How One Mechanic Can Sell Your Game
Anime and related Japanese media have thrived off of subversion ever since the tactic was popularized by Neon Genesis Evangelion’s psychological deconstruction of the mecha genre in 1995. However, this past decade in particular has taken such slight of hands to the extreme with countless anime, manga and visual novels/games built to play on audience expectations. In turn, audiences have learned to pick up on all the cues that a writer is feeling sly. Seeing archetypes and cliches flipped can be enjoyable nonetheless but the commoditization of this narrative technique has left it feeling normal, defying its nature.
This is the landscape that Doki Doki Literature Club was borne into in 2017. Writer/Developer Dan Salvato’s deconstruction of the harem genre quickly reveals itself to be not what it seems from the outset; the first thing that appears on screen when you load the game is a (necessary) trigger warning, followed by another and another. Even if you removed the warning, the game’s dark-twist-to-come is heavily telegraphed early on through words related to self-harm slipped into “poetry-writing” segments. And while the visual novel spends its next few hours going through the expected motions, one little moment is all it took to set Doki Doki Literature Club apart from its contemporaries.
In the game’s climactic moment, Monika (the archetypically ignored girl pulling the strings (read: literally recoding the game)) has won. She’s secured you all to herself. The harem genre and concept of digital media have been successfully twisted and commentaried. However, what Dan did next cemented Doki Doki Literature Club as more than “just another”: he directs the player to go into the game’s directory and delete Monika’s file.
Yes, this is itself subversive, but what makes it special is that it’s singularly memorable. It presents a way of interacting with the story that hasn’t been done in any game I can think of and can’t be replicated in another medium. This one touch transformed Doki Doki Literature Club into a visual novel that has remained in the minds of players two years later. It got people talking about a game that otherwise might have stood in the background. Such talk allowed it to reach beyond its niche. And it’s all thanks to literally a minute of gameplay in a 4-ish hour experience.
This X-factor is at the core of almost any game that creates buzz and sales. It can be something small like the momentary but impactful moment of Doki Doki Literature Club’s Monika deletion, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons’ final sequence (not spoiling) and BioShock’s “Would you kindly?”. It can be a wider-sweeping twist on a genre like Crypt of the Necrodancer’s rhythm-gameification of roguelikes or Superhot’s stop-and-start FPSing that results in what’s more akin to a puzzle game. It could even be the addition of narrative where one typically doesn’t exist, such as how Celeste uses the trials and tribulations of overcoming challenging platforming up a mountain as a vehicle to express the feeling of climbing the metaphorical mountain that is depression. Finding just one way that you can give the player an experience different than similar titles is what attracts them to love your work, not just consume it.
But what struck me most about Doki Doki Literature Club’s surprise moment was how it singularly turned an otherwise run-of-the-mill story of subversions into an unforgettable experience. With the right special sauce, you can wow your audience with one flick of the wrist. That’s a powerful thing and goes to show the possibilities of interactive narrative. So, the moral: use the traits that set games apart from passive mediums to make your own game shine brighter than the rest.
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