really the name thing and the guitars that make it weird.

Girls will be Girls

Now games are not inundated with these ‘cool daughters’. This crop of games might just be a footnote or a stepping stone to more varied characters. It doesn’t even fully constitute a trope or pattern in games due to how few examples exist. What is really important is to be aware of this emerging pattern. It’s important to understand how games have shown the masculine and feminine traits; and to understand that the male gaze it not removed by just adding daughters. There are deep and subtle patterns being displayed in these games and there is a lot of possibility to show new and interesting characters.

Also, all the daughter characters’ names start with the letter ‘E’ and it's starting to freak me out.

*The father's gaze also represents a more mature and positive gaze. Male gaze is often vilified for its adolescent connotation. Father's gaze does remove or lessen  a lot of the most troubling aspects male gaze, such as the objectification of women, and women being acted upon instead of as independent actors. However, men are still implied to be the audience and violence is prevalent and their values are still upheld.