> Time for another Post from the Past! I really wanted to write something up today but NOTHING has happened this weekend that I feel is really noteworthy. Therefore, I revisted my old posts today and found one of my favorites. It has to do with a game from Digital: A Love Story creator Christine Love and it blew me away so much, I immediately went and wrote something about it. Enjoy!
Don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story (yes, that’s what it’s called) isn’t exactly a game. It most closely resembles a text adventure from the infancy of gaming. It has two major differences from those games though; it uses visuals to help supplement the gameplay and it doesn’t actually have any form of input, other than checking your messages from time to time and clicking to advance the text boxes. Instead, Don’t take it personally chooses to focus entirely on its story, a very well crafted and meaningful look at privacy in our world today with the advent of social networking sites like Myspace and Facebook.
In the game, you play a new high school teacher who hasn’t had the best luck in life. Your hopes are to start a great new life here in this school and turn your life around. As part of the school, you are given complete access to the school’s built-in social network, the one all your students use. When I say complete access, I mean it. No message sent between students is hidden from your eyes and the game regularly makes you read every last one of them before you move on. The teacher must deal with these kids in class, secretly knowing all of the drama that happens outside of the classroom, and learn to deal with the friction that constantly erupts.
Along the way, you are treated to an amazing number of wall postings, private conversations, and forum posts from each one of your students. These are brilliantly written, feeling like they come from each character personally. As the game goes on and you learn more about these characters (mostly from the messages), each new message feels like it belongs and you never feel that the message doesn’t match the person. Each message feels like it came from a real person, the one who’s been writing them all along. Of course, the messages are also filled with typos, Internet slang, and memes that can really make you laugh if you know what they are. The author of this game clearly knew what Internet speak looked like and painstakingly recreated it in-game.
These posts aren’t all funny though. We’ve all been in high school and we know the drama that can create. During the course of the game, you see things like gay relationships unfolding, depression, and jealousy portrayed in a very realistic manner. The whole time, you as the teacher have to experience it all and still teach your class each and every day, even as your students cry out in pain online. Several times, your students come to you for advice and the teacher always finds himself in a tight spot. He always knows exactly why they are coming to him but never feels comfortable telling them that. Also, as time goes on, he feels more and more responsible for helping his students, no matter the pain it causes him. Even when the situation entails something he couldn’t possibly have advice on (for example, a lesbian relationship), he can’t help but feel guilty for not being able to help. It develops an interesting rapport between the teacher and his students and shows us something we may have never seen before.
The whole thing ties together in a truly shocking ending that reflects on the overall theme of privacy as a whole. It is an interesting look at the lack of privacy we have today and the game contemplates where it will go in the future (the game takes place about 15 years from now). Will we even know the meaning of the word when all of our messaging and posting shows up for all to see? Does giving a teacher the ability to oversee all of this really help students or would it just drive them insane seeing so many things they can’t help with? Kids today seem to post their deepest feelings online on a whim and don’t always think of the backlash they may receive. Is it the fault of the child though or of the others who post in response? This game looks at these points and many more like it over its length.
I downloaded Don’t take it personally, babe, it just ain’t your story on a whim today and played through the whole thing in one sitting. During its whole length, I was very engrossed in the story, absorbing every message and post, watching as the characters became more developed. The end of the game came at the perfect time and I was left thinking about the overall themes of the game. While a complete lack of gameplay (well, except for a few choices you get to make) may seem boring to some people, I still recommend it. Be prepared to sit there reading for a few hours before you reach the end but I promise that you will be thinking for a long time after finishing it. Look it up on Google if seems up your alley; it’s entirely free.
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