#cibele

Miturile despre zeița Cibele

Released: Monday, November 2, 2015 Developed by: Star Maid Games

Isn’t all art autobiographical? To a certain extent, yes. Compared to painting, music, and film, games are rarer, however, at being read as the expression of a specific individual. Painting, drawing, sculpting and the like might be the “purest” form as there is usually only the one artist bringing about the creation of the work. The less hands the more “pure” a creation is viewed as. Music making is an expression of a singular or group of artists, but is touched by many hands. The artist plays the instrument, sings the lyrics. Often the writing is a collaborative process, sometimes ghostwritten entirely by someone else. There are producers who help in the process, the audio mixer at the time of recording, and the editor among others. A final, published work is not the product of a single person but can largely be credited and viewed as the spirit of one (or more). Film has even more collaborators and even larger numbers of hands touching a work before its “final” form. It can also be re-edited, remastered, and reproduced long after those original hands have finished their work.

It was in film that the “auteur” theory began, where a singular person, namely the director, of a film is credited as the authorial voice behind the film as a whole. This theory crossed over into video games, a medium desperately attempting to emulate film, where a singular person is credited as the authorial voice behind a game. One way that games have mirrored films is that in the big budget space the amount of people contributing to a project has exponentially increased. For film, just compare the credits to Rambo III (whose credits occupy 321 lines of an excel sheet), then the highest budgeted film of the time, to Avengers: Endgame (4221 excel lines), the most prominent of the big budget blockbusters. Rockstar North at the time of Grand Theft Auto III’s release in 2001 credited 185 developers. In 2008 with the release of Grand Theft Auto IV there were 1,334 developers credited. Most recently, with Red Dead Redemption II in 2018 there were 4,130 developers credited. As we have learned, there are likely many more whose hands touched these games but whose names were withheld from the official credits due to a cruel policy, something that sadly can also be a mirror of film. Can Red Dead Redemption II have a singular authorial voice behind it when over 4,000 people all had a hand in its creation? I certainly don’t think so. It is due to this exponential inflation of development sizes and the reliance on outsourcing development for high budget projects that a game like Death Stranding can get a lot of attention for being the work of over 1,400 people, but largely credited to the singular voice of Writer, Director, and Designer: Hideo Kojima.

Much like his previous work in Metal Gear Solid, conversations between characters were not always exposition or character history, but instead just someone explaining to Sam Porter Bridges (the player stand-in) a movie or the history of some niche topic, things that could easily be read as something Kojima simply found interesting and decided to put into the game. Except, in the early games of Metal Gear Solid these conversations are mainly optional ones summoned via codec calls, whose dialogue was mainly written by Tomokazu Fukushima, not Kojima. Not that this somehow discredits Kojima’s contributions, but it does lessen the belief that ALL of the Hideo Kojima branded games were the result of his singular creative vision dominating development, and explains their lack of presence in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which Fukushima did not work on. Death Stranding remains an oddity of its time as no other game with its budget could be so easily attributed to a singular person’s vision. Instead of looking to apply auteur theory in the big budget space, which can lead to regrets such as Tom Bissell’s profile of Cliff Blezinski for The New Yorker in 2008, it can be much more easily applied to the independent development space of games, where smaller teams, sometimes even consisting of only one person, create games that are frequently an essence of their spirit being shared with others.

Cibele, released in November of 2015, is a creation of many but carries the voice and spirit of one person: Nina Freeman. This is not just because she is the writer and designer and actor amongst a team of 25 people, but the game is explicitly autobiographical and an adaptation of a period of her own life. It relays the story of young, emotionally immature love, found between two people who met and mainly communicated through the online space of playing an MMO. Freeman’s expression here is one of tender care for its player. The game is a sharing of a personal experience as a way of comforting those who have gone through the same thing by letting them know they are not alone in their pain. Playing the game consists of browsing the PC desktop of Freeman the character, littered with snippets and photos from Freeman the person’s life. This usage of real images extends to the interstitial scenes in which Freeman the person plays Freeman the character in a live action video, or better known in the gaming space, as FMV (full-motion video). The most “gamey” aspect of Cibele is when you play the in-fiction MMO Valtameri. It’s very simple to play, you simply click on screen to move your character there and click on enemies for the character to auto-attack, eventually summoning a larger boss enemy character to defeat ending the play session. During this playtime you will listen to Freeman talk to Blake as their online friendship eventually stumbles into the beginnings of a relationship before the fateful in-person meetup and cold feet abrupt breakup.

