Players who do not want to save the world

The kind of stories that interest us as a society, as a people, is changing according to the moment we find ourselves and the things we want to hear about ourselves. In literature, the best-selling genres are replaced cyclically on the shelves, and even within them, there are easily understandable tendencies if we look at the context of the publication. Within science fiction, social and humanistic approaches ( The female man, kindred) tend to become particularly fashionable in times of great changes and political conflicts, while utopias technologies tend to fit better among readers in the moments of bonanza, in which it seems that everything is possible. Of course, it is also easy to identify trends according to the age range. At the end of the first decade of 2000, the literature young adult left aside the supernatural romance to enter the brutal contemporary histories as if adolescents had taken together to the conclusion that to overthrow a tyrannical government Mold more than having A vampire boyfriend. But nothing disappears. No gender is destroyed, it is only transformed. Ideas are only waiting for a new opportunity.

«For me, it is more interesting to see a family conflict to save the world. I do not want to save the world, he told us only a few weeks Greg Kasai at the journalist Albert García and me in the framework of an interview on Hades. The creative director and scriptwriter of Super giant Games understood his game as something similar to a family drama about a dysfunctional and powerful family who, for artistic reasons, carry the skin of mythological characters. Agrees does not want to be a hero, he just wants to leave home, he concluded. The same year in which Hades was crowned as one of the best games of the moment also came to the stores The Last of Us Part 2, an ambitious proposal of a study that is proud to create titles capable of convincing a global audience, connecting With players through different cultures. But there are great differences between the first and the second part. The Last of Us Part 2 could have opted to be a continuous game that continues to explore the history of salvation and heal open in the original title. However, the game ignores it. While the first title focused around a man on a journey with which he could be the cure for humanity, the second leads him to a story of revenge with family ties. There are players who do not want to save the world.

In his essay focused on Elena Errant s work, master of the Epic Anti-Epic (the teacher of anti-epic elicit) the cultural analyst Aaron Bad points out how criticism of the work of the Neapolitan writer do not hesitate to compare his tetra logy Go friendly with forms of light entertainment such as telenovelas or romantic comedies, overlooking much more evident influences — by topics, length and style- as the work of Charles Dickens. Men write serious pieces of literature while women write cheap consumer products that can be fun but, ultimately, insubstantial, writes with Iron yon Bad, criticizing as his colleagues not to end up understanding the influence and expertise of authors as a fellow, Jane Austen or Bronte Sisters, confused by the fact that the objectives and hardships of these heroines are disguised with the mundane and are enclosed in a house instead of structuring through a trip around the world. When people describe the Errant s work as epic refer to the extension of it in good sense. In this context it is an adjective as big. The project has a cope epic, you could say. He may focus on two friends of a small neighborhood of Naples, but he has great ambitions when trying to teach us everyone through this Vicinity. All these things are true. [...] But if you wait for a soap opera you could ignore how the fellow story is full of relays to the male epic. The novels of Elena Errant do not take the form of a man: they take the shape of the rejection of male standards.

But antigenicity as criticism of violence, ego and the forms associated with classical masculinity are not alone in fictions created by women. The recent The Green Knight takes a renowned Arthurian legend, with all the elements associated with the epic fantasy that usually show, as the importance of honor, the values ​​of cavalry and courage, and transform them into a story in which a man who He is not prepared to become a gentleman, he lets himself be carried away by the need for male approval until he was forced to give his life for some reasons that surpasses him. But although the character of Dev Patel is selfish, cowardly, insecure and little virtuous, the portrait that paint him is not. In the story that he wants to tell himself is a courageous gentleman who never doubts what is the duty of him and faces him with pride, sword in hand. It is no coincidence that in the picture that Gawain s skin is white in the village of Help. That, for many, is an important part of the story.

For years, the great feats have copied the narrative of most games. Saving princesses, ending the corruption of the world or ending with the reign of a dark tyrant wake up several alarms because they are recurrent premises that can be developed with relatively few explanations. During the first decades of the medium, the target for which the games were developed matched largely with the one who consumed gender fiction and role-playing, so betting on an epic story was considered to walk on safe terrain. But as already wrote in 2016 Brie Code in his essay Video Games Are Boring (video games with boring) are many players who feel disconnected from the stories with traditional heroes who do not resemble them and appeal to a series of values ​​that They could result (as shown The Green Knight) ridiculous in what contexts. The horizontal growth of both the public video game and its creators has helped to progressively introduce a series of changes in the proposals that, on most occasions, we only analyze in terms of inclusion of diversity. However, in my opinion, one of the most notable differences is the change of focus from outside to within which has occurred and accepted even within the Mainstream video game.

We are at a time — season temporary, of course — in which apocalyptic stories no longer have to reflect the destruction of humanity, but can be concentrated in the end of a single person. In which the way in which the characters assimilate a change as the trip of the protagonists and their actions to reverse them are so important. The intimate is collective, how small is capable of creating very large stories. It makes more than a week unpacking, a tiny moving simulator became one of the titles of the moment, praised by the players and the criticism of equal parts. Its history, one of the most amazing elements of the proposal, managed to convince fans despite locating themselves between walls and reduced to the daily life of a quiet life that is sometimes faced by small violence. But, to my surprise, Unpacking has not been minimized, has not been praised despite, nor has it been, as the Errant s work, under the label of light entertainment. The proposal has been welcomed seriously and with the same deference as any other title where, instead of ordering a house, we play to be legendary heroes. The means that promised us great adventures has been able to incorporate very well the little ones and several of the players who wanted to be heroes now only seek a reflection that helps them reflect on their lives and their routine. There is a group of players who no longer want to save the world. A group that, satisfied, does not seek glory anymore.