The inclusion of Freeman’s presumably real life photos and text lends a voyeuristic touch to the way you interact within the game. You as the player are supposedly re-enacting any typical evening spent in front of the character’s computer, but because it is full of actual photos, not renders or artistic interpretations of real life, it feels more like we’re getting an intimate view of this person, both the character and the creator behind her. As time passes in-game by months the relationship between herself and Blake becomes more explicit. Photos you can view that were taken and/or sent to Blake as shows of affection become more revealing, to a surprising extent given they are actual photos of a person. Not that this aspect is any different in lots of other games. How many times have we, as the player, gone through another person’s personal items in a video game and read their diary or emails? The main difference here is that these are photos of someone we know is real, half-naked, and meant to be viewed only by her lover. She even has a brief text exchange with someone else while playing Valtameri who claims a former love of hers shared with him explicit photos originally sent for his eyes only, an unfortunate outcome all too common in young relationships. Are we, as the player, any better for snooping around her desktop and viewing her undressed? Despite its inclusion in the game meaning my viewing was intentional, it still feels wrong. It does make me question my comfort in digging into others' private lives in other games, even if they’re purely fictional.

Some of the text you can read are archives of old blog posts Freeman made, an online persona maintained through sporadic updates sharing details of her life. The way she organizes her files, the different information she reveals depending on who the recipient is, all are different ways we get to form a picture of what we imagine the “real” Freeman is. The game itself lends insight into the real Freeman’s life and mind, a representation of a specific time of her life, though obviously viewed through a lens of something to be played by anyone willing to buy it, and as an artifact of memory, and only one person’s at that. It’s incomplete, just like the image of Freeman conjured by Blake’s mind. It could be that finally viewing the “real” Freeman and not just the one presented in voice conversations and explicit photos was overwhelming for Blake, who took the easy way out of claiming he doesn’t, in fact, love her and that he has to go (but they’ll talk later). However, having been there myself, it was most likely just emotional immaturity that led to this sad end.

I see pieces of myself in multiple characters in Cibele. The jealous friend in the DMs, the awkward conversations of compliments and unknown feelings, baiting for any statement, or picture, to make myself feel better. Post-high school and early 20’s are a weird and lonely time, and trying to reason with someone in the midst of their emotions during this time seems to never lead anywhere. I was a lonely boy looking for connections online, though instead of an MMO it was Tumblr that was my outlet. I met my wife on Tumblr, though our relationship had stop and starts and teary breakups and getting back together make outs that could easily fit into the same emotional feeling Cibele evokes. This feeling, this sharing of a personal experience and emotion, is what I always find valuable in art and artistic expression, or just any expression. Through the sharing and receiving of emotions, memories, stories, and images, we can become better people and more whole.

There have been some recent conversations about the intent and purpose of art and whether it is still relevant. On the podcast Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games episode 109: Answering Your Questions without a Guest the cast reads the question, “In your Day of the Dev episode Paolo posed the question why would one not be making games that actively try to make the world a better place. More specifically in regards to climate change. Pressure of being part of one of the last generations with the possibility to take action affects many parts of our lives, how we make games, and what games we play. Whether that is not flying to conventions, playing cozy games to distract ourselves, the insane ethical implications of producing hardware and much more. I would love to hear the cast pick up this question, explore how it influences their play, and what, if any, consequences it has for themselves.” Similarly this topic is discussed in the YouTuber Art is Everything’s video from March 2022 titled, “Is Art Still Relevant?”

Eu Já Estive Em “Eu, Inútil”, de Cibele Laurentino

Inútil: achei que esse fosse meu nome de batismo! Para o livro começar dessa forma, você já se prepara para o que está por vir. Ao se apresentar na sala de aula, a mesma coisa: me chamo Inútil, minha mãe quer que eu seja pediatra, mas quero ser cozinheira. Eu, Inútil, é um romance de formação que apresenta a vida de uma personagem central que deseja ser amada por sua mãe. Dividido em 41…